The Philadelphia Union came to Seattle hoping that a road win against perhaps the league’s best team could change the course of their season.
Instead, it turned out to be simply more of the same for the reeling Union, who blew another lead to drop a 2-1 decision to the Sounders on Saturday and remain winless in their eight games.
“We have a lot of guys playing good,” Union manager John Hackworth said. “We just continue to make mistakes at critical moments.”
The mistakes on Saturday came in the second half as the Union lost their marks to give up a pair of goals in the second half, including the game-winner from Chad Marshall off a corner kick in the 84th minute.
For the Union, it was the fifth time this season they surrendered a go-ahead or game-tying goal after the 80th minute.
“It’s a difficult one to take because I thought we came and we played well in the first half and we got up a goal,” Hackworth said. “Even in the second half, we had some chances to get the second [goal] and we didn’t put those away.”
The Union certainly looked poised to pull off the upset in the first half, taking a 1-0 halftime lead after Cristian Maidana hit a free kick off Seattle’s Brad Evans and into the back of the net and goalkeeper Zac MacMath stopped his third straight penalty kick.
But, in continuing with their season-long trend, the Union couldn’t make enough plays to win. And even though they snapped a 204-minute scoreless drought with their goal, a Union player has not scored from the run of play in their last four contests.
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“Hopefully we can get some luck on our side,” center back Amobi Okugo said. “I feel like whether it’s the defense has a good game and the offense struggles or the offense has a good game and the defense struggles, we just have to have a complete performance on both sides and hopefully we can get a win.”
With a troubling 1-4-5 record, the Union are probably past the point of taking away positives from bad results.
But they’re trying their best to remain hopeful.
“We take away that we can come into probably one of the most difficult environments in MLS and compete and play with, in my opinion, the best team in the league right now,” Hackworth said. “And we had an opportunity to get a result tonight. But once again, we kind of let ourselves down.”
Dave Zeitlin covers the Union for MLSsoccer.com. Email him at djzeitlin@gmail.com.
