Sergio Santos will return from injury for the Union’s big game vs. Nashville

Santos has missed the Union’s last two games because of a quad injury suffered early in the Oct. 10 win at FC Cincinnati.

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Oct. 22, 2021, 4:54 p.m. ET

Union goalkeeper Andre Blake and striker Sergio Santos “will be ready to go” for Saturday’s big home game against Nashville SC (7:30 p.m., PHL17), manager Jim Curtin said Friday, as his team tries to jump over the visitors into second place in the Eastern Conference.

Blake has been tending to an adductor injury that he suffered during Jamaica’s recent World Cup qualifying games. It caused him to not take goal kicks in Wednesday’s 3-2 loss at Minnesota United, and in Jamaica’s games against Canada on Oct. 10 (when he first got hurt) and Honduras on Oct. 13.

“I thought it worked out fine,” Curtin said of Blake’s limitation. “We kind of preserved the leg a little bit. It’s obviously feeling better as time goes by. So he’ll be 100%.”

Santos has missed the Union’s last two games because of a quad injury suffered early in the Oct. 10 win at FC Cincinnati.

“Sergio will be available to contribute — is that as a starter, is it off the bench, still to be determined,” Curtin said. “Not going to reveal that quite yet. But [it’s] certainly great to get another striker back, especially with the speed that Sergio provides.”

Santos’ absence left the Union with just one starting-caliber forward, Kacper Przybylko. Curtin tried to surround Przybylko with a number of different players in supporting roles, but Matheus Davó notably wasn’t one of them. And if he wasn’t going to come off the bench when the Union trailed late Wednesday, that was a pretty clear sign.

“We manufactured some results along the way, have tried some different things,” Curtin said. “Some worked really well, and some, you know, we can improve on.”

Curtin has been more blunt in admitting to his fears of overworking Przybylko, who has played in every game this season. Until Cory Burke comes back from an ankle injury that has sidelined him for over a month — Curtin said “hopefully” that could be Wednesday’s game at Toronto FC — Przybylko might not be able to get a day off.

“It scares me,” Curtin said. “There’s not going to be a ton of rotation from any team, I don’t think, because everybody wants their best players on the field at this stage of the season. You don’t want to have any regrets.”

If Przybylko can be spelled for a little while, or if Santos can’t go the full game (which will probably be the case), we might see Dániel Gazdag played as a second forward again. The Union will hope the two goals he scored against Minnesota, his first from open play with this team, will bring a confidence boost that leads to more scoring.

“He’s been doing a lot of those same things in training, so we see it and we know it’s in him,” Curtin said. “I’ve also played him out of position. … We’re asking him to do a lot of different things, maybe inside his comfort zone, sometimes outside his comfort zone. But yeah, certainly those two goals give confidence, and I think will propel him down the stretch of the season.”