Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Union
Philadelphia Union
Earnie Stewart still backs head coach Jim Curtin. In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Local
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Penn FC continued a four game undefeated streak, drawing against Nashville.
MLS
Toronto FC is set to face Chivas in the final leg of the Concacaf Champions League final tonight. TFC need a heavy win to bring the title home.
NYCFC unveiled a new training facility. It looks nice.
Grant Wahl released his MLS Ambition Rankings. The Union, with their formula for long term success sit at a whopping 20th place.
Around the globe
Liverpool topped Roma in their first leg of the UEFA Champions League semifinals.
I almost wish ES didnt talk. I get he has to back Curtin and can’t be negative, but some of that stuff is like spitting in our faces, as if no one has eyes and we’re all too simple to understand how great their plan is. “The data is very good”. If I have to hear about luck one more time I might lose my mind. Please just shut up Ernie until you’re gone to the National Team
I still don’t understand why he took the job without being able to bring his own guy in.
Yeah I’ve wondered that since he started.
Because the academy wowed him and he had complete control. Plus it’s a nice area to live. I also think Curtin talks a good game and seems to know what he wants to do and it seems legit. Not that it apparently works on the players or anything but I bet he gives a good knowledgeable interview.
There are no excuses left. The schedule was set up with two early breaks which leaves more time for coaching and time for Dockal to acclimate. The team has been relatively healthy outside of Fabhino and Fafa’s suspension. In other words everything was laid out so this team should have some results.
No results. No signs of improvement and no reason to believe it is going to get better. A poorly coached team with a poorly constructed roster. This team is no better than it was during the Sak/Hack/Curtin era. That’s on Earnie and Jim and most of all the owner.
“This team is no better than it was during the Sak/Hack/Curtin era.”
This is where I disagree. People must be forgetting the Kai Herdling and Gilberto signings Sak blessed us with.
Haris, Fafa, hell even Alberg > them
Gilberto?
el Pescadito scored.
I bought a Herdling jersey. Seriously, one of a kind. 😉
https://www.philadelphiaunion.com/players/gilberto
Yeah, you could potentially argue that the difference between us and the rest of the league hasn’t changed, but our current team would crush those past teams.
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Also, a lot of the underlying metrics seem to think we are woefully under-performing and I think Earnie puts a lot of stock into those metrics. That’s the reason they think it’s going to get better. I mean Sapong alone should probably have 5 goals so far.
Ha! Great stuff, James. I totally forgot about that “guy”.
Same era delivered Nogs, Barnetta, Chaco, Casey even Edu until his health crashed. I don’t see us as any better off, except that the academy is starting to produce. And the academy started under the previous regime as well.
This Union team is way better talent wise then any of the teams during the Nick Sak era. This team would be a Shield contender in 2012. The problem is that the rest of the league has improved along the way as well.
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The Union’s model is good in theory, however, it’s not very good in practice. Small market teams like SKC and RSL are spending some money on transfers. The bottom line is that this organization needs more investors, or a new well healed majority investor in order to compete in MLS today and going forward.
Nothing about “Trash Truck-Gate” this a.m.? If anything was emblematic of this organization’s tone-deafness, it was this. I feel like this whole organization is little more than a mass troll job by MLS.
That was so funny. Both RB and DC’s social media teams were all over it.
They skewered us. And yea, it was funny. Would be even funnier if it wasn’t our team.
a classic “That’s So Union” moment.
I think the Union deleted the trash truck tweet. I can’t find it on their Twitter page.
Damn right they deleted it. It was a disgrace that they posted it in the first place. You can find it on The Brotherly Game (along with my response, and some others).
I didn’t find it funny, I have to tell you. I found it pathetic.
I never – for one second, considered the
VISION
PHILOSOPHY
PLAN
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Would be in such stark contrast to the one I’ve written out in blood and angst and gnashing of teeth.
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I admire Earnie Stewart’s resolve, I do. It’s noble. And he’s staking his entire MLS legacy on a Nova grad CB and an academy director who thinks the shortest distance between two points is a straight drive while quantum analysis of world footballing has proven— its through.
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If he rolls for NT all the words he uses will not hide the real issue the truth that dawns on our sporting director daily-. WTF did I get myself into with this ownership.
