After Philadelphia Union defeated New England Revolution 3-2, Jim Curtin saluted the resolve of his players at the end of a busy week.
“Grit and heart”
Curtin acknowledged that there were a lot of frenzied moments in a match that neither team could wrestle under control.
“In these Eastern Conference games down the stretch, a lot of times it isn’t so much about the beautiful soccer that’s played,” Curtin admitted, “It’s more about grit and heart and you saw that tonight from both teams.”
“I thought that our players made the badge proud tonight,” the Union coach added. “I thought that it’s a big win for us and a little bit of momentum now with the two results — with Chicago, obviously getting ourselves into a final, and now getting a big win against a rival in New England.
“Jack Elliott stepped up for us, Ray Gaddis was solid again, you could go through each guy and they showed a lot of heart and fight. And again, sometimes it isn’t about pretty soccer, and there was pretty soccer on short bursts tonight from both teams, but at the end of the day it became about rolling your sleeves up and getting a result.”
The Young and the… short-term memory
“All the things we did great in the first half, which was closing the ball down, not getting beat 1v1, being brave, getting blocks went out the window on the goal that they score a minute into the half,” Curtin said.
Indeed, the Union were not particularly clean in the first half, but they were organized enough to keep their opponents from creating chances in the most dangerous areas of the pitch. That changed after halftime. Curtin singled out Auston Trusty as one player who had a brief lapse to start the second frame but recovered to see out the win. “I’m going to be hard on Auston, I think he has to make a block there and bail Andre [Blake] out,” Curtin explained. “He kind of bails out and it deflects off him and goes in and that starts the downward spiral. But he’s been excellent, rebounded and had a short term memory and played a great rest of the game.
“Listen, we’re young, and we’re growing, and we’re sometimes naive, but I think a win like this, to show the resolve and to get the goal can be a turning point for the group.”
Big boys in the box
The Union used CJ Sapong up top and had Jack Elliott in back with Mark McKenzie injured. That gave them a lot of size to work with on set pieces.
“For the first time we had CJ and Cory out there as well, so now you think what that does to a team, and when you’re going through the matchups and who’s going to mark who,” Curtin said. “Usually you have to put your top two headers on Auston, on Cory [Burke], on CJ [Sapong], and now Jack maybe gets maybe a fourth or fifth option marking, and he’s 6’5”.
“So it’s an advantage, because just by sheer numbers and size that we have out there, we created some problems out there today. A little bit ‘right place, right time’ as well, but [Elliott] did a good job continuing his run and he gets on the end of one.
“We knew restarts was something New England struggled with in recent weeks,” the Union head man continued, “So we really focused on it in training. Guys executed, and Jack did a good job being in the right spot. Fafa hits a great shot off the post as well. We created a little numbers advantage on the short corner, led to some advantages for us, and I think we did a good job scoring on restarts and Jack was a big part of that.”
The Union are in action again next Saturday at 7:00PM EST when they host New York City FC at Talen Energy Stadium.
