Photo: Marjorie Elzey
It was a night to forget for the Philadelphia Union.
They were easily put away on Saturday evening by expansion side Charlotte FC and Daniel Rios, who tucked away 4 goals himself. Philadelphia saw it’s usual sturdy defense ripped to shreds and a lack of offensive cohesion spelled their doom.
On to the ratings.
Player Ratings
Andre Blake – 6
Blake didn’t have much of a chance at saving any of the goals, but did look a little late to react on the cross for the 4th. Still hard to rank a keeper highly who had 4 goals put past him.
Nathan Harriel – 5
Not too much offense involvement for the young right back, which the Union rely on in their system. Could have done better on the second goal where he lost the ball in the box and was unable to win it back.
Jack Elliott – 5
Elliott wasn’t directly responsible for any of the goals, but his spacing with Glesnes seemed to be off all night and wasn’t able to make many tackles to prevent Charlotte from running forward.
Jakob Glesnes – 5
Glesnes seemed to struggle with his spacing throughout the match, seemingly caught between two attackers and unsure if he should play the pass or the shot. Almost had a very bad giveaway with Blake for a Charlotte goal.
Kai Wagner– 4
Just a not very good night for the German left back, who got himself sent off and gave away an obvious penalty. His service into the box didn’t seem as crisp as it usually is.
Leon Flach – 4
Flach excels at stopping teams in transition and helping to link passes to the forwards in the midfield. Nobody on Philly did much transition-stopping or pass-linking on Saturday night.
Jack McGlynn – 5
A pretty quiet night for McGlynn, but his lack of speed probably did not help against Charlotte’s transition attack. Made some passes in the midfield, but not enough for the offense to click.
Daniel Gazdag – 5
Made some good passes, but just couldn’t get the strikers going. Seemed to be settling for shots outside of the box instead of looking for through balls.
Jose Martinez – 4
Martinez is the usual shield of the Union’s backline and helping put out fires. Saturday night he seemed slow in transition and not getting stuck in. When Martinez has a bad night, the Union struggle mightily.
Mikael Uhre – 4
Wasn’t much going offensively for the Union, meaning Uhre and his partner Carranza were not involved much. His most notable moment was when he blocked Gazdag’s shot on target.
Julian Carranza – 4
Much like Uhre, wasn’t involved much on the offensive side. Did have a great look at an equalizer but somehow shanked his shot way out to the left for a throw in.
Subs
Paxten Aaronson – 6
Brought some energy in the 6oth minute to try and wake up the team, had some good link up play and a few looks at goal.
Cory Burke – 5
Also brought some energy, but also found it hard to find chances during the match.
Matthew Real – N/A
A 10 minute cameo for an injured Jack Elliott.
Quinn Sullivan – 5
A short 15 minutes of running and looking for a shorthanded goal for the youngster.
Player of the Match – Daniel Rios
It has to go to the man who scored all the goals in the match. Rios was in all of the right places as he notched Charlotte’s first hat-trick and then added a 4th goal for good measure.
Geiger Counter
Jon Freemon – 4
Let a pretty physical match go for most of the match but called some fouls to harshly in some spots. Got the Wagner penalty correct and was right to give him a second yellow.
Way too high.
Actually, it was a night for them to remember—winning the East, and getting home field advantage, with performances like that, won’t happen.
The team suffers their worst loss of the season (by twice as many goals as any other loss) against a likely non-playoff team and NO ONE receives a score less than 4? Jose Martinez definitely deserves less considering his responsibility on the first 2 goals (he was completely lackadaisical on the first with a really bad giveaway. And Kai has to take some responsibility for missing the next game.
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Freemon may have gotten the PK right, but he deserves to take a hit for giving Kai a completely random first yellow to Wagner when there were several other fouls much more deserving of a card (against both teams).
Wagner definitely earned his first. There maybe should have been cards before his but his was deserved
But how does a player know what’s acceptable when greater fouls haven’t been carded?
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If the ref isn’t consistent, his rating should be low.
+1 for all of Andy’s comments here.
Can we start holding these players to higher standards?
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Maybe we should start each of these articles with a breakdown of the scores:
0 = may as well have scored a hattrick for the opponents
3 = Not quite a cone on the field but only barely better
5 = a workmanlike performance with no errors
8 = an astounding performance where a player lifts the team performance
10 = scored a hattrick, won a fistfight on the field without getting a card, saved a baby in the stands from an errant free kick, and defused a bomb using nothing but the referees yellow and red cards.
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The team didn’t show up this weekend.
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This is Philly. When we love a team, we show them our love by telling them when they underperform. We should do that on these pages as well.
I agree with most of those but 5 could just as easily be that the outstanding moments exactly cancel out the errors and the cone is probably a 2 rather than a 3.