Since there’s so much to discuss on the Union’s 2017 season, I decided to outsource my brainstorming for the postseason wrap-ups. Most of the ideas I have are just ones that’ve rattled around my head for months to the point of familiarity where I can’t tell good or bad.

So after my column Monday, I got this response from Andy B on Twitter that I thought warranted more than 140 characters:

Serious question: Is there another MLS manager with a worse record over the last 3 years?

— AndyB (@TheRealBergs) October 24, 2017

First, we have to establish Jim Curtin’s record. He’s been in charge for 120 MLS games since taking over in June 2014 when John Hackworth was fired. That’s the 25th-longest streak with a single club in MLS history for a manager and seventh-longest active streak.

Compared to his peers, Jim Curtin's yield of points
has been underwhelming in recent years. (DFM file)

In those games, Curtin has a 39-50-31 record. His teams have collected 148 points, an average of 1.23 per game, and made the playoffs once.

In all competitions, Curtin is 47-52-37, factoring in four Open Cups (remember, shootout results count as draws whether teams advance or not) and one playoff game.

Good news: Curtin’s 1.23 PPG is the highest in franchise history, ahead of Hackworth (1.22) and Peter Nowak (1.16) in short tenures.

Bad news: There isn’t a long-term comp league wide with a PPG so low. Coaches with that low of a points-per-game average tend to be shown the door sooner.
Read more »

For John McCarthy and the Union, the last year hasn't been great. (AP)

On this weekend a year ago, the Philadelphia Union was flying high. They had just handled Sporting Kansas City, 2-0 at home. With a record of 11-9-7, their 40 points were situated third in the Eastern Conference, three points from leaders Toronto and soaring over the red line for playoff qualification.

The question had ceased to be if the Union would end a playoff drought or even if they would break the franchise record for points in a season; needing just eight points from seven games, the Union would certainly blast through the 48 points they tallied in 2011 with even mediocre form.

Then the roof caved in. Seven winless to end 2016. Ninety minutes being comprehensively outclassed in Toronto on a Wednesday night in a gone-before-you-knew-it playoff berth. Then eight winless to start 2017 at so great a disadvantage that now, officially, has been deemed insurmountable.

For all the oddities of the MLS calendar, the schedule makers offer the Union symmetry. Saturday’s visit from Atlanta United marks the 34th regular-season game since that night 364 days ago against SKC.

Through all the ups and downs, what has this 33-game snapshot of Union existence shown? In short, it’s not good.

In that 33-game stretch of regular season, starting with the Sept. 3 loss at Chicago, the Union are 8-17-8. That includes the 0-5-2 stretch to end 2016 and the 8-12-6 mark they’ve stumbled to this year.

That’s 32 points in 33 games. There’s no result the Union can achieve Saturday against Atlanta to avoid falling short of the franchise’s lowest tally for a season, set in 2012 at 36.

A win Saturday is required to avoid falling short of the season-low set in the expansion year, when the club played four fewer matches. A loss Saturday would equal the franchise record of 18 set in 2012, which remains in play for the Union this year. (N.B.: I’m comparing this stretch to full calendar seasons, from the Union and other clubs, via MLS' Fact and Record Book. Even I’m not that much of a masochist to parse each team’s worst 34-game stretch across seasons, even if the info was complete enough.)

The Union in the last 33 games have a points per game average of 0.97. The sub-1 realm is where the truly terrible MLS campaigns reside. How bad? Well, bad enough that no Union team has ever been there before – the 2012 team came closest at 1.06 over a calendar season – and the Union have had some atrocious seasons.
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Even six years on, this symbolism of FC Dallas' Marvin Chavez, left,
bounding over the Union's Gabriel Farfan remains salient for a club
that has never lost to the Union. (AP)

The Philadelphia Union have never beaten FC Dallas, which in the eighth year of the organization’s existence remains a statement of increasingly bemusing fact. That 0-5-4 record sounds like a lot of futility – perhaps not for the Union, who are also winless in 10 games against Real Salt Lake (0-7-3), including a 1-0 loss at Rio Tinto Stadium May 27.

