Mikael Uhre aims for a 20-goal season in his second year with the Union

On the eve of the Union’s first appearance in Major League Soccer’s championship game, sporting director Ernst Tanner was already looking to the future.

As he stood to the side of Banc of California Stadium’s field, Union players working out in front of him, he had a hunch that one of them still had another level to reach.

Mikael Uhre had a very good debut season with the Union. After overcoming preseason visa issues and an early-season hamstring injury, he tallied 13 goals and seven assists in 30 games. The Union won nine of the games in which he found the net, and tied the other two.

That was ample justification for the biggest price tag in Union history, a $2.8 million transfer fee and $1.67 million salary.

“He could have probably scored more than 20 goals,” Tanner said in November. “There is some space for improvement even with him.”

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Plenty of people saw the quote at the time, Uhre included. But it made sense to return to it now, in an interview with The Inquirer on the eve of a new season.

So, Mikael Uhre, do you think you can score 20 goals this year?

“Obviously it means a lot,” he said of Tanner’s vote of confidence. “But I’m also pretty sure that that’s expectations I can live up to.”

He isn’t alone.

“It’s true,” manager Jim Curtin said. “The sky’s the limit.”

Philadelphia sports fans like their heroes to be selfless and down-to-earth. Strikers are paid to be selfish and arrogant. Their number one job is to put the ball in the net, not pass it or play defense without it.

It so happens that Uhre also does all of those other things well, and with a pleasant smile off the field. But when the 28-year-old Dane is inside the lines and the whistle blows, he is a headache.

His runs behind opposing defenses are especially impactful. He’s fast for a 6-foot-2, 185-pound guy, and he knows where to run to pull back lines apart. Chase after him, and defenders leave more space for Julián Carranza, Dániel Gazdag or whoever else is in the Union’s attack that day.

“It’s very important, and I think also one of the things that made us successful as both the team but also the front three,” Uhre said. “If I can take 10 deep runs without getting the ball, that makes it open up for Danny or Julián or whoever it might be, then I don’t really care who gets the goals as long as we win the games.”

That’s a nice thing to say, but it’s only true up to a point. If Uhre made those runs but didn’t score much, teams would leave him alone. But his scoring rate kept opponents honest and forced them to make a big decision in an instant.

The end result last year was all three front-line stars tallying double-digit goals for the year: 13 for Uhre, 15 for Carranza, and a team-record-smashing 24 for Gazdag.

“It’s the worst,” said Curtin, who knows from experience as a former centerback how difficult it is to defend Uhre. “When he runs in behind three or four times, it makes you drop five, six yards deeper, and he’s faster than most guys. So they have to overcompensate.”

This year’s attacking adventures could come in new forms. Uhre is excited by the increased diversity of the Union’s tactical playbook, with Curtin dialing up 3-5-2 and 4-3-2-1 formations. The first of those is one Uhre knows especially well: He won the Danish league title and top scorer award playing it with Brøndby in 2021.

“As a solo striker, you need to be more of a hold-up player, where if you’re playing with a second striker, you have more freedom to go in behind,” he said. “It’s going to be good to have a few different variations in formations to go for when games need it. And it’s easy for me to say the 3-5-2 system is a favorite of mine, because I became a Danish champion in that system.”

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But not all is ideal yet. Though Uhre played 30 games for the Union last year, he never played a full one. He played more than 80 minutes only three times. Curtin is wary of that, and wants to boost Uhre’s stamina.

“If you look at all the goals we score from minute 70 to 90 when we wear teams down, that’s usually the time of subbing him out,” Curtin said. “We want him on the field then, to get so fit and so in shape that he’s out there for all those minutes. Then you can start to see that 20-goal number happen.”

One way to get there, Curtin theorized, is for Uhre to not slam the gas pedal every time in the first halves of games.

“Then you’re exhausted; you’re out of gas, and then we demand so much of our strikers pressing, it takes some time to recover,” Curtin said. “So now we want him to find moments in the game where maybe he checks back into midfield and just gets a touch of the ball, and gets more involved.”

» READ MORE: Last summer, Mikael Uhre asked Jim Curtin how he could do more for the Union’s attack. In his next game, he scored two goals.

That would solve another problem Curtin has noticed: “There’s still stretches of the game where 15-20 minutes can go by, and he doesn’t touch the ball. That’s not what we want from him.”

When Uhre was presented with these theories, he didn’t entirely disagree with them.

“It’s a thing I need to put on my game, that I need to be better at dropping sometimes,” he said. “I think I also have that in my locker, and that’s something I can do.”

He also offered a reminder of his striker’s instinct.

“But I think it’s tempting, always, to go for the thing that makes you a great athlete,” he said, “and maybe separates you from other guys.”