Union save best performance for most critical game
Through shutouts and shootouts, from the fast starts to the late rallies, the Union have won games in 2020 in a plethora of ways. They’ve done it when looking good, looking bad and every shade in between. They’ve played down to opponents, raised their level to knock off favorites, ended games within the first 20 minutes or waited until 90+5 to claim a result.
Saturday night, in the biggest game yet, all those scripts played out and culminated in a masterclass performance. In routing Toronto, 5-0, to grab first place in the Eastern Conference and the league standings, all those maybes and glimmers through the season exploded into fully realized positives for the Union.
“It was our most complete game,” manager Jim Curtin said. “Even when we played at Toronto, we had a bad seven or eight minutes and they punished us like good teams do. For us to now regroup and get another crack at them in our building, this group has confidence.”
Saturday’s 90-minute master
piece was a perfect distillation of the Union. For the eighth time in 20 league games, they kept an opponent off the scoreboard. They made it seven wins in seven home dates, outscoring opponents at Subaru Park by a ludicrous 20-3 margin. They scored multiple goals for the 13th time, including 10 times in 15 games since the Phase 1 restart on Aug. 20.
With three games left, the Union (1 2 - 3 - 5, 41 points) are not just tops in points. They lead the league in goal differential (plus-22), are second in goals scored (39) and second in goals allowed (17).
After weathering the slings and arrows of a condensed and helter-skelter 2020, which has them in
the midst of eight games in 29 days, the Union have had to win games in different ways. Before Saturday, they’d fielded five different central midfield alignments in five games around suspensions to Alejandro Bedoya, an injury to Warren Creavalle and Jose Martinez’s international duty. With Martinez back, that position was settled, in the process marking Toronto’s MVP candidate Alejandro Pozuelo to the point of invisibility. Curtin, no fan of changes at the back, has deployed 11 distinct back fours this year.
Having done what was necessary to get results under sub-optimal conditions, the Union played Saturday like they were celebrating being at full strength.
“We found ways to win, which was really important, in our last four games,” Curtin said. “But our performances, if you break them a ll down, didn’t look like tonight, where there’s a crispness to every pass, there’s the movement ... guys are stepping and being aggressive.”
The Toronto triumph echoes what the stats say. Sergio Santos’s hat trick brings him to seven league goals (10 in all competitions). He’s even with
Kacper Przybylko for the team lead, though Przybylko holds the edge with four game-winners. Anthony Fontana has six goals. More impressive: Jamiro Monteiro’s goal from outside the box makes nine players with goals outside the 18 this season, per Opta Stats. No other team has more than six.
Przybylko is slumping by his standards, goalless in his last eight games. But he contributed three assists (one secondary), leveling him with Monteiro and Brenden Aaronson for the team lead.
The balance of who scores and how typifies the Union’s philosophy: They aren’t star-driven, instead at their best when 11 players contribute in near equal measure, each capable of making special plays.
“I think it was our best team per for mance of the year, just collectively star ting out defending as a team,” Mark McKenzie said. “We keep a zero, and we turned our defensive transitions into offensive transitions. We’re able to turn over a really good team in their defensive third, get some great chances and get a goal off a set piece.”
Of the smorgasbord of goals, Monteiro’s was the most impressive, his blast from the top of the box smashing the crossbar and spinning into the net after Aaronson dummied a Przybylko pass. But Curtin’s favorite was Santos’ opener. It started with a Ray Gaddis takeaway on the right wing. The ball cycled through Monteiro, Martinez, then Kai Wagner to barrel forward and hit the cross that Santos nodded home.
The goal was a quintessential counterattacking goal, as the Union want to play. And the group participation is what Curtin prizes.
It’s a fitting game-winner to put the Union in pole position for the franchise’s first trophy. They are three games from being able to lift the Supporters’ Shield, the trophy that rewards the best team during the regular season. The Shield recognizes the most complete team — not the one able to summon the highest level or most star power on any given day but that manages to have the least drop off from game to game as the season slithers through eight or more months.
“This is a really loveable group,” Curtin said. “The way that we play represents the city in a lot of ways. We don’t fear anyone. We’ll go toe-to-toe with any superstars, and our stars stick together and really fight for each other.”