So naturally I wondered, how unusual is that? And in answering that question, I had to naturally turn to the great resource that is the MLS Facts and Record Book. MLS has endured a ton of expansion in the last decade or so, with teams’ staggered entrances allowing all manner of dips and rises in form that would seem to allow opportunities to win. MLS’s enforced parity makes it hard to make blanked statements about organizations always being good or bad. (I realize the opening this leaves for a Union joke, but let’s move on. Or at least save it for later.)

If we exclude the recent bursts of expansion – i.e. New York City and Orlando City in 2015; Atlanta United FC and Minnesota United FC in 2017 – how many MLS franchises are without a win against another franchise all-time in MLS games?

Well, the Union are exemplary, and not in a good way. There are only three instances of a team having played more than three times without beating an opponent, and the Union own two of them.

The other is Chicago, which is 0-4-4 all-time against Portland since the Timbers’ elevation to MLS in 2011, including a 2-2 draw a month ago.

The only other two winless records in four or more meetings are the Union against FC Dallas and Real Salt Lake. A fourth such string between San Jose and Montreal was alleviated in the 2017 opener, when in their sixth meeting the Quakes finally got the better of the Impact.

Even if you include the two 2015 expansion sides, winless spans are tremendously rare. In year three, Orlando City has beaten all but four MLS teams – Dallas, San Jose, Seattle and Vancouver. The Lions have only played Dallas and Vancouver twice, with their 2017 meetings looming this season. Four MLS teams have never beaten Orlando City: Colorado, Portland, Real Salt Lake and San Jose. (No, that overlap isn’t in error; San Jose and Orlando City have drawn all three meetings.)

New York City’s zeroes club is at three apiece – having never beaten Dallas, Kansas City and Real Salt Lake; having never lost to Colorado, Houston and San Jose. Three of those six teams still have to play NYCFC this season.

That leaves only the three bona fide streaks – Union-RSL, Union-Dallas and Chicago-Portland – on the list of protracted winless streaks, one of which can be evicted this weekend.

However, let me offer a modicum of solace to Union fans, something that next week’s opponent Montreal will never gain relief of. Forever and all time, let it be known that Montreal will never have a win against Chivas USA, posting an 0-2-1 record in three all-time meetings across the three seasons the Impact coexisted with the defunct side. At least the Union can, theoretically, improve their goose egg.

The Union’s defensive record in recent weeks has gone from horrible to tremendous. It’s been rehashed many times, but once more for emphasis – dating to last year and including the playoff loss to Toronto, the Union allowed multiple goals in 12 of 15 games. They haven’t allowed more than one goal in their last six games, conceding a mere two times in that span.

Make no mistake, this is the foundation on which their turnaround his been built.

But though drastically improved, the team still has its vulnerabilities. And one forms the commonality between the last two goals they’ve surrendered, one of which cost them three points against Real Salt Lake Saturday.

Here’s the goal that the Union allowed against Colorado last week in a 2-1 win. Axel Sjoberg takes possession of the ball deep in his own half:

 

And here’s when Caleb Calvert deposits it in the net: 

That’s nine seconds for the ball to travel nearly 100 yards.

Fast-forward a week to RSL, and a play that begins with a wayward Chris Pontius cross that rolls toward the touchline that Fafa Picault and Tony Beltran pursue (the video doesn’t quite go back that far). Beltran recovers the ball at 35:14.

In 24 seconds, the ball is in the back of the net 90-some yards on, after a succession of nifty passing between the lines featuring Jefferson Savarino and Joao Plata and through a defense that never full resets into its shape. It’s a bit more leisurely a pace than the Colorado goals, but in the way RSL weaves in and out of Union bodies, it’s arguably more concerning.

The Union have gone through spells this season where particular actions have given them difficulties. They’ve been susceptible to moves up the center of the park, a weakness they’ve shored up. In years past, they’ve struggled with quick changes of field or set pieces or any number of issues. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse to adjust, and this vulnerability to the quick counterattack is the next one on the board to repair.

