CHICAGO FIRE MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 21, 2026

Chris Brady

Press Conference

Chicago Fire 2, Philadelphia 1

Q. Four losses last season and you weren't able to help out. How did it feel to get the win here finally?

CHRIS BRADY: Finally. It's been a long time since we got one here against them, huh? Yeah, the motto all week was just embrace the duel, embrace the battle, because we knew that's kind of what they feed off of. I think that the guys were great about that today, and I'm just happy we got the three points. We really needed it, especially after last year.

Q. How good is it to get a win for yourself going into the U.S. national team?

CHRIS BRADY: Yeah, helps with confidence feeling good. Never fun to go into camp off a loss but just feeds the confidence.

Q. With U.S. National Team staff in the building today, how helpful was that as a motivation for you to perform?

CHRIS BRADY: It was good. Definitely got me wired, ready to go. But yeah, he texted me. I knew he was here.

Yeah, I'm happy that he could see not only my performance but the team performance because it was great today.

Q. Curious, so in the first half you had a punch on a corner where it looked like maybe you had a little bit more space. You were realizing it afterwards. And then on the Vassilev free kick, you really made a point of controlling that free kick. I'm curious about that evolution as we talk about parts of your game making sure there wasn't that rebound opportunity in the second half for Philadelphia.

CHRIS BRADY: Yeah, for set pieces, especially, today the absence of Jack really hurt us. Knowing that going in the game I was going to have to be a bigger presence on corners, wide free kicks, things like that. The first one was getting it out of danger, not really knowing what's around me. I'm not sure how it looked from above. But yeah, it was a split-second decision, just get out, there get the ball high and wide.

Like you mentioned on the direct free kick, I think I read it well. Didn't cheat. Yeah, just moved my feet to collect it easy.

But the thing that it most helps with is calming the team down because, you know, the more rebounds, the more work that they have to do to recover. So if I can collect the ball and if center backs can take the ball down, take the care out of it, it really helps everybody else on the field.

Q. Having Andrew back and seeing him get that assist what does that do for the group, not only energy-wise but morale-wise, knowing how crucial he can be?

CHRIS BRADY: I know he was excited to get back. He was itching to get back out there and I'm happy to see him out there as well. His presence, especially on the offensive side of the ball was slightly missed and it does help having a guy like that, a veteran guy who is not afraid to whip in a good ball.

Yeah, happy to see him back and performing well.

Q. So last week, it was another physical game like this one was. Didn't get the result you guys wanted. That was kind of an issue sometimes last year. How important is it to the group to have had a physical game from Philly like this and still been able to stick to the game plan, execute and come away with three points?

CHRIS BRADY: Yeah, the message from Gregg, especially after the D.C. game, was if we can understand when a game is going to be a physical battle like this, like today against Philly, we embrace that, and if we start to win first and second balls more frequently, then the game plan will take care of itself.

You guys saw that on full display today. Never really felt threatened back there, and I think the guys agree with that because guys were buzzing. They were all over the field after every ball they could. It helps the morale and confidence of the team going through the game against a physical team.

Yeah, against these types of opponents, it's incredibly important, and it just shows if we keep that calm understand that we can ride out physical games like this, our quality of play and our quality of players will take over.