Ask around and you’ll get a range of descriptions for Chicago Fire goalkeeper Gabriel Slonina.
Mature. Composed. Intelligent.
Four clean sheets in 10 appearances entering Sunday’s season finale against the Columbus Crew have only added to the buzz that surrounds the Addison native.
“It’s scary how good this kid can be,” interim coach Frank Klopas said last month.
Defender Jonathan Bornstein was a bit more direct Oct. 27 after a game against New York City FC.
“The kid’s an animal out there,” Bornstein said.
And fellow homegrown Mauricio Pineda’s take?
“I feel like there’s a 30-year-old man behind me,” the defender said in August.
For a 6-foot-4, nearly 200-pound keeper, that’s a fair description.
But it probably is worth noting that Slonina is only 17, not yet finished with high school and several months from being eligible to vote.
His rapid rise — which includes becoming the youngest goalkeeper in Major League Soccer history to start, record a shutout and save a penalty — has the Fire excited about what’s in store.
But don’t think it will go to Slonina’s head.
“The moment you start to get comfortable is the moment you stop improving,” he told the Tribune. “It’s always about that mindset of never being comfortable, putting yourself in uncomfortable situations because that’s what really grows us. The biggest amount of growth comes from when you’re uncomfortable, when you’re not in a place you want to be, when you have to work to get where you want to be.”
‘He’ll say certain things that you can’t believe a 17-year-old is thinking.’
The culmination of Slonina’s path to the first team came Aug. 4 against NYCFC, his first professional start.
There was just one problem: His car broke down on the way to Soldier Field.
“It was kind of a stressful moment because you don’t want to be late to a meeting on your debut,” Slonina said. “But I got there on time and was able to focus on the game and completely forget about it while I was preparing for the match.”
Slonina’s ability to stay focused and his maturity were attributes Fire goalkeeper coach Adin Brown recognized instantly after joining the staff in 2020.
“You could tell from the very start he was hungry even though he was third or fourth on the depth chart,” Brown told the Tribune. “He wanted to get reps, he wanted to jump into the scrimmages. And you could just tell from early on that he was very hungry. Hungry for minutes, hungry for success and very ambitious.”
Slonina has tasted some success early in his career. His four clean sheets equals the Fire’s total from last season, and a five-save performance against Real Salt Lake earned him a spot on the MLS team of the week.
While former U.S. men’s national team goalkeeper Tony Meola is quick to point out the small sample size — 10 matches, most of which have come with the Fire well out of playoff contention — he noted Slonina’s intangibles, including a willingness to come for crosses.
“The things that you can’t teach are his size, his reaction time, his confidence in organizing a back four,” Meola, an analyst on Fire broadcasts, told the Tribune. “Those are things that I always think as a goalkeeper you either have or you don’t.”
Meanwhile, Brown praised Slonina’s intelligence and ability to recognize passages of play before they develop, something that typically comes only with age and experience.
“He really is a student of the game and he reads the game very well,” Brown said. “When we’re going over film, he’ll say certain things that you can’t believe a 17-year-old is thinking on the field in terms of his visions of how things are developing.”
‘It was clear that he had something different.’
When Cedric Cattenoy joined the Fire in 2016 as the team’s academy technical director, three youth players stood out: Slonina, Javier Casas and Brian Gutiérrez — all of whom have since signed contracts with the Fire.
Slonina, who has been nicknamed “Gaga” since his pre-Fire days with Addison United, was 12 at the time and already playing up two levels with under-14s.
“His maturity and presence were so spectacular for a very young goalkeeper,” Cattenoy told the Tribune. “It was clear that he had something different.”
That something different also caught the eye of then-coach Veljko Paunovic and then-GM Nelson Rodríguez, who signed Slonina to a five-year deal in March 2019.
Slonina’s signing at 14 was notable because at the time he was the second-youngest MLS signing since Freddy Adu.
To avoid repeating the mistakes that befell Adu’s development — i.e., unrealistic expectations — the Fire largely kept Slonina out of the spotlight as part of a five-year plan to integrate him slowly.
Slonina made his first start Aug. 4 because of a knee injury to veteran Bobby Shuttleworth, but he didn’t play again until Sept. 19 when coach Raphael Wicky, who was fired at the end of September, wanted to see how Slonina would cope with an extended run of games.
