As the 2018 season winds down for the Chicago Fire, players, supporters and anyone who follows the club starts to reflect on a season in which the team severely failed to live up to the high bar set in 2017.

Perhaps more than anyone in the Fire locker room, Dax McCarty has felt the frustration of a disappointing season that deprived him of the MLS Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2009.

As the Fire head for an extended break before their last two games, 90 Minutes spoke with McCarty about his frustrations, the biggest differences compared to 2017, the absence of supporters groups at Toyota Park and how the team is approaching the home stretch of the current season.

It’s been a long, up-and-down season for the Chicago Fire. As it winds down, how are you feeling?

I'm confused because I've never been in this situation before. I've never been in a situation where I'm still not fighting for something at the end of the season, where I'm not preparing for playoff soccer. So I’m confused, a little bit of anger, a little bit of a frustration, all the above. I think the main thing that I'm focusing on is just having a little bit of pride, a little bit of self-pride, a little bit of pride in the club, in the badge to say that we're not gonna give up just because we're not in the playoffs anymore.

What has been the message in the locker room after being eliminated from the playoffs?

To have a little pride and to make sure that you don't just give up because that's disrespectful to the fans and that's disrespectful to the club. It's disrespectful to the profession and what we chose to be. I was really disappointed actually after the DC United game because I felt like we did some decent things. The second half just gets away from us a little bit and I think we take it for granted. Some guys on the team were taking the opportunity that we have for granted because, in seasons like this, people lose jobs, players get traded, players get cut, players get released, changes are made. These last two games, it's about the will to go on and prove yourself because no one on this team is guaranteed to be back here next year and no one on this team can say that they deserve to be back here with the way that this season's gone.

At the beginning of the season, you talked about the roster missing pieces. After all the acquisitions and departures, is the roster still incomplete?

I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you and tell you that we're a perfect team. If we were a team that had all the pieces that we needed, then we'd be fighting for trophies and we'd be in the playoff hunt, but we're not. We certainly need to bring in a little bit more talent. We have quality, we have good players, there's no doubt about that, but I just don't think we had enough this year to compete game in and game out and we weren't far away, I don't think. We certainly do need to make some changes and make some additions. I think that for the guys making the decisions, there's going to be some tough decisions that have to be made with regards to the roster and everything else.

What has been the biggest fault of this team compared to last season?

We've been really inconsistent. We haven’t, I don't think, at least to my knowledge, started the same starting lineup in any game this season consecutively. There's been just a constant rotation of bodies in and out. There's been a constant rotation of formations. There's been a constant rotation of tactics trying to figure out where we can hurt teams and how we can get at our best. The thing that sticks out to me is that when we were at our best last year, we played the same way at home on the road and we had a really a big consistency in our rosters and our starting XI’s. We never really got going to where we built up a lot of confidence. We were a fragile team mentally and I take responsibility for that. I'm the captain, I need to make sure that we're confident going into every game. We just had a distinct lack of confidence going into games.

One of the most notable aspects of this season has been the number of minutes given to the rookies. As captain, how would you assess their growth this season?

I think that they all had their positive moments for sure. I think all the rookies came in and showed the reasons why they were brought in. I think they also showed why their young players and why they're rookies. Some guys hit a wall, some guys got injured, some guys had their ups and downs, some guys had great games and then followed it up with not so great games and that's the life of a young player. They got experience playing at the highest level, playing in games. That’s a real big positive for us going into the next year, is that all those young guys, whether they're rookies or second-year players, a guy like Brandt Bronico, he's not a rookie but he's a guy who took a big leap this year in terms of his minutes and I thought he was a bright spot for us all season.

Another aspect has been the absence of supporters groups in the stands. How much does that weigh on the team and on you?

It's definitely something that the players know about and it's something that we know something is going on. We want a safe environment and welcoming to everybody and we want an environment that's loud and that opposing teams are intimidated to come into. The supporters groups, it's unquestioned that they bring that. Sector Latino and Section 8, they bring that passion and that environment to Toyota Park. My personal hope is that they can figure out a solution and come to an agreement where we can get all the fans back in the stadium happy and supporting us in the fashion that I know would make us a formidable team at home. I really hope that they meet in the offseason. I hope that they can come to some sort of agreement to where all parties are happy because nobody's winning in this situation.

You had that moment with Bastian Schweinsteiger giving you the armband during his testimonial in Munich. Take us through that moment.

It's hard to describe a moment like that. Certain moments, like the one where we're playing in Munich at the Allianz Arena with probably one of their best players, when he gives me the armband in front of a sold-out crowd at his testimonial game, moments like that you can't dream of as a kid because you just aren't sure that those opportunities will ever come around. For me it was surreal. The respect I have for Basti as a person, as a man, as a player, it couldn't be higher. When a guy who is a legend of the game, you have a moment like that with him, it's something that I'll be able to remember for the rest of my life. I tell my kids about, I'll be able to look back on that when I'm an old man and say, ‘man, I did some pretty cool stuff in my career.’ That's a top moment for me for sure.