Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Transfer-market inaction is a big gamble
CHESTER » There were 36 hours left in the summer transfer window when Jim Curtin stepped to the microphone Tuesday afternoon. There were no new faces behind him, no additions to the group he’s trained all year at Talen Energy Stadium.
And there was a message, the same as it’s always been from the diplomatic Curtin, who in his job can only control so much with the Philadelphia Union.
Yes, the club is on the lookout for reinforcements. No, none have arrived. This transfer period is unusual for the Union. The club is navigating a summer window in which it’s transitioning from sporting director Earnie Stewart, whose last day before taking over as general manager of the U.S. men’s national team was Aug. 1, to an as yet unnamed hire, with whom the club is in final negotiations and could be announced as soon as this week.
But it’s business as usual on the field. And the message from Curtin to his troops and the media is that they have plenty of firepower in-house to try to lift the U.S. Open Cup (the semifinal of which is in Chester Wednesday against Chicago) and qualify for the playoffs.
“We’re always looking to upgrade, like I say to you guys all the time,” Curtin said. “Nothing’s been finalized. There’s been a lot of calls with a lot of different teams. Everyone’s looking to improve their roster at this point, so we’re one of those teams in the mix for, whether it’s adding an attacking piece, adding a defensive piece that can help you now in this final stretch of 12 games that are left. Again, you’ll want to finish on a strong note and if you can add a piece to your roster to help you do that, whether that’s in-league or from outside, we’re still obviously exploring all those options.
“But we’re still fully confident with the group we have, that we can get a win against Chicago, that we can lift our first trophy and we can make a push to get in the playoffs. That’s been our goal all along.”
Curtin was adamant that with him and technical director Chris Albright shuffling as stopgap cover for the void left by Stewart, “there’s not anything that’s slipping through the cracks.”
From an organizational sense, that’s true. But it doesn’t overshadow what existed before Stewart’s reign, during it and will likely persist after Curtin and Albright and anyone else there now is gone: The yawning chasm between the Union’s financial capabilities and the rest of the league.
In the last month, the following moves have been made in MLS:
Dallas dealt one-time Homegrown darling Kellyn Acosta to Colorado for forward Dominique Badji and draft picks/MLS financial hokum. It was a cut-rate price.
Columbus, short on scoring, picked up Patrick Mullins from D.C. United for one-eighth what the Union paid for David Accam, then reacquired Justin Meram from Orlando City for $300,000 less than they sold him for at the beginning of the season.
Los Angeles FC, already flush with attacking talent, poached Christian Ramirez, who’d fallen down the depth chart in Minnesota.
Sporting Kansas City reacquired Krisztian Nemeth from New England.
And FC Cincinnati, the soon to be expansion side, proactively landed out-of-favor San Jose midfielder Fatai Alashe and Portland’s leading scorer, Fanendo Adi. While still in USL.
Meanwhile, the Union — who are dead last in the Eastern Conference and third-worst in MLS in goals scored at 29, just three ahead of Atlanta’s Josef Martinez — have not (yet) done anything. Their biggest transfer rumors were Everton fullback Leighton Baines (a purely fantastical concoction by English tabloids) and French midfielder Anthony Ribelin, who trialed with Bethlehem Steel. The closest thing to a new face at training is Eric Ayuk, whose move to Turkish club Trabzonspor has hit enough of a snag that he’s back in the States.
Some of those trades were flawed for the Union (Nemeth has been with 11 clubs since 2010; Ramirez’s price tag of $1 million in allocation money was steep). But surely something could’ve been done.
To corroborate Curtin’s view, it’s not the power vacuum left by Stewart. Last summer, for instance, the Union showed a glaring need for an attacking midfielder, knowing Roland Alberg had underwhelmed and would move on at season’s end. They did nothing.
This year, there’s a clear attacking deficiency, at center forward or the wing. And the Union have done … nothing. Not cashed in on Ayuk, who has played one game for them in three years. Not given Jay Simpson, a contractual albatross, his release to reinvest the assets. Not a deal within MLS to swap supposed roster depth to shore up a thin spot.
Before Stewart left, he embarked on a media tour. One line stands out.
“We understand that the expectations from the outside are maybe different,” Stewart told me. “A lot of times, once again, it’s about winning and losing. If you lose a game, a lot of times it’s bad. And if you win a game, it’s good. I don’t function that way, because it’s never as bad as it seems, and it’s never as good as it seems.”
There was a persistent dissonance between Stewart and a fan base so hungry for tangible success that many have given up on the Union. Building for tomorrow has paid dividends. But Stewart never grasped (or succeeded in) risk-taking in the present, and a thin-pocketed ownership group doesn’t provide the funds to encourage taking chances.
Curtin couches the choice as a vote of confidence in his group, that what they have is all they need. But a different vote of confidence would be to say, yes we have a lot of potential in this group; let’s make a move to put it over the top. The latter statement isn’t Curtin’s to dictate; it has to be initiated by owner Jay Sugarman.
But from the top down, whether it’s avaricious ownership or the excessively distant stare of Stewart overlooking the immediate reality, the Union have lacked that perspective.
Maybe this season, they do have a team good enough to lift the U.S. Open Cup. Maybe they can get to the playoffs, win a game even. Maybe.
But it’s a gamble, a larger one than they’ve ever ventured on the transfer market.