Considering Slonina’s performances, it goes without saying the original five-year plan has changed.
“I’m not surprised because he has a special mentality,” Cattenoy said. “He knows exactly what he wants to accomplish. And when you know what you want to accomplish, it’s really a tool to move forward.”
An insatiable drive to improve
Even before getting first-team minutes, Slonina had an unrelenting drive to improve.
He wakes up at 5:45 a.m. to meditate, set targets for the day and reread the short-, mid- and long-term goals listed on a board in his bedroom.
He’s out the door an hour later and typically is one of the first to arrive at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, where the Fire train, getting in upper-body or hand-eye coordination work before others arrive. The Fire usually practice around 10 a.m.
“He makes me better by his work ethic, by his standards,” Brown said. “He makes me a better coach because of his attitude and because of where he wants to go and what he wants to do. He raises my level and he raises those around him as well. And that is one of the best assets to have as a player in a team sport.”
After a recovery session in Bridgeview, Slonina takes notes in a journal about that day’s training session or about the previous match.
Unwinding is important, too, and Slonina is conscious of taking mental breaks, which for now include watching “Game of Thrones.”
“It’s an everyday process to continue to get better,” he said. “And it’s hard, you know? It’s not easy. A lot of people just see what happens on the field and think it’s just a given, but it’s a lot of work that people don’t see.”
It’s a work ethic Slonina and his brother, Nicholas, who also signed with the Fire, attribute to being the sons of Polish immigrants.
“It definitely was a difficult road for them and it’s always a reminder that they came from nothing,” Gabriel Slonina said of his parents, who emigrated from Tarnów when they were about 21. “When in difficult moments I use that as motivation to keep going because I see how far they’ve come. It’s a good reminder that anything is possible.”
Given the brothers’ size — Nicholas is listed at 6-3 and Gabriel at 6-4 — it’s fair to wonder what was cooking in the Slonina household.
“Oh, we ate everything, man,” Gabriel Slonina said. “I still eat everything.”
It’s a healthy diet befitting professional athletes, of course, but also includes a number of Polish delicacies, such as pierogi and kotlety, which Slonina said are “super good with mashed potatoes.”
Said Slonina: “All those Polish dishes, if someone from a different country were to try some, they would be very shocked at how good it is.”
So how good can Slonina be?
Spend enough time on Twitter and you’ll inevitably come across the list of Fire goalkeepers to start since Sean Johnson was traded in 2016.
(Ten, including Slonina, if you’re keeping score at home.)
Slonina very well could be the solution to the Fire’s search for consistency in goal — but he knows he needs to improve his footwork and distribution.
“I don’t think I’m excelling at any part of my game,” he said.
Meola wants to see Slonina better control the pace of the game — when to start a quick counter, when to slow things down — while Brown thinks some techniques can improve.
“He’s the type of kid that wants to be perfect, that wants to get things right,” Brown said. “And he’s the type of kid that’s going to continue to work on it until it gets better.”
Slonina is signed through 2022 with a team option for 2023. After that is when things could get interesting.
Young talent is a hot commodity in soccer, and having a Polish passport makes Slonina an appealing prospect for European teams. He also recently was the subject of a page-long spread in Italian sports newspaper Tuttosport.
“The quicker he gets to Europe, the quicker he figures out where he fits in world football,” Meola said. “I’m not trying to take away from the Chicago Fire, that’s not my mission here. … Go test yourself. There aren’t a lot of 17-year-olds around the world at any level that get first-team football.”
After the season finale Sunday, Slonina is set to join the U.S under-20 national team. Breaking into the senior national team could be a challenge — goalkeeper depth is a U.S. strength — which could open the door to the Polish national team if it comes calling.
Like a potential move to Europe, that’s yet to be decided.
“I have a lot of family in Poland but I also grew up my whole life in the USA,” he said. “It’s going to be a tough one but it’s going to have to be made.”
Whatever his future holds, Slonina will, as always, take it in stride.
“I’m always trying to be in the moment, even in my daily life,” he said. “Because when you’re in the moment, there’s no next play. There’s no what you could have done better the last play. It’s always about how I’m going to be the best in this moment.”
And at least at the moment, the Fire have what should be their goalkeeper of the future — and present.
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