The Union’s Leon Flach is out with a torn pectoral muscle

Leon Flach’s hopes for a bounce-back season with the Union will have to wait a while.

A pectoral muscle injury that the 22-year-old midfielder suffered at the start of the preseason turned out to be a torn muscle that required surgery, and he’ll be out for up to three months.

It’s awful luck, after Flach missed eight games late last year with a sports hernia suffered at the end of August.

He tried to manage the pain, and it subsided enough for him to make substitute appearances in the Union’s regular-season finale and first two playoff games. But after that, he yielded to the surgery he’d tried to avoid.

Before the injury, Flach and Jack McGlynn platooned on the left side of the midfield diamond. Flach also served as one of José Andrés Martínez’s backups at the defensive midfield spot.

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Flach’s defense has long been better than his offense, which is why he and the more creative McGlynn split time on the left. It’s also why there was some hesitation to put him in the anchor role too much, because that job requires a lot of smart passing. (In other words, when Martínez wasn’t there, it got noticed.)

But Flach worked hard to improve his passing game last year before the injury, and it showed. He’s still just 22, turning 23 at the end of this month, which means there’s ample time for him to keep improving. The Texas native who grew up in Germany has been on German clubs’ radars, especially Werder Bremen — the same club that recently pushed hard for Julián Carranza.

Flach played for German second-division club St. Pauli before coming to Philadelphia in 2021. He has said often that he’d like to return to Germany at some point. The Union would be quite happy if he plays well enough here to earn that move — and a good transfer fee with it.

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