The day after the Nico Gaitán deal was finally announced, Chicago Fire President and GM Nelson Rodríguez was going through some files at home when he came across some packs of soccer trading cards. They were left over from the days he used to hand them out as gifts to his younger players when he was coaching youth soccer, and on a whim he opened them. The first packet contained a Benfica player named Nicolás Gaitán.
As Nelson recalls it, it was a moment of serendipity that bookended a general good feeling about this deal, that started the morning Gaitán first came onto the team’s radar.