Saturday's draw for Alejandro Bedoya, right, and the Union
to Joao Pedro's L.A. Galaxy makes it 16 straight games without a win
for the club. (AP)

I made an attempt in Monday’s paper to hit whatever passes as positives with regard to the moribund 2017 Union season, and the dredging left me slightly spent. So in the constant drive for content and the absence of any positives on the team side, figured I’d steer into the skid as it grabs headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

There’s ambiguity in the numbers that bothered me that I needed to get to the bottom of: I tweeted two weeks ago about the Union’s historical standing in the annals of MLS winless streak history. Those numbers weren’t cut and dry since I remained unsure if they factored in playoff games officially, since teams on historic winless streaks shouldn’t be making the playoffs, as I understand that concept. But the Union broke the mold with their slide last year somehow not precluding playoff positioning.

That led to a deeper dive to add texture and context to the teams the Union are chasing (read: praying to avoid). I was unsurprised – and you may be, too – to find a strong correlation between lengthy winless streaks and both missing the playoffs and low finishes in the standings. (You know, correlation vs. causation but in this case, just no.) By necessity this season, the Union have clung to the notion that they’re just one win away from a sea change in results like an ideological lifesaver. The truth is that there’s very, very little historical context to back that assertion, though the Union are bucking other trends.

Here’s the list of the eight most barren streaks in MLS history, annotated by the seasonal breakdown of those games and the team’s record in the streak. You’ll note that each winless gamut has bridged seasons.

Colorado Rapids, 18 games (July 30, 2014-April 4, 2015 – 14 to end season, 4 to start), 0-13-5
Real Salt Lake, 18 games (Aug. 10, 2005-May 6, 2006 – 12 to end season, 6 to start), 0-16-2
San Jose, 16 games (Aug. 8, 2014-March 7, 2015 – 15 to end season, 1 to start), 0-9-7
UNION, 16 games (Sept. 3, 2016-present – 7 to end season, 1 playoff game, 8 to start), 0-10-6
Chivas USA, 15 games (Aug. 12, 2012-March 2, 2013 – 14 to end season, 1 to start), 0-11-4
D.C. United, 15 games (Aug. 10, 2013-March 29, 2014 – 12 to end season, 3 to start), 0-11-4
Real Salt Lake, 15 games (Sept. 23, 2006-June 17, 2007 – 4 to end season, 11 to start), 0-6-9
Toronto FC, 15 games (July 28, 2012-March 2, 2013 – 14 to end season, 1 to start), 0-11-4

Quick accounting note: For weeks, I’ve excluded the Union’s playoff loss from the streak or added it with a caveat, unsure if the other streaks were just regular-season matches while similarly ignoring playoff contests. Since the Union are the only member of this ignominious octet with a playoff loss, I’m factoring it in now.

In a class of their own
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The Philadelphia Union are limping into the playoffs, or backing in, or whatever verb-euphemism-in you’d like to deploy. The achievement of the club’s first playoff berth since 2011 is marred by a seven-game winless streak dating to the start of September. Over that stretch, they’ve gone 0-5-2, taking a mere two points from a possible 21. It’s not an ideal finish to the regular season by any stretch of the imagination.

So I wondered, how does it stack up historically? What is the longest winless streak for a playoff team? And how did struggling teams fare in the playoffs?

First off, it’s hardly unprecedented, since the Union aren’t even the only 2016 MLS Cup playoff qualifier with such a streak of futility. The sixth-place team in the West, Real Salt Lake, has endured an 0-4-3 stretch in its last seven, matching the Union’s winless run. None of the other playoff teams, though, have gone more than two games without a win.

Only one other team in the last dozen years has entered the playoffs on a seven-game winless run: The 2013 Seattle Sounders, which stumbled into the playoffs on an 0-4-3 record. That team won a Wild Card playoff game, 2-0 against Colorado, before losing in the Western semifinals to Portland.

