Curtin and Co. hope a few fans in stands will have positive impact
Without fans, the Union have won all five of their Subaru Park games in 2020, outscoring opponents by a 13-2 margin.
Having fans in the stands should only make the building a more daunting place to play starting Sunday, when 2,775 fans (15 percent capacity) can attend a game against Montreal (7:30 p.m., PHL17).
The Union haven’t needed fans to reinforce the urgency of reaping points on familiar turf. But adding them to the mix is an aid down the stretch.
“We always take pride in winning in Subaru Park,” manager Jim Curtin said Friday via Zoom. “Obviously we miss our fans; it’ll be nice to have a few of them back this weekend. There is a certain familiarity. The players have a confidence when they step on the field here. You’re in your normal habits, you’re in your normal locker room, you’re walking out the tunnel that is home to you. It’s not foreign. We miss the fans, too, in a big way, but the players have done a good job of having it go off in their brains that this means more.
“When we’re at home, we cannot drop points. And I think they’ve really executed in our home games. Our record at home speaks for itself, and certainly our goal differential at home speaks for itself, which is something that we take pride in.”
The home record is a big part of why the Union (9-3-4, 31 points) enter the weekend in second place in the Eastern Conference. Despite a general paucity of home games, they finish the season with five in the final eight games, which began with Wednesday’s 3-0 win over FC
Cincinnati.
Fittingly, the first home game with fans is against a team that is somewhat homeless at the moment, with the Impact (6-8-2, 20 points) calling Red Bull Arena its home base in the Lower 48. The Impact ended a five-game winless streak with a surprising victory at then-East leader Columbus midweek. They had to jet from Columbus to New Jersey then bus to
Chester before a midweek date next week against New England at RBA in Harrison, N.J.
The Union beat the Impact, 4-1, in North Jersey two weeks ago, a game that turned when Romell Quioto was shown a 15th-minute red card after putting his team up a goal. All those factors – the Impact’s spate of recent red cards, the adjustments under first-year head coach Thierry Henry and the particular challenges of being a nomadic club in the COVID era – make Curtin wary of the eighthplace Impact. If he needed any reinforcement, the Columbus result provided it.
“We have to follow it up with a good performance against Montreal, a team that comes in very confident, coming off a win against Columbus, one of the best teams in our league,” Curtin said. “Now we have to prepare on short rest to be ready to go on Sunday. I told the guys, this is basically the fourth or fifth phase of the season, and this one is just about survival and getting points. We’re at the stage where every team has a ton of injuries that have added up because of the amount of games and how busy the schedule is. …
“A lot of teams don’t look that way they’ve looked all season in terms of the players on the field. We recognize that we have a deep team. We have a team that everybody has contributed to, so we’ll have to be ready to go against a strong Montreal team.”
The latest depth test Wednes
day came with the last-minute departure of Jose Martinez to international duty with Venezuela. The Union reverted to a 4-2-3-1 for the first time this season, with Alejandro Bedoya and Jamiro Monteiro forming a midfield double pivot. That alignment, as well as the 4-4-2 diamond with a healthier Warren Creavalle as the solo holding mid, are both in play Sunday. After players like Anthony Fontana and Brenden Aaronson, who assisted on Bedoya’s goal Wednesday, played myriad positions in the shifting tactics against Cincinnati, the team is primed to adapt.
“That’s what a good team does; guys adjust,” Curtin said. “That’s what this season has been about, being able to adapt to your sur
roundings and keeping a positive mentality. The players deserve a ton of credit for that.”
That the Union’s latest adjustments will happen in front of fans for the first time adds another wrinkle to the equation, one for which Curtin and company have waited all year.
“It’s more fun to play in front of our fans,” defender Kai Wagner said. “They push us when we are a little bit down or something. The first half against Cincinnati last game was not our best half, but maybe the fans would push us a little bit more. I’m looking forward to them ... that they will also help us from the stands. We are all happy that our fans can come back into the stadium.”