Fire Sidebar: Another Clean Sheet for Slonina

Chicago, IL-The Chicago Fire keeps working and finding ways to win at home. But working hard seems to be coming from one of its youngest players in 18-year-old goalkeeper Gabriel Slonina.

Behind his efforts in goal, Slonina recorded his seventh clean sheet this season in 17 matches and his 11th overall in his career. He made a couple of spectacular saves in the match but didn’t really want all the credit in the Fire’s 1-0 victory over Eastern Conference leader Philidelphia at Soldier Field on Wednesday night.

“I really like the group’s energy for the whole 97 minutes,” Slonina said. “We were up there; we were pressing them, and we were giving the game to them. I was super proud of the guys from what I saw from where I was, and it showed with the result.”

There’s been a number of clean sheets that Slonina has taken pride in his efforts along with the team.

“It’s part of my job to keep the ball out of the net, anytime you keep a clean sheet it’s big for us, and big for the entire team.” Slonina said. “More to keep clean sheets, the better you have of getting results.”

Even though some of the results on the recent victories have shown progress, it has taken the defense and the rest of the whole team to make it happen together.

“I think it’s really the whole team,” Slonina said. “When we see the first defender go against their striker. It adds motivation for us in the back to contain and shift and move our lines. A lot of it goes in our communication and organization. It all starts in training. The more we put into training and the more we put into the game, the more get out of it.”

Chicago Fire head coach Ezra Hendrickson has seen some really good progress with his keeper Slonina, but there’s more work that still has to be done to see him get to another level.

“We hope to get a consistent effort from game to game,” Hendrickson said. “He’s a very good keeper, but he’s a young keeper with a lot of inexperience. So, there’s still a lot to work on. He does have a lot of the right tools. But he’s improving daily. We’ve seen some improvement.

“It’s easy sometimes when you don’t face a lot of shots in a game, you’re not active, to fall asleep, to go in a lull as a goalkeeper. But he finds some way to still be active when he does get called upon, he answers. Sometimes, maybe it’s not a shot, sometimes maybe it’s just organizing the back four or maybe it’s a cross coming out and punching it, and he’s very good at that. There’s still more work to work on but he’s on the right track and headed in the right direction. I like his progression.”