In the past, how have similar strugglers fared? For this, I looked at MLS Cup playoffs dating to 2004. I defined the category as any team with a winless streak of five or more games to end the regular season or just one win in their last seven or more games. Eleven teams fit the bill (record to end the regular season in parenthesis):

2013 Montreal Impact (1-6-1)
2013 Seattle Sounders (0-4-3)
2012 Vancouver Whitecaps (1-6-3)
2011 Real Salt Lake (0-4-2)
2010 Columbus Crew (1-3-3)
2009 Chicago Fire (1-2-4)
2008 New England Revolution (0-4-2)
2007 FC Dallas (1-5-2)
2006 D.C. United (1-4-2)
2006 Colorado Rapids (0-2-3)
2004 San Jose Earthquakes (0-3-4)

Of those 11 teams, none lifted MLS Cup. But five of the 11 won playoff ties. Four of those won two-leg ties, while Seattle in 2013 is the only to win a one-game wild card, though that is a newer addition to the playoff scheme. Three of the strugglers have played wild card games; Seattle in 2013 is the only one to win, though they were also the only one to host their game.

Four teams have won two-leg games: RSL in 2011, Chicago in 2009, and D.C. and Colorado (in PKs) in 2006. None of the teams has even made the MLS Cup final, the closest being Chicago in 2009, losing in PKs to RSL.

That sets long but not unreachable odds for the Union to extend their postseason.

UNION (4-2-3-1) 

Blake 

Fabinho-Marquez-Tribbett-Rosenberry 

Carroll-Creavalle 

Ilsinho-Alberg-Pontius 

Sapong 

Bench: McCarthy, Yaro, Gaddis, Fernandes, Le Toux, Herbers, Restrepo. 

Real Salt Lake (4-3-3) 

Rimando 

Phillips-Olave-Maund-Beltran 

Mulholland-Beckerman-Morales 

Plata-Garcia-Martinez 

Bench: Attinella, Glad, Wingert, Kavita, Stertzer, Holness, Sandoval

Preview 

- The Union ring the changes after last week’s embarrassment in Montreal. Ken Tribbett and Fabinho return to the lineup, and the suspension of Tranquillo Barnetta requires Warren Creavalle to play as the No. 8. Derrick Jones, signed midweek, isn’t ready to play just yet.

- It’s hard to pinpoint the defensive changes, though both all-stars Andre Blake and Keegan Rosenberry are straight back into the squad. Josh Yaro and Ray Gaddis, both a party to last week’s drubbing, make way. Let’s see if that makes a difference in the recent defensive slide.

- Nominally, it’s a 4-3-3 for Real Salt Lake, which is missing Yura Movsisyan up top with a hip flexor injury. But the action of Javier Morales flitting between the lines creates the difference in shape that should look more like a 4-2-3-1 in attack. The Union fullbacks will have their hands full corralling the pressing runs of Joao Plata and Juan Manuel Martinez.
- Jamison OIave shakes off a calf problem to start in central defense for RSL. He should be the big target to get moving to create gaps, particularly for Roland Alberg to exploit. CJ Sapong will certainly get his licks on Olave in the physical back-and-forth, but Alberg’s ability to capture second balls in the space between the center backs and Kyle Beckerman is vital.

We’ve reached the juncture in the season where it’s time to deploy this little tidbit about the Philadelphia Union.

I think we all can agree – even Jim Curtin acknowledges the possibility, to a degree – that the MLS Cup Playoffs will likely commence for a fourth consecutive season season without the Union, the final nail of many likely being the 1-0 loss Saturday to New England. Officially, the percentage of the Union making the playoffs is listed as 4.0. (The journalist in me who won't allow me to state assertions as facts is the reason for the hedging, so apologies.)

With seven matches (four on the road) remaining, they sit last in the Eastern Conference with 27 points from 27 games. They’re just two points behind Orlando City for the sixth and final playoff spot, but there’s also the struggling Montreal Impact in seventh with four games in hand and a crowd of four teams to hop over to get back into contention. The Union also have to travel to four bona fide playoff contenders (New York Red Bulls, Toronto, New England and San Jose) among their four games, so the likelihood of summoning the form to get back into the playoff picture, especially around the Sept. 30 U.S. Open Cup final date, is remote.

