CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 14, 2020

Mauricio Pineda

Robert Beric

Press Conference

Chicago 2

Seattle 1

Q. Mauricio, congratulations on your first goal. After the celebration, we saw that you were pulling your soccer cleats. Are you okay? Were you cramping? What happened next?

MAURICIO PINEDA: Yeah, I'm okay. I think after the celebration, it was just a little too hard. I probably should have taken it a little easier. I just felt a cramp in my calf. Nothing major. I think everyone was going through the same thing. Yeah, I'm all right.

Q. Can you kind of sum up the feeling of your performance today and how good you feel and what it felt like to get the win in that winning goal?

MAURICIO PINEDA: Yeah, I felt good. I think everyone was looking forward to this game. We were all really anxious to start playing games again and I think everyone worked really hard today. We all really wanted a good result today to start the tournament off and just for the league points, and I think we are all happy to do that and just happy for all the guys that they all worked so hard and you could see that on the feed.

I think it all paid off and we came away with three points.

Q. For Robert, so two games now against Seattle, the defending MLS Cup champions, and you score in both games. Only three games into your MLS career, what confidence does that give you as a striker to repeatedly now score against one of the best teams in MLS?

ROBERT BERIC: I'm glad. Of course I'm happy that I score, but I'm more happy that we won this game. We got our revenge back. We lost last time in the last minutes, so we were quite sad after the game, but today, today we got our revenge. We won this game.

And this is what makes me happy when I see my team winning and yeah, hopefully we are going to continue like that.

Q. For Mauricio, when you look back on the hard times and all the work and silence to get through to your dream, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you look at this game and see that you score in your first game?

MAURICIO PINEDA: I guess I haven't really reflected too much. I think right now all my energy is going towards this team. I'm just really happy that we got the three points. I think everything has been directed towards this game, all the hard work that we have had in the past three to four months, so I'm just putting all my energy on that and I'm glad we got the result and I'm happy with that and I'm ready to move on to the next game.

Q. So today was a different formation for you guys with going two up top today. What went into the preparation for that and what was it like to play besides C.J. Sapong, and did that help cover some ground, given the conditions with the heat and humidity?

ROBERT BERIC: Yeah, we play in a new system with two on the top, and for sure it's easier when you have somebody beside you helping you in all the drills and all the jumps, chasing the defenders.

So yeah, I think we did pretty much what worked since it's so hot outside, and these morning games are quite hard. I mean, for me, I felt it was good.