Philadelphia Union fell to Orlando City 3-2 on Saturday night, dropping their third straight home match, this time against an Eastern Conference opponent. After the final whistle, which concluded play after 115 minutes of action, Curtin met with the media, recapping the result.
Recent woes
Curtin started his postgame press conference addressing his teams recent misfortune, having gone five straight games without a win.
"Thanks to the fans that stuck with us through 115 minutes tonight. Obviously, incredibly disappointed again. In some ways, I'm a big believer that you can make your own luck. We've shot ourselves in the foot quite a bit in recent games, played from behind quite a bit, had to chase games and put a lot into them, and we get punished."
"We've had out of characterstic goals going against us, but we have to stick together as a group and find a way to tighten things up."
Improving together
The Union claimed a lead early by way of a 12th minute Mikael Uhre goal, but after letting Orlando get one of their own minutes later, things went downhill and Head Coach Oscar Pareja's squad put two more on the board. When asked about his team's defense, which has conceded 19 goals so far this season, Curtin said he believes recent results are not the fault of one group in particular.
"We will all have different ideas as to why we're conceding so many goals. Number one, it shouldn't happen the way it's happening, especially at home. I's been five years since we've had a streak like this," Curtin said.
"It hurts. We've been trying to guard against it for a lot of years. I don't have the exact answer. I'm not going to point fingers, if you want to point fingers, point fingers at the coach I'll take the blame for it. I recognize now, we have to do better. I won't single out any individuals, but we also have to get through it together."
Despite the result, Curtin said there was plenty of positives in Saturday's match, and his team will look inward to move forward as New York City FC will take the trip down I-95 for a midweek matchup on the riverfront on Wednesday.
"They know each other and they when they play good, they know know what parts of the game are going well and what they can improve on. We'll try to eliminate the mistakes, get rid of the self-inflicted errors. Things run in streaks in this league, it hurts right now. We're on a really bad stretch here but we're know were capable of going on a unbeaten streaks already like we've had this year," Curtin said.
"We have to turn it around and we can't feel sorry for ourselves because your New York City's coming in on Wednesday."
