July 28, 2022 – National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) – Chicago Red Stars News Release
Ahead of the Chicago Red Stars’ match against San Diego Wave FC, Coach Chris Petrucelli and forward Sarah Griffith took questions from reporters. The Red Stars take on the Wave Saturday, July 30, at 7:00 p.m. CT at Soldier Field.
On reintegrating players who were on international duty (from Claire Watkins)
Chris Petrucelli: It’s been different for all of them. We’ll start with Bianca. Bianca obviously didn’t get a lot of playing time, so we have to build her back up. They did do some top offs with her and stuff like that, but she hasn’t had significant minutes in five weeks or so. She’s got to be built back up a little bit. She’s more than willing to go as long as we ask her too, but I want to be smart about how we build her back up. So, we’re going to work her and try to increase her minutes over the next couple of weeks. Alyssa trains 100% everyday, so Alyssa is right back into it. Right back into training and playing. That’s just who she is and how she goes about things. Mal is somewhere in between. She did play a good number of minutes. She’s a little bit banged up, not too bad. She’s been training but maybe we’ve been smart about how many minutes and how hard we’ve been pushing her at training so she’s ready to play the match.
On playing San Diego a second time (from Claire Watkins)
Petrucelli: I think a lot of times in the league when you’re playing teams twice, you can look back to the first game to get a good idea of what the game might be like. I don’t know that’s one you can do that way because we were a different team on that day. There was no Mal, Danny was coming off of some illness so her minutes were limited. We had games in a short period of time and I think we limited Vanessa at the time. Sharples played and we had Zoe Morse in midfield so just a very different team back then. I think we even played Hill as a ten that game. So I think we’ll be a very different team on Saturday.
On how the team is embracing the chance to play at Soldier Field (From Larry Hawley)
Petrucelli: I think they’re really excited. It’s a historic venue in many sports including our own. I remember going to opening of the ’94 World Cup in Soldier Field, so even in our sport they’ve hosted some pretty important games a long the way. I think our group is excited about playing there and really looking forward to getting in there. Having our fans there in conjunction with the Fire I…
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