'Can the Chicago Fire win the World Cup?' reporter owns his mistake
The reporter who earned worldwide attention for his Bastian Schweinsteiger press conference question regarding the Chicago Fire and the World Cup has owned and explained his mistake.
Derek Henkle, an AFP video journalist who does not regularly cover soccer or sports, now-infamously asked Schweinsteiger whether he could help the Fire win the World Cup in the German star's introductory press conference with the MLS club.
On a CLTV broadcast Thursday night in Chicago, he offered an explanation for where it all went wrong.
"At first I thought the question was lost in translation," he said. "Really it's that it was just lost in my brain in terms of not having knowledge of what the appropriate cup was to ask. What I was trying to ask and what I was trying to get at was I wanted to know whether we could expect big trophies out of the Chicago Fire especially since the success of the Cubs and Blackhawks recently, and I think we have kind of a world-famous set of sports fans here I wanted to know whether that would translate for Chicago Fire with Bastian joining the team. I really appreciate how he helped me out there at the end."
The Fire have certainly had some fun with the gaffe. The club tweeted a picture of Schweinsteiger at his first training session full with the hashtag #RoadToRussia, while Schweinsteiger's fellow central midfielder Dax McCarty chimed in with an on-point joke of his own.
And just to be definitive: No. The Chicago Fire cannot win the World Cup.