If – and it is still, technically, an “if” – the Union miss the playoffs this season, it would be the fourth straight time that they have failed to qualify for the postseason. Where does that rank in the annals of MLS history?

Well, it’s a thorny proposition to put that into the appropriate context in a league where a minimum of two-thirds of teams made the playoff through its first decade. Eight of 10 teams making the playoffs strips the accolade of much of its prestige while hiding plenty of warts on teams that qualified via numerical necessity. It may not be until we see several seasons of a 20-plus team MLS that we can gauge just how devastating a four-season absence is. Or if, you know, something that rhymes with "go/fell" happens.

Even so, if the Union miss the postseason in 2015, they’d join very, very select company:

Toronto 8 (2007-2014)*
Chivas USA 5 (2010-2014)
Union 4 (2012-2015)*
D.C. United 4 (2008-2011)
San Jose 4 (1997-2000)

(Two of those streaks are active and can continue. But, terrifying as this may be to some in Ontario, Toronto is pegged as a virtual statistical certainty to end its playoff torment, while the Union are extremely likely to perpetuate theirs.)

That isn’t the group you want to be in, not least of which for what happened after the droughts ended. Read more »

Austin Berry, here jumping against Portland's Diego Valeri in the season opener,
finds himself on the bench behind Aaron Wheeler in the Union's
center-back pecking order. (AP)

John Hackworth is generally not one for grand declarations or illuminating insights into his coaching process as it pertains to players. That close-to-the-vest demeanor makes his open proclamation that Aaron Wheeler is his first-choice center back at the moment in favor of a healthy-again Austin Berry all the more poignant.

In full (asides and all), here is the answer Hackworth gave when I asked the question of the pecking order between Wheeler and Berry:

“I don’t think there’s a definitive answer for that because you have Aaron Wheeler, who’s played well. Being very honest – and I told Aaron this during the first half against Houston – he needed to be more aggressive. He needed to assert himself more. And he did a great job of that toward the end of the first half, and he continued to do that in the second half. You get a shutout as a team, and deal with an opponent in Houston who kind of like us came away from their previous game against New England, just they were going to go out and take shots from everywhere. And we defended pretty well as a group.

“My point is thought that Aaron has done well in the minutes that he’s played, and because we’ve had a positive result like getting a shutout and doing it against a team like Houston that was going to come out firing, I think Aaron is still the first choice. And Austin, and there’s other guys like Ethan White, who need to continue to work hard in training to see if they get that opportunity.”

So there you have it: Wheeler is the Union’s first-choice center back until further notice. The fact that in 2012, Wheeler was a forward in the Finnish second division while Berry was MLS rookie of the year as a central defender in Chicago is of no consequence in the debate, however interesting the sentence might read.

What is important for the Union and Hackworth is how they’ve stacked up this season. From what we’ve seen, there’s little separating the two. Wheeler has started five games, including the last two and five of the last six, while Berry has gotten three starts, finishing each game but the New England match, in which Wheeler spelled him for what goes a split clean sheet between them, I suppose. (Wheeler also played the final three minutes of the Portland game in a pseudo-defensive capacity; we’ll ignore that for this evaluation.)

So here are the raw numbers this season:
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Few players in Union history left as confusing an imprint as Keon Daniel, whose three-plus year stint with the club officially came to an end Tuesday with the termination of his contract by mutual consent.

Keon Daniel, seen here against D.C. United last year,
was let go by the Union Tuesday. (AP)

His presence has elicited hopefulness, exasperation, devotion, confusion and dissatisfaction, among a wide continuum of other sentiments. Finding a simple summary for Daniel's 64 MLS appearances is well-nigh impossible for a player that has embodied both a major tactical problem and significant solution at versions points in his career.

