The Philadelphia Union settled for a 1-1 draw in their Group A match against Orlando City SC on Monday, but things might've been different if they had drawn the benefit of a 50-50 call at the end of the match.
In the waning moments of second-half stoppage time, Orlando's Antonio Carlos attempted to clear a ball out of the box and saw it take a deflection off teammate Ruan. Should it have been a penalty kick? Judge for yourself below.
"Maybe a handball at the end from the texts I’ve received,” Curtin said about the play.
Added midfielder Alejandro Bedoya: "From my angle it looked like a handball, but I'm not sure. It was very close."
Bedoya also felt aggrieved that Orlando's equalizer through Mauricio Pereyra was allowed to stand, suggesting he had been fouled in the buildup.
"I thought it was a foul on me. I think the way he comes in high, he clipped me when I cleared the ball."
Either way, both Curtin and Bedoya said they felt 1-1 was ultimately a fair result based on a game that both teams went into already sure of qualification to the Knockout Stage. But, for Curtin, it was also another example of an adequate performance that could have been better. It's been a theme throughout the tournament from Curtin when he speaks about his emerging Philadelphia squad, which is still on a mission to prove its status among the league's upper-tier teams.
"We haven't played a perfect 90 minutes yet, we haven't played a complete 90 minutes," Curtin said. "So there's still things to work on and improve. The goal is every time you get the opportunity to play 90 minutes you want to get better each time you step on the field. I think we've done that for stretches. In each game we had a little bit of improvement in some areas, but I still think we can put together a total 90 minutes.
"The elements are difficult, the start times have been different, so there's been a lot of things going against the players being able to press and run and fight for 90 minutes, but as the coach, the technical staff, we'll continue to push them into this next round where now, if you lose you go home. So there's the ultimate consequence. We want to try and win a trophy here. We have a team that's playing very well, I think as well as anybody right now. We respect all the teams in the league but we don't fear anybody."
Bedoya echoed the sentiment, specifically citing sharpness in the attack as one of the primary areas of improvement the team needs to focus on ahead of the Knockout Stage.
"I think there are things we have to continue to work on," he said. "I think in all three of these games, we've lacked that final pass, the final product. Tonight was no different. I thought in the first half we had a good chance to break them off and even some of the crosses, our runs have to be better, more decisive in the box and just sharper with our final-third passing. Those are things we're going to build on, but good effort by the team. On one end, we could have done better offensively, on the other end [Andre Blake] came up with some big saves again. Overall we're satisfied with the point given how the game unfolded."
While the Union await to find out their first KO Stage opponent on Saturday, Curtin said he'll be scouting his potential opponents, while giving the players some necessary time to recover physically after the demanding stretch of group stage matches.
"We'll have a good little window of rest here where we can recover," Curtin said. "We’ll obviously scout I believe Group C, the Toronto group. Possibly it’s Toronto, New England or DC, teams we’re obviously very familiar with, teams we’ll have to be on our game for. We’ll keep an eye on the games, scout the games and try to improve our game. It's time for recovery, get guys fresh again, work on things in training and get a little bit better as we go along here. It's our fourth game in the last four months, so I'm proud of where the group is at but we'll continue to push to try to get better."
