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.)

Philadelphia Union 2-0 FC Cincinnati: Line-Breaking Passes Break Teams

At last! I have whipped a metaphor to stiffness!

If you’re looking for good news, FC Cincinnati lost 0-2 to the Philadelphia Union Wednesday night, and the result didn’t really flatter anyone. Going the other way, if you’re going to call a lot of what FC Cincy put up "shots," you are the patron saint of generosity. Too many of them looked about as threatening as Darren Mattocks’ 29th minute attempt. It was fairly early in the game when “PHI really good at blocking shots” went into my notes, and that didn’t really change till late in the game. I’ll get to that later, but the big takeaway for this game is that Philly deserved the win. Now, the details…

FC Cincinnati fans had all of – what? – five minutes to ask whether it would have mattered or not had Kacper “Sh-Bilko” Przybylko was offside on the go-head goal (wha…? 7 minutes? No shit?). I don’t know how psychic recovery time works, for a variety of reasons, but I hope no one treats the question of whether “Sh-Bilko” (yes, I’ll stop; it just helps me remember the pronunciation) was offside on the Union’s opening goal as the whole damn problem tonight, because it mattered to the same rough extent that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand “caused” World War I – i.e., it was merely the first act in a particularly painful drama (only scaled to 1 versus, oh, 30,000,000 or so, not counting the Spanish Flu, as in, and the "1" is spectator sports suffering, which isn't actual suffering).

FC Cincinnati had a low-block as dense as plywood, one that alternated from suffocation (4-1-4-1) to outright strangulation (5-4-1; rare sightings on that one). The Philadelphia Union had more talent in every position, familiarity, tactical understanding, etc. etc. etc. It took them an entire half, plus a halftime of (presumably) planning and/or screaming to figure out how to breakdown that low-block, but they did it. And once the tide turned, low-tide didn’t return until late in the game, when Cincy substitute, Fatai Alashe, lined up the most unobstructed shot of the game for Cincinnati. They came too late, obviously, but I want to linger on that idea of unobstructed shots, because it’s a biggie.

From what I saw, Cincinnati’s low-block only kicked in when it’s press failed – and that press discombobulated the holy shit out of Philly for the first 45 minutes of the game. Throw the possession stats all the way out the door, because a lot of Philly’s involved pushing the ball across the backline until something actually easy opened up. The Union alternated between isolating players on farthest fringes of the low-block, or trying to play a ball over the top to Fafa Picault, or to Kacper Przybylko. None of that worked: FC Cincy kept Philly’s players too far away from one another to do any damage, and that threatened to spell a decidedly uninspiring phrasing of “success,” but I also think most FC Cincy fans would have eaten 20 crickets in exchange for a draw tonight. If that doesn’t make sense, I’m arguing that just about any draw would have worked for me tonight – and I’m guessing that applies to most fans of FC Cincinnati.