Fire’s Alvaro Medran isn’t holding back: “There are things that need to change from top to bottom.”

In his two seasons with the Chicago Fire, Alvaro Medran has consistently been one of the more talkative, insightful members of the team. In a media availability Wednesday, Medran took it to another level. He didn’t hold back about his future with the club, and what went wrong these last two seasons.

“That’s a question for (sporting director) Georg (Heitz). He knows what I want,” Medran said, bluntly, when we asked about his future. “I do want to reiterate here that I never said I want to go back to Spain. That’s something between Georg and I. He’s the one who makes the choices, and he’s the one who will say in the end.”

On why 2021 was such a failure on the field, Medran was even more direct.

“There are many things that need to be changed,” he said via a translator. “We need ambition to try to win games. We need to demand more from ourselves. Commitment. Quality. A lot of things inside the locker room need to change. There are things that need to change from top to bottom. But, I’m confident, hopefully in the off season, things can change so this club can continue to move forward.”

After a rocky 2020 with players joining late, Heitz made it a point to keep the roster largely the same heading into 2021, saying “continuity” would help the team jell and become a winner. It didn’t work, and the Fire are now slightly worse from a record standpoint than they were the year prior.

“If you look at the team from last year, to this year, it’s practically the same,” Medran said. “So, we have practically the same players, and it’s the same mindset. So that makes it difficult for things to change from one season to another, because the same players and we have the same mentality.

“In order to be able to improve we really need a winning mentality,” he continued. “Hopefully we can all look at ourselves and reflect on ourselves and see what we did and how we can improve, so we can keep moving forward, so this club can keep moving forward. If you want to be a winning team, you have to have a winning mentality, you have to have a commitment to winning, and you need to work accordingly, and you also need good quality as well.”

The Fire have five games left in 2021, starting with this Saturday’s away match against the New England Revolution.