On Wednesday night, Philadelphia Union claimed their third straight shutout in a 0-0 battle against Toronto FC, preventing their Canadian opponent from finding the back of the net through the final whistle. While they emerged with a point at home after a difficult stretch at Subaru Park, the team is eager to achieve more, especially in front of Union faithful on the Delaware riverfront.
In his postgame press conference, Head Coach Jim Curtin described the club’s 2024 campaign as one of extremes, diagnosing what’s led to a start that’s placed them at 8th in the East as the season’s midway mark looms near.
“We go on these runs where we score a ton of goals, but we're conceding a ton of goals. That's not us. And now, we're not conceding and we're not really creating a ton. We scored the three goals against New England, but let's be honest, they're down a man early in the game, so it's too extreme,” Curtin said. “That's not really what the Philadelphia Union's badge of consistency is and over the last five, six seasons now has gotten us where we are. I don't want to be a team that runs hot and cold. That's really not how we're designed.”
Hungarian midfielder Daniel Gazdag shared a similar sentiment in the locker room, citing balance as one of the team’s needs in their pursuit of three-point results.
“The season is not going as we planned. So far, we've been struggling and conceded too many goals at the beginning of the season. Now, we are struggling a little bit to score goals. So I think we just have to find the right balance,” Gazdag said. “We’ve shown before that we are a good team, we have the same players here, so I'm pretty sure that we will get back to our best and win games.”
The team has one more game at home before a two-week break; they’ll take on C.F. Montreal on Saturday, then on June 15th, Inter Miami will come to town to face a Union side that'll have quite a few players missing due to National Team call-ups. Curtin says in upcoming matches, the team will have to make not only personnel changes, which was expected, but also alter their typical formations.
“Hopefully our guys’ focus will be here [on Saturday] and not with different things, like Copa America, or the Euros or the Olympics – they're here, finish strong, and then we'll have to put a plan in place and talk about formation change, we'll probably have to with on the numbers that we have,” Curtin said.
The list of absent Union players will be a long one, with nine already having earned callups during the upcoming FIFA international window. Without them, the Union's depth pieces will become essential.
“We can adapt and adjust. We're going to have to. We've talked about this from preseason ‘til now. You know who's going to be here, who's going to not be here when we go into this stretch in the summer. So it's on us. We've known this is coming and it's up to us to get ourselves out of it, but we haven't done any favors for ourselves. I think that's the reality of things,” Curtin said.
For now, the priority remains getting three points at home on Saturday against Montreal, which is something the team hasn’t done since the end of March against Minnesota United.
“A tie feels like a loss when we're at home. I think that's just the way it is. But you know, the coaching staff does try to put a positive twist on things and say we've kept some clean sheets now in three consecutive games, which is good. But we have to hit the back of the net, and that has to start on Saturday against Montreal before the International break.”
