Curtin draws on past experience to maintain team’s confidence
CHESTER >> You could almost hear the opening chords of Journey rising from behind Jim Curtin’s podium at Talen Energy Stadium Wednesday afternoon.
It’s seemed a lonely world in recent weeks for the struggling Philadelphia Union, but with the hope that an end to their malaise is hiding somewhere in the night, the message from the small-town boy Curtin to his players is the same: Don’t stop believing.
“The guys have to have a belief and a confidence that yeah, mistakes are going to be made over the course of 90 minutes, but how you bounce back is how you get points in this league,” Curtin said Wednesday. “It’s something that we’ve discussed. Is there a magic potion to cure it? I wish there was, but there’s not.”
The potential remedies have gotten increasingly vague yet vast in recent weeks. The club is less in need of one player to step up than a holistic healing of mentality that allows everyone on the roster to drastically improve performance and translate a decent level of play to results that aren’t as bottom-dwelling as the standings indicate.
Part of that, Curtin said, is eradicating the self-doubt that is only natural in a spiral like the Union’s. He was pleased by the amount of turnovers created in last week’s 2-0 loss to New York City FC. But those spells of possession in dangerous areas too seldom morphed into concrete chances at goal.
It’s a wholly explicable phenomenon — a team doesn’t score, so players press to create perfect chances, passing up others, then a game passes like last Friday’s with just two meager efforts on target. Struggling for form suggests that the first instinct is wrong, to players fight that inclination, then get tangled in neural knots that paralyze decision-making and prevent everyone from getting on the same page.
Curtin’s focus this week has been geared toward propping up his team’s daring to continue striving despite the negative noise surrounding them.
“Guys start to press, confidence is down, and you start to see guys maybe trying to do too much to make the big play that turns everything around,” he said. “It has to be a collective effort of everybody just being focused on doing their jobs rather than guys playing out of their comfort zones, which you start to see guys do when we’re maybe tied or down a goal, everybody tries to do more, which is natural. We need to keep them in their comfort zone and be able to execute in order to get a result.”
“I think we need to be mentally more prepared for that because the game is 90 minutes,” midfielder Haris Medunjanin said. “We need to be focused all the game. I think we create a lot of chances but the ball doesn’t go in, and the key is to score goals if you want to win the game. We have a good potential group and we are fighting and training every week to get better. We have a good coaching staff, but football, the results count, and at this moment, we don’t have the results.”
Curtin seems confident that he hasn’t lost the locker room. With the bulk of this team held over from last year’s playoff run, the current predicament is even more perplexing. Disappointment abounds, but the belief that the group is capable of more than they’ve shown is also palpable.
It’s just a matter of finally proving that against an opponent for a full 90 minutes to obtain the elusive first victory.
“It’s a good team in terms of locker room and mindset,” Curtin said. “I’ve seen them pick each other up, even the guys that were not in the starting group, did a good job all week, mentoring and talking to the other guys. From that standpoint, it’s a great locker room, and you need a great locker room. Everyone says they have a great locker room in the easy times, and this has been a hard time.
“This is when you truly find out about the group and what it means to stay positive and stay focused and stay together. I’ve seen that as a coach now. I’ve seen them respond internally in the locker room, and now it needs to translate fully on the field for 90 minutes.”