Blake, Bedoya big in win before heading to Gold Cup
Victory over D.C. United snapped Union’s three game skid
After the jumble of chaos comprising the second half Saturday evening, Jim Curtin had a moment to exhale on the podium.
“You’d hate to see such hard work from our guys and they work hard every game, for it to slip up at the end like that would’ve been pretty devastating,” Curtin said. “… If you talk about a night where guys were willing to roll up their sleeves and fight, I think that that was evident tonight.”
The direct allusion was to Andre Blake, who twice saved the Union’s bacon in spectacular fashion to preserve a 1-0 win over D.C. United. But the larger objective fulfilled, in what Curtin termed a “typical Eastern Conference grind,” revolved around big-time players like Blake stepping up to deliver a massive win.
The schedule peculiarities heighten the significance of the victory. The Union (5-7-4, 19 points) snapped a three-game losing streak, exited last place in the East and po-
sitioned themselves to be within a stone’s throw of the red line should they compound this week’s performance with another win at home against New England next Saturday.
The contributions of a pair of stars also carry outsized weight. Blake was the man of the match, stonewalling a Lamar Neagle penalty kick in the 71st minute, then leaping to paddle an open Neagle header off the crossbar and out deep into stoppage time, solidifying the full share of points in a wild finish.
“Andre is a great goalkeeper,” midfielder Haris Medunjanin said. “He saved us a lot of games, and tonight he saved the penalty kick. It was a moment for him to step up, and he did it. This is the reason why last year he was the best goalkeeper in the league. He has potential to play in Europe.”
As influential as Blake was, captain Alejandro Bedoya finished a close second. His cross was volleyed home by Fafa Picault at the back post for the only goal in the 31st minute, and Bedoya created two other scoring chances, a game-high.
The Union, as Curtin pointed out, are 5-1 in the last six games Bedoya has started (though just 8-10-6 in his 24 total regular season
games with the club).
“He plays at the highest level,” Curtin said. “He’s been through the battles and different guys are working their way but we are a different team when he’s on the field and defensively as a group, it’s harder to score on us when he’s out there and that’s clear.”
There’s another commonality between Saturday’s two standouts: Both are headed to the Gold Cup, departing this week. Blake is almost certain to be in goal for Jamaica. Bedoya, who played sparingly in recent World Cup qualifiers for the U.S. in part due to a hamstring injury, was named by Bruce Arena as a veteran presence on a team of MLS-based players, allowing the head man to rest European-based regulars and select MLS vets for the group states. (The option exists for up to six roster changes ahead of the knockout stages.)
While travel details remain to be ironed out, the pair has likely played its last games with the Union before the tournament. (At least the Union were spared a harsher hit to their numbers with the two other Americans on the 40-man preliminary roster — Chris Pontius, without a goal this season, and CJ Sapong, hampered by the citizenship switch of Sporting Kansas City’s Dom Dwyer — passed over.)
Therein lies the added dimension to Saturday. The Union need to make up ground, and they squandered a chance to do so last week when a Derrick Jones red card translated into a 2-0 loss to the New York Red Bulls and three dropped points at home. A loss Saturday would’ve dropped the Union to four games under .500, the same predicament in which they found themselves on an eight-game winless streak to begin the season.
Instead, the Union generated momentum to kick off a three-game week, with an Open Cup tie against the Red Bulls Wednesday sandwiched in. And in dodging a larger Gold Cup subtraction, they have the chance to glean a net positive from the tournament, with the club’s next two opponents — New England (losing Americans Juan Agudelo and Kelyn Rowe) and Sporting Kansas City (sans Dwyer, Graham Zusi and Matt Besler) — arguably more detrimentally impacted by the tournament.
The East is beginning to partition itself, with the elite echelon rising and middling teams like the Union settling into a pack well off the pace. The battle to climb over one another for positioning in that crowded and mediocre field will determine the bulk of playoff berths in the East this year.
And efforts like Saturday’s ugly, unconventional affair are the only way the Union will get there.