CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 23, 2022

Xherdan Shaqiri

Press Conference

Chicago Fire FC 3, Vancouver 1

Q. First of all, your initial thoughts on the result and the performance of the team.

XHERDAN SHAQIRI: I think it was important to start playing well because we know, and we had a long trip here, and we knew that we going to play on turf and it's not always simple to play on turf.

Yeah, the guys did very well. We have now three games in a row we won, so yeah, it was a perfect day for us.

Q. Did you have any difficulties with the turf? Was everything okay with that?

XHERDAN SHAQIRI: Yeah, I played for sure in better turfs. Yeah, the ball was not bouncing.

Yeah, sometimes it was slipping, you know. Some players slip. Me, too, the first half. So yeah, it was not best turf but we managed very good and yeah, we scored three goals. The guys played a good game. We won three games in a row, so yeah, we have to keep going.

Q. So that turnaround, the last three wins that row after the Columbus game, what do you think that turnaround comes down to in this team?

XHERDAN SHAQIRI: Man, it's all about belief in yourself and every player belief has to stay confident and to try to work hard, first of all in, training, and to learn from mistakes, the most what I want from these guys because they are still young, and they need to learn from mistakes.

Yeah, they get more mature in the game and yeah, we also like the game, how we played. The players, their understanding is much better than before.

So we have a game plan, and everybody stick to it more. So yeah, this is I think the key at the moment because everybody knows what is his work, and everybody has to do that good to bring that into this team.

And then I think you can have success and win games, and that's exactly what we did in the last three games. So we have to believe, we have to stay confident and to stay consistent what is the most important in football, and this is what the team at the moment is.