Quote Sheet – MLS Regular Season
Chicago Fire vs. Columbus Crew
Toyota Park – Bridgeview, Ill.
Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014
Chicago Fire Head Coach and Director of Soccer Frank Yallop
On talks with Jermaine Jones
“I actually spoke with Jermaine yesterday and I wanted to put forward our club and what we thought of him. We'd love him to join us. I've done that. He has an offer, it's not officially turned down because we have not heard anything back. We are still waiting. I think it was a big offer. Andrew [Hauptman] stepped up and put out a good contract offer. I think he's thinking about it and we will probably find out in the next couple of days. We have a few guys we have, sort of, a domino effect, lined up if you like. If one doesn't go, then we have to move to the next one. The closer it gets to the end of the window, those guys decide to move on and we are scrambling. But, we have some interest in some players and I'm sure we will get something hopefully done in this window for sure. I'm hoping it works out.”
On Jermaine Jones' interest to join the Fire
“He's a nice kid, he's receptive, he wants to play in MLS. He's coming from a big contract and I think that anytime you have that in your background, if you want to come and play somewhere then you have to commit yourself to do that and it's maybe not as much as you like, but, it's the market value we have in this country and I think if he comes to the understanding that it can work out, and it's a good offer. It's pretty much up there for us and for the league. I'm hoping he thinks about it and takes it, but, again I'm not Jermaine and he's going to decide. We're just waiting to hear back.”
On transfer talk being a distraction to the team
“No, not at all. Unless a player arrives or we sign him then it's more of a talking point. Speculation is speculation. We have no idea if he's going to sign with us or sign with somewhere else. Until you get a contract signed, like I said a couple days ago, you don't know what's going to happen. They have options, good players have options. I said it to my staff earlier, we can sign bad players because it's easy, but to sign good players it's difficult because everyone wants them and that's our issue. We are trying to get the best players we can for the club, we obviously need help in certain areas. If you go into the game tonight, it's sort of déjà vu. We've all sat here before and said the same thing: it's frustrating, maybe we didn't play great, we could have maybe gotten something more out of the game but didn't. Again, I'll say we are not quite ready to get over the hurdles of winning games and dominating play. But, it will come, we are working on some stuff, and we are trying to build for the future, which is important.”
On the frustration of giving up a goal
“Your whole talk at halftime is to see the game out, let's try to get a second goal. All the things you talk about as a team to make sure they don't get into it. I thought we did a nice job in the first half. It was an even-ish game and I thought we shaded it to get the goal. It's just one of those nice professional performance. Second half and from a long ball with a broken play and boom, boom, boom, here goes [Federico] Higuain and he scores. You know right after halftime, is the worst time because the tactics you talked about three minutes earlier are useless. Now we're depressed again and I don't think it got into our guy's mind to get urgent and get moving forward. We still had a couple of chances, but I didn't think our urgency, and it's not from a lack of effort, it's more like a lack of knowledge I think a little bit to go and our urgency to go and try to win the game. I think we were trying to protect what we had and maybe go and see if we can win it. When I wanted us to go out and try and win it.”
On the possibility of acquiring players from within MLS
“We don’t have much to trade. That’s an issue when you’re trying to get people in the league. We have a first round draft pick, but sometimes that’s not as valuable as you think it is. But we’re always looking to improve the team. When you have a window coming up, and have one or two spots we can focus on, it sometimes becomes who’s the best player. And if we’re getting Jermaine Jones, we’ll take him. For sure. He makes us a lot better than we are. If we want to get a certain player, a forward or attacking midfielder, or whatever we’re trying to do, we’re trying to get the best available. But, again, it’s a domino effect. It’s not easy. It would be nice to get some more options. I see a team, our guys, I love them to death; they try hard, they’re desperate to win, they’re very frustrated when they don’t. But I think it’s where we are: we’re not quite good enough to get over the hump and dominate games. It’s up to me to make sure that I get players in that can do that. Whether it’s in this window, I’m trying my best to do some moves that will really benefit the team. But I don’t want to panic, because I think the club has done that in the past, and now I’m paying for that a little bit from last year, to be honest. But I want to make sure we’re building for the future, and make sure that come this window, the next window, and the next window after, that we make some solid, clean, good decisions that build the team from the back up. I think that that’s my big focus right now: not to panic, and just build, and make sure we’re solid.”
On conversations with Chicago Fire Owner Andrew Hauptman
“I’ve spoken to Andrew for the last week every day for at least half an hour or forty five minutes. He’s completely on board. Whatever we want to do, he’s completely put up whatever funds we need. Obviously, there’s maybe a little bit of a limit, that we’re not going to go crazy with everything, but real substantial amounts of money, Andrew’s ready to pay. He’s determined to let me do my thing, and let me and Brian [Bliss] get after it. I said to him last night, ‘it’s not easy to do; it’s not a quick fix, you have to make sure that you’re building in the right direction, you have to get everyone on board, you have to see what you have to start with, and then you can start to piece together what you think is right.’ And it’s a little unfortunate we haven’t had more results to help that along and not make it desperate. But, I think we’re in the right direction. I feel good about some targets we have right now, in this window, and moving forward in January. End of the season will give us a little more scope to do some stuff too.”
On Harry Shipp’s absence from the Starting XI
“I honestly thought the team played well enough to win the game against Vancouver, and I wanted to reward that group that went out there. In our game tonight, we go a goal up, and we did ok; I wouldn’t say we were dominant, and completely outplayed Columbus tonight. For the first half, I thought it was pretty even. I go back to Harry, he’s in his rookie year where it’s not easy, it’s tough, it’s a lot of games, a lot of minutes, a lot of training. He’s taken more photographs now than he ever did, and everyone’s filming him. That wears on you. Once he gets back to playing soccer, he’ll be okay, but just a little tired right now.”