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In the meantime, we all just wait and somehow learn to surrender.
Stop giving Earnie a pass. He doesn’t deserve it. This roster is fully his and he weilds complete control. He doesn’t have the funds of the top teams, but he also has enough to do much better than he has.
Each off season he has went out and addressed needs. Hell this offseason we needed a winger and a ten. He got the best winger in MLS and natural 10, 1 year removed from preforming well in a respectable league and continental competition.
When the COACH has been given new pieces each year, but has done nothing with them, you start to look at the coach more and wonder what is happening. Name one player who has gotten better each year under Curtin. Name one player Curtin has gotten to perform at a higher level than we expected for a consistent period of time. Name one tactical nuance Curtin has actually introduced that led to any type of success.
We can’t.
Wait a minute. I led my comment first with: vision philosophy and plan…. Earnie is the architect of that. Period.
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I’m despondent about these variables of which he is 100% responsible for.
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I’m just saying that the pieces Earnie has brought in constantly don’t fit what we apparently want to do. I mean look at Alberg, Simpson, Medunjanin, all decent money signings that totally don’t fit. I like who he brought in this year but he literally brought in 2 players to a bad team. I’m just saying we are constantly blaming everything on Curtin and while he shares in and probably deserves the most blame of everyone (not including Sugarman) lots of other factors are at fault as well.
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I also think saying Dockal was good 2 years ago doesn’t mean anything. And while I love Accam, there is a reason he was let go of.
el P., sometimes your interesting writing style makes it slightly difficult to see the main thrust of your argument. When you write of the “truth that dawn on our sporting director daily”, it sounds like you are letting him off the hook.
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If that’s not your intention, fine. Personally, I feel he’s had enough time to make the team his, and the team is horrendous. And if he still feels that Curtin is the right coach, well… perhaps the problem is Stewart himself then. Because clearly the machine is not running properly. In fact, pieces started falling off shortly after it was switched on.
So we’re more ambitious than 3 teams that aren’t even trying and no one else.
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DOOP
The only part of ES rant that i agree with is his take on Dockal. …..that’s it. I hope he’s just saying this shit just to eliminate more controversy through the FO and team. If not? We’re in deep shit.
The shit is deep.
I have trouble believing that there are 3 teams LESS ambitious than the Union. At best we should be in a tie for last place.
no, i believe that Wahl’s list is accurate.
Rapids and Revs are in the same boat: rich men who have bigger and better franchises to delight their fancy. both have found some level of success but are in purgatory. at least we have an owner who didn’t want to move the team when purchased like the Crew.
removing them and we are the worst with no albatross. we have an owner who makes some effort at investment. we have a soccer specific stadium. we have a sporting director looking to jump ship. we have a manager who cannot grow. we have players that cannot overcome tactical deficiencies. we have an organization that promotes mascots and trash trucks. in a word: dysfunctional?
EGO TRIP. ……..Ernie is one of those coaches who have ultimate confidnece in everything about themselves including their system of play and are unwilling to admit they screwed up and made some bad decisions or misjudged how to win I the MLS.
He thinks he can apply the same principles that he learned in the Dutch league and apply them to the MlS. It is not working. you can’t do it on the cheap when every other successful MLS team has at least 2 DP stars on their team then suplements the roster with players of the Caliber of Medujian and Bedoya and Dockal (maybe)?, plus a core of qualitly MLS vets and a few others.
The other successful team either hire a proven coach from a higher level of soccer then the MLS .Theier have been a few exceptions i.e. Caleb Porter maybe.
Let’s be honest Curtin would not be the head coach on any MLS team other than Philly if it was not for the old boy system and Sugarmans lack of soccer Knowledge. Curtin is thrilled to be head coach of an MLS team its way above his pay grade. He is also the perfect person for Ernie he is good little soldier who will do what he is told plus he knows this is the last head coach job he will have in the MLS. You get what you pay for folks an owner who is hoping to make some money on the team before he unloads it. A soccer director who is building his resume to move on and a coach with know imagination and is too afraid to try something that is not in the system.
A club that claims to be all about local, home-grown talent partners with a university in New Hampshire when there are too many to count in the greater Philadelphia area? How many Widener billboards must whoever in the FO that made this decision drive by on their way to work every day? The marketing department at Widener must love this!