Bradley Carnell admits his Union players are feeling ‘a little fragile’ after their latest loss

Bradley Carnell knew he couldn’t spin it this time.

“If this was not MLS, if this was Europe, this is a relegation-type feel,” the Union’s manager said after his team’s fifth defeat in five league games to start the year, a 2-1 loss to the Chicago Fire at Subaru Park on Saturday.

The Union are now the only team in the league without a point in the standings.

Carnell also knew he’d likely be out of a job, but that isn’t going to happen here yet. This team’s problems are fixable — especially at the attacking end, where the lack of strikers making off-the-ball runs to stretch defenses is ever more glaring. You read about that here last weekend, and it was mentioned on the Apple broadcast of this game.

But now the tactical issues are compounding into mental ones.

“We turn them [opponents] over at the top of the 18 [yard box] three games in a row now — we can’t get shots off,” Carnell said. “We can’t organize and arrange our feet and what have you. So it’s three games in a row where we’ve won the ball on the 18, which is our bread and butter, and that’s something that, yeah, then I go to the confidence factor.”

Carnell admitted that his squad is “a little fragile,” and at another that there’s “uncertainty, which you would expect with a team that’s in our current streak at the moment.”

There’s no sign that the players are tuning Carnell out. That sense comes not just from the manager, but also from enough players.

» READ MORE: Union still searching for their first MLS win following narrow loss to the Chicago Fire

“I don’t see anyone shying away,” Carnell said. “I don’t see anyone not taking responsibility, I don’t see anyone not taking ownership or accountability. The guys are hurting. … It’s my job to help them with the basics and kind of go down two levels just to get back to the origins of who we are and what we stand for.”

That wasn’t the only time he signaled that he thinks the players might be doing too much to try to fix things.

“Everyone’s willing and wants to do so well, but sometimes sticking to the basics is a really good thing [and] will get you through,” he said. “Every action that they’re doing, they’re trying to do the right thing for their teammates and the team. … Less is more sometimes.”

Though Carnell wants to be free of his past, it has come back to haunt him again. He was fired in St. Louis when his team followed a 2023 Western Conference regular-season title with a big dropoff in 2024: 3-2-7 in the first 12 games, then 0-6-3 in the next nine.

» READ MORE: What’s wrong with the Union? Bradley Carnell has work to do amid the team’s worst-ever start

This time, his only cushion has been the Concacaf Champions Cup rout of Defence Force, a squad that was clearly miles less talented than the Union.

When a reporter raised the specter of a comparison on Saturday night, Carnell’s first word was “Yeah,” and he laughed a little. It felt like he knew the question was inevitable.

“I can argue that this is a different slide, you know what I mean?” he said. “And what can I take out of it? I’m just trying take to the next day as it is, and make sure I’m living for the next day, and the next moment, and the next opportunity to get better.”

He said the losses were “five learning moments that I want to get done with. I’m over with the learning. Now, we have to embrace it and move on.”

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If there’s a glimmer of light out there, it’s that the season now stops for the March FIFA international window — the last one before the World Cup. The Union’s next game isn’t until April 4 at Charlotte (7:30 p.m., Apple TV).

Asked if he wants the upcoming time to be a reset, Carnell said he wants it to be even more.

“I wouldn’t just say a reset,” he said. “I would say it needs to be a calibration, I would say it needs to be an assessment, a critical analysis of where we are currently and what we need to do. And then we get two weeks of training, pretty much, where we can really push the needle and push the messaging.”

There was time Saturday to go to the visitors’ locker room, and it was worth doing because of who was there. For all the criticism Gregg Berhalter earned at the end of his U.S. national team tenure, the Fire’s manager knows the game and he’s a good person. So it was no surprise that he had plenty to say about the Union.

“I’ve watched all their games this season, and I have to say that they’ve gotten unlucky ... they haven’t been playing poorly,” Berhalter said. “I think today wasn’t a great performance by them, but in most games their xG [expected goals total] was high, their chance creation was high, a lot of good set pieces, a lot of crosses, a lot of near-misses. And that’s how it goes sometimes.”

» READ MORE: Bradley Carnell orchestrated the Union’s success in 2025. His second season in charge matters more.

He suspected the travel to and from the Concacaf Champions Cup wore down the players, including some of those who played Saturday; and he could see a potential snowball effect.

“You can see it’s starting to take a toll on their confidence a little bit,” Berhalter said. “But it’s a good team, a well-coached team, and I’m confident that they’ll play themselves out of this.”

If you’re a Union fan, you might fear that the Union’s talent isn’t good enough. But a look around the field shows that really isn’t the case. A bigger fear should be that the book is out on the Union’s playing style, and opponents know how to shut it down.

When Berhalter was asked if he believes that, he didn’t say no.

“It’s a way to play that is very specific, and they stick to the guns a lot,” he said. “And for us, it was having a clear game plan, really understanding where the spaces were that we could exploit and then doing it.”

» READ MORE: The USMNT’s March squad shows Mauricio Pochettino has much work to do before the World Cup

He also had his team ready to face the psychological challenge of facing a winless opponent.

“We were concerned about the game,” he said. “We didn’t think it was going to be an easy game. Their backs were against the wall. They have higher expectations for their own performances. … We knew it was going to be a dangerous opponent, and it turns out it was.”