CHESTER — The reasons that Ernst Tanner laid out at Subaru Park — in November, then again on Thursday — all made perfect sense. The Union had regressed so sharply in 2024, in terms of on-field results and off-field mindset, that it was time to part ways with Jim Curtin in November. Thursday’s hiring of Bradley Carnell, a coach with experience in the brand of counterattacking soccer and financially challenged environments that the Union represents, is the right fit. Each point logically followed the previous, as does this one: Whatever happens in 2025 to the Union is solely Tanner’s, to reap the credit or shoulder the blame. Two months on, there’s no relitigating Curtin’s departure. The Union underachieved in 2024, finishing 12th in the Eastern Conference and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2017. Curtin believed he didn’t have enough quality players in the team. Tanner believed Curtin didn’t get the most out of the roster, unwilling to trust young players and unable to continue developing senior players. Neither is wholly right or wrong, but in the business of soccer, the tie goes to the sporting director. In Carnell, Tanner acquired a methodological refresh and a sharpened perspective. Curtin believes in many of the values Carnell professes – counterattacking soccer, player development, man management – but a decade in the job led to complacency enacting them. Carnell is more dogmatic than Curtin ever was about playing without the ball. He’s more steeped in the Red Bull soccer philosophy that produced Tanner. And in a new place, he’ll be hungrier to prove it. Carnell is also, crucially, on his third chance as a head coach. His first with the New York Red Bulls was as an interim, guiding them to the playoffs in 2020 over a 14-game stretch before the club made the wrong decision by passing him over for the ill-fated tenure of Gerhard Struber. Carnell took over as St. Louis City FC’s inaugural head coach – its sporting director, Lutz Pfannenstiel, once worked for Tanner at Hoffenheim – then led the expansion club to the top of the Western Conference in 2023. Three wins in the first 20 games of 2024 led to his firing on July 1. “One of my core philosophies is development,” Carnell said. “And I think if you’ve looked at my history over the last two and a half years or three years as a coach, giving debuts and homegrowns, this is me to a core. This is my DNA in terms of development. And I’m not talking about development just as young guys in the II team. There’s definitely development still to be done with the seasoned pros.” His resume holds promise, but also sufficiently unstable footing in the business that he won’t demand of Tanner better players, as Curtin in so many words did. “We never had that depth discussion over the period where we have been successful,” Tanner said in November. “And even this year, we had a lot of injuries and we had some releases for national teams, but when everybody was in, Jimmy was telling me, Hey, listen, all of a sudden when everybody’s here, we have a lot of depth. So that discussion, I don’t know where it is coming from. That is a little bit the wrong one.” The final word on 2024 finds plenty of blame to go around. Neither Curtin nor Tanner is to be fully vilified nor absolved. Curtin’s in-game management was never elite. He could be stubborn about player usage. He put his faith in veterans who underperformed, with little consequences or accountability because of his unwillingness to lean on unproven players, leading to a training environment that Tanner thought had curdled. The example of Tai Baribo, who played barely 100 minutes in 10 months then scored 16 times in 17 games when forced to start, is incontrovertible. If you say there’s not enough talent at hand to succeed, eventually that sneaks into the preparation and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. At functional soccer clubs, managers don’t stick around for a decade unless they’re Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola. Curtin is neither. But Curtin’s firing elides blame attributable to Tanner. The German executive built a team capable of winning trophies through shrewd dealing and bargain acquisitions (Kai Wagner, Kacper Przybylko, Julian Carranza, Jose Martinez). But he built it once, and any contending club must renew the well regularly, in times good and bad. He hasn’t done enough to sustain it, and he hasn’t profited off those players on the back end as once envisioned. A miss here or there is the price of doing business. A half-dozen players who’ve left without any impact is a problem, and the blame for the Union being caught without a reliable backup goalie last year lies solely at Tanner’s feet. A season like 2024 invites pessimism into the frame. In the least charitable reading, the pole to which many fans are currently gravitating, Tanner’s adherence to the Academy and counterattacking soccer provides cover for an ownership group that lacks the financial wherewithal to compete. Curtin often served as the shield to that discontent, both with his hometown amiability and coaching feats that, whatever the valid criticisms, led to the seventh most wins in MLS history by a head coach. When he stopped extracting overachievement in 2024, the entire house of cards folded. Owner Jay Sugarman is a deeply unpopular figure among Union fans. Carnell, given his international roots and New York history (much of the fanbase will unfairly read that as a stain), has a long road ahead before engendering warm and fuzzy feelings in such a parochial market. That leaves Tanner out front, to absorb whatever gets flung at the club. Given the lack of roster turnover and the likely dependence on young players, it may not be adulation that is coming his way. Contact Matthew De George at [email protected].