Julián Carranza’s dazzling hat trick is a reminder of what makes a big-time striker

It feels a little strange to see Julián Carranza still in a Union uniform.

That’s how strong the belief was, inside and outside the team, that he’d be sold off to Europe over the winter.

But to much surprise, he wasn’t — and not because he doesn’t want to leave. He still does, and he eventually will, and the Union know it full well.

So there he was, in a news conference Monday in Costa Rica and in the starting lineup against Saprissa on Tuesday.

It took a while for the Union to get going, as expected for their first game of the year. Though they played five preseason games, real action is still different, especially when that action comes in the Concacaf Champions Cup.

Not for nothing did Jim Curtin equate Saprissa’s raucous bandbox with Mexico’s towering Estadio Azteca after his team’s 3-2 win Tuesday night. The two venues have long been renowned as the continent’s most daunting.

“Teams don’t come in here and score three goals, let alone three goals in a half,” said Curtin, who played at Saprissa with the Chicago Fire 20 years ago.

And not for nothing did Carranza’s hat trick leave the crowd near-silent in one of the best 25-minute stretches by any Union player.

» READ MORE: Julián Carranza’s hat trick powers a Union win over Saprissa in the Concacaf Champions Cup

“He’s a top striker, and one that I don’t know how much longer we’ll have in Philadelphia,” Curtin said afterward. “But a great performance from him, a special player, and a special night for him.”

For a while, it seemed Jakob Glesnes and Andre Blake’s nearly-comedic own-goal-by-committee in the first half might be the night’s only score. A 1-0 loss would have been unsightly but not terrible, a clearly surmountable deficit in the Union’s home game of the series next week.

But when Carranza headed in Kai Wagner’s cross in the 55th minute, the game turned on its head. Whether in the stadium or at home, you could tell momentum had swung in the Union’s favor.

His second and third strikes, in the 76th and 79th minutes, capped plays with beautiful team and individual work. The TV broadcasters lavished praise, especially Univision’s Spanish-language announcers who’ve called many Union games over the years.

“He does a lot of the dirty work for the team as well with his pressing and defensive work,” Curtin said. “But when you score goals in the big games — and this was a big game tonight — the world is watching. And any time you have a night like this, I’ll just say a lot of scouts’ eyes are on him.”

» READ MORE: Why Julián Carranza chose to stay with the Union this winter

If you’re a casual soccer follower, you might wonder why devotees say scoring a goal is the hardest thing to do in the sport. How hard can it be when you’re three feet off the goal line and the net is open, as was the case on Carranza’s second?

Ask Mikael Uhre, who got a little too cute with an open look in the 65th and blazed it over the crossbar. It’s about what’s in your head, not just in your feet: keeping your nerves as calm as a golfer and acting on instinct instead of overthinking. And that’s after all the work that goes into timing a run and getting positioning right to receive a pass.

As Curtin said of Carranza: “He’s a pure goal scorer — in that all he wants to do, all he thinks about, is hitting the back of the net.”

When the Union’s academy puts the hat trick in its textbooks, it might place Carranza’s name next to another famous striker. And coincidentally, for a few minutes Tuesday night, she played at the same time he did.

» READ MORE: An analysis of the Union’s roster at the start of the 2024 season

While most local soccer fans who stayed up late Tuesday night watched the Union, you can bet a few were split-screening the game with the U.S. women’s team’s Concacaf Gold Cup opener against the Dominican Republic.

It was a 5-0 U.S. win, with the last two goals coming on late penalty kicks. But the finale carried a lot of weight: It was superstar striker Alex Morgan’s first goal for her country in 363 days.

On top of that, Morgan wasn’t supposed to be there. Interim manager Twila Kilgore didn’t pick her for the official 23-player roster but had to make an emergency call after planned starting striker Mia Fishel suffered an ACL tear in the team’s last practice before kickoff.

Morgan immediately headed from her San Diego home up to suburban Los Angeles, where the U.S. is playing its Gold Cup group games. She took the field Tuesday as a 66th-minute substitute, and stepped up to the spot in the 91st.

The TV cameras zoomed in on Morgan’s face as she stood over the ball, waiting for the referee’s whistle. Who knows what was on her mind, but from the pictures, it sure looked like something was.

Almost exactly five months earlier, Morgan shot poorly from the spot in the Americans’ World Cup opener, setting off a cascade of ill-fated moments. This time, finally, she stepped up and buried it.

» READ MORE: USWNT rising star Mia Fishel suffers a torn ACL; Alex Morgan to replace her on Gold Cup roster

She knew what it meant. So did her teammates as they embraced her, fans as they cheered, and 76ers play-by-play voice Kate Scott as she called CBS Sports’ broadcast online.

And Kilgore, no doubt, whose big call paid off.

“I wouldn’t put Alex in that position if I didn’t have total confidence and faith that she was going to put those away,” she said after the game.

All he thinks about, Curtin said of his star. Confidence and faith, Kilgore said of hers.

The mental side of soccer really does matter as much as the physical one.

The odds are slim that Morgan and Carranza ever will cross paths. Maybe Kilgore and Curtin will, especially if she’s still around when the U.S. women next play here.

But if the players somehow do meet, they might recognize a few things in each other — especially what it means to be a big-time striker.

You know it when you see it, and you know it when you see them.