CHESTER — Conditions were less than ideal for the Philadelphia Union on Saturday afternoon in Bridgeview, Ill., and with the team they brought to it.
One of MLS’s best road teams still proved why that’s the case in a 3-0 win over the Chicago Fire, ending their best-of-3 first-round playoff series in two games. It’s the last time the Union have to leave Subaru Park until 2026. And while that ability to win away from home won’t apply any further to their MLS Cup quest, the adaptability to conditions that the Union showed Saturday most certainly will.
Coach Bradley Carnell was forced into an unorthodox lineup decision.
For the first time this season, and the first time in his young professional career, outside back Frankie Westfield played in midfield. He was drafted into one of the twin No. 10 roles next to Milan Iloski, with Indiana Vassilev not 90 minutes fit and Quinn Sullivan absent after his ACL tear.
Union forward Tai Baribo, left, celebrates after his first-half goal with Jovan Lukic, center, and Kai Wagner during Saturday’s MLS playoff match against the Chicago Fire in Bridgeview, Ill. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)
Westfield had played in a more advanced role with the United States Under-20 team, but in a much different way than Carnell envisioned, and against slightly better opposition than the New Caledonian U-20s.
The Union had tried something similar once this season, when Nathan Harriel played as a No. 10 against St. Louis City in April. It worked, inasmuch as a painful slog of a 1-0 home win over the team that finished 13th in the West can be called success.
The Union deciphered that the playing track at SeatGeek Stadium, the Fire’s home for playoff games with Soldier Field booked, was notoriously slippery. They thought that the Fire might have to go to a backup goalkeeper, with Chris Brady sustaining an injury in training midweek.
That only amplified the Union’s plan for an away playoff tie.
They were content to concede possession but retain field position, tilting the field so that the Fire made those passes in their own end or in less dangerous areas.
The Union would press with Westfield and his tackling ability in a four-man unit pushing for mistakes. And they could clog lanes upfield in the middle of the pitch with Westfield dropping as a third 6 when the Fire breached the press, in particular monitoring the movements of creative winger Jonathan Bamba.
“We control field tilt usually in the games, in the opponent’s end, but I think it was a little bit more deliberate how we did it tonight,” Carnell said. “And tonight wasn’t about the beautiful, 100-pass possession sequences. I don’t think this field applied. You could see even what they were trying to do. It was just the state of the game and the state of the field that dictated what both teams could do.
“We couldn’t really play our game. They couldn’t play their game. It was just a bit of a lottery. But we take opportunities when they come. We’re a proactive team on the front foot, and we were trying to force mistakes.”
Whether that specific gambit worked or not is … well, Jeffrey Gal was too poor in net for the Fire to tell, but the Union’s collective press most definitely dictated the game. Tai Baribo stole a ball off his foot to score in the eighth minute, and Iloski charged down his goal kick in the 35th, the ball falling directly to Bruno Damiani to score into an open cage.
The Fire had nothing but bad luck.
Romingue Kouame went off injured in the 26th. They missed prime playmaker Philip Zinckernagel for Game 1 and Brady for Game 2. Brian Gutierrez took a beguilingly bad penalty in the 31st that looked more like a pregame goalie warmup drill, Andre Blake stopping his first in-play penalty kick by an MLS opponent in three and a half years. Gutierrez had a goal called back for a handball early in the second half.
An unbiased view might be that it was justice for the Fire’s time-wasting in Game 1 or fans’ homophobic chants that twice halted Game 2.
But the Union, for their part, approached the game in the correct way given the setting.
Chicago were 9-6-2 away from home this season and 6-5-6 at home. They’re better when they can play against the ball than when forced to dictate the game.
The Union should be familiar with disposition, since it’s been used to describe them a fair bit through the years. Even in last year’s disaster season, they were at times an elite road club while struggling to dictate play at home.
So the Union played to their strengths and made the most of them.
They did it without the two guys who combined on the first goal of Game 1, Vassilev and Mikael Uhre, the latter of whom failed a pregame fitness test on his knee. And they mostly learned from Game 1’s letdowns, when they allowed Bamba to affect the game between the lines late and conceded twice on set pieces to turn a 2-0 lead in penalty kicks.
The one blemish Saturday was Jovan Lukic running over Jack Elliott on a corner kick to lead to Gutierrez’s penalty.
That skillset to diagnose and adapt to the conditions of an opponent and a situation are what the Union need to do moving forward, home or away, in this postseason. And on that score, they came out way ahead Saturday.
“We tilted the field a little bit, played in their end a little bit more. And then the dominoes started to fall our way,” Carnell said. “So very impressive for the guys to seize the moment and to execute the way they did, to set up the tempo of the game in the right way. And then it was about game management.”
