Nine years ago today, Philadelphia Union overcame a second-half deficit with two goals in 10 minutes to defeat the Chicago Fire. Below is the original match recap that appeared on PhiladelphiaUnion.com
They knew it was just a matter of time. They knew if they kept executing the gameplan, the goals would come. On Saturday, that’s exactly what transpired as the Union defeated the Chicago Fire, 2-1, before a raucous crowd of 18,372 at PPL Park.
The Union snapped a scoreless match at halftime with a pair of second-half goals by Michael Farfan in the 64th minute and Carlos Ruiz in the 74th minute. It was the first time in 10 league matches this season that the Union managed to score multiple goals in one game. And did it ever feel good.
“Tonight was great with two goals,” said Sebastien Le Toux. “We knew our time would come. We kept telling ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities and stay spaced on the field. It was a great night to be sure. Carlos scored a great goal to give us the lead.”
Coming into the match, the Union had scored a league-low six goals, two less than the Columbus Crew and three less than Real Salt Lake and the New England Revolution. But despite the goal shortage, the Union sit in first place in the Eastern Conference with a 5-3-2 record. The players never were all that concerned with the lack of offense.
“We try to block all that out,” said midfielder Kyle Nakazawa. “For us, the most important thing is getting points and I think we’ve done a decent job of doing that. We got the three points tonight and that was great.”
“Overall, it was probably our best offensive performance of the year,” defender Danny Califf added.
Ruiz leads the Union with three goals and his stunning goal sent them past that elusive one-goal mark. The Guatemalan international has been in the league long enough to realize that it was way too early to start worrying.
“We had to keep working and we did that,” Ruiz said. “We have been training very hard and preparing the same every day. It felt great to get the two goals, but we expect to score a lot more goals this season. We don’t expect it to end here. We want to take the momentum into Toronto and keep it going.”
Union manager Peter Nowak was pleased with the offensive output.
“That was a good step forward, especially when you score two goals,” Nowak said. “There’s still a lot of room to improve, but we found a way to improve.”
They found two ways to score goals and that has to be a confidence-builder. More importantly, they found a way to come up with their fifth victory.
