Playoff numbers not adding up for Union

The currency of MLS playoff qualification is doled out in threepoint increments. Come out of a game with all three and a team has the potential to make big moves in the standings.

Draws, especially away from home, are valuable. But for a team like the Philadelphia Union that dug itself an early hole this season, consistently returning three points was always going to be the only way to claw back into some semblance of relevance this season.

All the moral victories haven’t added up to an actual one in five matches, the latest installment a 1-1 draw in their first ever visit to Minnesota United Saturday night. For the third time in four games, the Union squandered a lead — provided by CJ Sapong’s fifth-minute tally — to split the points.

And while the Union’s performance may have deserved somewhere between one and three points, the discreet nature of soccer doesn’t allow “two-ish” as a return. Hence the Union’s standing in 10th in the 11-team East, equidistant on points from the sixth and final playoff spot (entering Sunday) and last place.

“We had a lot of chances, as well as them,” manager Jim Curtin said. “Probably a point is fair on the night. It’s always difficult on the road, but we walk away with a point. Obviously we wanted all three so it’s disappointing, but it’s something to build on now as we move forward to New York.”

Sapong continued to do what he’s done all season, sliding on the turf to roof a Fafa Picault cross early, his 13th goal of the season, one shy of the franchise record set in 2010 by Sebastien Le Toux.

But the Union squandered the lead via a spate of shambolic defending in the 40th minute, allowing Minnesota native Ethan Finlay to get the final touch in his first game in front of home-state fans after all four Union defenders took turns whiffing in the box (including on Francisco Calvo’s spinning through two hapless markers on the edge of the box).

The Union were saved by a penalty in the second half, when a handball in the box by Oguchi Onyewu that would’ve been his second yellow card was nullified by video review. It’s the second time the Union have come out on the right side of a video review in the month that it’s been in use.

Onyewu will miss the next match via yellow-card accumulation, though. Josh Yaro, after his red card against Atlanta last week, will return, as does Alejandro Bedoya (yellow cards). Warren Creavalle filled in ably Saturday, just his third start of the season.

The draw leaves the Union (8-128, 32 points) with just a 1-8-5 record on the road, yielding a paltry eight points of a possible 42. Their season is just whiling away with an 0-2-3 record in the last five, not enough to plummet fully but just enough to tread water. (Not that it matters much, since they shipped their firstround draft pick to New England for Charlie Davies last year.)

The Union finished play Saturday six points behind sixth-place Atlanta, which has four games in hand and eight games at their new stadium, which opens Sunday. It would take Atlanta falling flat at home in epic fashion down the stretch for anyone but the expansion side to claim the East’s final playoff spot and possibly resolve the playoff chase with several weeks to spare.

That just leaves the Union toiling in two months of soccer purgatory. They could’ve theoretically made things interesting, had they not surrendered stoppage-time equalizers in San Jose and to Atlanta at home and protected the lead in Minnesota, which would’ve boosted their point total by six.

But in MLS, nearly there is hollow consolation, which leaves the Union distinctly nowhere.