Ad Disclosure
The Union Have Scored One Goal in MLS Play, and it was a Bullshit Penalty from a Makeup Call
Published:
The Union fell to 0-3 in league play after a 1-nil home loss to San Jose on Saturday night:
That’s deputy left back Gio Sequera snoozing on the back post. Sery Larsen is also too far off his mark. He should just stand right on top of the guy at the 18. It’s tough to get a backline in positional sync, which is to be expected with all of these new players on the roster. They’ll have Philippe Ndinga over there hopefully sooner than later, because left back has been a black hole in the post-Kai Wagner era. The center halves have also been taking too many cards.
Time’s ticking because that’s three MLS games now and the Union are 0-3. They’ve scored zero goals from the run of play, and the one goal they did score was a PK from the New York game in which referee Chris Penso handed them a make-up call after he blew an earlier penalty shout. They deserved the first penalty, which was legit, and didn’t get it, so it was probably fair in the end, just an ass-backward way of getting there.
The only thing keeping the U out of the Eastern Conference basement is the fact that they haven’t allowed many goals, just four in three games, so they’re -3 in goal differential. New England, Atlanta, and Orlando are also winless but have worse GDs, so they occupy spots 13, 14, and 15.
It’s a strange juxtaposition because the U scored 12 goals in their opening Champions Cup series against Trinidad’s Defense Force, which is barely a professional team. The U looked like 2011 Barcelona in that two-leg series, while they’ve looked like the Bad News Bears in MLS play. We’ll get a better read on this team when they host Club America on Tuesday night, a traditional Mexican power that hasn’t been playing particularly well in their domestic league. They’re also struggling to score, so it might be a leg 1 grinder at the Soob. A rock fight, perhaps.
Bradley Carnell has a lot of work to do. He no longer has Wagner, Jakob Glesnes, Tai Baribo, and Mikael Uhre, and it shows. They did well selling off their best players last season, but not so much this year.
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