Chicago Fire 1-1 Columbus Crew
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.”
