A win is a win, right?
Not for Union head coach Jim Curtin. After his side got a late Jack Elliott goal to knock off Houston Dynamo, Curtin was adamant that he was far from satisfied with what he saw on the pitch.
“You can insert any line you want, any cliche line you want,” Curtin began. “We weren't good enough with the ball, we turned it over in bad spots, guys weren’t sharp, the field is bad, its bumpy, its difficult,
but at the same time it's the same for both teams. We weren’t clean with our passing. Its disappointing because we had, I thought, a really sharp week of training. I thought the players looked excellent, seemed ready to go. Then we let ourselves down.
“We had to kind of fight and scrap to get out of here with a win.”
After a strong start to the match, the Union failed to build a significant lead before the Dynamo recovered and grabbed an equalizer just before halftime. The visitors left men high as they tried to squeeze out the Union’s build-up play — specifically, Haris Medunjanin and Philly’s fullbacks. In an extreme example, Memo Rodriguez sat on Ray Gaddis even when the ball was on the far side of the pitch.
Push on to “the upper echelon”
The reason Curtin was so frustrated is that he expects more from his side at this point. They have been atop the east for a while, but now he wants them to become great consistently.
“I don’t want us to be a middle of the road, average team,” Curtin emphasized. “I want us to take a step up and actually get some respect in this league, because the players deserve that.”
“They've had a great season, but performances like tonight are dangerous. It could have been a tie or a loss in a lot of ways. Overall, our players are too good, they've put too much work into this year to let things get away from us. Again, I’m saying this off a win and a two game, good, winning streak we’ve got going. But, again, we want to push into the upper echelon of teams.”
Flexibility in buildup
The Dynamo sat high in order to prevent Philly from finding their typical rhythm. Often, the Union will use their fullbacks to draw defenders across the pitch before looking for Medunjanin. On this night, there was no outlet, and the match became a back-and-forth affair.
Curtin used halftime to push Medunjanin higher in buildups, allowing one pass to break the lines and give the Bosnian space to operate. The result was a lot more freedom in the latter frame, with Medunjanin twice nearly picking out a striker with breathtaking crossfield passes.
“What was happening was Haris was dropping a little bit too deep I thought in the first half,” Curtin said.
“He was in between the center backs a lot. Rather than creating another level for us to play
through and being higher than that front four. So now, once balls go through the lines to him, he
can turn and he can now really play forward and do what he does best which is pass.”
Medunjanin certainly does pass well, and his ability to spread the pitch became a huge boon to Philly as Houston was able to press. The Union are at their best when they can control a match with the big Bosnian, and it became clear they could do so once Medunjanin was higher up the field.
“Just a matter of where we found him on the field,” Curtin continued. “It's a combination of a lot of things, when they sacrifice four guys high like that, and you play a good forward ball on the ground, you're eliminating four guys right off the bat.”
The Union are back in action next Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET on PHL17 when they battle CJ Sapong and Chicago Fire.
