Jim Curtin lost a gamble with his lineup in the Union’s loss to Miami

It made sense that Jim Curtin didn't start Anthony Fontana, with Tuesday's Champions League game looming. But ...

The Union have to be careful to not burn out midfielder Jamiro Monteiro, right.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

Published Apr. 25, 2021, 7:03 p.m. ET

Union manager Jim Curtin may well have meant it when he said after Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Inter Miami that “We put everything into tonight” instead of saving some firepower for Tuesday’s Concacaf Champions League quarterfinal first leg at Atlanta United (8 p.m., FS1 and TUDN).

“I’m not going to say that we held guys back or we subbed because we’re looking toward Tuesday,” Curtin said. “We played to win tonight’s game, our performance was good, and on another night I thought it was good enough for three points.”

But it would have been totally understandable if Curtin was looking ahead. The turnaround is so quick that the Union had to fly to Atlanta on Sunday in order to meet Concacaf’s requirement to be at the game site 48 hours before kickoff. Then it’s back to Philadelphia to prepare for Saturday’s game against a New York City FC team that just smashed FC Cincinnati, 5-0.

In that context, it was sensible that Anthony Fontana didn’t start against Miami. Curtin needed to spread him, Jamiro Monteiro, Alejandro Bedoya, and Leon Flach over three games at the central and attacking midfield positions.

From Monteiro’s opening goal until Gonzalo Higuaín’s equalizer off a free kick after a Flach foul, it looked like Curtin was going to win his bet. The shame wasn’t so much that Curtin lost it, but that he lost it in a game the Union dominated for long stretches.

Fontana presumably will start Tuesday. It will be even more interesting to see if Monteiro does, because as important as he is, he deserves a day off somewhere in the stretch of nine games in 37 days that the Union just started. So do Bedoya, José Andrés Martínez, Kai Wagner, Kacper Przybylko, and just about everyone else.

You’re probably going to see a lot of Flach, and that’s not a bad thing. He had another fine game Saturday night, completing 32 of 35 passes and registering five tackles — including a half-field sprint to dispossess Higuaín in the third minute. And he can take a bigger workload because he’s just 20 years old.

There definitely ought to be some rotation of the centerbacks, but doing so could get tricky. Atlanta kept star striker Josef Martínez on the bench for the first 67 minutes of Saturday’s 3-1 win over Chicago, which means he’ll be fresh for Tuesday. If Stuart Findlay plays Tuesday, that would be quite an introduction to MLS.

The other key talking point out of Saturday’s game is that it offered a reminder that Monteiro isn’t a true midfield playmaker. He can do it, and against certain styles of teams he can be as good as he was against Saprissa. But against a pretty stout Miami defense with Blaise Matuidi, Leandro González Pírez, and Nicolás Figal, he was relatively limited.

(Yet Monteiro still scored a goal and created three chances, which tells you how good he is.)

It has been said enough here by now that the Union need more firepower at the attacking midfield position. And as The Inquirer has reported, the team is pursuing the answer in Hungarian playmaker Dániel Gazdag.

Until any additions arrive, Curtin is going to have to keep gambling — and keep hoping that he can get to June without suffering too many losses.