CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 1, 2023

Rafael Czichos

Press Conference

Orlando City 3, Chicago Fire FC 1

Q. Rafa, how can you ensure the momentum from the two previous matches isn't lost going into the next few games at home?

RAFAEL CZICHOS: Yeah, of course we came here to get a result, to get three points, and it's disappointing that we were not able to make this happen but at the end of the day, I think if you would have made me an offer two weeks ago and would have said, you're going to win two of the three home games, do you want to accept it, I probably would have said yeah, of course.

So we are not allowed to be too frustrated and disappointed. We are going to move on and now focus on Nashville at home. We have three games at home finally, and that's what we have to do next week, so focus on Nashville.

Q. How do you see Carlos Terán tonight, and was there any difference in the back line with Mauricio playing with you?

RAFAEL CZICHOS: Of course it's a different game with Carlos. I have been a huge supporter of Carlos, and I like how he plays with intensity, with his speed. He's really important for me in my defensive back line. I was happy to see him back, but also Mauricio next to me, we have shown that we can work together and that we can be successful together. So at the end, it doesn't matter who plays. We want to get the three points every game and unfortunately today, I think we changed three times on this position.

This is definitely not ideal but yeah, I'm happy to have him back next to me.

Q. How valuable is it to have a player like Chris Brady playing like he is, especially here on the road?

RAFAEL CZICHOS: Chris is a young goalie, but he wants to learn, and that's for me the most important thing with the young players. He's been showing very good performances, but like I said, he's like willing to learn and he asked me a lot of questions and he shows me that he wants to be -- he wants to become a very good goalie and that's very important for us. I think you can already see that his game has developed, and yeah, I hope he's going to keep working hard and helps us.

Q. There's been some discussion about the officiating tonight. From your perspective down the field, do you have any thoughts on how the referees impacted the game?

RAFAEL CZICHOS: I know I have to be careful right now, but my main problem is it starts even before the game. Like all the time before the season, we have a thousand meetings, how we have to behave on the field, off the field, and then we have referee, he's like so arrogant, he's not looking at us and he's not saying hi. This is already ridiculous for me but then it's really hard to be a referee and difficult in many situations, I understand, but for me, very hard to understand. We have playing in a league, like it's important and we don't have the goal technology. It's the next big thing. I don't understand.

But at the end of the day, we could have played better. We didn't, and we lost the game and not the referee.