CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 25, 2024

Gastón Giménez:

Press Conference

Q. Curious, Toronto this weekend, what do you think makes them a difficult team to go against, understanding that you guys did win the first matchup this season?

GASTÓN GIMÉNEZ: Every game is different. In Toronto, we played a great game. We played a very complete game. We knew how to understand the situations, how to understand the different moments in the game.

And now they are in a different situation, we are in a different situation than that first game. Right now we are playing at home, and we definitely want to return to winning games, and doing so, also bringing joy to the fans. And so we hope to do that well to be in good form, and to play through the plan, play well according to the plan that we have to play against them.

Q. I was wondering, Toronto has a final tonight, the Canadian Championship final and likely will be playing key starters then. I wanted to know how your perspective on the game changes if some of their players like Bernardeschi go 90 minutes tonight and may not be available for 90 on Saturday against the Fire?

GASTÓN GIMÉNEZ: Those are players that are used to playing games like this every three days. They really are players that are high-quality, high-class players and they are used to playing every three days games like this at this level. I don't think that's going to be a problem for them.

For the players that you mentioned, it's pretty simple, pretty easy for them to play at this high level so it won't be an issue.

For us, we are definitely going to be watching and definitely going to be paying attention to the games to see what happens because it's important to see their style of play and to see how they play with the group. More importantly for us, it's important for us to follow through with our plan, and as I mentioned before to your colleague, we can give people here joy, which is something that we all need.

Q. We talked to Frank and Frank mentioned the goal for the team is to finish strong and make sure everyone plays hard. As one of the captains and leader of the team, how do you relay that message to the locker room and that everyone finishes strong? Is there something that you say or do to relay that message?

GASTÓN GIMÉNEZ: I agree with Coach. It's super important to finish strong and to finish the three remaining games in the best way possible. There are three games left, and we have to go out there and try to get as many points as possible.

The guys and I are not happy with the situation we find ourselves in but we are here with three games left at the end of the season. So we have to go out there every game and give it everything we have, leave everything on the field. Just keep working hard so that we can be ready so that we can be focused and we can be at 100 percent and claim as many points as possible in the last three games.

Definitely, I agree with Coach that we need to go out there and finish strong.

Q. Talk about your thoughts at this time, how are you seeing these final moments, this final stretch, and what message do you have for the fans?

GASTÓN GIMÉNEZ: For the fans, first of all and most importantly I want to say thank you for the support. They are always will there and always with us, and so that's very important. Honestly we are as frustrated as they are.

But we really do go out there and do our best and try to do our best every game. As I was saying earlier, there's nothing left for us to do but to go out every single game and get the most quantity of points possible and work as hard as we can.

In each training session and every game, we all go out there and give the best of ourselves. At this time with the final stretch coming up, we are going for as many points as we possibly can and try to play good games so we can bring joy to the fans and finish in the best way possible, finish strong.