Keegan Rosenberry, left, seen against Portland's
Marco Farfan in a game in April, hasn't started
an MLS game in more than four months.
(DFM/Mikey Reeves)

CHESTER >> A season ago, Keegan Rosenberry never saw the bench for the Philadelphia Union, making MLS history in the process.

This season, he’s hardly seen the field, in a case of drastic extremes for the second-year pro.

Rosenberry finally return to action in last Saturday’s 2-2 draw with the San Jose Earthquakes, his first MLS minutes since May 17. He hasn’t started in more than four months, dating to April 14.

The departure from how Rosenberry began his career is stark: He started each of his first 41 MLS games (including the Union’s playoff ouster in Toronto last fall), the first rookie to play every minute of a 34-game season. From those lofty heights, he’s logged a scant 72 minutes in four months, all in substitute appearances, the last a 16-minute cameo when left back Giliano Wijnaldum picked up an ankle knock. Rosenberry started two U.S. Open Cup matches in that span.

“It’s been fine,” Rosenberry said Tuesday. “For me, it’s just about trying to continue to train hard and stay focused and try to be motivated and help the team in whatever I can do to push the guys in front of me that are playing day in and day out.”

Rosenberry, who finished second in Rookie of the Year balloting, clearly hit a wall late last season. The logic went that a stint to rest and watch from the bench would be beneficial.

But fate has intervened in the plan for a short-term refresher. The Union were winless in Rosenberry’s last 14 starts, and his benching coincided with an uptick in form that rescued hope for 2017. Along the way, Ray Gaddis provided a valuable veteran presence, not relinquishing his spot.

So the MLS All-Star has watched and waited … and hoped to learn.

“It’s not easy,” said Rosenberry, repeating that phrase on several occasions. “It’s the last place you want to be and trying to learn about the game and trying to get better. At the same time, like I said about the frustration in training and not getting selected, it’s the same way when you’re watching the game: You try to use it to your advantage in any way you can. If that’s watching players on other teams in terms of matchups and what you might see, but at the same time, it’s a different perspective and you try to use that to your best benefit.”

Rosenberry was thrown into a difficult position Saturday and didn’t exactly impress. It was on his side of the field that Josh Yaro felled Shea Salinas in the 90th minute for a PK that denied the Union a badly needed three points.


Rosenberry is one of many players who could’ve done better on the sequence, and manager Jim Curtin acknowledges mitigating factors – like the switch of Gaddis from right to left back and the late addition of Marcus Epps for a tiring Chris Pontius on the wing.

“Keegan went into the game, had some decent moments,” Curtin said. “On the penalty kick, didn’t do great to help with Marcus, but again it was a bit of a chain reaction of events. … We had a breakdown on that side, but it was difficult.”

While he may not be polishing his skills in games, Rosenberry has been forced to burnish his mental approach. Beyond platitudes about being a better practice player, you could imagine the temptation to take selection for granted last year when Rosenberry was an automatic selection.

This season, he’s managed the swings of hope and disappointment that come with not having his effort in training necessarily correlate with weekend selection. He’s worked on harnessing that frustration.

“The minute that you let it get the better of you is when training doesn’t go well, you make poor decisions and you’re not as sharp as you want to be,” he said. “And that’s the challenge. You need to embrace that and you have to embrace the low points in your career and the high points. I think for me, it’s embracing the frustration and trying to use it as motivation.”

This week’s stretch of three games in eight days served another opportunity to get him minutes, though other such chances have gone by the wayside. The Quakes appearances is an appetizer ahead of Wednesday’s trip to league-leading Toronto and Saturday’s visit from expansion club Atlanta United.

But of the many things Rosenberry has gained this year, one is perspective: He wasn’t benched last year as the team spiraled, and he hasn’t broken into the side even as the current iteration has scuffled. Sometimes the connections aren’t as clear-cut as you’d imagine, so lumping on additional worry isn’t productive.

“I feel like if you’d ask the guys on the team (they’d say) that I’ve been training as hard as I can, and that’s not easy to do,” he said. “… It’s very easy to be frustrated and look at the negatives and ask, ‘why aren’t I playing?’ But you look at last year like I said, whatever numbers of games it was throughout the end of the year and we’re not in great form and still no changes for me. It’s a double-edged sword, so you’ve got to think of it both ways.”