UNION SMASH GOAT-LESS MIAMI 4-1

Photo courtesy of  Kyle Ross, USA TODAY Sports

Article by J.D. Walker

Columnist and Co-Host of The Sports Den on Spanglish World Networks, Spanglish Sports World & Zingo TV

Philadelphia. -  Inter Miami shocked the world when they signed Lionel Messi earlier this month. News broke on Saturday that they’re also signing Messi’s former Barcelona teammate and Spanish legend Sergio Busquets. Unfortunately for Miami they will not be reporting to the squad until July, so the pre-renovation last place Miami squad came up to Subaru Park and got pounded by the Philadelphia Union 4-1 on a hot and humid Saturday evening in Chester. Jakob Glesnes, Julian Carranza, and Leon Flach scored for the Union in a less than crisp match that still sent the fans home happy with a big win.

In the 14th minute the Union set up for a corner kick on the right side. Defender/set piece specialist Kai Wagner planted a rainbow right in the center of the box, finding the pot of gold at the end in the form of Jakob Glesnes sending a header past goalie Drake Callender into the bottom left corner of the net to give Philadelphia the early 1-0 edge. In the 35th minute Francisco Negri of Miami went down with a knee injury while attempting to field a cross to the right of the Union net, leading to a stoppage for medical attention before Negri was carried off the field and Robbie Robinson came into the match to replace him. Shortly after play resumed, in the 39th minute Mikael Uhre sent a through ball from the far right side finding Daniel Gazdag in the center of the box, quickly tapping it over to Julian Carranza to fire it into the center of the net for the Union’s second goal of the night. Shortly before halftime in the 4th minute of stoppage time, “El Capitan” Alejandro Bedoya fielded a cross in the center of the box and passed over the Leon Flach just outside who fired a left footer into the bottom left of the net for his first goal of the season to give Philadelphia a 3-0 lead at the half.

The Union lost the clean sheet in the 50th minute when Robert Taylor fired one from outside the box which deflected off Glesnes into the net to put Inter Miami on the board and cut the deficit to 3-1 and briefly give Miami some hope. Benjamin Cremaschi was credited with the assist. Glimmers of hope for road teams at Subaru Park rarely last long, and this one was completely out by the 68th minute. Mikael Uhre was deep on the left side and tried to send a pass over to Carranza in front of the net, but David Ruiz of Miami slid down to intercept the pass but instead of clearing the ball flew towards the net and bounced off the crossbar into the net for an Own Goal to give Philadelphia a 4-1 lead. The Union appeared to get a fifth goal in the 79th minute on what would have been another Miami Own Goal, but it was quickly waved off as Carranza was offside, leaving the final score at 4-1.

In the postgame Jim Curtin said the play was “Not our best”, continuing:

“I’ll give credit to Miami. I thought they played really well. Obviously the fans go home happy with a 4-1 win, but I don’t think we played our best soccer, not even close…It looks good on paper, but I think there’s still a lot of things we can work on and improve.”

Curtin did see positives in this game and was especially happy to see Leon Flach score his first goal of the season as a reward for the dirty work he does:

“Leon doesn’t score a ton; he scores big goals though. That’s a big goal at the end of the half. He scored the big one against Cincinnati (in the playoffs last season). I believe soccer is fair in that regard. When you work as hard as Leon does, you get rewarded. Tonight, he got rewarded with a goal, did a great job for us, and played a great game. That goal before the end of the half to go up 3-0 kind of deflates Miami. Goals going into the locker room are really important, and that was a big one.”

Team captain Alejandro Bedoya echoed his coach’s sentiments:

“We did not play well. We need to play a lot better than this, especially at home. I don’t know how we scored four goals but that’s the great thing about this team that we’re still able to come up with goals even when we didn’t play well so I’ll take the victory but we got to work on a lot of things and I’m just happy with the result.”

Jakob Glesnes was happy with his goal off the corner kick, “I was so happy when I had a smaller guy with me and I saw the ball was just floating perfectly for me so it was just to get the head on the ball. It was really good because it’s been a long time now since I scored a goal. That tasted good, so hopefully it’s a catch up effect now and we can score more.”

News and notes:

• Andre Blake and Damion Lowe were unavailable as they were playing with the Jamaican national team in Chicago against Team USA in the first Group Stage match of the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament. Lowe had a yellow card in the 3rd minute and a goal in the 13th minute for Jamaica in a 1-1 draw.
• Alejandro Bedoya had his first start back with the squad after missing six games with an injury, picking up an assist on Flach’s goal just before halftime.
• Kai Wagner came out of the game at halftime after tweaking a hamstring. Wagner missed several games with an injury to the same hamstring earlier this season. Coach Curtin said if it was a playoff game Wagner would have played through it but he was taken out of this game as a precautionary measure.
• Philadelphia improves to 10-5-4 on the season (34 points), currently good for 4th in the Eastern Conference, 1 point behind Nashville and 2 points behind New England on the table.
• The Union play their next three matches on the road, starting with Sunday July 2 in Atlanta at 4pm. That game will be broadcast on Fox and streaming on Apple TV+. Miami plays at home against Austin FC at 7:30pm on Saturday July 1.