Why the Union’s shortest offseason is also the most important in their history | Analysis

Eleven years ago, the Colorado Rapids won an MLS Cup.

In the span between then and this year’s first-place finish in the Western Conference, here’s how the Rapids fared in the regular season: 5th, 7th, 5th, 8th, 10th, 2nd, 10th, 11th, 9th and 5th.

The 2010 championship remains the club’s only trophy. On top of that, a club that was one of the league’s founding teams 25 years ago has come close to silverware only three other times in its history.

There’s a lesson in that for the Union, and for newly minted Union fans who might not have heard of the Rapids before their Thanksgiving Day playoff game this year.

In the last three years, the Union have totaled the most regular-season points of any team in MLS. In 2019, they advanced in the playoffs for the first time in their history. Last year, they won their first trophy, the Supporters’ Shield for the regular-season title. This year, they reached the penultimate rounds of the Concacaf Champions League and MLS playoffs.

After nearly a decade of mediocrity on the field and irrelevance off it, the Union are on the cusp of becoming one of MLS’s elite teams. They’re also closer than they’ve ever been to real relevance among Philadelphia soccer fans and on the city’s sports landscape as a whole.

» READ MORE: Ernst Tanner and Jim Curtin set the stage for the Union’s offseason

Ernst Tanner’s skill at scouting under-the-radar foreign players should have earned him the league’s sporting executive of the year award by now. It has certainly earned him the fans’ trust, as has his transparency.

Richie Graham and Tommy Wilson’s stewardship of the youth academy has made it one of this country’s best, developing not just a quantity of players but a quality of intelligent creators that American soccer has rarely seen.

On the Subaru Park sideline, Jim Curtin brings everything together with tactics, courage, honesty, and selflessness.

But we still don’t know what the Union really are. Are they going to be long-term contenders, or are they going to be the Eastern Conference’s Rapids?

This winter will tell us, perhaps more than any offseason in team history.

Union fans are accustomed by now to Curtin’s public laments about being out-talented by too many opponents, even when his team has stood on some of the league’s highest steps.

In fact, the Union have had at least one double-digit scorer every year since 2016 except for last year, when the pandemic shortened the season: Chris Pontius in 2016, C.J. Sapong in 2017, Cory Burke and Fafà Picault in 2018, and Kacper Przybylko in 2019 and 2021. But none has been truly big-time. Sapong at the height of his skills came closest, but didn’t quite get there.

» READ MORE: Union’s 2022 schedule has 5 national TV games, road trips to Portland and LAFC

The tasks at hand for the Union in this short offseason — training camp starts at the end of next month — are clear. First, figure out what will happen with Kai Wagner — and that comes first so Tanner can know whether he needs to sign a new left back. Second, get the visa situation for Jamiro Monteiro’s family settled, or at least do as much as possible within immigration laws and bureaucracy.

Third is the marquee-topper: reel in a big-time striker.

We know Tanner is working on it, because he has said so repeatedly. He’s even said he’d like to sign two strikers this winter if he can, which would help the team’s depth.

But if all Tanner can do this winter is sign two depth pieces, that won’t be enough. If the Union are to become an elite team, they must spend the money that elite strikers command.

» READ MORE: Union sporting director Ernst Tanner is going shopping for a striker as the offseason begins

An anecdote from earlier this year comes in handy here.

In mid-July, reports claimed the Union bid $2.5 million for Gabriel Silva, a 19-year-old reserve with Brazilian giant Palmeiras, before backing out.

Some time later, word got around that those reports weren’t entirely true, and the bid might not have been that big. But in one way, it didn’t matter. Just the possibility that the Union might spend that sum on a striker got people’s attention, because they’ve never come close to doing so.

Tanner has signed four strikers in his Union tenure: Przybylko, Santos, Davó and Andrew Wooten. Two of them were free transfers (Przybylko and Wooten), one was a loan (Davó), and one had a $500,000 transfer fee (Santos). None has earned a higher salary here than Santos’ $728,500 this year.

Money spent isn’t everything in MLS, as the Union have repeatedly proved. But no sporting director would be able to do much better than Tanner’s 2-for-4 success rate with the sums he’s had for soccer’s most expensive position.

The Union have opened their checkbook — which means ownership’s checkbook — for midfielders plenty often by now. And every time they’ve done so, it has paid off. Alejandro Bedoya, Tranquillo Barnetta, Marco Fabián, Jamiro Monteiro, and Dániel Gazdag are among the examples.

But the team’s history of not spending big on strikers goes back even farther. Carlos Ruiz and Conor Casey were free transfers. Sapong was bought for a draft pick. Jack McInerney was a college draft pick, and Sébastien Le Toux was an expansion draft pick. Picault and Pontius weren’t true strikers, they were wingers who could score.

Arguably the closest the Union came to spending big on a striker before Tanner’s arrival was Fernando Aristeguieta, whose loan deal here in 2015 qualified him as a Young Designated Player though his salary was a moderate $350,000. The biggest outlay on the forward line overall was the $1.2 million in allocation money and $1.25 million salary spent on winger David Accam in 2018.

If this track record is to ever change, it’s got to be now. And a number of people within the Union’s ranks know that if it’s not now, there could be serious ramifications.

Bedoya is running out of time. Monteiro might run out of patience. Most importantly, Curtin might run out of town. FC Cincinnati won’t be the last team to back up a Brinks truck to his Queen Village home to try to pry him away.

» READ MORE: Union assistant coach Pat Noonan leaves to be FC Cincinnati’s new manager

It’s clear from Curtin’s words and deeds that there’s no team he’d rather coach than the one he never got to play for, and there’s no place he’d rather live than the one he has always called home.

But he has every right to aspire to work for a club that will give him more resources than the Union have. If he keeps getting better offers than what the Union give him, he’ll have every right to accept one.

Curtin knows better than anyone how close the Union are to being regular contenders for Philadelphia’s first top-level soccer championship since the Atoms in 1973. (Sorry to the Kixx fans out there, but you know the difference.)

He also knows that the most famous question he has asked in his tenure now deserves to stand beside another.

Do the Union want to be good, or do they want to be great?

And if not now, when?

» READ MORE: Jim Curtin knew how stacked the odds were against the Union in the Eastern Conference final — and that his team almost beat them