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Philadelphia Union showing wear after being stomped at home by Inter Miami

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Photo by Carl Gulbish

The Philadelphia Union were battling more than Lionel Messi and Sergio Busquets Tuesday night in a lopsided 4-1 home loss not seen at Subaru Park in almost five years (4-1 loss to Montreal Sept. 2018).

Fatigue, plain and simple.

Sure, we can dissect the Union loss to a handful of factors: tactical shape, lack of pressure, rare goalkeeping errors, disorganization, and on and on. All that leads back to the realization they’ve covered a lot of miles, and there’s only so much gas in the tank.

The Union went all in on Leagues Cup and its dangling carrot of Concacaf Champions Cup qualification. But after playing their sixth game in 25 days with essentially the same lineup, against a revamped Inter Miami team with nothing else to play for, the Union were outclassed from the start.

Three minutes, the Union gave up a goal that summed up their woes on the evening.

Playing out of a 3-5-1-1, the Union were focused on the Messi-Benjamin Cremaschi-Deandre Yedlin combination down the right side but abandoned ball pressure, one of the defining qualities that has made them so good over the years. Defender Sergii Kryvtsov walked the ball
up to nearly the midfield line with no resistance before sending a through ball around Damion Lowe for Josef Martinez to run onto.

For a team that has consistently been among league leaders in pressures, the lack of numbers around the ball is uncharacteristic. This was one of numerous examples but set the tone for the night where the Union were reactive, second to the ball, and lost between dropping and
attacking the ball.

Andre Blake rarely makes mistakes. Tuesday night he made two big ones, both positionally, which almost sounds unheard of for the three-time MLS Goalkeeper of the Year. By the time Martinez gets on the end of the ball, Blake is still backtracking, finding his near post. He never gets his feet set until Martinez strikes the ball, a well taken shot off the bounce with power but a save we’ve seen Blake make countless times. This is not 2019 Josef Martinez either but 2023 post-ACL Martinez, who scored his 9th goal of the season and third of Leagues Cup, the first from open play.

If that looked familiar, it’s because Miami’s second goal wasn’t much different.

In the 20th minute, the play begins with Kryvtsov again with no pressure, but the Union are so spread that Martinez is able to come back and get the ball in the space in front of the central defenders. He turns and finds Messi just before Lowe wipes him out with a late challenge,
which later drew a card. On the ball with space toward goal, Messi is the best in the world, and even though his shot wasn’t the strongest, it caught Blake off guard and found the bottom corner.

The behind the goal angle shows how again Blake hadn’t yet found his position. On a night where Miami produced an xG of .6, all four shots on goal found the back of the net.

According to OptaJack, Messi’s goal was his longest from distance since 2012.

Even before Leagues Cup, going back to July 8 at the LA Galaxy, the Union have played 9 games in 39 days. For their core players, the minutes are piling up fast. With the added intensity of Leagues Cup, the minutes aren’t the typical mid-season variety.

Here’s a rundown of Union player minutes as of 8/17.

Blake also spent most of July with Jamaica in the Concacaf Gold Cup where he played 360 minutes. Martinez, in addition to his trip down I-95 for the midweek All-Star game, played 75 minutes in a June friendly with Venezuela and 180 minutes in March. Gazdag played with Hungary in March. All three could be called upon again with FIFA windows in early September and October.

Jamaica will open Nations League play this fall with upcoming games against Honduras, Haiti (2), and Grenada. Venezuela will open 2026 World Cup qualifying with games against Colombia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile. Hungary will have a UEFA 2024 qualifier against Serbia followed by a friendly against Czech Republic in September then two UEFA qualifiers Serbia and Lithuania in October. Another FIFA window takes place prior to the MLS Conference Semifinals in mid-November.

With 11 leagues games remaining and a third place Leagues Cup game against Monterrey on Saturday, the impact of a long season has been felt inside the Union locker room.

“We changed in three positions that we’re pretty comfortable changing and where we can keep guys fresh,” Curtin said when asked about the impact of fatigue. “a lot of data and analytics and analysis that we’ve done shows that in our league if you rotate four or more, it kind of falls off a cliff in terms of getting results. Rotation is good and it’s necessary in a busy competition like this. I think we’ve tried our best to make some changes here and there to keep guys fresh but fatigue’s played a role no question about it.”

Jesus Bueno has stepped in and become one of the biggest role fillers of Leagues Cup, starting 5 of 6 games. His 464 Leagues Cup minutes leads his league minutes by four, a big uptick since starting the CCL opener against Alianza and the Open Cup loss to Minnesota. Damion Lowe, used primarily as a reserve center back in the 4-4-2 diamond, has now become a third center back in the often tweaked 3-4-1-2. Nathan Harriel and Olivier Mbaizo have traded starts at right back, and Jack McGlynn and Leon Flach have done the same in midfield. Outside of the Quinn Sullivan or Chris Donovan spot start, the Union have changed little.

Maintaining player fitness has been one of the Union’s strongpoints over the years, however in recent weeks, they’ve faced multiple injuries to key players. Julian Carranza has since been sidelined with a hamstring injury and Daniel Gazdag dodged a bullet after suffering a knee
sprain and returned to the lineup against Miami.

“The gift and the curse of this competition and advancing is reducing injuries,” Curtin said. “A lot of teams in the final four are now picking up little knocks here and there while you’re playing for a trophy.”

Tactically, the Union made a decision to play to their opponent, which they rarely do. The debate may now be how much of their performance was due to the quality of players on the other side of the ball and how much was on wear. There’s a difference between sitting back and attacking, which they’ve done before in midweeks, and sitting back and absorbing everything that comes their way.

“The thinking was to be a little more defensive with a team that we knew would have the ball,” Curtin said. “Statistically, with Messi now, they’re leading every possession statistic, so we knew we wouldn’t have the ball. That’s why we chose the guys that we did and the shape and
formation that we did.”

Captain Alejandro Bedoya, who made his return Tuesday night after a lengthy absence due to injury, spoke about the team’s mentality and its impact on the performance. “A lot of soccer is psychological,” he said. “Before the game, once the game starts, during the game, killing the game off. Mentally, we’ve just got to be a little bit sharper, a little bit better, play a little bit braver.”

Playing against Messi and Busquets certainly had an effect on the game, but Bedoya didn’t think it was out of the Union’s grasp. “Look at our second goal,” he said. “We have three center backs, they have one number 9. Josef Martinez picks up the ball alone and is able to turn and lay it off to Messi…that says a lot right there, it’s not even just being respectful to Messi but players in general. We needed to be more aggressive.”

Take away the Union’s press and counter-press, and they become a different team. What we saw, and the entire world saw Thursday night, was not the team Union fans have seen this season. Though they made a valiant effort in the second half to get back in the game, flexing
their warrior mentality, the signs of a long season with a third of its games still to go have started to reveal itself. The cautious, passive defending exemplifies how the team’s intensity has dropped. How they manage fatigue before Saturday, now a massive game, and the next
couple weeks will play a vital role in the end of their 2023 season.

Greg Oldfield is a teacher, coach, and writer from the Philadelphia area. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Barrelhouse, Maudlin House, Carve, and the Under Review, among others. He also writes for the Florida Cup and Florida Citrus Sports. In 2023, he received an award for Best Column from the United Soccer Coaches for his story "A Philadelphia Soccer Hollywood Story." His work can also be found at www.gregoldfield.com.

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