Questions linger, and deepen, about club’s youth approach

CHESTER » In an effort to streamline a discussion that has recurred in recent weeks and shows little sign of abating, Union manager Jim Curtin went the succinct route Wednesday.

“I guess in short, Derrick, Auston and Adam will not be playing against Chicago,” Curtin said.

The enduring conversation about Jones, Trusty, Najem and others will dog the last five games of the season, with the popular acclaim in a campaign that will end outside the playoff picture to use remaining minutes to vet young players at a club so fond of touting homegrown development.

But there’s a wrench in the conveyer belt that has supposedly been assembled to deliver players from the greater Philadelphia area to the Union first team via Wayne. And despite Curtin’s valiant attempt, it defies a simple explanation.

On one hand, Curtin and those above him in the club hierarchy talk a good game about giving young players opportunities. On the other, the likes of the aforementioned triumvirate have seen chances severely limited this season.

Curtin adheres to a rigid meritocracy for determining lineup spots: Practice well and you play. Extrapolating that decree finds that starring with Bethlehem Steel earns consideration for the Union’s gameday roster. That’s how Jack Elliott arrived, same for Marcus Epps.

Implicit in that arrangement is that the young trio hasn’t yet warranted minutes. Curtin Wednesday made the connection explicit.

“I know that people want guys to just be thrown out there and get a chance, but they have to be earned,” Curtin said. “There’s examples of guys doing that: Derrick early on in the year absolutely did it.”

Najem, though, hasn’t made headway down that path.

“If he’s able to impact games — and he’s had some real good moments in Steel games where he’s gotten assists and goals,” Curtin said. “He’s done a real good job, he works hard in training. But I don’t think he’s quite ready to take that next step to first-team minutes. I think could he be used off the bench this weekend? Yeah, but the decision right now is that he’s not starting.”

That determination differs somewhat from the mindset espoused by sporting director Earnie Stewart. Framed in a discussion of the Academy players, Stewart holds a view on what forces progress in young players. The foremost principle is players “making their minutes,” but sometimes the rubric changes.

“I believe that’s the best way to go about it for everybody,” Stewart said. “One, training is very important. But two, also making a lot of valuable minutes, especially in the academy, against teams and players that are physically maybe stronger than they are so that they have to think their way around plays and certain parts of the game.”

But even those explanations don’t paint the whole picture. Stewart’s media address Wednesday, nominally on nonrumors surrounding Andre Blake, meandered toward other nagging issues afflicting the Union. His appraisal came with the caveat that the club has competed in most every game. But?

“But for us it’s very, very difficult to just win simple games,” Stewart said. “We have to be really, really, really good to win games simply. And that is a difference that we would like to have in next season.”

Stewart indicated a plan to add differencemakers, regardless of position. And while no one expects Najem or Jones to fill that role, the conversations between the twin ills of the Union’s week dovetailed.

With the playoffs allbut-mathematically off the table, the last 450 minutes of the season take on a different value judgement for Curtin. At what point, with deference to Curtin’s deepseated philosophy about earning minutes, would he permit an override to that structure? And, when Curtin was presented with Stewart’s exact words on throwing players in, would the coach be tempted to apply it to the first team?

“At a certain point, you become responsible for your own development,” Curtin said. “We obviously want to be a developing club, but players also have a responsibility in that. They’re young, they go through highs, they go through lows.

“I do agree with the point of, sometimes you have to throw them out there and let them sink or swim. But at the moment with the way that the rest of our group is, the way the rest of our team is, I don’t think there’s enough support there for them to be set up to have success, and that’s on me as the coach and that’s on all of us to get this thing better. So again, part of being a club that can develop players is you have to have a really strong core around them.”

Saturday’s opponent provides a pertinent case study. Curtin drew a parallel between Chicago’s ability to augment its veteran core with the likes of Juninho and Dax McCarty with the strides taken by young players like Matt Polster and Brandon Vincent. The Fire also provide a gauge of how far the Union are from their stated aspirations, on the playoff side and in how the club views its core mission.

But before any of that happens, the club has to sort through its chickenand-the-egg conundrum: Does the Union lack a strong core because it can’t develop its youth, or does it lack developed young players because it can’t assemble that core?

Union coach Jim Curtin has faced myriad questions about giving time to young players this season. But the heart of the question drills much deeper into the Union’s maladies.