CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

April 26, 2025

Gregg Berhalter

Press Conference

Nashville 7, Chicago 2

Q. How do you respond to a result like this? Is it as simple as flushing it away and moving on, or is the focus hard on what went wrong and try to also understand that there were those two goals to show that there was a response late?

GREGG BERHALTER: You know, I think the first thing is, apologizing. Apologizing to the fans that took the time out of their day to watch that game, some of them perhaps traveled to the game. Apology to the owner for putting up a performance like this. That doesn't represent would we are.

It was a very, very poor performance, and we deserved to lose the way we did.

Congratulations to Nashville for playing an outstanding game.

You know, the way I'm looking at this is we're going to learn a lot about ourselves this week. And part of it is going to be processing through the game, not just flushing it away. Taking accountability for it as coaches, as players, and plotting how we move forward.

Today was an absolute disaster and a very, very poor performance.

Q. What do you think allowed it to be such an easy night for Surridge and Mukhtar out there?

GREGG BERHALTER: You know, we could not deal with balls behind our back line. That was a big, big issue for us in the game and some of it was fundamental mistakes, and some of it was lack of pressure on the ball.

It's a collective performance, and we weren't happy with any of our lines. I think that the defense will get singled out for this.

But I think it me it was the collective failure to get pressure on the ball and close them down.

Q. Obviously not the night that you planned on having. What do you say to the squad on Monday to try to just change the psychology of the group after what felt like the team kind of lost the plot for a little bit tonight?

GREGG BERHALTER: We have to process through it. As uncomfortable as it is, it's part of this season right now. To lose like this is something we're going to have to work through together. You know, so that's really what it is.

We want to take accountability for this. Take responsibility for this and we want to move forward. But it will be an interesting week for sure, both on the field and off the field with some of the discussions.

Q. Obviously a tough night. Is this an opportunity for you to sort of send a message to the team, or are there repercussions individually or collectively that you do after sort of an embarrassing loss, you'd say, or you just kind of maybe throw out the video and forget about the game?

GREGG BERHALTER: No. We're going to look at the video.

But to me it not about singling people out. We are all responsible for this. I'm responsible for this, the coaching staff, you know, setting the guys up to succeed.

And you know, I think a lot of this is going to have to be owned up to and we are going to have to look at it. And the process of doing that is going to help us grow and improve.

But there's definitely room to improve on, and today, the things that we got wrong, we have to get right. It was really, really poor performance.

Q. Curious, Christopher Cupps got to make his MLS debut tonight. Curious, the result is what the result was, but for obviously a 16-year-old making his debut in MLS, a big deal.

GREGG BERHALTER: Absolutely, congratulations to Chris Cupps on making his debut. We didn't concede a goal when he was on the field; so that's really positive.

But overall, I think that for a player to work his way into the fold and to make a debut for the first team is a special occasion, and I know that's not the result he would have wanted.

But nonetheless, it shows both the effort of the club to help develop academy players but also his own perseverance and dedication to the game.