Following Chicago Fire FC's 3-3 draw with FC Cincinnati, Head Coach Ezra Hendrickson, midfielder Maren Haile-Selassie, and goalkeeper Chris Brady gave their thoughts on the result. Read their postmatch quotes below:
Chicago Fire FC Head Coach Ezra Hendrickson
On what went wrong late in the match...
“Well, again, it's 75 minutes of pretty decent football. It's a very good team, just one of the teams that's picked to finish, you know, in the top half, at least one, two or three [in the] conference. And we have them on the ropes like that and we don't finish out the job. And it's all about, you're at home, you're up two, they have a corner kick. I'm not getting beat by my man, alright? The ball is getting cleared. I'm fighting through everything. I'm not getting pushed around. They're not gonna score.
It's simple. When we get in these positions, we have to fight. The mentality has to be better. And it's all about competing. It's all about fighting for the badge. You know, it's 10 minutes to go in the game. We're home, we're up, we're not going to lose this game. My man is not going to beat me. If they're on a counter and I don't have a yellow, I'm going to foul the guy, reset. And if they get a free kick, a corner kick or whatever have you, I'm not gonna get beat by my man. And that didn't happen tonight. We almost lost that game. We almost lost that game. So yes, we're not happy about this tonight. We felt like we lost two points tonight, not gained one.”
On why the team has lost late leads...
"I wish I could tell you. We'll look at the film and maybe if we got a day in training, we've got to do more competitive stuff where we do more situational stuff; we'll put a team up two and play for about 10 minutes and see if they can hold a lead. But it's all about competing, it's about competing. The football has been too good not to come out with results. Tonight, we played probably our best game of the three and we still didn't get the result that we want. It's not an easy team to play against. But at the end of the day, when you have them on the ropes like that, you have to finish out that game. And again, we did not do it.
And so that's something that we're gonna have to continue to address in training. Just put the guys in situations where they have to compete, make them uncomfortable. The team is coming at you. They're trying to catch up to a two goal deficit. So, they're going to press, they're gonna come. You know, maybe you don't need to make that little cheeky pass; maybe you're under pressure, maybe it's a ball down the corner, and we push them back a little bit and we regroup. You know? We can't always try to play out. We're a team that wants to play with the ball, but there are times in the game when you just have to route one, you have to go long, because you're under pressure. Because if you don't and you lose it, they're down your throat. And so, these are situations that, we have to find a way of finishing out games better than this. Last week is a different story, you're down a man and you're fighting to hold on. This week? No excuse. No excuse whatsoever. I'm very upset about the way this game ended tonight.”
On the performance of the fullbacks...
“Well, for me, neither one had a good game tonight. It's a lot of missed passes, a lot of turnovers, a lot of being out of position. So, we have to address that. We took Miguel out because he had the yellow and we didn't want to risk him picking up a second yellow. I thought [Jonathan] Dean came in and played really well. But yeah, the way we play, we need our outside backs to be a little better on the ball. And one of their goals was a turnover directly from [Arnaud] Souquet, that they went down and scored on. So, we have to address that. But neither one, I thought, performed well tonight.”
On the positive play of Maren Haile-Selassie...
“Well, the way you get on the pitch here is by performance: how you do in training, you get your minutes, your time, on game day, and how you do in the game determines if you play again. I thought he played really well tonight. He got the start tonight because of what he was doing and has been doing in training. He's been playing really well and he's gonna be a very good player for us. I just hope he continues to work hard and continues to play like that and get that kind of performance, because he's gonna be a good feature for this team.
He gives us something that we don't really have: that pace, getting behind defenders, very good one-v-one. So, I thought he did really well tonight. But he hadn't played 90 minutes since October and so, he got a little tired towards the end, so we had to take him off the pitch. But, really good performance by him tonight. There was several good performances tonight, I thought Guti (Brian Gutiérrez) played pretty well also tonight. The team as a whole, for about 75 minutes, we played well. But when it came to crunch time and Cincy started pushing and pressing, we didn't deal with that really well. But Maren was on the pitch tonight because of how well he's been playing in training.”
