While most eyes nationally are on Nashville SC for Sunday’s GEODIS Park grand opening (4 pm ET | ESPN, ESPN Deportes), the Philadelphia Union are hoping to play spoiler.
The Union enter MLS Week 9 atop the Eastern Conference standings and look like a legitimate Supporters’ Shield contender, posing quite the challenge now that the Coyotes’ eight-game road swing has concluded.
“The first 15 minutes really set the tone,” Curtin said of usual road games. “That gets magnified probably tenfold now when you’re going in to open up another team’s stadium because this is something their fans – and they have a great fanbase – have waited for years and years.
“It’s a beautiful-looking stadium. We’re excited to play in it. We’re excited to be the ones who get the opportunity to open it. But at the same time, we want to try and make 30,000 fans go quiet, which is the hardest thing to do in our game. It’s really hard on the road.”
Odds are little will separate the clubs, with each side winning a home regular-season match, 1-0, before Philadelphia knocked Nashville out of the Audi 2021 MLS Cup Playoffs. That postseason match, an Eastern Conference Semifinal, ended in a 1-1 draw before the Union won the penalty kick shootout at Subaru Park.
Given that history, Curtin expects another encounter where one or two plays define the outcome.
“That playoff game, I think, will be what the game looks like,” Curtin said. “You’ll see two really good teams. The chances will be very tight, there won’t be many of them. The team that makes the play on a transition or that team that makes a play on a restart will be the happy team at the end of the day here.”
Making matters harder for Philadelphia, Nashville bring a 19-match home unbeaten run from their previous Nissan Stadium stomping grounds. And they’ll need to corral Hany Mukhtar, who has recorded at least one goal contribution in his last 10 home matches.
The Boys in Gold have also established a clear identity under manager Gary Smith since their 2020 entry to the league, Curtin said.
“I think if you took a poll of fans, you took a poll of players, if you took a poll of coaches in the league and you [asked] what comes to mind when you think of Nashville,” Curtin said, “I think instantly they’d go very organized defensively, pretty lethal on the counterattack, good on attacking set pieces. A real strong foundation and a tough team to play against.”
Now, it’s about seeing which of these strong teams can find the edge when all of MLS is watching.
“We’re a first-place team that has to go in there with confidence, but we recognize a really good opponent, really strong,” Curtin said. “We’ll have to limit them as best we can and take our chances. They don’t give up a lot so we have to really execute in front of goal.”
