Gregg Berhalter – Sporting Director and Head Coach
On what he saw from the Fire:
"I thought they did a good job. They made it difficult for us. I think we have ourselves to blame. I think of the tempo of how we played-when I see 566 passes I know that we were not playing quick enough. That's a great indicator of our tempo. We are usually around high four hundreds and that means we are playing our game, breaking lines, getting behind, creating chances. I think it was a difficult game, they did a good job but I think we could have done a little bit better."
On whether he noticed fatigue with his players:
"Yeah, Wednesday, you know Wednesday is always a difficult night for us. We played Sunday, this is Thursday. It's a Wednesday game. We know we struggle sometimes with that."
If he is pleased with the point:
"Yeah, listen, I didn't think they were really going to score, and then we gift them a goal. What I told the guys was, it wasn't a good game but it was a great effort. You know, the comeback, the team was desperate. Chicago is desperate. And we came back and we got an important point."
On whether that was the message at halftime:
"Yes, that was exactly the message."
On his takeaways out of this week and getting 10 days off:
"I told the guys that we have to get better. We have to get better. I think playing our game, even if they played five in the back, even if they are very defensive, we want to play our game. We want to break teams down. We want to be dynamic. I don't think we were dynamic enough tonight."
On the subs impacting the game:
"I think the subs made an impact. We always talk about that before the game. We talk to them, we say, guys you can make a difference in the game. I think they did tonight. All three came on and played a good game."
On Justin Meram making his first start:
"We want to get him involved. We think his success and his performance is going to be crucial to our team. We want to get him involved as soon as possible. He played in Atlanta, he came in the 60th something minute, and to start this game today was the path that we are choosing for him today to keep his fitness going in the right direction."
On the Valenzuela mistake in front of the goal:
"Listen, guys make mistakes. I'm glad the team was able to get a goal for him so he didn't have to live with a loss, it was a mistake. We move on."
On Josh Williams making his 125th start:
"Josh is another guy when we talked about Hector last week, Josh is another guy that is important for the locker room. He is a team guy, he is an experienced player, and when we brought him back last year, we had this exact role in mind. I think he is doing a great job."
On whether it was a hand ball for Cleveland:
"Maybe?! Here we go. It was a hand ball. It is a hand ball. That's how I perceived it. I perceived it touching his arm. We have a goal scoring opportunity that we lose because he handled the ball. Robert [MLS VAR official walks by], hand ball. Red card. Yeah. Yeah, that's my friend in the referee crew. I think it could potentially be a red card. Listen, you know me, I don't get on the referees, I think through the course of the season it all evens out and it's one of those breaks that didn't go our way in the game."
Niko Hansen – Midfielder
On his goal:
"I see the guy get to the byline and I see Gyasi running kind of front post, and I just kind of held my position at the top of the 18, it popped out to me right there and I just found the corner."
On the goal giving him confidence:
"Yeah, I think it will give me some confidence. I think in light of the game though, it is still disappointing. We come here to get three points and I think we are all disappointed with the result. It's good for me but this is a team thing so we want to keep pushing."
On the speed of play increasing when he and Higuain came on:
"I mean, with me I always try to incorporate and speed and power and trying to get behind the line, dragging them down. It was a different game plan than we had in the first half, and I think we tired them out. We were trying to get behind, get a couple different looks with me and Higuain in. I think he placed us in a place where we had comfortability and strengths. We got something out of it."
On getting productivity from the wing position:
" I think we have all recognize there needs to be more out of all of us and I don't think it's a lack of will, or want, I think it's just us trying to push for it. I think we always push for it, all of us, whoever is in there. It's good for us to get a point today as well."
On looking ahead to New York:
"Do what we always do. We think about ourselves and we work on the things we can do. We put our own stamp on the game. It's always about how we progress and how we move forward. I think it's a good game for us to inch forward closer to them, and hopefully we bypass them towards the end."
Wil Trapp – Midfielder
On getting something positive out of the game:
"We can take the positive of battling back and getting something out of this game. We are disappointed to get a tie to be honest. It's one of those games where it's always difficult to play against them. They play a very stymied type of style, against us in particular. I think we need to be better executing in the ball, passing the ball, and creating chances. I don't think we did a good enough job with that."
On the slow pace of the first half:
"I don't think it's a quick turnaround, look at the number of changes we had. I think it's just execution of our game plan was a little bit different with personnel and how we wanted to play defensively and attacking wise. You could see a little bit of that lack of continuity but into the second half I thought it was not good enough with the ball. Our tempo was too slow, we weren't getting the ball off our foot, we were getting transitioned on, those are things we have to correct because we can't sleepwalk through games in terms of losing balls in bad spots."
