Before Saturday’s game against the Montreal Impact, Philadelphia Union manager John Hackworth promised the tide would soon turn for his struggling team.
After a 1-0 loss in Montreal extended the Union’s winless streak to seven games, he promised it again.
“My opinion is it’s always a work in progress,” Hackworth said. “And that, in this case we have a team that’s still playing the game very well and we’re just going to have to be patient. I still believe that if we can play that way every single game, we’re going to come out at the better end of it.”
Hackworth may not be panicking yet but some Union fans certainly are after watching Philadelphia fail to score a goal from the run of play for a third straight game – against a team that had yet to record a shutout or win this season prior to Saturday.
But despite those frustrations, the Union manager sought out positives from Saturday’s game – particularly that the Union led in most statistical categories and created what he felt were enough scoring chances to win.
And while upset with the “really bad turnover” from Sheanon Williams that led to Felipe’s 15th-minute goal, Hackworth was pleased with how his team played from that point forward.
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“I thought our response was really good,” Hackworth said. “We put the pressure on. In particular, I thought in the first half we did a really good job of trying to attack and keep going. We moved the ball well most of the day.”
But as has been the case for much of the season, the Union failed to turn that “positive possession” into goals. And for Hackworth, the main solution to that problem seems to be to give it more time and hope things start to break right in the offensive third.
“I thought we again created plenty of chances for ourselves and ultimately it comes down to making a play,” Hackworth said. “They had a couple of plays and they made one of them. We had a lot of plays and we didn’t make any of them.”
Dave Zeitlin covers the Union for MLSsoccer.com. Email him at djzeitlin@gmail.com.
