CHESTER, Pa. – How do you move on from watching another team win a trophy on your own field?
For the Philadelphia Union, who lost a 3-1 extra-time heartbreaker to the Seattle Sounders in Tuesday’s US Open Cup title game at PPL Park, they have no choice. After all, they’re right on the bubble of making the playoffs with just six games left in the regular season.
“Of course it hurts,” rookie Pedro Ribeiro said. “It’s got to hurt. But we’ve got to keep moving forward to MLS because we know we’ve got to win a few games to get into the playoffs and have a good run. We can’t let this affect us. We have to think about it, but we’ve got to get over it and move forward from it.”
Both Ribeiro and Vincent Nogueira had golden opportunities to score the game-winning goal at the end of the second half but couldn’t find the back of the net. That the Union came that close to beating the league’s top team in a title game did little to quell their dismay – as evidenced by how glumly the players accepted their second-place medals, with a couple immediately taking them off.
But, even if the pain of losing a final in extra time won’t soon subside, the knowledge that they played well in such a big spot did provide more reassurance that the playoffs are well within reach.
“It just goes to show that we can play with the best team in the league,” Union goalkeeper Zac MacMath said. “Seattle’s been great all year long and we were toe-to-toe with them and probably deserved to beat them in the first 90. It just goes to show this team has a lot going for it, and hopefully we can turn this into a positive and take this into our playoff race.”
In many ways, the US Open Cup helped the Union revive their season, as interim manager Jim Curtin led the team into the tournament’s quarterfinals by winning two extra-time games in his first two games in charge. Gaining more confidence from there, the new boss helped Philly charge up the Eastern Conference standings while guiding them to two more USOC wins and the franchise’s first-ever final.
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But now that this year’s US Open Cup has ended, there’s only one more trophy left for the Union to win this year. And they certainly don’t have much time to dwell on Tuesday’s loss as they welcome a Houston Dynamo team trying to catch them to PPL Park on Saturday (7 pm ET, MLS LIVE).
“We have to move on,” Sebastien Le Toux said. “It will be up to us to kind of pick our heads up and be ready for Houston because we’re in a playoff race and we want to be in the playoffs.
“It’s an objective for this team and we are six games away from that.”
Dave Zeitlin covers the Union for MLSsoccer.com. Email him at djzeitlin@gmail.com.
