This weekend’s Union game could be a big one for Leon Flach
With José Andrés Martínez suspended, Flach will get a chance to show how much he has improved his contributions to the Union's attack this season.
With stalwart Union midfield anchor José Andrés Martínez suspended from Saturday’s home game against Houston (7:30 p.m., PHL17) due to yellow card accumulation, there’s an opportunity for someone to step up in his place.
If that someone is Leon Flach, he will have earned it.
The 21-year-old German-American with Texas roots has always been known for his defensive contributions. But sometimes he’s been a little too well-known for his work on that side of things from his usual place on the left side of midfield.
Whereas Jack McGlynn is (and Jamiro Monteiro really is) a two-way player, Flach has been a defensive shuttler most of his time here. In the last few months, though, Flach has shown considerable improvement in attacking play, from better passing to off-the-ball runs into the 18-yard box to draw opponents’ attention.
Union manager Jim Curtin has noticed.
“Leon has spent a lot of time before training, after training, improving his stuff with the ball — receiving with his left foot or right foot, and then his first touch being good and playing the next guy,” Curtin said this week. “He’s worked a lot on that. It’s something you can improve.”
This matters more than it might appear on paper for the position officially called “defensive midfielder.” As much attention as Martínez gets for his crunching tackles and loud personality, his talent as a passer is a huge part of what makes the Union so good in transition.
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Martínez has the highest pass completion percentage of any of the team’s regular starters this season, 79.3%. Flach ranks No. 4 at 75.7% — a better figure than Kai Wagner, Jack Elliott and Alejandro Bedoya, among others. (Paxten Aaronson and Olivier Mbaizo have higher percentages than Flach and Martínez, but with a fraction of the minutes played.)
“I’m really happy with his progress; I think he’s improved greatly from last year,” Curtin said of Flach.
That progress could allow Curtin to stick with the Union’s traditional 4-4-2 setup on Saturday, with Flach at the midfield base of the diamond.
“Physically, he can certainly do it,” Curtin said. “The ground he covers, he can match Jose [Martínez] in that regard. The things with the ball, you have Ale [Bedoya] next to him, you could have Jack [McGlynn] next to him, whoever you decide — that part presents different things.”
But having realized he sowed some doubt, Curtin soon added: “Leon certainly is comfortable enough to sit and play as a single No. 6. He’s done it for us in the past.”
If that happens, it will spare Curtin from having to improvise something like the 4-2-3-1 deployed against New England on July 16. It was an unusual version of that formation, to put it politely, with Flach and Aaronson in the wide roles on the line of three.
“We want to do what we’re good at, at home,” Curtin said. “We don’t want to change and tweak too much to a group that’s won four games in a row.”
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Burke back
It did not look good when Cory Burke had to leave last Saturday’s win at Orlando 25 minutes after subbing in for Mikael Uhre, with what looked to all watching like a head injury. The substitution was deemed a concussion sub by the refereeing crew, which gave each team an extra sub to make as part of recent rule changes to treat head injuries more seriously.
But it now looks like Burke is back to full health, at least judging from practices and Curtin’s words on the subject.
“Everybody’s healthy; everybody’s out there training,” Curtin said. “Full credit to our sports performance department, because numbers-wise, we don’t have a ton [of depth], but we’ve been healthy the whole year. … Knock on wood, obviously, if we remain healthy, we’ll continue to be a really tough team to beat, and they deserve a lot of credit on the medical side for what they do.”
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