The Union’s playoff-opening win over Chicago was dramatic and entertaining, but that doesn’t mean it was all good.
Any game in which a team loses a two-goal lead by conceding twice on set pieces clearly has a flaw. That’s been one of the items of focus this week heading into Saturday’s Game 2 on the Fire’s turf (5:30 p.m., Apple TV).
“They took some space late on in the game, and we give away two silly set-piece moments,” manager Bradley Carnell said Thursday in his weekly news conference at the Union’s practice facility. “But that’s something we can control, and we should — and should have or could have done a better job on that. And [it] for sure is a topic for us going into the next game.”
The tactical battle before Chicago’s late comeback came down to the Union having to break the Fire’s five-back defense, then adapt to Gregg Berhalter’s 73rd-minute tactical switch to a 4-3-3. Whether Game 2 plays out that way partially will come down to which of those formations Berhalter starts with.
At least now the Union have seen plenty of each. Chicago used the 4-3-3 in both regular-season meetings — and the Union won both, 1-0 at Soldier Field in June (with a lot of backups playing) and 4-0 at Subaru Park in August.
“They have shown a real resiliency with three centerbacks — they can defend deep, plug up space, and catch you in the transition, and they’ve shown that they can break you down,” Carnell said. “It’s something that they’ve been working on now toward the latter end of the season, and it gets them into the playoffs, into the play-in game against Orlando. So, credit to them. But I think we’re a team who’s built on principles, as we’ve always spoken about.”
What is certain is that though the Union lost the lead, they didn’t lose their nerve. There were slip-ups, such as Jakob Glesnes’ foul that set up the equalizer, and Mikael Uhre’s saved penalty kick. But even at the end of regulation, once Andre Blake stepped between the posts, there was calm confidence.
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That is a sign of a team that earned its confidence through the regular season and kept it after boarding the playoff roller coaster.
“You can feel the tension, right?” Carnell said, noting that the U.S. Open Cup semifinal run helped prepare the newcomers for this moment. “We build tension in training. We build scenarios in training. We train with provocational rules, to provoke certain behaviors and stuff like that.”
There has been messaging from the coaching staff, and just important, from the players to each other. Blake, Glesnes, and Alejandro Bedoya have made sure their veteran experience is transmitted to younger colleagues.
“You lead by talking or you lead by doing,” Carnell said. “And I think all of those guys have done a great job in the video rooms and done a great job on the field by leading — and not just leading when the lights are on. For me, it’s been around little conversations with individuals in and around the facility or on the field, the way they drive the tempo in training, the way they drive the quality in training, the way they deliver the messaging in training.”
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Carnell cited Bedoya as a particular example after watching him provide some choice words during intrasquad scrimmages.
“He’s defending on the other team [as] a sparring team,” Carnell said, as in the team defending against the expected starters. “And he puts guys in a situation to be like, ‘Come on, you should have controlled that better; you should have done better there.’ So he’s actually helping coach the situation while he’s defending … which just drives the intensity up and drives the quality up as well.”
