Union Takeaways: A lot of shots, but not enough of the right ones in a rare home loss

Here are our day-after takeaways from the Union’s 2-1 loss to Orlando City on Saturday night at Subaru Park, the team’s first home loss in a regular-season game since Sept. 3, 2021 — a stretch of 25 games.

Jakob Glesnes. Playing on his 28th birthday, the reigning MLS defender of the year was one of the Union’s few bright spots. He recorded 65 touches, 39 of 53 passing, eight defensive recoveries, one block, one clearance, one tackle, and 10 duels won out of 12 attempted. And he treated himself to three shots, one of which forced a punch-save from Orlando’s Mason Stajduhar in the 64th minute. There was a juicy rebound, but Chris Donovan couldn’t get to it. (That was one of Donovan’s many lowlights on the night.)

Union fans love yelling at Glesnes to crank one of his trademark long-range blasts. In the 21st minute, he gave them what they wanted on a 35-yard free kick — but the ball flew 20 rows up the stands.

At least he did his part on the defensive end, on a night when Jack Elliott and Olivier Mbaizo were caught out far too often.

» READ MORE: Shorthanded Union fall to Orlando City, 2-1, for first home loss since 2021

1: The Union as a team took 26 shots against Orlando, with 13 on target. Donovan took just one shot, a header off a corner kick in the 71st minute, even though he played the entire game — 72 minutes in a partnership with Mikael Uhre, and the rest going solo in a 4-2-3-1.

13: The Union’s total number of clearances. Orlando had 36. The Union don’t often have that many fewer clearances — or any defensive statistic — than their opponent.

“It’s not the first game where we had a bad start. It’s almost all season long. We have to figure it out, because we cannot go on with [trailing by] a goal after 10 minutes every time — today it was two goals. Then it’s hard to win the games. So yeah, it is not good enough.”

— Glesnes on the Union giving up an early goal for the second straight game.

“It’s one of those things the more I talk about it, the worse it gets. We talk about it over and over. I might just shut up about it this week.”

— Union manager Jim Curtin on how he’s handling the subject in the locker room.

St. Louis City SC 4, Real Salt Lake 0: The expansion team is only the second MLS team to ever win its first five games of the year, and the first debutant to do so. The only previous team to start a season with five wins — excluding the old shootout era that decided ties — was Sporting Kansas City in 2012.

» READ MORE: The Union were without nine players against Orlando, and they didn't have to be

The Union host Sporting Kansas City at Subaru Park on Saturday (7:30 p.m., Apple TV, paywalled). Jim Curtin will match wits with Sporting Kansas City’s Peter Vermes, a Delran native who’s the longest-tenured manager in MLS. Curtin is second.

Sporting and the Union haven’t met since 2020 because of MLS’s imbalanced nonconference scheduling. That game was in the tournament MLS staged in Orlando in the summer to resume action amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Vermes hasn’t come home for a game since 2018, when the Union beat Kansas City 2-0 in Chester.

That game was famous for being the high-water mark for forward bust Jay Simpson. He scored just four goals in two years here, and two of them were that afternoon.