The Union only need to blame themselves, not the ref, for an ugly first loss of the year

Before Sunday’s game against Nashville, the Union honored star goalkeeper Andre Blake on the field for passing the 300-appearance mark with the club.

Then his teammates walked onto that grass and dishonored him in an ugly 3-1 defeat.

Jakob Glesnes and Frankie Westfield got beaten off the dribble by Sam Surridge for the first goal, with Glesnes gliding by Surridge’s cutback as if on ice skates. On the second, Westfield was caught upfield and Glesnes lost a footrace to Ahmed Qasem, looking as bad as he did last year. Then Glesnes charged into the back of Hany Mukhtar’s neck to offer a penalty kick for the third.

To cap things off, Olwethu Makhanya threw a ball into Jacob Shaffelburg’s face — after they had tussled for it on the sideline — in the 12th of 14 minutes of second-half stoppage time. That rightly earned a straight red card. The centerback will be the seventh first-teamer out of this Saturday’s game vs. St. Louis (7:30 p.m., Apple TV), along with six absentees due to national team games at the same time.

» READ MORE: Defense does the Union no favors as Nashville hands them their first loss

Fans spent much of the afternoon complaining about referee Pierre-Luc Lauzière, for not giving a penalty kick — even after a long video review — after Wyndmoor native Dan Lovitz slid in on Quinn Sullivan from behind.

But when Lauzière pointed to the spot after a review caught Glesnes’ infraction, Kai Wagner shouted one of the many blue streaks he offered throughout the afternoon. Six minutes later, he aimed another one at the ref, and that was enough to draw a yellow card that was thoroughly earned.

And when the Union earned a penalty kick for Lovitz tackling Chris Donovan in the 99th, Sullivan took it poorly. Nashville goalkeeper Joe Willis saved it, then saved Bruno Damiani’s shot off the rebound.

You can’t blame all that on the ref, no matter how much of a boo bird you want to be. Some sure seemed to, because they commemorated the Union’s Dollar Dog promotion by throwing hot dogs and wrappers on the field after Mukhtar’s goal.

» READ MORE: How will the Union contend with all the players they'll miss due to national team games?

“The football gods didn’t want us to go 4-0, or to compete in this game, and unfortunately we get the short end of the stick,” manager Bradley Carnell said, later adding: “You can hear a pin drop in the locker room, because the players are really upset about the proceedings today and rightly so. We’ve created a high bar, we’ve set a high standard, and not every day is going to go our way, and today was one of those days.”

For as much as Carnell has differentiated himself from Jim Curtin so far, he showed himself to be like his predecessor in one way: He didn’t criticize individual players from the podium. But Glesnes took it on himself.

“It wasn’t good enough for me on all three of the goals, and I should never make the PK there, either,” he said. “So I have to take learning from that and just raise my head again, because it’s a new day already tomorrow, and a new game on Saturday.”

Having established how the Union lost, it’s also worth spending a few words on how Nashville won. What did new manager B.J. Callaghan figure out that the three veteran managers Carnell previously outcoached — Orlando’s Oscar Pareja, Cincinnati’s Pat Noonan, and New England’s Caleb Porter — could not?

And in particular, what did Callaghan plan for his first game back at Subaru Park since the Ventnor City, N.J., native with a lifetime of Philly ties left the Union staff five years ago? Two weeks earlier, fellow former assistant Noonan watched his current team get blown out on the same field, 4-1.

» READ MORE: How different are the Union this year? The Cincinnati team they beat knows best.

“I think they scouted us really well, and they knew what we were going to do,” said Blake, who spent the first five years of his career under Callaghan’s tutelage. “They were also very physical, and the referee didn’t help. I don’t want to talk too much about the referee, because then I’ll get in trouble, but they had a game plan, and they were very physical, and tonight, we just weren’t able to match their physicality and they got the better of us.”

Callaghan didn’t want to give away too many secrets, lest other coaches figure out his recipe. But he revealed enough when he talked about how his team beat the Union’s high press.

“I thought you saw a committed group that was able to exploit some space behind and finish our chances,” he said. “And that’s really the game, right? There’s always chances from both teams in these games, and I think our guys took them, took them quite well.”

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He also knew what his players did to his former pupil. After Carnell was done with his part of Blake’s ceremony, he walked over to Callaghan for the traditional pregame handshake. From up in the press box, we couldn’t know what was said, but at one point Carnell pointed toward where Blake then stood with his wife and children.

Was it a hint that perhaps Callaghan should have been out there, too?

“The ovation that Andre got from the fans tonight speaks volumes more than I can,” he said. “We’ve developed a great relationship. Three-hundred games is hard to do. And as I told some guys on the bench, he didn’t get a lot of playing time in the first year or two when he was here, so to get 300 even in that is just a truly remarkable achievement for a guy who’s been here his whole career.”

Callaghan had a job to do Sunday, and his players helped him do it. But he knows a lot of things about the game, which is why he earned a brief stint as the U.S. men’s national team’s interim manager in 2023.

It’s a hunch from here, having known him for a long time, that he knew Blake deserved better.