CHESTER, Pa. – Since the start of the 2014 season, the Philadelphia Union have allowed 14 goals in the 80th minute or later, including two in a brutal collapse at Kansas City last week.
On Saturday against New York City FC, they flipped the script.
Instead of allowing a late winner, the Union broke a 1-1 deadlock in stoppage-time with a dramatic goal of their own, sending Philly to their first win of the season and providing a glimmer of hope that perhaps better days are on the horizon.
“That’s pretty fitting to score late, huh?” defender Sheanon Williams said. “That’s a credit to our guys and how hard we’ve worked to start the season. Things haven’t gone our way but tonight things went our way. And hopefully this will catapult us and get us moving in the right direction.”
To say things didn’t go the Union’s way through the first five games of the season is probably a severe understatement. Doomed by injuries, silly red cards, tough calls and, of course, conceding late goals, the Union came into Saturday’s game riding a three-game losing streak and having not yet scored at PPL Park this year.
Even Saturday’s game provided its fair share of tough breaks as leading scorer Fernando Aristeguieta was a late scratch because of a quad injury and Sebastien Le Toux had to leave in the second half after slicing his arm on the boards behind the end line – a nasty gash that required five stitches but shouldn’t prevent him from missing much time.
But the Union struck first on a goal credited to 20 year-old Homegrown midfielder Zach Pfeffer and survived a second-half onslaught from New York City, only allowing one goal from the visitors before Vincent Nogueira sent the PPL Park crowd into frenzy with his winner at the death.
“That was the last chance,” Nogueira said. “I was a little bit tired like everybody else on the field. I just saw the goalkeeper did not get the ball, so I was in the box and I was first on the ball because my opponent was just next to me. It was perfect.”
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Interestingly enough, Union head coach Jim Curtin said he was about to take Nogueira out before the goal but changed his mind at the last minute when he saw Pfeffer cramp up, taking Pfeffer out instead. Curtin took that as a good sign that maybe his team might start to get some lucky breaks after all of the “heartbreak” they dealt with through the first five games.
“I’ll probably sleep better tonight,” the Union coach said. “I didn’t sleep at all after the Kansas City game. … We can play better, there’s no question. It wasn’t a great performance but it was a gutty, needed performance.”
Curtin went as far as saying that a tie would have been a fair result given that New York City controlled the run of play for most of the second half. And given the Union’s recent history of surrendering late goals, there were probably many fans that thought a tie would have been the best-case scenario for Philly.
But, with the game tied and time running out, the Union players never allowed themselves to think like that.
“All of that stuff is behind us hopefully,” Williams said. “Nobody was out there thinking, ‘Oh here we go again.’ We were all thinking to push and get three points, especially at home and in front of our own crowd.”
