CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 3, 2022

Ezra Hendrickson

Press Conference

Columbus 0, Chicago Fire FC 0

Q. Congratulations on the clean sheet, at least. I know it was a tough unit there. Just quickly want to get your thoughts on Gaga's performance in goal, he seemed to make a lot of saves, busy tonight. Have you noticed his demeanor, confidence, anything change since his agreement there with Chelsea?

EZRA HENDRICKSON: Not really. He's always been a confident goalkeeper. He's always been a good keeper. Hence, he signed a contract with Chelsea.

But he came up with another great performance again. I think that's his 11th, maybe 12th shutout this year. So you know, we know that he's a good goalkeeper, and been good all year for us. So we're happy to have him.

Q. On the game itself tonight, what did you make of your team's overall performance and how important was he to getting that draw tonight?

EZRA HENDRICKSON: Well, you know, what I told the guys is that in normal circumstances, a point on the road, a clean sheet, it's about. Not that this is not good but we're in a situation now that we need to pick up points.

Tonight I thought defensively we did well. There was some miscommunication and things that -- break us down. For the most part, I thought we did well but with the ball, the transition from defending to attacking, again, tonight, was not up to par to what it needs to be. We're turning the ball over too much, too easily, sometimes with no pressure and unforced errors. We need to clean that up, but definitely want to keep the clean sheets and be better on the attacking end of things.

Right now it's not good enough. We need to get points, especially at home, coming up next weekend, we have to get the full three points and then still go on the road and pick up three points at Cincy, Montréal, one of those teams.

We definitely kept ourselves in it by not losing games and picking up points. The key thing is we didn't give the two teams we are fitting for a playoff spot full points at their place, so that's very important. The effort was there, Wednesday and tonight. Tonight I thought we got a little winded, our legs got out from under us a little bit. You know, third game in the last seven, eight days, two being on the road, it's a little difficult.

But the guys put in the effort. We have to be better on speed and we win the ball going forward.

Q. With all the injuries, is there any more lineup turn around for the next game this coming Saturday?

EZRA HENDRICKSON: We'll take a look at the squad and what we have and how guys came out of these three games. We have taken some knocks. We are missing some key players here tonight. Shaq wasn't able to start the game.

We have to make sure we heal up a little bit. We don't have a midweek game coming up this week. That helps. Get a good seven days to prepare. Maybe take a couple days off.

We've just got to get healthy and hopefully by next Saturday we are refreshed and ready to go again.