Union striker Mikael Uhre reflects on a year that’s been good, but not as good as he wanted

For the most part in Major League Soccer, scoring 10 goals in a season is the bar for a striker’s success. Mikael Uhre has scored 10 goals for the Union this year, so he’s right at it.

But while the year hasn’t been a failure for the Union’s most expensive player, it certainly hasn’t been what it could have been. Uhre scored 13 goals last year, his first campaign with the Union. Sporting director Ernst Tanner publicly backed him to score 20 this year. Uhre publicly agreed, and so did manager Jim Curtin.

It’s not just about the tally of goals either, it’s about the manner of them. Uhre scored in only seven games this year, with eight assists spread across seven other games. Had he scored a goal in each of the 10 games instead of enduring what has amounted to some achingly long droughts, the impact could have been very different — especially a seven-game stretch in August and September when the Union won just once.

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“I think it’s been a tough year,” Uhre told The Inquirer in an interview this week. “Obviously, [there are] things I could have done better, but sometimes the second year is a bit tougher because people know who you are at that point, and they know how to defend you.”

Indeed, how teams defend Uhre matters a lot. He’s at his best when he can break away behind an opposing back line, pulling defenders apart to create space for himself and his attacking partners.

It’s all the better if that back line is playing high up the field while the ball’s at the other end. If the Union force a turnover, Uhre gets ready to take off. Get the ball to Dániel Gazdag or Jack McGlynn, they look to make a pass, Uhre takes one line, Julián Carranza takes another, and the other team is in trouble.

When that works, the plays go on highlight reels immediately: at Montreal in March, vs. Toronto in April, vs. Monterrey in the Leagues Cup in August (with a dazzling McGlynn assist).

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“I think you could see pretty easily that every time Danny is turned with the ball and I’m running forward, the first thing defenders do is sprint back,” Uhre said, referring to him and Gazdag. “So yeah, I think the defenders know me, and us three as a trio, really well now. So again, sometimes you need to go back to the drawing board and see what you can do to make it work again.”

But sit deep and jam Uhre, and he likely won’t be able to create a shot off the dribble because it’s not his game. Similarly, bunkering against the Union as a whole has long been a successful tactic to stifle their attack.

Carranza’s presence over the last two years has been vital to deal with that. The Union play with a lot of battering ram-style forwards, but this year haven’t had enough lock-pickers to back up Carranza. This affects Uhre too: Jam him and dare the other forward to score, and you might succeed. But if that other forward does score (as Quinn Sullivan did on a few clutch occasions recently), opponents have to go mark him, which gives Uhre more space.

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That makes a goal Uhre scored against Atlanta earlier this month, the one that snapped that seven-game drought and remains his most recent tally, worth a closer look. The Union broke away on a counter, with Uhre playing a give-and-go with Carranza en route.

When Uhre got the ball back, Atlanta had retreated sufficiently that it had five players in the TV camera frame, and two marking Uhre. Though he had some space, he didn’t have an acre of it. But he was able to cut into a gap to his right, wind up, and slam a shot past centerback Luis Abram and goalkeeper Brad Guzan. It was one of Uhre’s finest goals for the Union, and it helped propel an eventual 3-2 win.

“You sometimes have to, I wouldn’t say reinvent yourself, but sometimes [how opponents defend him] can be more difficult,” Uhre said. “Sometimes it hits the post and goes in, and sometimes it hits the post and goes out, and that’s how it is in life. But you’ve got to keep focused on the things you can do, and then keep getting better every day.”

A striker is always going to be judged on goals first, but assists and combination plays don’t hurt. Think back to last year’s playoff win over Cincinnati. Uhre assisted on the game’s only goal by dribbling the ball away from three Cincinnati defenders, his back to goal the whole time, and nudging it over to Leon Flach — unmarked in the middle of the 18-yard box because no one expected him to shoot.

Flach took his chance and scored the game’s only goal. It wasn’t a pretty sequence, but it was effective.

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“Everything’s a team effort,” Uhre said. “We haven’t been our sharpest. But I think we’re working on it on the training pitch, and that’s what you need to do in tough situations. You need to get together and perform well as a team, instead of trying to be the best individual players.”

That’s especially true at the start of the playoffs, a moment that allows Uhre and the Union to start a new chapter in the year. It’s a time for results, not aesthetics, especially in a first-round playoff format where aggregate scoring doesn’t matter. Unlike in some of Major League Soccer’s past formats, the Union could score one or five goals in Saturday’s opener at home against New England (5 p.m. Apple TV, free), but only winning counts.

“The real season starts now, and this is what people are going to remember,” Uhre said. “We’ve got the home-field advantage in the first round as we wanted. It’s nice to go out in front of our fans, and they can for sure give us a boost.”

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