After Zlatan Ibrahimovic led LA Galaxy to a come-from-behind victory over Philadelphia Union Saturday night, Jim Curtin spoke to the media about how his team will try to rebound next week.
Building on a goal
CJ Sapong was back on the board for the first time since April, and Curtin said he hopes the striker will build on the tally going forward. “I think it was good to get on the end of a cross, good goal for him, continues to run in hard areas,” the coach said. “ I thought he showed a lot of fight in the 30 minutes he played in the open cup game, and then showed some good things today again. Hopefully we can ride that momentum into houston and get some more goals.”
Pushing the big boys, next is breaking through
“You know, if you look at it in all the games against the teams are towards the upper echelon and have some star players, whether it's Atlanta, Toronto, and now the Galaxy, we've come up just a little bit short,” Curtin said.
In the past, the Union have struggled to put away their early opportunities. But on Saturday they put away their chance before falling prey to Galaxy comeback. “Finding ways to win these types of games is what turns what is a good season into a great one, and we haven't been able to take that step,” Curtin continued. “I thought we played a good first half, moved the ball well, created some chances, maybe had an opportunity to get a second goal; we didn't do it. But still played well.”
Halftime sub helped LA
Sigi Schmid was able to call on Romain Alessandrini off the bench when his team was down, and having such a talent to throw into a close match helped a lot. “Alessandrini is a nice piece to bring off the bench, and a really talented player,” Curtin admitted. For better or worse, the Union head man thought his team had more to do with the result than the opponent. The Union have been able to dictate the shape of many matches this season, but they lost control in the latter forty-five on Saturday.
“Again, I still look at us and what we did or what did not do in the second half, and that was keep good possession. We made a mistake and a turnover, I don't think Alessandrini changed the game a ton for them, but we kind of let ourselves down.”
The Union have a quick turnaround when they travel to Houston to take on Andrew Wenger and the Houston Dynamo on Wednesday evening.
