Kai Wagner is happy to be back with the Union — and to be one of the team’s leaders
"I came here because I want to go back to the playoffs, and that’s the main target," Wagner said in some of his first comments since his surprising return to Chester.
It might be too cliché to say that, as Kai Wagner walked off the Union’s practice field on Saturday, it felt like he’d never left.
But considering that he was only gone for six months, he really did fit right back into things when he returned to Chester.
Of course, the clearest sign that he really did leave is the Union having the worst record in MLS (1-10-4, 7 points) as the league returns from its World Cup break. The quest to change that will begin Wednesday when Red Bull New York visits Subaru Park (7:30 p.m., Apple TV) for the first of the 19 remaining regular season games.
“We have to step with the right mindset on the field, and go in there and get the fans back behind us,” Wagner said. “And then we will see what the second half of the season brings for us. But I came here because I want to go back to the playoffs, and that’s the main target.”
Some of what Wagner said sounded a little more like his side of the story than the full story. He didn’t go too deep on how much his family wanted to return here, and he didn’t say anything about the Union paying a $4 million transfer fee to bring him back — one of the higher sums in team history, and well above the $2.5 million they sold him for.
But it was nonetheless clear that Wagner had kept a close eye on the Union after leaving, and wasn’t happy about the team’s collapse this year.
» READ MORE: Why the Union and Kai Wagner made the surprising decision to get back together
“It’s sometimes hard to say, maybe stupid to say for myself, but I also personally felt a little bit guilty that the team doesn’t do that well anymore,” he said. “When I see all my friends here and how they wrote me the whole time after each game — I was watching the games at 1:30 in the morning [in England] … I couldn’t [bear to] see the ship going down.”
So when Jon Scheer called to make the first big deal of his tenure as sporting director, Wagner was open to it.
“When Jon called me and told me the clear message of what he wanted to bring to the team and what he wanted to change in the team, for me it was straight [away] clear that I wanted to talk to the club to try to make this happen,” he said.
Wagner enjoyed his time in Europe, as brief as it was. He wanted for years to go, as the perennial offseason rumblings from his camp showed. But the Union got the point, and ultimately agreed to help make it happen.
» READ MORE: As the Union resume their season, Cavan Sullivan knows the spotlight on him will only grow more
“I would always do that step again,” Wagner said of going abroad. “For me this experience was something really special. I hopefully have a lot of years left, but at the end of my career if I would say to myself I never tried it or I never did it, I would always say to myself why I never did it — even if it was just seven months, the experience was unbelievable.”
Being at Birmingham City specifically came with some extra perks. Though he didn’t meet part-owner Tom Brady, they exchanged text messages a few times. And in a February FA Cup home game against Leeds United, Wagner got his first chance to play against a Premier League opponent — one that happened to have an old friend in Union alum Brenden Aaronson.
“We had a long, long chat after the game, and that was a special game,” Wagner said, adding that he got to talk with Brenden’s father, Rusty Aaronson, too. “I saw one post from you guys where you said you thought that I would tackle Brenden, but Brenden tackled me the first time. It was really fun to play against him — I got his jersey, too, at home, and we had a really good relationship with each other.”
Though the penalty shootout loss after a 1-1 tie didn’t go Birmingham’s way, Wagner still called it “one of the top three games probably of my career, just with the atmosphere and all that stuff.”
» READ MORE: Alejandro Bedoya reflects on his World Cup TV debut, the U.S.’ run, and lessons for Union teammates
He particularly noted that he “was not the main guy anymore, and maybe also had a little bit of pressure off my shoulders.” That won’t be the case with the Union, and he knows it.
“That was the main target from Jon, just bring mentality and leadership back to the team,” Wagner said. “He knows that I can step in and I don’t need a lot of time to adapt to everything. … I think these are all players who really have belief now on the field again, and just to see them this morning, I felt so, so happy that I made that step back.”