On Patrick Ianni’s performance with Jeff Larentowicz in defense
“I thought he did well again tonight. I could look at the goal again; it looked a little disjointed and sloppy. I think Jeff missed, not missed a header, but this fella flicks it on, and I don’t know what happened. I haven’t seen the tape, I have to look at them. But I feel pretty comfortable with those guys there. I think they work pretty hard, work well together. I think Jeff’s a solid influence back there, and whoever he plays with will be okay. But I’m pleased with the two performance. They didn’t give up a lot of goals and a lot of chances, and I think that’s good.”
Chicago Fire goalkeeper Sean Johnson
On having to make multiple saves in a short amount of time
“I think in those moments we were really pushing to get the go ahead goal – it’s what the game needed. As a goalkeeper, I just have to be alert in those situations and not switch off – anything can happen – especially when you’re pushing for a goal. I’m going to have to come up and make saves when we’re going to try and find a goal for the lead. It’s just one of those things. On the night, I think we were the better team, we were just unfortunate.”
On the draw:
“It was a disappointing result having been up 1-0. You always want to go out and win the game after being up. You don’t want to let it slip away, especially at home. It’s a tough spot in the season for us. We’re tying a lot of games, we’re not playing badly but need to find it within ourselves to go out and do what’s necessary to win games. We haven’t found an answer yet, but obviously by the results, but we have to keep searching. Once we do find it, we really have to buy into it and keep that going for the rest of the season so we can make a push for the playoffs.”
Chicago Fire defender Gonzalo Segares
On play of the back line
“I think we’re doing fine. We had a clean sheet the last game and this one there was an unfortunate bounce or we could have had another one. It’s frustrating because we’re fighting every game, and then we have a situation like that. But we’re doing fine, Jeff’s a guy with a lot of experience even though he hasn’t played there much he feels comfortable and we both have done well. I think he’s adapted pretty quickly and done a great job.”
Columbus Crew Head Coach Gregg Berhalter
On the match:
“I think we are disappointed to not come away with three points after a sluggish first half. In the second half, we created enough chances to win the game. That’s a little bit disappointing. I think the reaction at halftime was everything we were looking for. So that was good. That was a positive.”
On getting fresh legs in the second half:
“We wanted to make some subs. Obviously we knew Chicago had three games this week against Tottenham, and Vancouver and we wanted to take advantage of that. We put some new guys in, and hoping they will be effective as they have been in the past.”
On the hand ball in the first half:
“Honestly, I haven’t seen anything. So I can’t comment on it. I need to look at it again.”
On generating more chances in the second half:
“We identified spots that we knew where guys could get the ball to be dangerous. They were wide open. We just weren’t finding them in the first half. We were giving the ball away. Our main principle was to take care of the ball and we weren’t doing that. We needed to be patient and find those gaps between the midfield line and the defensive line, more towards the inside, then we can turn and play from there. I think we did that. But besides tactics, to me it was the will, it was the will of the guys, the belief in the guys, and I missed that in the first half. That’s what we communicated to the guys at half time. We said you have to show more. It’s not good enough.”
On the team’s mental mind set versus the knowledge the Crew haven’t found success at Toyota Park in many years:
“I don’t think so. I think today was a perfect opportunity to get three points. That’s not to discredit Chicago but I thought we were there. We were in position to do it.”
On playing Michael Parkhurst on the right:
“You see when he gets forward he’s accurate in his passing, he’s calm, and I thought we needed a little bit more accuracy in that position.”
Columbus Crew Midfielder Wil Trapp
On the match:
“I thought the first half was a little slow. We started not the way we wanted, not urgent enough. Then giving up the penalty kick was unfortunate, but I thought the second half we came out obviously right off the bat. It’s something we’ve been kind of looking at which is great. Not a pretty goal but a goal nonetheless. I thought we created a lot of chances. Sean Johnson made some big time saves for them. We were a little unlucky not to come away with three points.”
On what the coaching staff said at halftime:
“He wasn’t happy with our first half. He gave us some pointers about what we could do to fix it. It’s mostly just a mentality sort of thing. We really didn’t need to change too much tactically or technically, it was kind of just a desire sort of thing.”
On battling the Fire in the standings and as rivals:
“Yes, they are definitely our closest neighbors, the noisy neighbor I guess you could say. We had a great crowd come out today. The east is tough. There’s a lot of teams vying for those playoff spots. These are big games. To come away with a point we aren’t happy with but it’s better than no points at all.”
On a three match unbeaten streak:
“It’s great. We would prefer it to be three wins in a row. But every game from here on out is important.”
Columbus Crew Forward Adam Bedell
On the match:
“I thought we came out a little slow in the first half. It was kind of slow paced both ways. Unlucky with the penalty kick call. Moving into the second half, I thought we came out on fire. No pun intended. Off the kick off, scoring the goal was huge. Got us into the game. I thought we dictated the play in the second half. We are happy with the second half. Hopefully we can start the game next weekend like that.”
On the sluggish first half:
“I don’t know what it was. Sometimes that’s the way the game goes. Maybe it’s a little bit of communication too. Not talking, not asking for the ball. But I thought we did better in the second half realizing where the spots were and I thought we exploited those areas and it lead to some of our chances.”
On having a few excellent shots on goal:
“We had enough chances to win the game tonight. Obviously Sean Johnson stood on his head a couple times there with Ethan’s shot from the cross, it was an unreal save. You put it on net, and nine times out of ten that goes in the net. You stay positive and keep trying to get those chances. They’ll go next time.”
On Michael Parkhurst’s All Star call up:
“It’s well deserved. It’s great for him, it’s great for the club. He’s going to represent the club very well.”
