CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

June 23, 2021

Francisco Calvo

Press Conference

Cincinnati 1, Chicago Fire 0

FRANCISCO CALVO: The team is hurt. It's a long season in front of us. We cannot put our heads down. I know it's a difficult stretch for the club and to us.

Q. Where has it all gone wrong for you guys this year?

FRANCISCO CALVO: I mean, I think we are trying to get a team -- we know for one year, from last year, so we don't have the excuse that we are a new team anymore. We cannot make excuses.

Q. It would be easy after this kind of start for you guys to be a divided locker room right now. How is the locker room and how are you guys with each other and are you still behind coach Wicky?

FRANCISCO CALVO: Of course. We support Wicky all the way. He's our coach and he's going to be our coach hopefully for many years. He's a great coach. He's a great person. He's an amazing person and we're going to be with him all the way. He deserves more and we deserve more than this.

The locker room, we are trying to stay positive and trying to stay together but it's hard. It's hard to be in a good mood when you are not having results. We need to wake up tomorrow, recovery and try to play on Saturday.

Q. What's the explanation for how you guys came out in the first half?

FRANCISCO CALVO: They were able to press us well and we were just playing -- that's not our style. We play good football. This club and with these players, we play good football and when we play long balls, we play the game that the opponent want and we don't have to play that. Yeah, they did pressure. Sometimes we need to play and we need to be smart and have the courage to come after the ball.

Q. Speaking of that pressure that Cincinnati put on you guys, it seemed like you guys really struggled especially in the first half, several mistakes and you made one as well. Mistakes are part of the game but is it something they were doing or a lack of focus on your part or the first half especially? What caused so much trouble for you guys when Cincinnati was pressing?

FRANCISCO CALVO: Mistakes are going to happen always. We don't want to do mistakes. Trust me, we don't want to step on the field and say we are doing mistakes, some of the mistakes happen, maybe it's a communication thing, maybe it's a tech my Cal mistake, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that everybody is focused and everybody is trying to be concentrate during the game. We just need to keep going. That's the only thing that I can say. It's a bad moment for us. It's a sad moment but that's the only way.

Q. Obviously after the game today, it's a little bit difficult, what are you expecting from Saturday's game? You have another game coming right up. How is the team in the locker room and what do you expect looking forward?

FRANCISCO CALVO: Yeah, we are going through a little bit of a complicated time. Things haven't quite gone our way but we have like you said another game coming up and we have to put our best face forward against Philadelphia which is a great team. This is the next game and we have to go ahead and look forward. We can't put our face down. We have to surge ahead and obviously we are at home and it's something we have to take on our shoulders and keep searching for.