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| The RAND Corporation: Planning Your Future. |
[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]
Thumbnail History
In the grand timeline of MLS expansion, the Philadelphia Union arrived fairly early – a couple seasons after Toronto FC, one after the Seattle Sounders, but one before my Portland Timbers – or just 2010. You can pull a couple threads out of that thought, but the one I associate with Philly more than any MLS team doubles as the big feather in their cap: they used that time to figure things, and well. Not perfectly, but still pretty fucking well. Something else about the Union: once you get
used to thinking about a team a certain way, that impression becomes sticky. In
this case, that meant forgetting they missed the playoffs in six of their first eight seasons. On the one hand, they made the post-season in Year 2 (yay!); on the other, they missed it over the next four seasons. Like any expansion team, most of that first roster came from the scraps they pulled out of the Expansion Draft. When the limits of that approach became apparent, Philly put real effort into signing game-changing players – e.g., Conor Casey and Maurice Edu, or even bigger swings like Cristian Maidana – but those players came and went before their dry spell in the playoffs ended. And then 2018 arrived and the Union hasn’t missed the playoffs since; better, they won the Supporters’ Shield…in the weird season (i.e., 2020) and strolled to MLS Cup 2022, where they contested one of the consensus best-ever finals in league history against Los Angeles FC. Being able to skim a healthy amount of cream from their academy system clearly had something to do with that – players like Derrick Jones, Auston Trusty, Brendan Aaronson, Jack McGlynn and Nathan Harriel don’t grow on trees – but, personally, I consider how much better they got at signing impact foreign signings the bigger story.
Best Season(s)
While I bet winning the Shield felt as good to Philly fans as winning the (one and only…please) MLS Is Back Trophy did for Timbers fans, I have to think reaching MLS Cup feels like their high-water mark*, despite the pain. Again, MLS Cup 2022 was a fucking party…so, why don’t I go with the obvious thing? (Because I’m me.)
(* Also, this call looks past their solid CONCACAF Champions League runs of recent seasons.)
