The Philadelphia Union Are Rolling Again, Which Should Surprise No One

Philadelphia Union striker Julian Carranza has seven goals this season for a team that is unbeaten ... [+] in its last six. The Union are trying to return to the 2023 MLS Cup final after losing to LAFC last year.

AFP via Getty Images

Somehow after all this time, the Philadelphia Union were flying under the radar again. But for how much longer?

After a slow start, the Union are the hottest team in MLS at the moment, winning five times during a six-match unbeaten run, most recently in an impressive 3-1 victory at New York City FC on Saturday night.

After play closed on Matchday 15 on Sunday, the Union had climbed back up to fourth in the Eastern Conference standings. They’re tied for the second-best goal difference in the East, and are the only team in MLS with three players who have already scored five or more times.

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And their resurgence has been completely predictable if you’ve paid much attention in recent years.

Since the start of 2019 MLS campaign, the Union have earned the most points of any regular season team, collecting 247 total over 139 matches. (Los Angeles Football Club is second with 241 in 136 games.) And their most notable lean stretches over that time both came while making runs to the 2021 and then 2023 Concacaf Champions League semifinals.

If you remove MLS games that came while the Union were still alive in continental competitions, they have earned 1.91 points per match, or 204 points from 107 games, since the 2019 season began.

Philadelphia is almost singularly unique in MLS history in performing at such a high level for such an extended stretch regular season games. And yet in the last couple weeks there were already signs that the Union were losing ground in the public eye when it came to ranking this year’s MLS Cup contenders.

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For example, when FanDuel Sportsbook posted its first 2023 MLS Cup odds for nearly a month, the Union were relatively far down the list at +2000 odds. That implies a shade under a 5% chance of winning MLS Cup, which feels low for a team that reached last year’s final, the Eastern Conference final the year before that, and retained all its key pieces from last year’s squad.

Bettors agreed, and the odds had shortened considerably before the end of the week.

There were also ESPN’s most-recent MLS Power Rankings, which had the Union eighth behind clearly lesser teams like expansion side St. Louis City SC and an intriguing but inconsistent Columbus Crew. (The power rankings from MLSsoccer.com last week, which are usually more nuanced, had the Union fourth.)

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In all likelihood, the Union’s place outside the spotlight will be short-lived. But it’s worth asking why they landed there to start, when their resurgence was nearly inevitable.

We’ve seen oddsmakers and journalists give more benefit of the doubt to other MLS teams in similar spots, even when those teams were less likely to recover. In 2021, the expectation was that LAFC would somehow recover and make the MLS Cup Playoffs until they were mathematically eliminated. The same for the 2022 Seattle Sounders.

But the Sounders had a legacy of two MLS Cup titles and four recent appearances in the final. And LAFC had not only their record-breaking run to win the 2019 Supporters’ Shield, but also the star power of Carlos Vela.

The Union’s 2020 Shield honor came with the asterisk of the onset of the pandemic. And their most recognizable player to American audiences during any of this span — U.S. national team midfielder Brenden Aaronson — was quickly sold on to Europe once he began contributing regularly to the first team as a teenager.

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Perhaps the playoff system obscures the very real skill of earning consistent league results that is revered elsewhere in the soccer world, where the league is decided without playoffs and single elimination play is left for cup competitions.

And maybe the Union aren’t as good in win-or-go-home scenarios. But history in other North American sports shows teams that repeatedly perform well in the regular season may eventually get their playoff moment.

The NHL’s Washington Capitals won the President’s Trophy as the best regular season team three times before capturing the 2018 Stanley Cup. Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers posted two 100-win seasons in the previous three years before they finally won the World Series in 2020.

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We’ll see if the Union follow those footsteps in 2023 or beyond. But for the foreseeable future, we should expect them to be in the running. And we certainly shouldn’t be giving up on them before the calendar turns to May.

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