Photo: Paul Rudderow

They never had a chance.

The Philadelphia Union’s 2018 season — by some metrics the best season in franchise history — came to a crashing end on Wednesday night on a baseball field in the Bronx.

A far superior New York City FC team tore the Union to shreds from the opening kickoff, with the final scoreline flattering the Union.

For the second time in three years, the Union scraped into the playoffs with the sixth seed, and became the first team eliminated with a 3-1 blowout.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and plenty that the new sporting director, Ernst Tanner, will need to do with an ungainly roster in the offseason.

But one thing is evident after yet another big-game collapse.

The Union cannot bring Jim Curtin back as their manager.

A tactical mess

The problem with never changing your tactics is that if you absolutely need to change them, you have no experience playing any other way.

For the entire year, Jim Curtin played Alejandro Bedoya and Haris Medunjanin exclusively as deep-lying midfielders. The squad played exclusively a 4-2-3-1, a formation that allowed them to use ball control and width to squeeze opponents into submission — when they had a willing opponent.

When the going got tough, though, teams began to adjust, and the Union had no tactical answer.

The first worrying signs should have been seen when Montreal Impact came to Talen Energy Stadium and sliced through the Union on the counter-attack in September.

If the lesson wasn’t learned then, it should have by the time Houston Dynamo ended the Union’s dream of hoisting the U.S. Open Cup title within twenty minutes in late September.

By the time Sunday rolled around, it seemed like madness that the Union would be unprepared for a team that they couldn’t break down or box in. And yet, there they were, rolling out the same set-up letting the goal of a home playoff match predictably slip away.

Last night, to his credit, Curtin realized that using the same lineup that lost to City would be suicide. He inserted Warren Creavalle in the midfield, pushing Alejandro Bedoya up to right wing and dropping C.J. Sapong to the bench.

And yet that approach was doomed from the start. How many times had the Union started Creavalle with Medunjanin in the midfield this year? (Once, at Columbus.) How many times had Bedoya played the wing? (Zero, to the best of my recollection.)

With everything on the line, Curtin had no choice but to put the team in an unfamiliar position — because he refused to try anything different until he had no other choice.

That’s a recurring problem with Curtin, of course. There’s a decent argument to be made that the catalyst for the Union’s hot streak over the summer was Cory Burke replacing C.J. Sapong at striker. Curtin didn’t make that change proactively. He waited as long as he possibly could, until it was literal insanity not to start the lively Burke over the ice-cold Sapong, so wedded was he to whatever Sapong does off the ball to make up for his goal-scoring woes.

Curtin has never understood that sometimes a coach needs to be proactive, rather than reactive, with lineup decisions.

On Wednesday night, it cost the Union dearly.

When the lights go on, Curtin’s men get small

Jim Curtin is now 0-5 as a manager in MLS playoff games and U.S. Open Cup finals.

When the Union have found success under his watch, it’s been early in the season. In 2016, the club got off to a hot start. 2017 and 2018 saw winning streaks under starry summer skies.

But when the calendar turns to fall, Curtin’s teams inevitably collapse. The 2016 and 2017 teams faded into irrelevance as the season reached their conclusion.

This year, the Union finished with four losses in six matches. Needing just one point from two matches to secure a vital home playoff game, the Union earned zero — and looked bad doing it.

The problems on Wednesday night were familiar to anyone who watched the U.S. Open Cup final. There was the early goal that took the wind out of the team’s sails. There was the listless, unfocused attempt to execute a gameplan in response, only to see the other side double their advantage easily. There was the meek acceptance of the inevitable, of a team deciding that all hope was long lost.

To be clear, the Union’s players were individually putrid on Wednesday night. The defense looked their age, and got no help from the supposedly veteran midfield. Borek Dockal played, according to the box score. So did Bedoya. Medunjanin popped up long enough to point at his man repeatedly and pick up a stupid yellow card for dissent. Fafa Picault spent the game in a state of pent-up rage. Only Ilsinho, who came on at halftime, seemed eager to make things happen — he did create the consolation goal.

It’s clear that there’s a leadership gulf on this team. That implicates those veteran midfielders, sure.

But when a team fails to turn up for big game after big game, that must fall on the manager.

Whatever Curtin is doing, it’s not enough to get this team past a six seed and an early exit.

Ambition or mediocrity

There are plenty of other things I could say (and have said) about Jim Curtin’s performance as Union manager over the last 4.5 seasons.

But I think it all boils down to one simple question.

After another failure on the big stage, how can the Union look their fans in the eye and send Jim Curtin out on the touchline to start the 2019 season?

And this season was a failure — a failure to earn a home playoff game, a failure to win the U.S. Open Cup, a failure to look remotely competitive in the playoffs, a failure to develop any young players other than Trusty and McKenzie, and above all else a failure to prove to the devoted masses why they should be devoted to this club.

Not all of the blame belongs to Curtin. But there’s little evidence that he deserves credit.

After five years as the club’s manager, we know that this is the best he can do.

If the Union have any ambition at all, they’ll bring in a new voice and try to do better.