Getting Reacquainted with the Philadelphia Union, aka, the Closest MLS Gets to a Technocracy

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.)

Obscenely plump.

Long-Term Tendencies

Philly have historically had respectable defenses and muddled attacks, but I’d call their recent, nearly unbroken succession of just…exquisitely balanced teams the trend worth watching. Even in the one season where their attack broke down – i.e., 2021, when they only matched the league average for goals scored (but backed it with a rock-star defense) – the Union have fielded excellent teams, balanced on both sides of the ball; hell, the 2022 team had the balance of the best pinot in Oregon. Those are the Union’s tendencies until something rattles ‘em off the foundation.

Identity: Kind of like a think-tank in a functioning society. Before the brain-worms start digging.

Joy Points: 8 (* see note below; and,  hello, single digits! And, again, this is the 12th team overall.)

10 Names to Know [Ed. - Why did I never add the seasons played by each before now?]

Sebastian Le Toux (2010-2011, 2013=2016)

I’d go so far as to call him the Union’s first indispensable player – even with the excursions to New York and Vancouver thrown in. Le Toux scored and assisted with equal aplomb and generally did plenty of both in the hopes of lifting a struggling team to the surface. Kind of heroic, really.

Brian Carroll (2011-2017)

Not to shit on Carroll – a player I respect immensely, and who played the position I most respect (and relate to) – but he does offer a ready-made symbol for Philly’s early, and arguably corner-cutting ambitions. If you sort the all-time roster by season (so very highly fucking recommended), you’ll see an almost uninterrupted list of MLS cast-offs – i.e., a real cattle-call of players who did well enough on other teams, if a couple seasons prior, to convince any team that they might shine on the right roster. A low-risk, low-reward model, basically, and one that worked as well as what that implied.

Maurice Edu (2014-2017)

One of those eternally-promising Americans blessed with a high-enough profile to pass as a major signing – i.e., what going abroad for a few seasons could do for a player’s reputation. Insofar as Philly’s concerned, Edu was injured more often than he fell short, but the brute reality of missing games through injury generally pencils out as a bust when it comes to signings. Still, signing him showed ambition, no matter how misplaced.

Not this guy. Different one, same commercial.

Andre Blake (2014- )

Just a good goalkeeper, full stop, the kind of player who keeps things regular and reliable in one of the key positions and frees up budget and thought-process for problem-solving. It’s like what that 61-year-old man says in the Hims commercial. Still, his 2022 numbers chased a record and that went a long way to helping the Union chase a trophy.

Alejandro Bedoya (2016-?)

One of those players that becomes so important to a team’s culture that a fan-base struggles to accept with the reality he’ll be gone one day – and gods know I have one of those too (Diego Chara). Bedoya’s contribution exist outside whatever he produces for statistics; he strikes me as the kind of player that sets the level that the players around him aspire to match.

Ilsinho (2016-2021)

I’m literally dumb-founded by this player’s top-line attacking numbers (e.g., goals, assists), because I recall him as being something close to automatic every time he stepped onto the field. Then again, his limited minutes bring that memory closer to reality – more to the point, he did the main thing the Union needed him to do, i.e., change the game. Step 1...

Brendan Aaronson (2020-2021)

Did he post eye-popping numbers in his two seasons with Philly? No. And has he struggled since going abroad? Yep. I’m not saying that doesn’t matter, so much as I’m saying that doesn’t matter yet. More than that, I see Aaronson as one of those players who can add actual value when he drifts all over the field to find the attacking game. He has plenty to learn, of course (e.g., dealing with physicality (steroids?)), but America needs to develop this player profile.

Daniel Gazdag (2021- )

A prime example of the improved foreign signings mentioned well above. Gazdag has produced numbers that any team would throw money at for two straight seasons. He’s slippery, he combines, finishes well, he stays healthy (this is very important!); just one of those signings, you know. It’ll take a couple more seasons to make him a great, but you can’t get those if you don’t get the first two.

Jakob Glesnes (2020- )

The Norwegian center-back arrived just a couple (full) seasons ago, and he’s already eighth on all-time minutes for the Union. Glesnes comes with all the basics – good size, decent speed, etc. – but that dude has damned cultured feet on top of that. Fun fact: I’ve seen him have games so catastrophic that they surely haunt him. So has Andre Blake. It’s a funny old game…

Jose Martinez (2020- )

I’m a sucker…no, I’m a straight-up whore for this kind of player. Insofar as I have a soccer spirit animal, it’s a ball-playing (effectively) No. 6. I type that as a former, deeply amateur, yet enthusiastic No. 8. I count having a massive, two-way presence at that position as one of the game’s greatest force-multipliers. And Martinez has delivered that.

Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything

Fifth overall, and with a respectable goal-differential, but also 4th in the East and 14 points off the pace to the team that would knock them out of the playoffs, FC Cincinnati -  who did so, it bears noting, with a low-key mentee-slaying-mentor vibe. Philly went reasonably deep in the playoffs (conference semis), but never really looked up to contending in 2023 – which, for the record, I’d argue was a weird season in any case. To sign on to the general consensus, the CCL campaign seemed to take the legs out of them and, for what it’s worth, I see that as a harder situation to pull out of than your garden-variety mid-season slump. So...yay, failure? (Or is the Union in next season’s CCL? And does that still exist? What’s normal anymore?)

Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition

Inasmuch as they have some things to sort out – the complicated question of what to do about Bedoya among them – but everything I see tells me they’re returning a pretty damn solid core - e.g., Blake in goal, Glesnes and (mostly) Jack Elliott holding down central defense, Martinez buzzing all over, and Gazdag and Julian Carranza leading the line. That pretty damn solid core will play fewer games, which is on top of flying far fewer miles, and it seems fair to expect that to carry them to two to three to four (or so) more successful results. I can’t predict a frictionless season for Philly – regression strikes where it will and pleases – and they could stand to land a midfield wizard (which assumes that’s an option), but they’re almost certainly playoff competitive without one.

* Joy Point Index

Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points

Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points

Winning MLS Cup: 3 points

MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points

Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points

Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points

MLS Is Back Cup: 2 points (yeah, yeah, I’m a Timbers fan; still, that was a tough one)

CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point

Making the Playoffs: 1 point

Missing the Playoffs: -1 point

Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points

Wooden Spoon: -3 points