Photo and video: Daniel Gajdamowicz

John Hackworth’s postgame press conference

Postgame interviews with Zac MacMath, Sheanon Williams, Amobi Okugo and Jack McInerney

Philadelphia Union postgame quotes

Team manager John Hackworth

On whether this was a missed opportunity for separation in the playoff race…

“Yeah I think this is a huge missed opportunity. We knew Chicago would come and give us a really good game, they’re a pretty good team. It was never going to be easy, but to go down a goal and come back and then lose another goal, we felt like we had out foot on the gas a little bit, but losing the way we did was really unfortunate.”

On Mike Magee…

“He’s a good player, he brings heat wherever he goes and it’s something to watch for.”

On what he thought about the four straight corners in the second half…

“There’s an advantage to getting opportunity and capturing it and that’s something we need to capture at home. We’ve had good runs, good service in the box. The night was up and down, but on that sequence it was really important that we put ourselves in that position by pushing them more than we did in the first half and that’s a good sign. Especially with a team that’s extremely dangerous moving forward. We were getting chances on the break, but nothing that could help us.”

On what happened with the first goal…

“We just had a lot of guys chasing the ball and a lot of guys trying to compensate with each other after a couple misses. We tried really hard to get the ball, but one of those things we talked about was not letting them have the first pass.”

On why Jack McInerney isn’t scoring…

“There could be a lot of reasons, but real goal scorers have been coming through and it just didn’t seem like the chances were happening.  He’s a very confident man and knows what he wants in play. He also understands how difficult it is.”

On Gaddis’s injury…

“He rolled his ankle really badly. We tried to tape it up on the sideline and get him back in the last three minutes, but it’s just really unfortunate.”

Zac MacMath

 On the match tonight…

“It’s a tough one. I don’t think the team came out the way we should have in the first half. In the first 30 minutes, we struggled, and they put a lot of pressure on us. A lot of credit goes to them, but I still think that in the last 15 [minutes] of the first half, and in most of the second half, we had the good part of the match, and we were unfortunate to give up two easy goals like that.”

On what John Hackworth told the team at halftime…

“To go back to what we should have done. Outwork them, play smart, play simple, be patient, and let them open up. They started to open up, and the game was very wide open later on when we were pushing for it. We knew a goal was going to come, and we just had to wait for it, and hopefully find the second one. Unfortunately, we didn’t.”

On what happened on Mike Magee’s game-winning goal…

“Obviously, Leo [Fernandes] gets picked off in the middle of the field, and it’s an easy counter for them. They find [Mike] Magee wide open, and he finishes well.”

On the wide-open nature of the game and if it contributed to Mike Magee’s goal…

“That’s the risk you take. At home, you don’t want to give up points, so I think that the team was pushing for it, and that makes the game really wide open. They’re a team that likes to counter as it is, and they were looking for that.”

On what happened on the first Chicago goal…

“I think it was Joel [Lindpere] who put in a really good ball, and they had a bunch of players in the box. Patrick [Nyarko] found himself wide open. He kind of hit it awkwardly, and he bounced it in. It came off of the turf weird.”

Jack McInerney

 On if him being away for Gold Cup and Conor Casey serving a suspension has affected their chemistry…

“No, I don’t think that has anything to do with it, really. We’ve been teammates for seven months now, so it’s just about getting that lucky break. We’re still playing well and creating chances, we’re just not getting anything to fall for us.”

On what the All-Star Game experience meant to him…

“It meant a lot. I grew up watching some of those players play. To play alongside of them, and to spend a couple days with them, it kind of opened my eyes to see what it was like to be there.”

On if the Union missed an opportunity to create separation in the standings tonight…

“Yeah, we were hoping to go on a little three-game win streak. It was a good opportunity, but we have to put this game behind us. We have been pretty inconsistent this year with winning. No one expected us to win in Vancouver, and we would have expected to win today. I think we just have to put it behind us and come out hard against D.C. [United].”

On the series of corner kicks the Union had late and if he thought Philadelphia would score…

“Those are one of the things where you keep pushing and pushing and eventually it will come. I don’t know if it came on a free kick, or something, when Sheanon [Williams] scored, but these things build up and wear the other team down. We wanted more of them.”

On his week of travel to the Gold Cup final and then the All-Star Game…

“Yeah, I went for a two day trip and it ended up being seven days long. It was pretty exciting. It was a lot of traveling, but it was a good experience in both cities.”

On his rap video at the All-Star Game…

“(Laughs) I just walked in, and they asked me to do it. They had it written down, and I just gave it a go. I’m from Atlanta, so I have a little bit in me. I’m better than [Chris Wondolowski] (laughs).”

On if his goal drought has left him frustrated…

“Yeah, it’s frustrating. I’ve been saying that I just need one of those easy tap-ins to get my confidence up and get back in the streak that I was going on. It’s one of those things I have to fight through, and the team has to help me get through.”

