BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. — Fire defender C.J. Brown isn’t happy. His team isn’t performing up to his standards, injuries have decimated the club’s roster, and, with the Fire only one day away from Thursday night’s match against Real Salt Lake, he feels that the squad’s mental approach is off.
“I would say mentally it hasn’t been as good as it should be,” the 34-year-old Brown said after Wednesday’s training. “I think [some individual] attitudes have been off. I feel like we should come in more focused when trying to get ready to play a very good team in Salt Lake, [who are] one of the best teams in the league playing soccer. If we go into it any which way like we did this week then it’s not going to look good for us.”
When prompted, Brown offered up a multitude of reasons for the Fire’s lackluster mental approach.
“You can throw all of it in,” Brown said. “It’s hotter, we just lost, guys aren’t getting as much time as they want or guys aren’t playing as well as they want to play, we’re not scoring goals or we’re not stopping goals and multiple things are just burning up on guys.”
“The individual attitudes haven’t been good,” Brown added. “Each guy has their reason of why they’re not focused, and it hasn’t been good this week. Hopefully we can turn it around in one day.”
And the Fire will need to turn it around. Real Salt Lake, who beat the Fire in a shootout to win the Eastern Conference Final last year, carry a nine-game unbeaten streak into the match and have looked good recently, drubbing New England 5-0 their last time out.
Brown said that some of the team leaders – himself included – have been trying to turn the attitude around this week, but have had limited success.
“We try,” Brown said. “I voice my opinions but at the end of the day we’re all grown men, and we need to get ready outside of here. When you come in you need to learn how to focus yourself. And as much as the leaders we have on this team are pushing for that, guys kind of have to do that themselves a little bit.”
Although his comments may suggest otherwise, Brown remains optimistic that Chicago can turn around their approach before Thursday’s kickoff.
“When we come into games the guys get focused pretty well,” Brown said. “We should be ready for the game.”
