On Friday, the Union will be back at Subaru Park for a showdown against DC United on Fireworks Night. After a road trip to face Chicago Fire FC and Columbus Crew, the Union will fight for three points at home in front of alumni including Brian Carroll and Michael and Gabriel Farfan. Philadelphia Union head coach Jim Curtin spoke with the media about the upcoming opponent. These are our Founders Brewing Co. Pressing Points.
More Possession
After the two games in Chicago and Columbus where the Union didn’t score a goal, head coach Jim Curtin still has faith that his team can find answers on the offensive end: “Now the challenge for the group is to add another layer in the attacking part of the field," he said. Against DC United, Curtin wants to be more dangerous on the offensive side than in their previous matches: “The thing that we’d like to improve is creating more chances and turning those ties into wins," the head coach continued. "And I think that starts by being aggressive at home.”
He also wants his team to have more possession than in the games before: “We do need to find moments now even tomorrow against DC where we can’t have sloppy passes and win the ball back and give it right back to them and then have to defend again. We wanna make them run a little bit.”
“The standings make no sense in this league," he continued. "Everybody has a chance still. Everybody still has hope and believe so if you are not carful you can get beat on any given day.
"The good thing is that we have been a very tuff team to beat,” Curtin concluded.
Homegrowns are back
Good news ahead of Friday are that four homegrowns, Paxten Aaronson, Jack McGlynn, Quinn Sullivan and Brandan Craig are back in training for the Union. Even better is that they are back with a lot of confidence after winning the U-20 Concacaf Championship.
In Curtin's view it paid off to let them go to the national team even if they were not available for a few games: “For what this club, the Philadelphia Union, is about, for what our league should be about, and for what our national team wants to be about as well, we did the right thing," he said definitively.
"I think that the stock of all four of those players has really risen, which is good.”
“They are going to get more minutes, I can promise you that," he said. "They deserve more minutes and it’s going to be a very exiting second half of the year.”
He also believes that they can keep up the strong performances on the professional level: “The challenge now is to go from that competition against your own age to do it against the professionals, which I think they are more than capable of doing."
Transfer news
Not only the upcoming game and the return of the homegrowns were topics on the press conference on Thursday. Jack de Vries, who was on lone to Venezia FC will get transfered to the Italian club permanently: “Jack went over there and did a good job at a top club. A team that got relegated but at the same time he had a great experience. They wanted to keep him there and we thought it was best at this time.” says Jim Curtin about the transfer. He is happy for him to get the chance to play in Europe permanently and thinks that it is a good chance for him to improve: “A good fit for Jack. A really good young attacking player that I think can do well there."
“It probably didn’t go as Matej had hoped, here in Philadelphia," Curtin said of Matej Oravec, who was released by the Union on Thursday. "But at the same time - very professional. We wish him nothing but the best of luck moving forward.”
Oravec spent last season on loan and now will not return to the Union.
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