The Union have reached the purely mathematical portion of their season. Jim Curtin expressed that Wednesday night in his unique coaching terms.
The Union didn’t deserve a point for how they played in a 2-1 loss in Orlando, Curtin declared. He could check off too many mistakes and too many down performances to make that argument convincingly. Deserving or not, his team had chances late, a few golden goal opportunities gone begging, to steal something.
Writ large, that’s the story of their season. Whether or not the Union look or feel like a playoff team, they may be one result away from being one. And that’s Curtin’s entire purview as they head to Columbus (7:45 p.m., AppleTV+) for a Saturday match against the reigning MLS Cup champ.
“It’s not a situation we want to ever be in again, but we are where we are because of us, and we have to try to fix it,” Curtin said Wednesday night. “Two games left, and the simple, simple question is, how much do we want to be in the playoffs?
“Whether we deserve it or not at this stage, you guys can debate, and you could probably say none of the teams probably at eight and below right now … deserve any sniff of the playoffs, but our reality is we still control our own destiny. So I hate where we are. I’m not happy with where we are, but we still have an opportunity to get in and from there, anything can happen.”
With just one point from their last two games, things are looking dire for the Union (9-13-10, 37 points). They fell out of a playoff berth and sit 10th, three points behind Montreal in eighth and level on points but two wins behind Toronto. D.C. United also has 37 points, though the Union own the tiebreaker. They have two games remaining – at second-place Columbus and home to third-place FC Cincinnati on Decision Day in two weeks, after the international break. Curtin’s hopes of making Decision Day academic are gone after the home draw with 12th-place Atlanta and the loss to Orlando City. Four points from their last two games almost certainly assure the Union of playoff soccer, but it’s a wall Curtin had exhorted his team not to get backed up against.
The Union can be eliminated from playoff contention if they lose at Columbus and both Montreal and Toronto, which is idle on Decision Day, win.
The Union, as they have all year, have selected the difficult path. They didn’t maximize points against Atlanta. They didn’t get anything from Orlando, thanks to two brilliant moments from Luis Murriel, who seems to only play well against the Union, and Nathan Harriel’s spurning of three wide open set-piece headers, two of which were harder to miss than to make. Curtin called his team, outplayed from the kickoff, “lucky to get in at 0-0 at half,” then they looked that gift in the mouth with a sluggish second half that led to concessions in the 57th and 64th.
Quinn Sullivan’s goal in the 72nd supplied a glimmer of hope, but Harriel’s misses and the anemic set of bench options left the Union behind and now fighting for their playoff lives.
“If you go through each guy, we didn’t get many good performances,” Curtin said. “We win as a team and we lose as a team, but we needed more guys in the game where you know at home, Orlando is going to put a lot into it.”
Now their playoff hopes come down to a result against Columbus, holders of MLS Cup and Leagues Cup. They thumped the Union, 3-1, in the latter competition, then won 1-0 in Chester a week later. The Crew might be susceptible to something similar Saturday, having slugged it out in a 3-2 loss to Inter Miami that saw the visitors clinch the Supporters’ Shield. At the least, they’ll be without Rudy Camacho, who was red-carded.
Columbus is one point ahead of Cincinnati for second, with a game in hand, though that falls during the international window. Much like the aesthetics, those circumstances matter little for Curtin and the Union.
“We’re into a point in the year where points are the only thing that matters,” he said. “They don’t have to be pretty points. They don’t have to be ugly. You can see how big the Atlanta two that we dropped, and even tonight, where, yeah, it was terrible from us, but we could still steal a point at the end, and that point would be massive. So we have to regroup quickly.”
