Philadelphia Union Scouting Report: A Tale of Fatigue, Potential Underperformance & Absences

Union fans, from what I gather and despite everything.

The Philadelphia Union limps into Providence Park this Saturday, mostly likely with a goal of playing for another draw or just not collectively expiring outright at the 64th minute, if not prior. Early as it is in 2024, the Union have got already around. And the experience has not always been pleasant (see, "violently ejected" below).

Some Basics

Were it not for the abandoned match versus the Seattle Sounders a couple weeks back, this would have been the ninth game of Philly’s season. Trips to San Juan de Tibas, Costa Rica and Pachuca, Mexico in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup (CCC) (and Kansas City and Austin) padded their frequent-flyer miles but all that flying and shitty airplane air takes its toll. For good or ill – here, it depends on whether they value getting a little rest over their self-esteem - Pachuca violently ejected them from the CCC just over a week ago, giving the Union its first full week’s rest since February 20.

Meanwhile, back in MLS’s regular season, Philly have played three games and finished in as many draws, all against teams that barely impress their own fans, aka, Chicago Fire FC at home and Sporting Kansas City and Austin FC away. Because all those games struck me as non-events, I skipped ‘em. As such, last night was my first long look at the Union this season. I didn’t go in blind, mind you: a quick tour through the (mildly authoritarian) Philly subreddit provided some context. To parse the sum of two threads (here's the other thread), the blowout at Pachuca magnified some anxieties – mostly about the defense, if with a dash of pining for Leo Flach* – but a lot of commenters have embraced a long-view/Zen philosophy to their team’s sputtering start.

The Review

I heard rumors (here) about Austin ditching the possession-heavy approach of seasons past and drifting toward more of a transition model. That made the Union’s 2-2 draw at Austin last weekend feel like a good model for how Philly might play the Timbers. With that, lights, camera…replay!

Austin v Philadelphia, in General

The Timbers can go a long way toward making things easier this Saturday night by being clean on the ball – and, to be clear, Austin fucked up with and without pressure from Philly.

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.)

Portland Timbers Preview: In Need of a Little Union Busting

Something to avoid in both soccer and life.

I’ve been eyeing Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Union as the likeliest brick-wall in what, until the Portland Timbers hacked up a lung down in San Jose, looked like a soft landing going into the June break. (And this is an international break, right?) Then again, Philly hasn’t exactly kept up expectations. Since bolting ahead in the Supporters’ Shield race early in the season, the Union haven’t won a game in weeks. Moreover, some of the points they’ve dropped - e.g., all three points away to Toronto (and that damn game sold me on TFC) plus two more at home just a couple nights ago against…fucking Miami?

I just sat through two good chunks of the Philly v Miami game - the first 30 minutes, then the 65th to…around the 80th - and, for what it’s worth, that experience doesn’t match the other spot-checks I’ve done on Philly games. They typically play vertically, even to a fault, but the Union either had an off-day, or Miami upset Plan A. They couldn’t start Julian Carranza, their second highest scorer and all-round second most effective player (four goals, three assists), due to the loan arrangement with Miami, so that’s one hole, and they started leggy, loping (yet generally competent) defender, Jack Elliott, as the defensive midfield in the absence of the regular, Jose Martinez (a player I don’t know well, btw). That might have pulled a leg out from Plan A, but, for all the forward movements that petered out or died on both sides of the center-stripe (so many), Philly still created plenty of chances, firing 20 shots, eight of them on goal. Against that, I saw most of those shots (the highlights include, well, the highlights of those), but it didn’t change the overall, real-time impression of a stymied, ambling Union attack.

To turn to some things that went well for Philly, Daniel Gazdag fired some menacing shots, and they’ve got a pair of solid shuttlers in Leon Flach and Alejandro Bedoya (who apparently speaks five languages), and they get solid overlapping options out of Kai Wagner and Nathan Harriel and/or Olivier Mbaizo (depending on who starts). Finally, to defend Philly’s…reasonably-maligned forwards, Sergio Santos and Cory Burke, both made good runs - e.g., see Santos’ run on one of Gazdag’s better shots (coulda had a tap-in) - and, even if either of them only puts away one chance in 15, the risk to Portland of allowing them 15 chances is real.

To flip in the other direction, even with a handful of other defenses in touch, the Union are the only team left standing on single digits for goals allowed. They’ve allowed just five goals over their past nine games, and three of those games came against your livelier attacking teams - e.g., Montreal, Red Bull and LAFC. Based on goals scored alone, Portland keeps up with all three of those teams, but anyone with a working memory knows that seven of the Timbers’ goals on the season came in a wheels-off blowout over Kansas City. Moreover, all those teams score steadily, whereas Portland has been shut-out three times and limited to one goal on six other occasions - i.e., a 0.67 goals-for average across most games. So, the question is, how does a putzing Timbers attack get past that, plus Andre Blake as a back-stop?