The contradictions begin with Daniel's very stature. At a formidable 6-1, he was often the most physical of presences among slighter midfielders like Roger Torres and Brian Carroll. Yet he rarely played like it.

His 14 goals in 59 appearances for Trinidad & Tobago indicate his offensive aptitude. His two goals and four assists in 64 games for the Union suggest otherwise. At various times, he's represented for the Union their most attack-minded option, or their most physical, or their most technical.

His two goals are evidence of the promise that has always been so seductive for two Union coaching staffs. The first, June 11, 2011, against Real Salt Lake, was the kind of heads-up hustle goal a player of his stature would find on a somewhat regular basis based on his physicality alone. Instead, it stood alone for him. Statistically, that 2011 season in which he had a goal and two assists in 18 games (nine starts) is remarkably his most productive. (Go to the 1:35 mark below.)
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I think the obvious has already been addressed, but now that the dust has settled a bit, here are a few other things that I noticed as the Union let another two points slip away in a 2-2 draw with Real Salt Lake.

- If the Union somehow miss the playoffs, the image of Sebastien Le Toux firing a ball into the hands of Josh Saunders should be on the cover of the season highlight tape. No moment would encapsulate the season quite so well. I hate to kill Le Toux for the game he had, since he scored the first goal and was active throughout. John Hackworth took a similar tack: "Sebastien had done so much work in that game," he said. "It’s hard to fault any guy that has run as much as he has and the length of the sprints and the efforts that he’s put out." But left all by his lonesome, the truth is that Le Toux has to finish it. I could bold, italicize and all-cap “has”, and it still doesn’t quite capture the pertinence of that sentence. Is he the main culprit in the loss? No. But it’s certainly a person of interest.

- I’ve never thought that the phrase “devastating draw” could be cobbled together, much less be perfectly appropriate two times in the span of five days. But once again, the Union jump on the emotional roller coaster and leave it feeling nauseous. From “a draw would be good” at the beginning to “must-have three points” late on when up a man and a goal (twice!) to feeling hard-done by leaving with the original result. The Union are turning the process of making a draw feel like a loss into an art, and you have to wonder what the psychological toll of two straight games like that is come Saturday against Houston. This team is resilient – the defiance with which Conor Casey almost blasted the ball through the net on the second goal – shows that, but you just wonder how much they can take.

- The final score line doesn’t bear it out, but I thought that Matt Kassel actually played well. Pairing with Brian Carroll late in the game actually had a bit of a calming effect, at least for a while.

- The verdict on Leo Fernandes' first start: Eh, not bad. He was a little too easily dispossessed from time to time, but it wasn't a bad debut on all counts.
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For the first 94 or so minutes Wednesday, this was going to be a post about the Union’s resilience, the prolificacy of Conor Casey, the development of Zac MacMath and a couple of digs about the officiating. I guess that will have to wait for another day.

As Union fans have come to know all too well, things change quickly, so instead, here goes.


There are a variety of late-game strategies the can be employed by soccer teams. Some go big and burly. Some go for possession. Some for aerial proficiency. Whatever you want to call the plan from the Philadelphia Union at the moment, it’s not working. It’s certainly creating exciting soccer, as the dramatic 2-2 draw with Real Salt Lake Wednesday reinforced.

But while the fans may be glued to their seats, the sight of points flying out the window as they did again at altitude against 10-man RSL is anything but encouraging.

Read more »

As July dawns, the Philadelphia Union undertake one of the toughest swings of the season, hitting the road for two games in four days against Real Salt Lake and Houston. Here are manager John Hackworth's thoughts from Tuesday's conference call:

On expectations for this road trip to Salt Lake and Houston:
I think a great outcome would be that we win one of these and tie one of them, so if we got four points. Obviously six is the best, but realistically, and I don’t even know if four is realistic with these two opponents, but I think for our team right now, we’re going in with the mindset that if we can get a draw out of one of these and a win in one, it would put us in really good position

On replacing Jack McInerney the next few games:
It’ll be more based on the matchup. We’re playing two tactically very different teams on the road, and so I think our system and our tactics will change and be dictated by our opponent as we go. We certainly have some good options with Jack being gone, but we’re going to try to make sure we utilize our strengths and see if we can’t take advantage of some of our opponents.

