Mikael Uhre hits a scoring milestone for the Union, and maybe this time his critics will notice

HARRISON, N.J. — A day after Union manager Jim Curtin talked about wanting his players to put Mikael Uhre in better positions to succeed, Uhre delivered a textbook example.

There he was, just over three minutes into Saturday’s 2-0 win at the rival New York Red Bulls, a few paces ahead of Jack McGlynn and lining up New York right back Kyle Duncan for a sprinting contest. McGlynn saw Uhre, played the ball forward, and the big Danish striker was off to the races.

Within seconds, Uhre had dismissed not just Duncan, but Sean Nealis after he came Uhre’s way and went right on by. Then came the finish, a 22-yard blast low past former Union backup goalkeeper Carlos Coronel.

The shot was pretty, the run was pretty, the whole play was pretty. But it all happened because Uhre was in that space one-on-one with Duncan, and McGlynn played the right pass to exploit it.

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“I could pretty early see that he was overcommitting a little bit to try to get me down the line, and I knew if I could get inside, then the pitch would open up a little bit more,” Uhre said. “That’s something I’ve been trying to work on — I’ve had a few of those situations kind of run out in sand lately. So yeah, I was trying to go a little bit more over the middle, and that opened up well for me this time.”

It wasn’t a play in which Uhre had to jump up for a set-piece service, or create something off the dribble amid a packed-in crowd of opponents and teammates alike. It was an instance when the team collectively built up a moment that Uhre could capitalize on, and he did so.

“We need those runs in behind,” Curtin said. “What people don’t realize is [that] creates so much space for [Dániel] Gazdag to operate underneath. “It doesn’t mean Mikael gets the ball every time when he makes those runs, but it makes the centerbacks drop 5, 10 yards deeper, and now Danny has more room to operate.”

Opposing teams know this too, which is why you see so many of them play five-defender back lines against the Union. It’s no coincidence that Uhre scored that goal against a Red Bulls squad that, as he said, “wants to play forward, and not just stay too much behind the ball, and doesn’t play a five-back [formation].”

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But the big picture matters most here: This was his 10th Union goal of the year across all competitions. Uhre has now hit double digits in scoring every year he’s been with the team, and no team turns that down — especially one that historically has been as starved for them as the Union.

How starved? Just seven players in the Union’s 15-year history have scored 30 or more goals for the team, and three of them are Gazdag (the all-time leader), Julián Carranza (ranked No. 3), and Uhre (No. 6).

Uhre is now 10 goals away from Carranza’s total of 43, which means he’s likely to get there next year. Yes, he’ll have done so in far more games — Saturday was Uhre’s 113th Union appearance, while Carranza had 96. But No. 2-ranked Sébastien Le Toux, who held the team scoring record for eight years until Gazdag broke it in April, scored his 53 goals in 189 games.

Will saying any of this make Uhre a more consistent scorer? No, and even amid the joy of the win Curtin offered some strong words about that.

“We challenge him, and he usually steps up in those moments,” he said. “But now, it’s like, ‘I don’t want to challenge you anymore.’ I just want it to be like that the rest of the way.”

» READ MORE: Mikael Uhre scored a big goal for the Union in the Leagues Cup after an ‘honest’ talk with Jim Curtin

Curtin knew it would sound “counterintuitive,” as he put it, to praise McGlynn after a helter-skelter game where his lack of athleticism could be a problem. But Curtin was right to say it, because McGlynn brought something to Saturday’s action that few players from either side could.

“When everybody else is 1,000 miles an hour, he can kind of have that calm and say, ‘I got this,’” Curtin said, “and when someone’s sprinting at him, maybe make a deceptive move to get out of pressure and then play a through ball. You need a brain, you need a guy that can make a pass that can unlock an aggressive team.”

A shorter term for that is what U.S. women’s team manager Emma Hayes called her young phenom Lily Yohannes a few months ago: “a press-resistant player.” An even shorter term is “a throwback” in an age in which many teams play with the gas pedal always down.

“I’m a really confident player,” McGlynn said. “On the ball, I believe that I’m better than everyone on the field — that’s kind of the confidence I have to go in and play with. So I think when I get it, I don’t rush, I don’t panic, I just make the best decision for the team.”

That’s certainly a Queens, N.Y., native talking after showing off in north Jersey. But the Union now have a 14-game unbeaten streak over five years against the Red Bulls, so he could.

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But there’s still room for such a player if he or she is put in the right position, and the best way to do that is to put a quality defensive midfielder behind that player. New signing Danley Jean Jacques proved Saturday that he’s up to the task, with a quiet-but-effective game that locked him in as a starter.

“Not all players get acclimated right away, but I think he’s done a great job in trying to get integrated into the team quickly,” said midfielder Alejandro Bedoya, who has helped Jean Jacques not just as a veteran leader but as a fellow French speaker.

“What’s expected is a guy that can break up plays, get interceptions and recoveries, and also be able to help our back line play out of the back and play forward,” Bedoya said. “I think it’s so critical for a [No.] 6 to be able to get on the ball and help us progress the ball forward and help us with transitional moments, and I think he helped do that tonight.”

There’s still lots of work left to do for the Union (7-11-9, 30 points) just to make the playoffs, never mind go deep in them. But Uhre, McGlynn, and Jean Jacques showed what they’re capable of Saturday, and the rest of MLS surely noticed.

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