Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Aaronson aiming to produce a perfect 10
CHESTER » The picture that was sent to him wasn’t one that Brenden Aaronson had seen in a long time.
In it, Aaronson is 10 and floppyhaired, standing alongside members of his Union Juniors team. They’re the kids walking out with members of the U.S. national team before a friendly with Mexico in the summer of 2011 at Lincoln Financial Field, Aaronson holding the hand, fittingly enough, of former Union defender Michael Orozco.
Aaronson posted the picture to Instagram this month, just after his journey to the national team had come full circle with his first cap. And as Aaronson looks to take the next step with the Union, the kid with the same unruly hair, which now pairs with personalized boots bearing an American flag, is focused on staying that same, exuberant kid.
“Coming back, I just want to act like the same guy,” Aaronson said at Union training Tuesday. “I don’t want to be any different. I think that’s what gave me the opportunities last year, so I want to be the same kid working hard on and off the field. I’m just going to look toward that and see how the season goes, and I’m really excited about it.”
At this point last year, expectations were modest for Aaronson. The 18-year-old Homegrown had played his way into the picture for the bench in the opener, but he figured to be the clear understudy to new signing Marco Fabian.
That’s not how it unfolded. The Union struggled in the first two games, the latter of which featured a Fabian red card and a two-game suspension. Aaronson would go on to start 25 of the season’s final 32 games, logging 28 games in total (plus two in the playoffs), displacing Fabian, whose services weren’t retained. Aaronson had one of the best MLS seasons ever for an American
midfielder his age, making his ongoing development a tantalizing prospect. His national-team stock rocketed from not even on the Under-20 radar to a U-23 regular and the first senior cap Feb. 1 against Costa Rica, alongside fellow Homegrown Mark McKenzie.
Now, as the unquestioned starter at the No. 10 role, he knows how much more there is to achieve.
“He could sit back and never play another MLS game and say he’s had a darn good impressive run already, with the national team cap added to it,” manager Jim Curtin said. “But we want more. We want him to get better, he wants to get better every day, and we’re seeing that.”
The next frontier is goal production. Aaronson’s work rate, technical skill and desire to press are exceptional. But the next step is melding that with goals and assists. He scored three goals and two assists last year in 1,846 minutes (including the postseason), and if there was one criticism on an otherwise stellar season, it was an occasionally exasperating reticence to shoot.
Some of that comes with being a rookie. Some of it is adapting to being a goal-scoring 10, less a creator and more a finisher. Either way, Aaronson has embraced the challenge, and he and Curtin have set the 10 goals/10 assists threshold as a lofty target.
“All these guys, 10s, have been in positions where they score all the time,” Aaronson said. “I think it will come with time, but I want to get toward it now and pushing toward getting my goals – 10 goals and 10 assists a season, I want to do that because that’s a 10’s season.”
Aaronson has brought back not just a high level of fitness from the national team but also more poise. Those intangibles, confidence and experience in the box, are commodities that could lead to second season improvement.
“You see confidence,” Curtin said. “… He has done an incredible job of finding spaces that are dangerous for opponents, and he’s done a good job turning in tight spots. Now the challenge is, and he knows this because we tell him every day, can he slow down and make that final pass? Can he hit that final shot? That’s going to be the next step to his game.
“We’re going to push him on that because again you see so much talent. It pops. You see it quickly and you want it all to come out.”
••• Kai Wagner won’t take part in the Union’s opener Saturday at Dallas (6 p.m., PHL17), though that shouldn’t be news. Wagner hasn’t trained in nearly a month due to a calf injury. Though the Union have a handle on the injury and it is healing, he didn’t train Wednesday and won’t travel to Dallas. Next week’s trip to Los Angeles FC is also doubtful.
“All I can do is look at that as an opportunity for other guys to step up,” Curtin said. “We have a roster that we trust all of our players. We know that Kai was an incredible left back for us last year, I’d say one of the top in the league, and the likelihood is that we’ll be without him for this game and likely beyond.”
Homegrown Matt Real will get the start.
Also in question for Dallas is Andrew Wooten, who didn’t train Wednesday. He got a PRP injection for the quad injury that cost him two preseason games, and though he returned to game action late in the Florida trip, he was still feeling pain.