Photo: Earl Gardner

There may be no team in MLS this season with both as high a ceiling and low a floor as Philadelphia Union.

This team could win the Eastern Conference or miss the playoffs without surprising anyone.

That’s what happens when a team completely changes its tactical philosophy during a single off-season.

Have they made enough personnel moves required to adequately staff that new system?

Have they had enough time to practice it?

Opening day is Saturday, so we’re about to find out.

Here are some major questions for this team, and let’s do it from a slightly Negadelphian point of view that has a good bit of Devil’s Advocate mixed into it. 

Have the Union traded Earnie Stewart’s tactical dogmatism for Ernst Tanner’s?

At their best in 2018, the Union played arguably the most attractive soccer in their history. Borek Dockal led the league in assists. Their possession game drew admiration from well outside Philadelphia. Yet they ran into the problem of having no Plan B, so wedded were they to former sporting director Earnie Stewart’s dogmatic view on how the game should be played.

The problem was tactical inflexibility, not a faulty system.

Stewart’s replacement, Ernst Tanner, is tossing all that completely out the window this year.

The 4-3-3 possession system is out, we’re told. The 4-4-2 diamond high press is in.

The new system could be what Union head coach Jim Curtin has truly wanted while being limited by Stewart’s dogmatic hewing to his very Dutch preferences.

Then again, the Union may have exchanged Stewart’s dogmatism for Tanner’s.

Why can’t they play both at different times?

Or will they play both? Is the talk a smokescreen for the league?

How do the Union’s three most dynamic returning attackers fit in a tactical system without wingers? 

After a great 2018 season, Fafa Picault faces an uncertain 2019. (Photo: Earl Gardner)

The Union no longer play wingers, according to Tanner.

That would be fine if, well, the Union most dynamic returning attackers weren’t all wingers.

Fafa Picault is now a striker. Picault has played striker before, notably in Germany. Of course, Union fans have seen that his strength is the creation of scoring opportunities, and his weakness is the finishing of them. He flourished last year as an inverted winger.

David Accam is an afterthought with a similar positional profile. When healthy, he was one of the league’s most dangerous players as an inverted winger who was halfway to a second striker. We know now that he wasn’t healthy last year, which is likely why Chicago vastly overpaid for C.J. Sapong. (More on that later.) Accam is now likely fourth on the striker depth chart. 

Ilsinho is … well, we don’t really know what Ilsinho is now. Probably a freewheeling right-sided shuttler coming off the bench (or backup No. 10), given he isn’t fit enough to play wingback, even as a sub. But how many minutes are there for a right-sided reserve shuttler when the Union’s most perfect fit for a diamond midfield is Alejandro Bedoya, who plays that position?

If these three have demonstrated anything in MLS, it’s that they create scoring opportunities when healthy. They bring a ton of excitement to the field.

None of them may be Union regulars by May. Sergio Santos wasn’t acquired to sit on the bench.

Is it wise to base a wingback-dependent system upon unproven fullbacks? 

When you play without wide midfielders, the fullbacks provide attacking width.

For a team planning to rely so heavily on outside backs, the Union are coming in with an awfully untested fullback corps.

The starting left back job is Matt Real’s to win or lose in 2019. (Photo: Paul Rudderow)

U.S. U-20 international Matt Real or 22-year-old German import Kai Wagner will likely start at left back. Combined, they have less than five games of MLS experience. Fabinho fit the attacking profile for this system, but on the backside of his playing career, he’s not the answer.

On the right side, Olivier Mbaizo looks to be the preferred choice, with all of one MLS match under his belt, unless veteran Ray Gaddis wins the job. Gaddis has the defensive chops for the high press when healthy, but his offensive game is limited.

Oh, and by the way, they’ll be flanking the league’s youngest center back tandem.

Has Ernst Tanner overinflated the quality of the lower Germanic divisions?

Speaking of Kai Wagner …

The third division of Germany? Really?

Exactly how many players from Germany’s third division have succeeded in MLS?

I’ll wait while you look that one up.

(Still waiting. Still waiting.)

Maybe you remember former Union left back Giliano Wijnaldum, from Germany’s second division, who washed out with the Union after one year.

Or maybe you watched MLS last year and saw all the players Colorado imported from England’s second division. They spent 2018 failing.

The time has long since passed when MLS quality was low enough that players from Europe’s lower divisions routinely walked into MLS starting lineups and performed. The league has improved.

Maybe Wagner will be different. Maybe goalkeeper Carlos Miguel Coronel, from Austria’s second division, will be too. They’re young players early in their careers, and the fact that they start their careers in lower divisions doesn’t mean that’s the extent of their capabilities. Good scouting finds are good scouting finds, wherever you find them, and Tanner most certainly has a proven track record of that in Europe.

Still, this looks a lot like the typical European overinflation of his home country’s quality in comparison to MLS.

