James McFadden, seen here with Everton in the FA Cup
in Jan. 2012, is on a two-week training stint with the Union.
(AP)

Chester has been an interesting way station for a number of soccer characters this season. To the average soccer fan who gets bombarded with mid-table English Premier League games on television each weekend, names like Eidur Gudjohnsen and Wilson Palacios are interesting figures, if not necessarily the economical path toward MLS success. (Note that Gudjohnsen, who signed with a team in China, was technically on a training stop, not on trial like Palacios.)

The next name to add to that list is James McFadden, who’s been training with the Union last week and this. He’s a name many EPL fans will recognize, having played in the world’s most visible league with Everton from 2003-08 and 2011-12, Birmingham City from 2007-08 and 2009-11 and Sunderland in 2012-13. He’s also been caped 48 times, scoring 15 goals for Scotland.

Wednesday, Union manager Jim Curtin had some positive things to say about McFadden.

“He’s done well in training,” Curtin said. “You can tell that he has quality. He’s played at the highest level. He’s a guy that he’s been good in training. He provides an intensity level that is good for some of our younger guys to see. No decision has been made. We’ll probably take until the end of the week and then discuss it, but he’s done very well.”

There are some weird aspects to this match. First, McFadden, who Curtin said last week was recovering from an injury, has been out of contract since leaving Scottish Premier League side St. Johnstone in May. He reportedly trained at Motherwell, the club of his youth with which he’s spent parts of five seasons, without being offered a deal.

MLS has passed the deadline for adding players, meaning anything that could materialize for the 32-year-old would be delayed to the start of next season.

Tactically, it seems an odd fit as well. McFadden, who has 20 career EPL goals on his resume, prefers a withdrawn second striker role which doesn’t exist in the Union’s system. Even if we posit that the Union won’t acquire Fernando Aristeguieta on a permanent basis after his loan terminates, McFadden is hardly a direct replacement and would likely be shunted to a wing in the Union’s 4-2-3-1 formation.

Several practice days remain for McFadden, and it’s possible that the Union could decide to keep him around for the rest of the season to train and evaluate him. But don’t be surprised if McFadden joins the list of brief Chester cameos.

The Philadelphia Union aren’t often at the forefront of much in MLS. But manager Jim Curtin Wednesday discussed an intriguing technology of which the Union seem to be early adopters: Drones.

That’s not a goalkeeping joke. It’s a factual statement about the Union’s use of drones as an aid to record and analyze practices at the training facility adjacent to PPL Park.

What started as a bit of a novelty has become a low-cost, high-tech way to provide feedback to players and coaches about training techniques and drills. Here’s what Jim Curtin had to say:

“At first, it was just kind of a casual, let’s see what it looks like up high, to view a training session with a drone. And then you get the footage back of it and … first of all the quality is unreal, in terms of HD and you can zoom in and it gives a nice broad picture as well. Obviously the height of it dictates that. We were pretty amazed with the quality and the details it covers. Full-field, transition exercises, you can see all the movements of your back four, you can see the shape of your team, you can see the runs that your attackers are making, what spaces are open. And we’ve started to use it a lot just to break things down in terms of just trying to improve.

You’re looking for every little advantage that you can. We’ve stumbled into it, and it’s become a good little tool, one that, and maybe it’s unique and a little strange to have that thing hovering over you during a practice. But it gives you certainly a view that you can’t replicate with a handheld on the sidelines or even the camera angles from TV. It’s a unique view for sharing and showing what that looks like. It’s pretty impressive though, and it’s something that we’ll bring out there.”

In a sporting context, drones for unmanned aerial recording remain primarily a nuisance, whether they’re sparking soccer riots or disturbing tennis matches and soccer games or spying on paranoid French players. The initial appeal of such affordable, democratized technology would seem to be in an aesthetic, marketing sense, filming from unique viewpoints to package video content to fans as the Union have done.

Coaches using drone video analysis for attacking and defensive movements to goal. pic.twitter.com/1jDZLXQwHE

— Philadelphia Union (@PhilaUnion) September 9, 2015

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