As his team readies for Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the Los Angeles Galaxy, Jim Curtin spoke to the media about using his team’s depth, the return of Chris Pontius, and how to contain the visitors’ star man.
City of Angels, or is it egos?
Zlatan’s ego is as big as his talent, and Jim Curtin knows it’ll take a team effort to contain the striker. “He's all of 6'4", strong on the ball, is just looking to create a half step and get a shot off, can assist goals, wins things in the air for them, can beat you a lot of different ways,” the Union coach said. “It's important that we always have one of either Mark [McKenzie] or Auston [Trusty] challenging for headers, challenging for balls that he's not just taking down off his chest and letting his team move, and then you're also having double teams come from our midfield to close down and not give him space.
“So it's going to be a little bit of Andre [Blake] having to make a big save, a guy having to make a big block or tackle in the box, not giving up free kicks around the box because he's so lethal with those. We'll have our hands full but our group is a real team, all eleven guys on the same page, everyone attacking, everyone defending, and we still think that that can hold up even against these superstar teams that we play, whether it's LAFC, Atlanta, Toronto, now the LA Galaxy.”
But even if you contain Ibra, there are plenty of other talented players that can beat you, and the Union will look make them play as individuals. “When you talk about Zlatan, Kamara, who has scored 20 goals in our league,” Curtin said, listing off names. “Alessandrini who can beat you, Dos Santos brothers, they have a lot of weapons that can hurt you.”
“We've got to be focused for 90 minutes, they've scored a lot of goals late as well, you saw that last weekend with New England. They have a lot of ways to beat you. We'll try to limit their key guys as best you can — you're not going to shut down Zlatan for 90 minutes. But you want to try and make it as easy for Andre as possible and make him shoot from angles that Andre can make saves.”
Primed for Pontius
Chris Pontius left the Union because he wanted to be out on the west coast, but Curtin doesn’t want the aerial monster to be forgotten amongst all the international stars LA brings. “He can score goals with his head, he can get shots off in the box,” Curtin said of Pontius. “Chris is another guy — you start to focus too much on the other big pieces and he can punish you, and you're seeing him do that this season.
“Chris is a guy that I have a great relationship with, that I respect a great deal. The end of his time here was tough, but at the same time, he had expressed interest in playing in LA because of more personal, family type reasons. That happens.”
Using the whole team
“We're going to call upon our entire team now to step up in a big way against really good competition,” Curtin admitted, suggesting the Union will look to rotate some players during the next two matches against the Galaxy and Houston Dynamo. “Every point matters at this stage, you see how close the standings are.
The Union have at least one game in hand on every team above them in the standings except New York Red Bulls, and everyone around them in the standings has a difficult matchup this weekend. “We have two games against Western Conference teams now where a lot of the east teams are playing each other this weekend and kind of take points off each other, so it's a real opportunity,” Curtin argued.
“And we have a couple games in hand on teams too. So these are critical points over these next two games.”
