CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

May 28, 2022

Ezra Hendrickson

Press Conference

Toronto FC 3, Chicago Fire FC

Q. I don't mean to be flippant here, but how do you guys lose that match?

EZRA HENDRICKSON: I wish I could tell you. You know, it's just, us, again, shooting ourselves in the foot and that's a question of a PK called. Once again we had another PK called against us that it's very, very questionable, and I don't know why this is happening, but beyond that, you know, we played very good football tonight. Probably the best we've looked. We finally started to get guys on the pitch, and we find a way to lose this game. It's beyond me at this point. That's not a game we should lose at all.

Q. By all accounts that was a pretty good performance all around, more possessions, shots, corners, everything. So what do you tell the team after a game like that where the performance was definitely there, and it's probably the best you've looked this season, but you didn't get the result you wanted?

EZRA HENDRICKSON: Well, it's kind of what's happened the last three or four games, individual mistakes, individual errors. We are trying to dribble out of traffic, we talked about at halftime, we need to get from one side to the next by playing quickly, not dribbling through the middle. Playing the ball quickly. And we don't do that, we lose it, and then come down and score after that turnover.

So that's individual mistake. That's just not being disciplined. That's not staying within the game plan. We have a way of playing, a style of playing, and it doesn't call for dribbling through the middle of the pitch. That's just not how we play. We wanted to switch the point of attack against this team because we saw that was a weakness against them, and we are doing that well. But the minute we decide we want to dribble through traffic, it hurts us. And again, like I said, that PK call, to me, it looks shoulder-to-shoulder, but that's the way it goes sometimes. You don't -- you've just got to get the calls, and for whatever reason, I don't know. But I'm getting fed up with it.

Q. How much does a loss like that, how much concern does it give you for the mentality of this team even with the stats, the final score still ended up 3-2 Toronto?

EZRA HENDRICKSON: Well, it's for us as a staff to make sure that these guys stay confident and it's going to take showing them film of us playing good football, but also showing them of us making silly errors. Doing things that is not within the game plan. That's what hurts more than anything is when we go out of our game plan we get ourselves in trouble, and yet we find a way to do it.

We have to stay confident. This team is going to be a good football team. We've just got to believe in ourselves, believe in that, believe in what it is that we are doing and just cut out some of thinks individual errors. This we cut those out, and continue to build and continue to progress like we have. I think we'll be fine. But the winning and getting the points and not losing points, at some point that has to start because we're slipping away from the rest of the group, and that's not what we're trying to do.