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Kacper Przybylko sees ‘quality’ in the Union as Ernst Tanner’s first foreign signing debuts

"There's big quality in this team," the newly-signed Polish striker said. "They try to play football, not only long ball."

"There's big quality in this team," Kacper Przybylko said of joining the Philadelphia Union. "They try to play football, not only long ball."
"There's big quality in this team," Kacper Przybylko said of joining the Philadelphia Union. "They try to play football, not only long ball."Read moreJonathan Tannenwald / Staff

Count Kacper Przybylko as the first foreign player signing of the Union's Ernst Tanner era.

The 6-foot-4 Polish-German striker said Monday that Tanner was the man who found him and brought him to Philadelphia. Tanner still hasn't officially become the Union's sporting director because of immigration bureaucracy, but he's been advising the team from afar.

Przybylko hadn't met Tanner before the offer came, but he knew of Tanner's work with Red Bull Salzburg and TSG Hoffenheim. So he figured he'd give America a shot.

"It was a good connection," Przybylko said. "He told me there's a great team here. I was here three or four weeks ago just watching everything. It was great. So I decided to come here."

When he came here, he liked what he saw. After training with the team for a while, he sealed a deal late last week and took in Saturday night's game against Montreal from the stands.

If the 4-1 blowout loss had been all he saw, he might not have been so impressed. Fortunately, he saw much more than that.

"There's big quality in this team," he said. "They try to play football, not only long ball."

Of MLS as a whole, he said, "It's not like everyone mentions in Germany that it's [equal to their] second league or third league."

Przybylko also liked what he saw in the infrastructure beyond Talen Energy Stadium. The Union's training facility in Chester isn't as spectacular as others in MLS, mainly because the youth academy is in Wayne. If the two venues were combined, you'd see something like what Toronto FC, Atlanta UnitedLos Angeles FC, and other clubs have built .

Or you'd see something like what Przybylko has experienced in Germany. And by that standard — which is pretty high, of course — Przybylko liked what he saw in Chester.

"This is not the quality of the third or second league in Germany, this is the quality of the first league," he said.

Przybylko has also experienced a lot of medical facilities. He has been bedeviled by foot injuries, including a broken foot that was mis-treated by doctors and required two further surgeries.

While he was sidelined, Kaiserslautern — one of Germany's grand old clubs — suffered relegation from the second division to the third. Przybylko became a free agent after that. One of the clubs he tried out with this summer was Sunderland, a famous English club which has now fallen to that country's third tier.

"It was very sad just watching all the games and not helping" at Kaiserslautern, Przybylko said. "It's a big, traditional club like Sunderland… It's impossible that teams like Sunderland and Kaiserslautern are now in their third leagues."

He says he's at full health now, and he clearly wants to show what he can do.

"I have now trained for the last four or five months preparing," he said. "It would be great to get some minutes for the team and help them go into the playoffs."