April 11, 2016
Courtesy Earl Gardner/Philly Soccer Page
Tied for first place in the eastern conference, the Union will travel to Seattle this weekend.
Sitting atop the eastern conference table, the Philadelphia Union got back to work with a Monday double session.
The only non-participant was Ilsinho, who missed Friday's 2-1 win with a hamstring injury. The Brazilian midfielder was off to the side in the morning session, working on five-cone agility drills with Union trainers.
This is a different type of week ahead of Saturday's trip to Seattle.
The club will scrimmage the University of Maryland on Tuesday morning at Talen Energy Stadium. Then, on Wednesday, the team will do another double session before flying to Seattle on Thursday morning. The Union will do two training sessions on the West Coast while getting acclimated to the time change.
PhillyVoice spoke with manager Jim Curtin following the Monday's early session.
PhillyVoice: How's Ilsinho doing?
Jim Curtin: "He's recovering well. I think he'll at least be in the discussion for Seattle. That's the hope. We'll have to assess it as the week goes on. The good news is that with the Friday game, we had a little extra time. We have a long week this week, so we're gonna play Maryland Tuesday morning. They'll be here at nine o'clock in the stadium. We get to take a look at some things. But yea, Ilsinho is progressing well. He knows his body pretty well. There was still hope that he was going to play last week, but the day before training I talked to him, and he just thought it wasn't right, so we didn't want to risk furthering the damage to his hamstring. An MRI was done; it's nothing too severe. He's been getting treatment and hopefully he'll be up for selection against Seattle."
How did the Maryland scrimmage come about? Was it something you had been looking to do?
"I talked to (Maryland coach Sasho Cirovski) a long time ago and we put it on the calendar during preseason. We just thought it would be a good way to get guys who haven't gotten a lot of minutes, to get them some time, but also experiment with some things and treat it like a training session. We'll take a look at some things, whether it's having two more attacking guys in the middle, and some other situations we can go through. Also, scouting wise, Maryland has a good program, and there are kids who will be in the upcoming draft, plus Sebastian Elney, who's a Union (academy) guy."
Thoughts on how Vince Nogueira performed in his return to the starting lineup?
"I think he was solid, you know? He came in and did a good job of getting us from one side to the other, hitting some of those diagonal balls that, over the course of 90 minutes, can wear teams down, just because they have to run and cover a lot more ground. He did a good job from that point, and broke up some plays defensively and won some battles. I thought he had a solid performance, a good day."
What did you make of the Bethlehem Steel result?
"It's difficult and disappointing just because there weren't a lot of good performances from our guys in particular. When they go down [to play for Bethlehem Steel], we expect them to play a certain way and represent the first team well. I don't think too many guys came out with positives from the game. Obviously it's a good Red Bull team and a good environment for them to play in, and a good stadium.
"It's disappointing. Not just because it was a 4-0 game, but if you break down each individual and their performance, it wasn't what we've seen every day in training with the first team. We'll talk to guys and have little individual film sessions and meetings and kind of break it down. But that's what those games are for, to get them game experience. Sometimes you realize, maybe you're not quite ready to make that jump. There are some humbling moments in some guys careers, and I'd say that would be one of them. They can improve from it. It's the best way to get tested, and it's still a learning process for those guys."
Bethlehem Steel own goal pic.twitter.com/MNgzDykwXb
— Kevin Kinkead (@KevinKCBS3) April 10, 2016
What will you say to Josh Yaro about that game?
"I've had a lot of individual meetings with Josh, in terms of him needing to have a short-term memory. He's very demanding and hard on himself sometimes. When there's a mistake, he kind of dwells on it for too long. That's something where, as a center back, you almost have to be like a defensive back in football, where you have to have a short-term memory. If you get beat,it's going to happen and there's going to be goals in games. You have to move on to the next play. The next play is the most important one. Again, it's good for him to get that experience down there now, so when he's called up to the first team he's ready to go with more experience under his belt."
You're flying to Seattle early, on Thursday this week. Is that just the product of having an extra day of preparation?
"We talked with Garrison (Draper), who is the head of our sports performance department now. He's done a lot of analysis on when you go out and when you move time zones, whether it's one hour, or two hours, or three hours. He's looked at the amount of points you're getting back on those trips. We tweaked some things, and we're going out there early in the morning and we'll train when we land, just to try to get the travel right out of our system. Then we'll train on Friday. We did it in Chicago, too, a little differently. We flew out to Chicago and trained at their place. It's a different way of doing it, but he has some pretty comprehensive data on who gets road points, especially when you travel three time zones. To change that is something I'm hopeful for, because there hasn't been a lot of success, not just from us, but league-wide. When teams change three time zones, the results aren't usually good. You've seen it throughout the league. It's a little tweak to it and we're trying something new. There's some data behind it."