On the tactical flexibility provided by Sebastien Le Toux:
I think it’s extremely important. It gives us some very good options, especially when you’re going on the road and need to have a little bit of an element of surprise sometimes, you want to have that. Sebastien has clearly done very well for us wide, and that’s certainly an option to stay there or we can play him up high, which is a position that he has done very well at for this club in the past.
Read more »

(Associated Press)

The video tells one side of the story. John Hackworth tells another.

"I think Michael Farfan should be getting a lot of credit for being an attacking player in this league, and I don’t think he gets any of it," the Union's interim manager said Friday, following the Union's 0-0 draw with Real Salt Lake. "How many times was he fouled tonight? Anybody know? Right now, this is a league-wide thing. If (Javier) Morales, who I think is absolutely one of the best players in this league, can get that respect, Michael Farfan deserves that, too." 

Hackworth spent the better part of his seven-minute, postgame press conference saying the Union deserved better ... and deserved respect.

He said more stoppage-time minutes should have been added to the clock. He said more fouls should have been called in his team's favor. He said, like he did midweek, that the Union have stayed away from altercations, rather than instigating them. He said the Union, a team that on paper should have been "whooped" by RSL, played to a draw.

And he said Farfan, an All-Star midfielder, deserved calls.

For what it's worth, I've embedded video of the call Hackworth's calling into question. It was in the 57th minute, when RSL's Chris Wingert and Farfan got tangled up on a challenge for the ball. Wingert takes down Farfan and Farfan responds with a jab at Wingert. Both picked up yellow-card bookings.

“The guy came up cleats-up on me and he kind of got me," said Farfan, who's one yellow-card booking away from a suspension. "I definitely thought it was a red card."

“I can’t really change what the refs do. I don’t think anyone can. I think I should just keep my mouth shut and keep on playing."

Farfan, clearly, was trying to avoid a fine or a suspension being levied upon him by the MLS Disciplinary Committee. And the Union, clearly, need points to keep this season relevant. Friday, both were at a crossroads.

(Times / JULIA WILKINSON)

One guy in this photo was passed over for John Hackworth's starting XI. The other is serving a one-game suspension.

The Union's lineup tonight vs. Real Salt Lake takes on a unique look. Here it is:

GK ... MacMath
DF ... G Farfan, Valdes, Okugo, Gaddis
MF ... Lahoud, Carroll, M Farfan, Gomez
FW ... McInerney, Cruz
Bench ... Harrison, Albright, Lopez, Adu, Daniel, Martinez, Hoppenot

A few notes about the 18:

• Where's Freddy? Well, Hackworth wasn't kidding. He said earlier in the week that it wasn't in the Union's plans to make Freddy Adu a 90-minute player. Tonight, he most certainly will not be, as he will come off the bench -- if he enters the match, at all. It's the first time since July 21 (at NYRB) that Adu isn't in the starting lineup. But considering he wasn't selected to the gameday roster that day, you have to go back to June 30 (at Houston) to find the last time Adu came off the bench for the Union.
• Midfield mix. This is the first time Hackworth is fielding a midfield with his three best possession men, between Mike Lahoud, Gabriel Gomez and Brian Carroll. Since the midfield has been their weakness, it'll be interesting to see how aggressive the Union can (and likely will) be tonight, with that trio on the field at the same time.
• No Sheanon, no problem. Because Sheanon Williams is serving a one-game, red-card suspension, rookie Ray Gaddis will hold down the right back slot. It's Gaddis' ninth start of the season, but only his third since June 23 (vs. SKC).
• Cruz'ing up top. Danny Cruz gets a second consecutive start in the attack since being acquired by the Union. Hackworth's trying him up there with Jack McInerney. Maybe it'll spark more than the 0.833 goals per game (five goals) they've average in their last six league matches.