Union, Red Bulls won’t shy away from contact

CHESTER, PA. » Games between the Philadelphia Union and New York Red Bulls aren’t always for the faint of heart. Where style matters, the teams tend to cancel, with their shared, counterattacking DNA.

Beneath the car-crash challenges that pockmark the no man’s land of midfield, though, there’s something that appeals to Jim Curtin, and it isn’t just the tense rivalry brewing.

“There is still beauty in defending,” Curtin said Thursday via Zoom. “A lot of times when people hear, ‘oh the Union, they’re a defensive team,’ or ‘Red Bulls is a defensive team,’ I still think there’s beauty in that, there’s entertainment in that.”

Entertainment might be in the eye of the beholder. More objective: The Union and Red Bulls are two of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, after having met in the playoffs two of the last three years. All of which should freight Saturday night’s affair (7:30, PHL17) with plenty of meaning, diabolic counter-pressing chess match aside.

The Union (5-1-4, 19 points) follow up a game against Western Conference leader Los Angeles FC by hosting the East’s second team, the Red Bulls (5-23, 18 points).

On one hand, it’s a clash of the two best defenses in the East, the teams having conceded eight goals each. Only three of the last 13 meetings in MLS (playoffs included) have resulted in more than two total goals. The 4-3 win by the Union after extra time in the first round of the MLS Cup playoffs in 2019 was the outlier; last year’s 1-0 playoff slugfest, won by Jakob Glesnes’ extra-time wondergoal, was the norm.

That logically follows from the team construction. Red Bulls coach Gerhard Struber exhorts his team to play at high intensity, much as Curtin does. Both Struber and Union sporting director Ernst Tanner come from the Red Bulls system with stints in Salzburg and have adapted the philosophy to MLS.

“I don’t want to put words in Gerhard’s mouth, but we both believe this is the way the game is played in the modern era,” Curtin said. “It’s transitions, it’s about how do you react after you turn teams over, it’s about how do you make teams uncomfortable.”

So many games between them, then, become less about soccer than derbies of execution. It’s not a question if one team will strong together doubledigit passes for a glorious team goal. Instead, it’s who can turn over their opponents and where? Who can finish chances generated in transition? Who can make plays on set pieces?

“Every game we play against them has a playoff feel to it,” Curtin said. “It’s a good, healthy rivalry. The proximity also makes it intense, as well. And we know each other really well. They have a really talented team, we have good team as well and it’ll be one of those tight games.”