CHESTER, Pa. – This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end.
Not after the Philadelphia Union surged into playoff contention with a scorching summer.
Not after they hosted the US Open Cup Final and came within inches of winning the club’s first-ever trophy.
And certainly not after they jumped ahead of the Columbus Crew by a pair of goals late in Saturday’s game, coming 15 minutes away from earning a vital win that would have pushed them within a point of the final playoff spot.
But, in the end, the Union couldn’t outrun their early-season struggles, their recent woes after losing in the Open Cup Final, or their unhealthy habit of failing to close games out.
And after giving up three unanswered goals to drop a 3-2 home decision to the Crew in devastating fashion, the Union were officially eliminated from playoff contention and left to answer what exactly went wrong.
“I don’t think we stopped playing,” interim manager Jim Curtin said. “Our guys played hard. Maybe we’re not quite there yet. We’re not quite good enough yet.”
The Union certainly looked good enough for a couple of months after Curtin took over for John Hackworth in June. But since sweeping a home-and-home series with Toronto in early September, Philly went winless in its last five games to fall out of the playoff race, with their last two games ending in especially brutal fashion.
In last week's draw with Chicago, it was goalkeeper Rais Mbolhi making a stoppage-time mistake that gifted the Fire a game-tying goal. This week, it was an entire defensive collapse that allowed a Crew team playing without leading scorer Federico Higuain to set a club record by scoring three goals in four minutes.
“In a lot of ways, this one is somehow worse than even the last one as far as letdowns go,” Curtin said. “To give up two goals on our home field and not be able to hold on is inexcusable from everyone – from the top down. It’s not good enough.
“And, to be honest, we’re not a playoff team. That’s clear. Over the course of 32 games now, we’ve come up short. To be eliminated on a night like this, you deserve to be when you give up three goals in a six-minute span.”
Curtin blamed the collapse, in part, on previous collapses, noting that once the Crew sliced the Union’s deficit in half, he could sense that players were thinking: “Oh shoot, here we go again.”
“We didn’t have a killer instinct to kill off the game,” the Union manager said. “We lacked that. And we’ve lacked that a lot this year. It came back to get us again.”
And that’s something Curtin said needs to change next season. But until then, the Union will have an entire offseason to lament the fact that they’ll be watching the playoffs from home for the fourth time in the franchise’s five-year history.
“We’re professional athletes,” said Danny Cruz, who scored the first of two second half goals for the Union before the lead was blown. “It’s what we live for. We live to win championships, to win games. We don’t take this lightly. I don’t. I feel awful. I feel like we let down the club. I feel like we let down the fans, more importantly.”
Dave Zeitlin covers the Union for MLSsoccer.com. Email him at djzeitlin@gmail.com.
