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The Union are Dead Last in Major League Soccer, but They Did Score a Goal
Published:
You want the good news or the bad news?
The good news is that the Union scored a goal from the run of play.
The bad news is that they lost again, 3-1 in Atlanta, and are now dead last in Major League Soccer. They are the only team without a point as they head to Mexico City to play Club America in the second leg of their Round of 16 Champions Cup series, down 1-0 on aggregate:
We hit on most of the bullet points in a recent story titled 12 Thoughts After Another Loss in Which the Union Looked Like the Philadelphia Flyers. That was after a good effort against America in which they just couldn’t score.
This time, however, they looked outright bad, and the body language wasn’t amazing. Shoulders were slumpy in the second half and a bunch of guys were jogging back on the third Atlanta goal. Milan Iloski banged a penalty kick off the post and the goal they did score was down 3-0 in garbage time. That’s despite the Union mustering 14 shots, putting three on target, and finishing with a flat 3.0 xG.
One of the things they really struggle with is hitting the target. Danley Jean Jacques sliced one so badly on Saturday that it just sort of skidded across the 18. The forwards are big thumpers who can’t create their own shots and the Union don’t play with a #10 to begin with, so the strikers don’t get much service at all. The U have generated 54 shots in four MLS games, which is 8th overall, but only 14 have been on target, meaning their 25.9 SOT percentage is second-worst among 30 teams.
They don’t seem to have a lot of on-ball creativity or a sense of how to operate in open play right now. Last year, they’d play Kai Wagner down the left and he’d thump in crosses and that was their bread-and-butter. They’d draw fouls and earn set pieces and corners and all of that. It says something when Alejandro Bedoya comes off the bench and makes an immediate difference with basic triangular passing and movement down the right flank. They need to get it back to basics, settle on a starting XI, and take it from there.
We’ll talk about it tonight on the IASIP program:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com