The Union will want to forget their Leagues Cup finale, a lethargic 2-0 loss to Santos Laguna on Thursday night at Subaru Park.
Fortunately for Ryan Richter’s squad, there isn’t long to dwell on the loss or its Leagues Cup run, which ended with a win and two losses.
The Union will travel to Yankee Stadium to face New York City FC on Sunday (6 p.m., Apple TV), kicking off a crowded stretch of the schedule that features three games in seven days.
“We have to take this one on the chin,” said Richter, the Union’s interim manager. “We have to have some honest conversations tomorrow, and we have to start preparing right away and get ready to start MLS play again in the way we left off in the last game against Atlanta.”
The Union already had considered their busy schedule before getting the ball rolling against Santos Laguna.
While they weren’t mathematically eliminated from the Leagues Cup entering Thursday, they would have needed to win by at least four goals and have favorable outcomes in other matches.
“That is something that we’re capable of, but not many games are going to go exactly that way,” Richter said of winning by four goals. “If you push for that, you win, 3-0, and you don’t get it, that leaves you now tired on Sunday.”
So Richter took the opportunity to rest many key players. Quinn Sullivan and Japhet Sery Larsen put in 90-minute shifts, but the likes of Milan Iloski, Cavan Sullivan, Danley Jean Jacques, Frankie Westfield, and Kai Wagner rested their legs as the Union prepare to enter a key stretch.
“Including tonight, that’s four games in 10 days,” Richter said. “That’s tough, to play with the same team through that kind of stretch. … We turn around Sunday against New York City. [It is] a big game to try and keep the form that we’ve had in the league. To keep that going, we want to make sure that we were fresh going into that.”
After they travel to NYCFC on Sunday, the Union will host Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami on Wednesday. The Union then travel to Texas to face Austin FC on Saturday.
While Richter was disappointed not to get a better effort from his Thursday night selections, his approach to the match made sense.
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Based on how Thursday night’s games played out, there was no way for the Union to advance, even with a win against Santos Laguna, as Real Salt Lake, the fourth-place MLS team and the last one to advance, finished with seven points.
NYCFC found itself in a similar situation to the Union when it came to its Leagues Cup finale, but manager Pascal Jansen took a more aggressive approach.
NYCFC needed to win big against Necaxa and get some help from the out-of-town scoreboard to move on to the knockout rounds and set its lineup accordingly. Jansen started usual MLS starters like Nicolás Fernández, Keaton Parks, and Andrés Perea.
NYCFC lost, 2-1, to Necaxa and was eliminated.
The approach each team took to their Thursday night Cup games could give the Union a rest advantage when it comes time for the two sides to meet on Sunday. That’s an important edge for a team that still needs every point it can get to claw back into the playoff picture.
The Union (4-10-4, 16 points) won one game before the league’s summer FIFA World Cup break, leading to the dismissal of manager Bradley Carnell in May. Richter took over as interim and coached the Union to three consecutive league wins after returning from the international break in July.
Despite their recent run of good form, the Union are still chasing the rest of the Eastern Conference. They sit seven points behind D.C. United, which currently occupies the ninth and final playoff spot in the East.
Every match going forward is crucial for the club’s playoff aspirations, and the ones against Eastern Conference foes carry extra importance. The Union will play three matches against the East before the end of August, two of which are away.
Since their return to the league schedule, the Union have looked like a different team than the one that lost, 2-1, to NYCFC (7-6-5, 26 points) in March.
But can the momentum the team built through its first three post-international break league matches carry through a poor Leagues Cup campaign? Richter hopes so, but he didn’t see it in his team on Thursday.
“I didn’t see that fire, in the end of the game, that I saw in the last few weeks,” Richter said. “We can’t lose that. We can’t lose that piece.”
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