Union starting fresh in 2023
CHESTER – The temptation, coming off the Union’s latest best season ever, will be toward comparison. But for the players trying to duplicate last year’s efforts, that’s not a helpful mental strategy.
The Union set records in 2022, none more headline-grabbing than what their attack produced. The club scored 72 goals, tied for sixth most in a season in MLS history and easily the most in club history. The leading trio of Daniel Gazdag, Mikael Uhre and Julian Carranza combined for 49 goals and 25 assists in leading the club to the Eastern Conference title and a loss in MLS Cup final.
But all that is in the past, at least for all tangible purposes this season.
“I think we think of it as a fresh slate,” Uhre said Tuesday at Union training, ahead of Saturday’s season-opener against Columbus. “Last year was a really good year, no doubt. But then again, that was last year. We have to keep the focus on what we have to do this year, and that’s the only way we can get better and improve on last year, because that’s the goal.”
About the only thing that club’s leading strikers are taking into this season is experience. All that production came with Carranza and Uhre being new to the club. The former was on loan from Inter Miami, a deal made permanent midseason. The latter signed in February and didn’t arrive until the day before the season-opener, delaying his debut and contributing to a quad strain that didn’t fully abate until June.
Both had plenty of reasons to struggle last year but found their footing quickly around Gazdag, who himself had only arrived the previous May. Now, they have a full preseason together, settled in town without any contract questions hoovering. The hope it’ll make a difference.
“It feels very different, going into obviously the season with a good preseason under my belt,” Uhre said. “Also for the team, we did very well in the preseason. And just being settled in the apartment – knowing where to go get groceries, knowing how to take care of everything – I would say it’s much different this year than last year.”
“Of course it was different this preseason,” Carranza said. “Last year, I was new – new team, new players, new staff. This year, I feel more comfortable with the team and relaxed so I can play at my best feeling like that.”
The chemistry does carry over. The club scored 16 goals in seven preseason games (some stretched past 90 minutes, so take it with a grain of salt). For all the formations manager Jim Curtin toyed with, Uhre and Carranza found themselves playing together often, from exercises on the first day of training in January to most games in Florida.
The connection wasn’t instant last season: The Union scored 22 goals in the season’s first 16 games before they hit the afterburners and potted 50 in the final 18 games, an otherworldly pace. The growth sets a high starting point for this season.
But that’s the extent of the helpfulness of last year’s experience. This year is a different beast. The Union are competing for five trophies, with the CONCACAF Champions League starting March 7 and the Leagues Cup in July and August. The orderly way in which Curtin could script the same starting lineup week after week is gone as the count of games creeps toward 50. Teams also might approach the Union differently, trying to negate the firepower.
The expectations from 2022 also don’t help. What the Union did at times last year was unprecedented – only one team in MLS had won four games by six or more goals in their entire history, and the Union did it two months. But the authors of those demolitions know how rare those games are in the grander scheme of soccer, and they don’t plan on being burdened by the weight of expectations if every game that’s 1-0 after 15 minutes doesn’t turn into a 7-0 paddling.