CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 28, 2020

Raphael Wicky

Press Conference

Philadelphia Union 2, Chicago Fire 1

Q. What did you see on the handball call against Calvo, and then what did you think of the decision on the red card?

RAPHAEL WICKY: I have not seen the images yet on TV.

The penalty situation for me on live, it's a situation, the problem is there is no consistency over the whole year in these moments. It's a ball which is crossed. It deflects, and from two or three meters or four meters, it hits the hand of a defender. That was my -- that's the way I saw it live. I haven't seen the images, but the probably is there's no consistency of hand balls over the whole season. That's a problem.

The red card, can I not say. I have no watch the pictures. Only thing I can say, it wasn't a nasty game. It wasn't a game where there was a lot of nasty, hard falls and you have to have a red card. Francisco is a player who never, never tries to hurt anyone. Never tries intentionally to make a foul or anything. That's what I can say. I haven't seen the images. People have told me it's not a red card, but that's all I can say.

Q. This has been the case all season, the coronavirus lurking with Philadelphia announcing before the game they had a first-team player who tested positive for COVID-19. When did you guys become aware of that and was there any concern the game would be played today?

RAPHAEL WICKY: We were aware of that this morning before flying, and we trust the league. They have a protocol they follow, and in every moment today, actually, we felt that we're going to play. I never had any information that the game wouldn't be on, so we flew over here and prepared.

Q. It was a crazy enough game that it's sort of strange that this is the third question you're asked, but overall, what did you take away from the game? What were the positives? What were the negatives? What did you see out there?

RAPHAEL WICKY: It was like the whole season. I think there was a lot of positive. We calm here away from home and play against the leader of the whole MLS, a team which is in great confidence, and our team is not squared. We played from the beginning and we took the game in our hands. Of course we knew that at one point they will have some chances. It's a team that often creates and scores a lot of goals. We knew that there will be something. But until the penalty came, we had a few moments where we had to suffer but in general we actually had the game under good control.

After that, I think we showed a really good reaction and I'm proud of the reaction the team showed after the red card and then down, coming back. Second half, trying everything. Again we are talking here, we are playing away from home against the leader of the MLS who just beat Toronto 5-0 a few days ago.

Overall a lot of positives and I'm convinced what have we do. It's just very frustrating to lose a game like that but like I said, I'm proud of the reaction of the guys, of the effort they put in. Never gave up and never were exposed to three, four, five, six, one, which could easily happen here, we saw a few days ago. So yeah, we will be there. We will come back.