In questioning Curtin, a deeper look at the roster is needed
Here’s a little pressbox mental exercise you can engage in at home: Take the 22 players who lined up for the Portland Timbers and Philadelphia Union Saturday night at Talen Energy Stadium and choose sides, pick-up style. How many Portland players get picked before the first member of the Union is selected? Three? Five? More?
The assertions, from the locker room and podium following Saturday’s 3-1 Union loss, that Portland didn’t exactly boss the Union on home turf hold some water. But the question is more haphazardly framed, as in, could the Union have snuck out a result Saturday night? The query certainly isn’t over which team possesses superior talent, an answer that’s fairly blatant.
So why does that bit of appraisal matter among the many existential quandaries the Union face?
Manager Jim Curtin was asked about his feeling of job security given the team’s mounting losses. He stuck to his guns, espousing continued confidence in his side to turn things around.
“It’s our job to stick together as a team, continue to work hard and bounce back from this, and the only way you get out of it is to win a game,” Curtin said. “That’s the only way you silence the noise. There’s always noise: When you’re playing very well, there’s always noise and people want to give accolades and anoint people the next big thing, and there’s also noise when things are going bad. And the only people that can turn it around are the people that are actually in the locker room and know what’s actually going on. And we’ll stick together.”
The talent at his disposal isn’t just material to evaluating Curtin’s job on the touchline but the motivations that might inform his staying power. It’s been months since the Union’s last win, a franchise-record 13 games in all competitions. It’s worth a refresher on what this team could be, and following the roster phylogeny is instructive.
For the first four months of last season, the Union performed like a playoff team, near the top of the Eastern Conference. That success, distant as it seems, informs the expectations on this group.
Then Vincent Nogueira left, and the Union went into a protracted slide. Alejandro Bedoya arrived, Tranquillo Barnetta departed and an offseason of reloading ensued.
Around 80 percent of the team that ascended the standings was on the pitch Saturday (it would be more if not for Josh Yaro’s injury), but with Bedoya and Haris Medunjanin replacing Nogueira and Barnetta in midfield. Yet the results are night and day, which indicates that the changes made in the last year have not been sufficient for the Union to keep pace with the rest of MLS.
That brings us back to Curtin, who answers to sporting director Earnie Stewart. The coach, who was hired by the previous regime and inherited by Stewart, is in the line of fire of fans, and the league-wide precedent has been set for an earlyseason coaching change (thanks to Real Salt Lake axing Jeff Cassar when its winless streak hit 10).
But if Curtin were to fall on his sword, the sights shift to Stewart.
It’s been 18 months since Stewart took charge, and many behind-thescenes aspects of the club’s organization have undoubtedly been refined and modernized under his watch. But under his watch, talent acquisition has fallen flat.
The 2016 offseason brought Roland Alberg, Ilsinho, Anderson and Chris Pontius. The last of that list had an unquestionably stellar season, though he’s scuffled this season. For his success in limited time last year, Alberg has struggled with his fitness in 2017 and has maddeningly failed to establish an impact commensurate with his pay. Anderson was a complete misfire. And Ilsinho, for all his flash, has two goals and two assists in 28 matches.
Bedoya has at times struggled to be the difference-maker he’s paid as while playing his non-preferred position of necessity. Charlie Davies has been a non-factor as he battled health issues.
Of the 2017 crop, Medunjanin has adapted well. But the jury is still out on Jay Simpson, Fafa Picault, Oguchi Onyewu and Giliano Wijnaldum. Simpson likely isn’t the unquestioned firstchoice striker that the Union needed. His presence may be coaxing more from CJ Sapong, but even Sapong at his best doesn’t take the Union to the next level. Picault’s absence from the 18 the last two weeks — this week for rookie Marcus Epps — while healthy is alarming. Onyewu has played a part in a defense that has allowed nine goals in five matches, leaving no one smelling rosy.
Then there’s Wijnaldum, who like Alberg was plucked from Stewart’s Dutch pipeline. The 24-year-old’s name hasn’t been uttered by Curtin in weeks as part of the selection picture, despite Stewart and company professing that he’d push Fabinho for minutes from the outset of his MLS career. Even as Fabinho has erred each of the last two weeks leading directly to goals, Wijnaldum seems to be nowhere beyond logging time for Bethlehem Steel.
Ascribing credit or blame is a difficult proposition within the front office. (The successful 2016 SuperDraft, for instance, likely owed to scouting networks that predated Stewart’s arrival; other moves are more opaque in their origination.) If the introspective message Curtin has voiced over the past few weeks is as pervasive as he says, everyone will be doing a little soulsearching this week.
At the moment, blame is a commodity to be avoided in the Union locker room. Outside of it, pointing fingers remains an ambiguous task.
But one thing is certain: If Stewart were to remove Curtin from his job, this becomes his mess. If the manager’s position becomes the dependent variable in the equation and the players produce the same results under a new boss, then Stewart is on the hook for assembling the wrong cast of players.