McBride to Chicago: How should we react?

At Thursday night's MLS All Star game, commissioner Don Garber said that a deal between Toronto FC and Chicago Fire had been agreed to sending former Crew Forward Brian McBride to Chicago to finish his MLS career. While people are happy that McBride is returning to the league, many folks have serious mixed feelings about McBride returning with Chicago. On Bigsoccer, various ideas have been discussed about crowd actions when McBride returns to The CCS. One poster suggested "McJudas" for a sign, and another opined that the Nordecke should turn its back in defiance to Brian McBride. 

I for one feel this is the completely wrong thing to do. During his time with Columbus, Brian McBride WAS the Columbus Crew. Brian McBride was and still is the only Crew player that gained wide recognition in Columbus not just from soccer fans, but all sports fans in general. In his 8 years with the club, McBride scored 62 goals which is the club record. Brian McBride was also the first ever draft pick in the MLS draft. In 2005 he was named to the MLS All Time Best XI. While McBride did leave Columbus, he left to fulfill a dream of playing in the English Premier League and left the club on good terms. Not once did McBride disparage the organization, cause trouble in the locker room, or voice displeasure of playing in a smaller market like Columbus. Brian McBride embodied the "Hardest Working Team", bringing his lunch pail to work every day and litterally leaving his blood on the field. Brian McBride is the greatest forward the US has ever produced, and the prime of his career was spent in Columbus. Whenever McBride returns, he should get a standing ovation for the service he gave the club in the formative years of the team. While he may now be playing for a rival club, that does not take away the great things he did for Columbus and all the sweat and hard work he gave to the club. 

If you as a Crew fan want to be upset at somebody, be upset at the front office, who came close to signing McBride last season to a new deal. HSG as usual was too cheap to close out the deal, so now we have to watch our greatest player of all time play on another team in MLS. When McBride returns to Columbus, it will be a sad day. But dont forget that we had the chance to resign him and decided to not pull the trigger and pay the extra money that he deserved. If the front office was serious about bringing Brian McBride back, they would have got the deal done. Instead, they did nothing and we now get to watch McBride play for Chicago. Hopefully when watching McBride, fans will remember the time he gave us and the fact that we were too cheap to bring him back.