Did John McCarthy get pushed out for a guy from Austria’s second division?

That brings us to goalkeeper John McCarthy, otherwise known as Union fans’ favorite everyman local guy made good.

John McCarthy’s penalty heroics are a thing of the past for the Union. (Photo: 215Pix)

When it was announced he was leaving the Union, Jim Curtin said all the right things about a popular player who was moving on. He wants to compete for a starting job somewhere, Curtin said. McCarthy is definitely a player who needs playing time. He progressed to the point where he looked like he could compete for a starting job in MLS. 

We didn’t hear much from McCarthy himself. 

McCarthy will be playing in USL this year.

Was Curtin’s story the real one, or was it the admirably face-saving support of a player-friendly coach who wasn’t making the decision?

The Union replaced McCarthy with a guy from Tanner’s former club. A cynic might say it looks like Tanner pushed McCarthy out for a foreign goalkeeper.

Regardless, it doesn’t require a cynic to know that, if there’s one position you should not spend an international roster spot on in MLS, it’s backup goalkeeper. America produces goalkeepers.

Do the Union have enough center midfielders, considering they plan to play four at a time?

Marco Fabian, Alejandro Bedoya, Haris Medunjanin and Derrick Jones are the likely starters in center midfield. Bedoya and Medunjanin are in their 30s, and Medunjanin clearly wore down last year. Fabian has a history of back trouble. Jones has yet to hold down a starting job in MLS.

Depth matters.

So who are the backups? Warren Creavalle is the No. 6. (If he’s the starter, the Union have problems.) Ilsinho and Anthony Fontana are probably shuttlers (the flanks of the diamond midfield). Brenden Aaronson is the No. 10.

Is that good enough? 

Why are the Union the only MLS club whose head coach doesn’t determine their tactical identity?

Jim Curtin is the only coach in MLS who doesn’t control his team’s on-field tactical philosophy. Instead, Philadelphia’s sporting director does. Curtin merely gets to implement someone else’s vision.

Is that wise?

It probably was when the Union fielded him as an inexperienced head coach who was hired for the role before he was ready.

And maybe you like it if you view him as disposable or on a one-year prove-it-or-go basis. It looks an awful lot like the model for Red Bull’s clubs in Europe.

Curtin is now entering his fifth full season at the helm of the Union. He placed fourth in the MLS Coach of the Year vote in 2018. He was just given a new system to implement and has only a one-year contract.

It seems like a recipe for a firing.

If Curtin succeeds, every Negadelphian may just have to accept that he has developed into one hell of a coach. 

And what about Marco Fabian??!!

Nah, this is a great move. Even Negadelphia cannot dispute. 

Sure, a Negadelphian would note that he’s barely played in over a year due to back problems and then, after surgery, difficulty breaking back into Eintracht Frankfurt’s lineup.

Whatever. This guy is a star. He’s a No. 10. He’s the Union’s first quality Mexican player. And — crucially — he’s on a one-year contract, so if he fails, it’s a one-year test drive. You know, like Borek Dockal was. Low risk, high reward. When fit, Fabian is exactly what the Union need on and off the field.

This sort of signing, along with the acquisition of forward Sergio Santos, is the sort of move that shows even the most Negadelphian of Negadelphians that Tanner’s moves may be bold and risky, but they also may be very, very smart.

Postgame bonus: A note on the C.J. Sapong trade

There is no way a 30-year-old MLS striker coming off an awful season with a cap hit of $525,000 and entering the final year of his contract is worth (up to) $450,000 in allocation money.

Further, what’s up with the “we’ll give you $100,000 if we get it” part of that trade, not to mention the mystery $50,000 component?

Something is fishy here, my friends. The spidey senses are tingling.

But wait!

Philadelphia’s trade was with Chicago, you say? The same Chicago that just last year fleeced them of $1.2 million in allocation money in exchange for the league’s biggest injury bust?

Ah ha! 

This must be what we call a make-up trade, folks. You could call it whatever you want really, because precedents aren’t easy to find.

After Accam ended his ineffective season early with a surgery for a sports hernia, we learned he had likely been playing injured most of the year. One would expect the Union to be furious about this.

Enter Chicago again, to make good.

“Sure, we’ll take Sapong’s high salary off your hands, particularly since he projects as your fourth striker (at best) this year,” Chicago general manager Nelson Rodriguez effectively said. “We’ll even overpay for the privilege of doing it. So don’t file a grievance with the league office or anything about Accam. We got this. Sorry?”

Sapong should help Chicago. He provides depth at striker and on the wings. When in form, he’s very good. He can give them a target striker for Nemanja Nikolic (or Fabian Herbers!) to play off in a two-forward set that can provide the sort of tactical flexibility that Chicago head coach Veljko Paunovic loves (perhaps a bit too much, at that).

Union fans should wish Sapong well. The trade is as lopsided as you’re ever going to see in MLS, so his departure helps his team.