After fighting to the final whistle, Jim Curtin’s Philadelphia Union fell to Houston Dynamo in the 2018 US Open Cup final Wednesday night. At his post-match presser, the coach was certain his squad will bounce back.
The one thing about this team
“We’ll get back and still look at the tape, as hard as it’ll be,” Curtin said. “The one thing this group has shown is resilincy. They bounce back from difficult losses; a final is as hard as it gets.”
“Only one team’s going to be happy,” the head man continued. “We came up a little bit short tonight. It doesn’t discredit the work that our players put in during this open cup run and what they’ve done in the leauge We’ve used a lot of our squad during this entire season. We do have a deep team, no time to feel sorry for ourselves.”
A word for the fans
“We win as a team and we lose as a team,” Curtin emphasized. “As hard as it is to lose a final, it doesn’t dismiss the entire work that’s been done this season. It’s still a very good open cup run. Only one team is happy at the end of this thing.”
Even though the team fell short of their goal, the head coach was glad to see Philly supporting their boys all the way down in Texas. “Thank you to the fans that came and made the travel,” Curtin began. “Apologies for letting them down. Starts with myself. And on the night it just didn’t seem to be we were clicking on all cylinders. Not for lack of effort the players put it, they emptied the tank for us, but just seemed like a night where nothing would go in for us.”
“I apologize to the fans again, because they came out in big numbers for us and we let them down. And that’s part of soccer. You learn from everything, I still think you can learn from these moments and get better from them, and move on.”
Next match is coming
“We have to stick together in a tough time and bounce back against a really good Columubus team that is fully rested and waiting for us to go into their building. It’ll be difficult, but if you look at our last eight games, they’ve all been really really difficult and I think our group will have a good response.”
“We’ll get on the plane now, get some rest, as hard as it is, the sun will come up tomorrow. We’ll have training, we’ll have to work on some things, we have another huge game against Columbus on the weekend. The focus shifts now fully to the league.”
In the end, there was little for Curtin to say other than how he felt after his third finals loss as a head coach.
“This is heartbreaking. This is hard for me to do, I feel sick. But at the same time you have to be a leader about it. It hurts.”
The Union have a big opportunity to get rid of that pain this weekend when they travel to Columbus to face down the Crew, who are a single point ahead of them in the standings and the only thing standing between Philly and a home playoff match. The big Eastern Conference matchup will surely be the game to watch Saturday in Major League Soccer.