On his message to the team following the match...
“Well, it was plain and simple: It's not good enough. That's not good enough, what happened tonight. In the 46th minute, we go up 3-1. We're at home and we fail to see the game out again. So, it was mainly, ‘Guys, we have to find some way, somehow, to compete when things get tough. All right? We're not going to have 90 minutes of the game. Sometimes, we're going to be under it and those times, can you find a way not to concede goals? Can you find a way to see out a 3-1 lead at home?’ And like I said, in training, we'll address it. We'll put them in situations where they're uncomfortable, continue to do that, something that we do already but we'll just do more of that, so these guys learn how to just fight and compete. It's not always you're gonna have to be on the ball and always play the beautiful soccer; sometimes you just have to grind out. And tonight, when push came to shove, I didn't think we stood up to the test. So, we have to address that. But we'll be better for it.
One of the things before the game, what we told them was, you know, we're trying to build a successful team here. And a sign of growth, the sign of building a team, is when you could have a good performance and then follow it up with an even better performance. And that's what we had to go out and do tonight. And I thought you know for the most part we did, but we just didn't get the end result. We just did not finish up the game as strongly as we needed to. Because, what I told them was, listen, we played well enough in Philly. Barring a red card, maybe we came out with points in that game. But can we go out tonight and perform better? We're at home – can we go out and get our three points? And we set out to do that.
I thought we were playing really well, we had the better of the game day. Their first goal was against the run of play, so that was difficult, but we found a way to fight back and get the two goals, and then came out right after the second half started and get that third. And now it's just a matter of, you know, finish out the game strong and continue to do the things that got you to the 3-1 lead and I thought we got away from that a little bit tonight.
So, we'll continue to get better, continue to progress, because every game is gonna be difficult, you know, every game we're going to have to fight. No one is going to give you points. You have to earn your points and that's something that we have to learn to be better at. Especially when we have the better of the play for most of the game: can we get the full three points, home or away?”
Chicago Fire FC Midfielder Maren Haile-Selassie
On the team’s mood following tonight’s result…
“I think you can imagine how the mood is. Yeah, of course it hurts to lose two points like that in the last minutes. We had full control of the game for a long time. And then, you just can't lose two points in that way.”
On why the match resulted the way it did after a strong start…
“This week it was 2-1 at halftime and we said that it's not finished. 2-1 is a dangerous result. So we reacted really well, scoring to make it 3-1. And then we had control, like I said, for a long time and then it was a corner kick where we were not tied to the man and then things happened. And at the end, we have to say we were lucky that we didn't lose the game.”
On Ezra Hedrickson’s message to the team following the match…
“He said that we can't lose two points in that way. We have to feel responsible for that and we do as a team. We know that we can’t concede two goals in that way, and especially not in the last minutes.”
On how he felt in his first career start for the Fire…
“I felt really good to be honest. From the start, I had a good feeling. Also the team connection with the players was good and yeah, at the end, I would have loved to have gotten three points.”
Chicago Fire FC Goalkeeper Chris Brady
On what he thought was missing from the team at the end of the game…
“I think a lot of discipline and game management from every single player on that field. 3-1 in the 46th minute is a game that any team should win, especially against a team like that and the way they performed. So I just think a little bit of a lack of discipline, and for sure we need to manage the game a little better.”
On how he felt about his performance tonight…
“Yeah, I don't dabble in my individual performance. I'm more looking at how the team can perform better and what the result was and ultimately, what we can improve on.”
On taking away positives following tonight’s result…
“Yeah, I think we didn't win a point tonight, we lost two. But you know, it's still early in the season. This is very early. So I think going into next week away, we're going to be ready again. And we're going to have the same approach as we did at the beginning of this game. So we’ll be fine.”
On the team giving up leads…
“I don't think there's a direct answer I can give you other than us, as a collective, we need to be more disciplined. And I'm gonna say it again, this game should have been ours. Three points should have been ours tonight. But it didn't happen and we need to be more disciplined in the future.”
