The Union earned a statement win in Chicago, but Ryan Richter is as level-headed as ever
“When we go into games like this, it’s not about me,” Richter said after his team passed what he had called the biggest test of his tenure. It did so by jumping on some awful defending by the Fire.
It’s tempting to say the Union won a game on Wednesday that they weren’t supposed to. And it may sound harsh in light of the 3-1 result, with Bruno Damiani scoring two great goals and Milan Iloski tallying the other.
Not for nothing, though, did interim manager Ryan Richter say Monday that it would be “the biggest test for this group since we’ve been coaching.” Chicago has been that good, especially since superstar striker Robert Lewandowski arrived in the summer.
Both men could have seen a lot of things coming in this game. They might not have predicted the moment that turned it on its head.
Former Union centerback Jack Elliott did his old team a big favor when he grabbed a piece of Iloski’s jersey from behind and sent Iloski to the turf. It would have been pass interference in a Chicago Bears game, but this was his second yellow card in five minutes, so he was ejected.
It also was barely two minutes after the Fire scored the night’s first goal, on a well-worked team play finished by Maren Haile-Selassie.
But it was not the silliest moment for a club that started the night in third place in the Eastern Conference and is dreaming of its first deep playoff run in 18 years.
» READ MORE: Bruno Damiani shines again as the Union extends unbeaten streak to 14 with a 3-1 win at Chicago
(Yes, it’s been that long. Since reaching the conference finals in 2009 — the year before the Union began playing — the Fire have made the playoffs just three times and won just one of the five postseason games they’ve played.)
Instead, the top dishonor goes to the play that produced Damiani’s second goal of the night.
Jovan Lukić hasn’t made many easier tackles in his Union tenure than the one that took the ball off Mauricio Pineda at midfield. He promptly sent Damiani forward, and off the striker went.
This produced a four-on-three break featuring the Union’s top attackers: Damiani, Milan Iloski, and Quinn and Cavan Sullivan. None of the Fire’s players had an easy choice to make on who to mark. Still, Damiani was allowed to run nearly 25 yards without any Fire player within touching distance.
» READ MORE: How far can the Union go this year? As far as Bruno Damiani can take them
Even Union fans could grant that Chicago manager Gregg Berhalter must have been furious on his bench. They certainly would have been had this happened to their team.
They’d also have been annoyed if their team had failed to convert the chance. This time, they could celebrate. Damiani slammed in a shot from just outside the 18-yard box, and the Union were on their way to an eighth straight win and a 14-game unbeaten run in league play.
“Of course it’s a great run, something that we’re proud of, but it’s something right now that I can say that the guys have earned,” Richter said. “Because of the way that they work every single day, the way that they’re focused, the way that they approach games, the dirty work that they’re willing to commit to during the games, you know they’ve earned that, and they’ve earned the record for the team.”
From there, Richter turned to his biggest focus throughout his tenure: going one game at a time.
» READ MORE: The key to the Union’s season-altering 12-game unbeaten run? Ridding the locker room of ‘toxicity’ | Kerith Gabriel
“We have to continue to work in that way, and not think that anything’s accomplished,” he said, “or not think that it’s down to anything other than the discipline, the focus that we’ve had, and the mentality that we’ve approached every single day.”
He kept that view through a question about his role in the success, and thus his future. Though Richter will tell anyone who asks that he doesn’t apply the interim label to himself, it’s still officially there.
The question of when the Union will drop it is for sporting director Jon Scheer to answer one of these days, and you might have noticed that there’s been a lot going on lately.
The view from here is that waiting until the season ends isn’t a bad thing, even though this win could go a long way toward putting the Union in the playoffs. They’re 12 points above the line, thanks to their unbeaten run and a pile of mediocrity behind them.
» READ MORE: What sparked Mark McKenzie’s return to the Union? Being closer to ‘family,’ on and off the field
For a while, it looked like the gap between the good and bad teams in the Eastern Conference would land at the top five. Now the Union have made it six, blowing open a seven-point gap to seventh-place Orlando City. From there, eight points separate the Lions from 14th-place Atlanta United with five games to go.
“When we go into games like this, it’s not about me,” Richter said. “It’s about the staff working together; it’s about the hard work that goes in from the assistant coaches and preparing for the opponent and finding the ways that we can try to put the guys into position to be successful. And then, of course, the majority of the credit goes to the players for buying in and then executing what we see in the game, but also what they see in the game that we didn’t come up with.”
That last clause — what they see in the game that we didn’t come up with — might have been the most powerful. It was another reminder that what got Bradley Carnell fired wasn’t just his record, but his inflexibility. Richter has let his players breathe and improvise.
“You know me,” he said, “I’m not looking to take credit for that. The credit goes to the staff, and it goes to the players.”
It goes to Richter too, even if the biggest reward doesn’t come until later.
