The highest hurdle in the backstretch of the Union’s season has been cleared. Though the team has long held its fate in its hands, the road to the finish this week is even clearer.
On the heels of a 1-0 win over Nashville SC Saturday night, the Union (13-8-10, 49 points) sit second in the Eastern Conference. With Wednesday night’s game at 13th-place Toronto FC (7:30, PHL17) and Saturday’s visit from 14th-place FC Cincinnati, the Union have favorable matchups to chart their playoff direction.
Two wins would guarantee them at least one home game in the MLS Cup playoffs. It might take three results, with the season finale on Nov. 7 at Yankee Stadium against fifth-place New York City FC, to repel any charge from Nashville for second.
While both opponents this week aren’t in playoff contention, Jim Curtin knows better than to take things lightly, starting with a Toronto FC side under an interim coach that still can field MVP Alejandro Pozuelo, Michael Bradley and healthy-again Jozy Altidore. Toronto, though, is just 4-5-6 at home in a horror show of a season.
“I think the players understand that importance at this point of the year,” Curtin said Tuesday via Zoom. “You don’t want to get caught looking ahead. … If we go there and don’t have the right mindset, guys like Jozy, Pozuelo, Michael Bradley can kill you. I think they understand that. We’ve been a better team guarding against those kinds of let-down games.”
This week’s contests can continue a startling trend. Over the last two seasons, the Union have gone 6-2-2 in September games and 8-2-2 in October. In their previous nine seasons, they were 14-15-16 in September and 10-19-5 in October.
That charts a rise from 1.289 points per game (a non-playoff level) in September 2010-19 to an elite 2.0 ppg in 2020-21. The October change is even more drastic: From an inept 1.029 to 2.16 the last two years.
That accentuates how the club has improved under Curtin. Even their early playoff campaigns were marred by late-summer peaks and swoons to the finish. But the 2021 surge has been different.
The reasons are myriad, but two central trends converge this week. The first is fitness, which Curtin lauds sports performance director Garrison Draper for regularly. It’s a big reason for the Union’s success in midweek contests, as COVID-19 has drastically condensed the last two schedules. It’s also why Curtin could select the same starting lineup that lost in Minnesota last Wednesday again on the weekend to neutralize a mostly rotated Nashville side.
Curtin seems equipped to name many of his regulars again in Toronto (6-17-8, 26 points). The only known absence is Andre Blake, who was excused to return to Jamaica after the death of his grandmother. Expect the only other alterations to be in sub patterns, tasking starters with shorter, intense shifts. Among the reinforcements is Sergio Santos, who is recovered from a quad issue and whom Curtin wanted to play Saturday, though the game didn’t allow it.
“We took a risk last game, certainly, on two days rest to go against a really strong Nashville team,” Curtin said. “But I can’t stress enough, whether our guys are young or old, the work that they’ve done building towards this moment now, and we knew what the schedule was long ago, we knew that they’d be able to take the load.”
The second aspect is the mindset. The Minnesota loss was jarring because it was so uncharacteristic for the calamitous defensive errors leading to three Minnesota goals. The Union have largely avoided those letdowns; save for April 24 home loss to Inter Miami, they don’t have many regrettable losses.
That evolution informs the late-season success: The framework Curtin and Ernst Tanner have assembled allows the team to strengthen, not weaken, as seasons progress. With Draper and his staff seeing to the physical side, the success they’ve built reinforces the mental aspect, ensuring resilience after tough results and steeliness in decisive tough in-game moments. That includes the positive reframing of their CONCACAF Champions League journey.
“The gradual improvement each year builds a little more of a winning mentality,” Curtin said. “When a goal can turn things negative or can spur us to do something bigger – I’ll point to the Club America and Champions League experience we had, playing against the top teams – we lost but we went toe-to-toe with (them), and it could’ve gone negative after we lost a game like that. We could’ve had the heartbreak and the quit, but our group through the years, you’ve seen those moments in games where it could go south, where it could go bad, where the stadium gets quiet and guys can kind of shrink. That doesn’t happen anymore.
“It’s something that’s taken time, and I think with that time has come confidence in the players.”
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