Philadelphia Union vs. St. Louis was an exciting match. The Union dominated control of the ball pretty much throughout the game. At the 9 minute mark Kai Wagner sent a corner kick to his awaiting strikers and Glavinovich head butted a beautiful goal. This was the only goal of the game.
Tonight Jacob Glesnes surprised me. The first few games of the season he seemed a bit tired and not nearly as lively as he had in the past. Tonight he was energetic starting off with a backwards kick over his head to redirect the ball back the other way. Jacob also had at least three sliding saves to defend shots on goal. He was key in shutting it down on the rare case St. Louis found an opportunity.
Tempers were flaring in this match for sure. We must have seen 8 yellow cards tonight on both sides. There was shoving, chest bumping, tripping, and a whole mess of attitude in the field. When St. Louis’ number 10 was given his second yellow card of the night, he approached the referee to complain and out came a red card immediately. The ref had enough and he was ousted from the game. We even saw a referee give on of the St. Louis coaches a yellow card for behavior on the sideline. It was a wild night.
Everyone fought hard tonight. Kai Wagner, and Quinn Sullivan were key in setting up goal opportunities. It seemed though, that there were atleast 3-4 times when Sullivan did his Roadrunner breakaway hauling down the field, river danced around his opponents and set up perfect opportunities for shots, only for our strikers to not quite be in place, and capitalize on the chance to take a shot. So we do need to make sure they have better support when they advance on goal and bring about the opportunity.
One final observation, this evening. The were clearly three times during tonight’s game where Andrew Rick was a bit far away from the goal. Three separate times St Louis made long distance attempts on the goal, and it was only because of their inaccuracy did they miss. Had they been accurate they would have scored, because Rick was too far away to do anything about it. I’d like to see him tighten up the distance he strays from that net.
All in all everything was super exciting tonight. Before we knew it we were into overtime. After 6 minutes of stoppage time, Philadelphia Union won the game, 1 to 0 against St. Louis.