Union's Edu disappointed and surprised at receiving critical yellow card
Union defender Maurice Edu has been an iron man this season and the only thing that has kept him from the lineup is yellow cards.
Edu has played in 19 of the Union's 20 Major League Soccer games, missing just a 2-0 win at the New York Red Bulls on May 24 due to yellow card accumulation.
He will now miss game No. 21 on Saturday at Toronto FC after receiving a yellow card in Saturday's 3-0 win over the Portland Timbers at PPL Park.
It was Edu's eighth yellow card of the season.
MLS players are first suspended for receiving five yellow cards and then suspended a second game for accumulating three more.
After receiving his seventh caution in the previous game, a 2-2 tie against Montreal, Edu was placed on "warning." If a player is placed on "warning" and appears in three consecutive games without receiving a caution, being sent off or sanctioned by the MLS Disciplinary Committee for an infraction that occurs during one of the three games, that player's personal caution total will be reduced by one caution. (This also goes once a player has four cautions).
Anyway, since Edu earned a caution in consecutive games, that wiped out any chance for a reduction. And now he must sit.
Against Portland he received the yellow card in the 35th minute after making a slide tackle one Diego Valeri. On the play, Valeri flipped over Edu, but the Union defender also got the ball, which is why he thought he wouldn't even be called for a foul, let alone receive a caution.
"I guess I have to watch it again, but in the heat of the moment I felt like we both went in on similar ways on the challenge, and I took the ball," Edu said. "Obviously the ref saw it a different way."
Union coach Jim Curtin saw it differently from the referee.
"It's a great tackle," Curtin said. "It's the tackle that I dream of as a center back, I loved it. I thought it was a clean play."
Overall, Curtin said he felt that referee Jose Carlos Rivero had a strong game. He just felt this instance was ruled incorrectly.
"I think that the mindset of the referee was that it (the tackle) did look hard because a guy gets taken out but you can't get more of the ball and the big thing right now in the program, and it's not their fault, but they always will say "studs up" that's the big thing," Curtin said. "I always rebut back, how can player in the field when you leave your feet not have your studs show? You can't physically slide and not have your studs show… athletically you can't."
Regardless of what Curtin and Edu think, he's now out for a critical game against a Toronto team that the Union trail by one point for the sixth and final Eastern Conference playoff spot. Of course, Toronto owns four games in hand over the Union, making it a must game for the visitors.
"It is disappointing and I feel like in some way I let the team down a little bit to miss the game through yellow cards," Edu said.
Edu feels confident the team can earn three point without him.
"We have a god squad ,a deep squad," Edu said. "I feel like we will go into Toronto confident and build off the momentum fo this game and hopefully go out there with a similar performance and come out with three points."
