CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 13, 2021

Alvaro Medran

Press Conference

Q. What's your mindset heading into the final five games of the season when the playoffs aren't going to happen for this team?

ALVARO MEDRÁN: Thank you, everyone, for being here, and as Frank said, we have to do our best and finish the best we possibly can. We have to finish the season on a good note, and keep going hard because you never know in football. You want to be known and you want to be seen to finish out the season strong so that everyone sees that I and the team did a good job until the end.

So we have to keep going hard until the end and the future will be what it is.

Q. Do you think that you'll be back in Chicago next season?

ALVARO MEDRÁN: That's a question for Georg. He knows what I want and I do want to reiterate that I never said that I wanted to go back to Spain. But that's something between Georg and I, he's the one who makes the choices and he's the one that will say in the end.

Q. If this is your last season here in Chicago, how would you assess your time in Major League Soccer? Was it what you thought it would be? Harder than what you expected? How would you assess the MLS the last two years?

ALVARO MEDRÁN: I know that it's a very competitive league. Sincerely I can say that I could have done better. I think every person from the very bottom to the very top will say we could have done things better.

I hope the club is able to reflect and learn from the things that have happened over the last couple years and any mistakes that were made and continue to learn from that and continue to improve and give the club what it deserves. But I know that if we reflect and look at ourselves, I could have done things better. There were moments where I didn't maybe have my best games but it's something that I look back on and I reflect and I learn from it so I can continue to improve and go ahead and hopefully next season, I will be at a different, better level and obtain what I want.

Q. Where do you think this team needs to improve for next season?

ALVARO MEDRÁN: Many things. For me, my opinion, there are many things that need to be changed. We need ambition to try to win games. We need to demand more from ourselves, commitment, quality. A lot of things inside the locker room that need to change that maybe there aren't right now. There are things that need to change from the top to the bottom but I'm confident and I think that hopefully in the off-season, things can change so that this club can continue to move forward.

Q. I notice your English is getting very, very good. You're understanding all of our questions. What are you expecting from the game this weekend? Obviously an away game at a very, very good open. Tell me what you're expecting.

ALVARO MEDRÁN: We know that it will be a difficult game. We know that they already qualified and they are in first place and everything, so we don't know how they are going to go out. We don't know if they are going to come out with reserves. But as Frank said, we are going to do our best to win the game and finish the season strong. We are going out there with the intent of winning. We have always gone out there in previous games with the intent of winning. We tied and lost one, but we always gave the best of ourselves when we went out there trying to win the game.

For this game, it's going to be hard and it's going to be complicated but we are going to give the best of ourselves and work together as a team and hopefully we can take advantage of any chances that we have.

Q. How hard or easy to get, one-offs, those are some pretty big things that the team is missing? How does the team go about adding those?

ALVARO MEDRÁN: Well, looking from here, it's easy to say, you look at the team from last year and the team from this year, it's practically the same. We have practically the same players and it's the same mindset.

So that makes it difficult for things to change from one season to another because it's the same players and we have the same mentality. In order to be able to improve, you really need a winning mentality and hopefully we can all look at ourselves and reflect on ourselves and see what we did and how we can improve so that we can keep going forward so that the club can keep moving forward, because if you're going to win, if you want to be a winning team, you have to have a winning mentality, you have to have a commitment to winning, and you need to work accordingly so that you can improve and you also need good quality, as well.