Curtin: Win over Montreal would ‘drown out the negativity’
CHESTER » The logic, however tired or tiring it may seem, holds true this week for the Philadelphia Union. To end their interminable winless streak, the club just has to win — pretty, ugly, fluky — doesn’t matter.
Only three points against Montreal (1 p.m., 6ABC) Saturday can prop up the assertions that Jim Curtin and others in the organization present, that the Union are statistically and functionally a stronger team than their lowly positioning indicates. The only way out of the doldrums is to sail straight out, with three points buffeting the sails.
“We’ll have to get through this together,” Curtin said Wednesday at his weekly press conference. “And the only way we do that, to kind of drown out the negativity, is to get a win, whether it’s an ugly win, a beautiful win, we have to fight to get that first win.”
Here comes the easier-said-than-done pivot, though with Montreal, the task could be more daunting. The Impact (1-2-3, 6 points) only picked up their first win of their season last week, 2-1 over expansion club Atlanta, thanks in large part to a red card to Leandro Gonzalez Pirez that an MLS independent review panel unanimously rescinded this week. (There’s an abundance of that luck that Curtin laments not seeing at Talen Energy Stadium.)
The opportunity is there for the Union (0-42, 2 points) to get off the schneid. Montreal sits 10th in the East, and while even a win guarantees the Union will dwell in the cellar for at least another week, felling the team nearest to them in the depths of the table is a good place to start. Montreal carries a five-game road winless streak (0-3-2) into the matchup.
But Talen Energy Stadium has been anything but a stronghold for the Union, who are 0-2-1 there this season. That’s the same number of home losses as the rest of the Eastern Conference combined (20-2-9).
Then there’s the historical weight of another non-win. The Union are winless in 13 games (14 including a playoff setback); extending that streak to 14 regular season games would tie 2013 Chivas USA and 2011 Vancouver for the eighth-longest streak in MLS history. The Union could also tie the franchise record for a home winless streak at seven games (May 15-July 12, 2014).
The depth of the struggle means that Curtin isn’t left fine-tuning one or two aspects of his game plan. The big emphasis is on the attacking mentality: Curtin was pleased with the frequency at which they turned over New York City FC in dangerous areas in last Friday’s 2-0 loss, but too often they didn’t put their opponent under severe enough pressure to yield a goal. Some of that is attributable to a struggling team keeping the faith.
“We’ve talked a lot about this week again about, obviously your first look should always be forward; that’s something we preach,” Curtin said. “But guys aren’t always, because of maybe confidence, maybe trusting that first look to play that forward pass. The only way you get to goal in this league is when you turn teams over, having that first ball be one that connects and one that connects forward. We’ve worked on that a great deal. We haven’t gotten a ton of times where we got our wingers in behind. A lot of it is teams are keeping us in front of them now.”
Montreal, with the speed and guile of Dominic Oduro and Ignacio Piatti on the wings, present a dangerous counter-attacking threat. That gives the Union pause on how many numbers they toss forward in terms of fullbacks overlapping. Indeed, the defensive record — 11 concessions of multiple goals in the last 14 games — would seem to advise erring on the side of caution. But with problems on both ends of the field, something has to give to force a change.
That speaks to the larger symptom of players lacking direction or confidence. Curtin maintains that his group hasn’t lost belief. Since Earnie Stewart has said that he’s not on the verge of firing Curtin as results have turned sour, the team’s collective confidence is one of the main process-based metrics that the sporting director may rely on to continue evaluating his skipper.
With the Union having figured out so many original ways to lose games in the eight months since their last victory, it’s going to take a broad-based solution that alters the aura around the team to arrest this incessant slide.
“Everyone says they have a great locker room in the easy times, and this has been a hard time,” Curtin said. “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.”