On if he finds himself pressing…

“I think I’m pushing a little too much, just because I know I’m on a streak where I haven’t been able to do what I would have done at the beginning of the season. I just need to relax, find a goal, and find that rhythm again.”

Sheanon Williams

On how he found the Fire different from the first two meetings this season, beyond Mike Magee…

“They had a little bit more heart. The last few times we played them, they settled for losing. Definitely with the new people that they brought in, they’re a different team. They’re not the same team that we beat twice.”

On what happened to the defense on Patrick Nyarko’s goal…

“We [gave] the ball away in a bad spot. I had the whole defense shift, and we didn’t do it properly.”

On his goal…

“When you put yourself in good spots, good things happen.”

On the defense tonight…

“It seems like we [gave] the ball away way too much. It cost us two goals today, and we have to do a better job of keeping it.”

On the Union’s back line pushing forward frequently tonight…

“We’re just trying to do what we can to help the team win. We obviously wanted three points. We would have settled for one after going down 2-1. We weren’t able to get the goal, so we have to settle for zero.”

On the late series of corners the Union had…

“The way I was thinking about it was, ‘One of these has to go in.’ One got cleared off the line, one got saved and put over the crossbar, and then we had another header. I thought that maybe we would sneak one in.”

Chicago Fire postgame quotes

Team manager Frank Klopas

On differences between team now and in May…

“Yeah I mean obviously in the beginning we had a difficult start. I think the slow start did hurt us early on. I think the additions with Baky (Soumare) and Mike (Magee) have helped a lot and I think in time with their ability to gel with the rest of the guys has helped. We knew there were a lot of important games coming up and we dropped a lot of points on the road early on so all these games are massive right now and we felt that we played well last time against Philly at home and they scored the late goal with Jack so it was a difficult match, but I give all the credit to my players, they came out, they competed, everyone left everything on the field and we got three points in a difficult place.”

On Mike Magee’s performance since joining the Fire…

“We knew he was a quality player but you see a night like tonight and that is what a forward has to do. He gets that opportunity, very composed, he waits for the keeper to go so it was just a class goal. Patrick (Nyarko) made a great pass, but when you get him in spots in front of the goal it is just very good He has been huge for us, but I think more than anything it has been the whole team must contribute and it is all about the team, the mentality is good, everybody is putting everything forward for the success of the team and I think that is what it is all about.”

On the turning point in the game…

“Yeah we knew their ability to do set pieces with Williams with the long throw, they have scored a lot of goals. It is easy to talk about it, but in a game you have to avoid situations like that. They put a lot of pressure, they had a lot of set pieces late in the game, open field crosses and there was some moments late in the game that were not so easy for us, but we knew that going up they were going to push the game and we would have opportunities in transition. We weren’t as good in certain moments to capitalize on that. We had our chances and in the end it was an exciting game, both teams left it all on the field and I just give a lot of credit again to my players in a difficult place against a very good team to come and get three points, it was huge for us.”

On the playoff race…

“It is exciting. It is going to come down to the end, there is so much parity in the league. I think it is going to be exciting; I think there is going to be a fight all the way until the end and I think you couldn’t ask for anything else. I think look at this game, how exciting it was, three goals in a game. Both teams up and down created chances and made very exciting for the fans and the atmosphere was super here tonight.”

Patrick Nyarko

Thoughts on the game…

“We knew it was going to be tough. Their team is a very good team, they are playing very well, their confidence level is through the roof and we knew it was going to take a special effort to get a result here. We made a point to get a good start and we did that. We sat back a little bit more and made them come at us for a long [period of the game. As a home game with how confident they are playing, they got lucky on the goal, but they are always bound to score if we drop off on them and we did that. We wanted to win here so after they got the goal we decided to push on and luckily we got a second goal and we resisted their attack for the last period of the game.”

On the magnitude of this win…

“They are a team we are chasing and we could not let them get away from us. We kicking ourselves in the teeth, we made two errors and they beat us, they took six points out of us. If not for that we are closer to them and we made it a point to get close them in this game.”

Mike Magee

On what made the difference in the game…

“It wasn’t our best game we obviously gave away a lot of set pieces, which we didn’t want to do, a lot of throw-ins, but we found a way to battle and we Sean had a great game and our back line was good and obviously the difference was scoring more goals than them.”

On his mindset for scoring…

“To be honest my mindset is just to always try to get wins. We are on the outside looking in at the playoffs and that is the only goal. The best part about tonight is getting three points.”

On his mindset going into his first game in Philly…

“I have played here before with LA. My mindset is trying to change the culture and try to get in the habits of trying to win games. I think there was a point in the 65th minute where we had been getting pummeled the whole half and we all kind of looked at each other and said this game is there for us to win. They were sending a lot of guys forward and we pretty fortunate not to give up a goal in the beginning of the second half. I think once whether that storm the soccer Gods tend to give us a chance and luckily I buried it.”