Kai Wagner Unlikely to Play on Saturday

The Philadelphia Union left back is labeled as questionable, but he trained on the side on Thursday.

CHESTER — The Philadelphia Union will likely be without Kai Wagner for a second straight game.

The left-back is dealing with an abdominal issue that kept him out of last week’s trip to south Florida.

Union manager Bradley Carnell provided an update during Thursday’s press conference.

“He’s doing okay. I think every day he’s a couple percent more,” Carnell said. “He’s still questionable. We don’t want to push anything and then be delayed by multiple weeks. In the next 24 hours we’ll know if he’ll be eligible for the weekend, but I don’t think so.”

Wagner trained on the side on Thursday, which isn’t a good sign for his status on Saturday.

Carnell was asked when the injury occurred, and it took him a while to eventually just say it happened in training.

“I’m not at liberty to disclose. It’s an oblique strain or something,” Carnell said. “I think every player over multiple weeks has something going on. A knock, a bruise, something. It wasn’t like it wasn’t on the radar. He was monitoring something and in training, yes, that’s when it happened.”

Look, I get Carnell isn’t as open as Jim Curtin was, but all you have to do here is give a straightforward answer about an injury instead of adding in a word salad before that.

This is MLS. You aren’t holding the nuclear codes. Just give us the answer because transparency is important in this regard. Plus the injury report comes out every Friday anyway, so Orlando City and future opponents know beforehand what the left back’s status is.

Anyway, excuse the long beat writer complaint.

Frankie Westfield will likely start on the left again with Wagner likely to be unavailable.

Saturday marks the sixth appearance for Westfield, who after this week, will have to have his roster designation changed.

Westfield is currently under the Off-Roster Homegrown Player portion of the roster. Those players are only allowed six call-ups to the gameday roster.

We’ll get more clarity on the impending move to the full first-team roster either on Saturday, or during next week’s press conference.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it, though. The Union have seen this coming, probably since the end of preseason, and have a plan in place to figure it out.

Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Union.