Ryan Richter balances wanting a deep Leagues Cup run for the Union with a packed August
Saturday's win over Atlanta was the first of eight games this month. That is a truckload of action, and it could easily flatten a team that needs every ounce it can muster just to make the playoffs.
The question always comes around when the Union enter the Leagues Cup: how seriously will they take it?
That moment arrived again Wednesday, as interim manager Ryan Richter prepared for Thursday’s group stage opener against perennial Mexican power Cruz Azul at Subaru Park (8 p.m., FS1, UniMás, TUDN, Apple TV).
In theory, the tournament is the Union’s shortest path to a trophy this season. Each of the 36 teams in the field — 18 each from Major League Soccer and Mexico’s Liga MX — plays three from the opposite league in the group phase. A win is worth three points, and there are no draws: tied games go to penalty kicks, with the winner earning two standings points and the loser earning one.
There’s then an MLS standings table and a Liga MX table, and the top four in each advance to the quarterfinals. The goal? Avoid matchups within the same league for as long as possible.
But while a full run is six games, the Union have another factor to think about. Saturday’s win over Atlanta was the first of eight games this month, three in the Leagues Cup and five in the regular season. The tournament quarterfinals are Aug. 25-27, the semifinals are Sept. 1-2, with the final and third-place game on Sept. 6.
That is a truckload of action, and it could easily flatten a team that needs every ounce it can muster just to make the playoffs.
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“For us, we have to take it one game at a time,” Richter said at his pregame news conference Wednesday. “But we’re going to play a strong team against Cruz Azul. So we’re going to go for the win, and then you see the way the tournament’s structured this year: then we have to go and see what the next game brings, and see exactly how far we can we can go in this tournament.”
He later added: “We’re approaching this game against Cruz Azul with our first team, and we’ll continue to progress like that through the tournament until it’s maybe not possible. But we plan on going through this tournament with the first team, and hopefully advancing past this round.”
At the same time, he knows the ideal will collide with pragmatism pretty quickly, and lineup rotation will be necessary.
“Yeah, we have to, that’s clear,” Richter said. “To ask the same group to play in those six games would be really difficult. But I’m totally confident in the players that we have in the squad, and I know there’s a number of positions that we can rotate and we don’t drop our level at all.”
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He also said he’s “excited to see the opportunities that present themselves for guys, and what they can earn, and the positions that they can earn with the minutes that come from a congested schedule like this.”
That pointed toward something that has always been among the Leagues Cup’s biggest benefits for the Union: the chance to give young prospects a taste of the big stage.
It’s especially important for young American players who might be able to earn looks from the national team. And since U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino has opened the door as he starts his second term, the Union can once again earn a spotlight: on Cavan and Quinn Sullivan, Frankie Westfield, Neil Pierre, Andrew Rick, and so on.
Playing against Mexican teams is always valuable experience, even if all of the Union’s Leagues Cup games are at home — though it won’t always sound that way, with all three visitors expected to bring lots of fans.
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If the Union have some good performances, perhaps that will increase the odds their guys get a call from Pochettino for the September and October friendlies.
“The intensity and the level of these games, when you play against a team like Cruz Azul, you find out who the real dogs are,” Richter said. “You find out a lot about players in the tough games against good teams, against really difficult opponents, in environments like this that are different … Who can raise their level, and is up to the level of that game? And the only way you find that out is when they’re in that actual situation.”
