CHESTER, Pa. – Forget about a six-point swing.
After just beating a Toronto FC team ahead of them in the Eastern Conference playoff race on Wednesday, the Philadelphia Union are now ready to beat the Reds for a second time in a four-day span when the two clubs meet again Saturday at BMO Field (3 pm ET, Univision Deportes).
Call it a potential 12-point swing.
“We’re going to have to be better than we were today to get points from them again,” defender Sheanon Williams told MLSsoccer.com following Wednesday’s 1-0 home victory. “If we go there and give them back three points, that does us no good.”
While the remainder of the Union’s games – all of which are against Eastern Conference foes – will all be critical, this unique home-and-home series with Toronto presents Philly with a unique opportunity to rise up the standings while sending another team plummeting.
And opening the series with a victory, they believe, may help in their quest to complete the two-game sweep and pass the slumping Reds for a playoff spot.
“The minimum of what we need there is a tie, but I think we can go for a win,” said Sebastien Le Toux, who assisted on the game’s only goal Wednesday. “Right now we are more confident than them and we need to use that confidence at the beginning of the next game to win it.”
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The Union are certainly playing like a confident team, with Wednesday’s victory marking their fourth straight league win at home. But the Union haven’t won in their last four road games, making Saturday’s match a far more difficult test, even though the absence of defender Ashtone Morgan (red-card suspension) will make things difficult for Toronto’s already-shorthanded backline.
But Philly interim manager Jim Curtin believes his team is growing up at just the right time, and that Wednesday’s grind-it-out victory over Toronto shows him that they can win on the road and pick up their first three-game winning streak of the season.
“Sometimes, it’s ugly. There’s no real nice way to say it," Curtin said. “I can sit up here and talk about the beautiful game and possession, possession, possession, and that would sound nice. The reality of our league right now is this grind in the Eastern Conference. You have to fight. I have men right now. I have men out there on the field and they are playing like men. They are learning to win. I think we have taken a big step. A 1-0 game says a lot to me about the character of our group.”
Dave Zeitlin covers the Union for MLSsoccer.com. Email him at djzeitlin@gmail.com.
