Union takeaways: Jim Curtin was too conservative at LAFC, and he was outcoached

Here are our day-after takeaways on the Union’s 3-0 loss at Los Angeles FC that knocked them out of the Concacaf Champions League in the semifinals by a 4-1 aggregate score.

Andre Blake. Yes, he was scored on three times, but he made five saves, and no one else on the Union did much of anything worthwhile.

Needing to score to have any chance of winning the series, the Union registered just seven shots, with two on target. On the bench, Union manager Jim Curtin was overly conservative even by his standards. He was as clearly outcoached as he’s ever been when LAFC manager Steve Cherundolo made two attacking substitutions in the 66th minute while up a goal and a player, while Curtin did nothing. One of those substitutions, Kwadwo Opoku, scored the goal that finished things off.

It barely mattered that José Andrés Martínez was out due to a hamstring injury. More than one player could have seen to it that Dániel Gazdag touched the ball more than 44 times. Julián Carranza had just 42 touches before being subbed out for Joaquín Torres in the 87th minute, a move that made little sense when Torres could have come in much earlier.

Until LAFC’s late outburst, the Union needed just one goal to tie the score and totally change the momentum. A 1-1 tie would have taken the action straight to penalty kicks, since there’s no extra time in the Concacaf Champions League. But that goal never looked like it was coming.

Univision’s sideline reporter Michele Giannone put it well when he said on the Spanish broadcast, then again a moment later in English on Twitter: “I don’t recognize Jim Curtin tonight.”

» READ MORE: Union shut out by LAFC, eliminated from Concacaf Champions League in 4-1 aggregate loss

14: The number of passes completed by Alejandro Bedoya in the first half, out of 28 attempts. In the first half, he completed just four of 12 attempts. And he was lucky to have the opportunity, because his second-minute yellow card for a studs-up challenge on Diego Palacios could easily have been red.

If you want to criticize Leon Flach for not contributing to the attack enough, you already know he’s not Martínez. Flach completed 27 of his 31 pass attempts, which would have been just fine had Curtin seen to it that the players around Flach got the ball forward more effectively.

0: The number of successful tackles made by Olivier Mbaizo before being sent off in the 59th minute for his second yellow card of the night. In the first game of the series, Mbaizo made an inch-perfect tackle to break up a Dénis Bouanga breakaway. This time, he was a half-second late chasing Bouanga down, the contact produced his second booking, and the Union’s hopes of an upset were done.

» READ MORE: The tiebreaker math showed it wouldn't have taken much for the Union to advance in the series

“I don’t think we were conservative. We played with two strikers like we always do. We had chances in the first half [and] we didn’t score them. The great thing about my team is we know when we’re a favorite, we know when we’re an underdog, and we know that we can, on any given day, beat anybody. The way we approached the game was to try to score and win — of course when we don’t score questions like yours will come up and that’s natural. But to say that we didn’t try to score is silly.”

— Curtin responding to a reporter’s question on whether his team was too conservative in the game.

“I think in our building, we were able to play forward a bit more we were able to pass out in the back and be a little more direct. … There were some moments where, could we have played forward a little faster? Yes, I agree with that. And we were a little, you know, not trusting the first thing we saw. Maybe being a little too safe.”

— Curtin answering a different question about his team’s conservatism.

“Zero. That’s your subjective opinion. Not mine, I think. It doesn’t matter. Painting a picture for your players and giving them the tools to make the decisions on the field, it’s always free-flowing a little bit. It’s not always X’s and O’s. It doesn’t happen [as] perfectly as we coaches draw up with our magnets, and our — well, it’s more than magnets nowadays. There’s paints and graphics and all of that stuff. … I think our guys made a lot of good decisions tonight, after they made poor ones the other night.”

— Cherundolo upon being asked how satisfied he was to have outcoached Curtin.

» READ MORE: Union owner Jay Sugarman says Jim Curtin’s contract status will be settled before his deal expires

The Union return to regular-season play on Saturday when they visit the rival New York Red Bulls (7:30 p.m., Apple TV, paywalled). The Red Bulls are in last place in the Eastern Conference with just one win, six ties and three losses; and they haven’t scored more than one goal in any of their last six games. It will be the Union’s first reunion with striker Cory Burke, who moved north as a free agent in the offseason. He scored his first goal for his new club in a 1-1 tie at the Chicago Fire on Saturday.