The Phillies start their Red October push on Saturday night with Game 1 of their Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It’s safe to say that most of the city’s sporting attention will be focused on fall baseball and the Phightins’ quest for another World Series title.
But this game preview isn’t.
We’re casting our gaze on Subaru Park in Chester, where tomorrow the Philadelphia Union have the chance to lift its second-ever Major League Soccer Supporters’ Shield with a win against rival New York City FC.
The Union have led the race for the shield — which is the title and silverware given to the team with the best regular-season record — for the majority of the year. The math became clear on Tuesday night after title rivals Inter Miami lost, 5-3, to the Chicago Fire. Now, Philly can clinch it at home, against a rival, with a game to spare, in front of what’s likely to be a sellout crowd.
The stakes are high for head coach Bradley Carnell and his side as they look to make an emphatic statement in his first season in charge. Last year, the team finished 12th in the 15-team Eastern Conference last season and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2017.
The Union booked a playoff spot this season before September, and they’ll be riding the momentum of a record-equaling, 6-0 away win over D.C. United.
“You want to go into the playoffs playing well and getting a big win like that, where we have a lot of different goal scorers,” forward Milan Iloski said, via the team’s website, on Tuesday. “I think it’s something that’s really important for a lot of guys, to feel confident and to feel like we’re firing going into the playoffs.
Carnell said the final game after a successful season can be its own challenge.
“We’ve always come up with narratives of can we stay the hunters, as opposed to the hunted,” Carnell said Thursday. “We’ve always come up with different ways to push the season where it hasn’t felt comfortable, even though we were always in a comfortable position. There’s never been a bit of comfort within these walls. There’s always been some added, driving initiative to keep the competition, to keep it humble, on the ground and just moving one step at a time.”
D.C. has been one of the worst teams in the league this year, so last Saturday’s result was not a surprise. NYCFC are significantly better, and are one of the few teams that have bested the Union this season, winning, 1-0, back in April. Like the Union, New York has won four of its last five games.
Carnell said he looks forward to games like these, “because you always want to measure yourself against the best teams.”
“They are really comfortable with the ball, they are feisty, they are edgy, their one-v-one dynamic is excellent and they have a real good attacking threat,” he said. “Have we got ways and means to go around that? For sure, and we’ve shown it a bunch of times this year.”
The Union won its first Supporters Shield in 2020, and made it to the final game of the playoffs in 2022, where the team lost to Los Angeles FC on the same day that the Phillies lost the World Series to the Houston Astros.
The shield guarantees the team will face the winner of the Eastern Conference wildcard game, between the 8th and 9th seeds. The top spot also guarantees that all but one game — part of the best-of-three series in the first round — will be a home match.
There’s a list of convoluted scenarios where the Union don’t win and have to rely on other results over the weekend to secure the shield. For Carnell and his team, though, it’s just another week trying to pick up three points with a win.
“We want to win every game that there’s points on the board for,” he said. “That there’s only six more points to play for, and three very important ones on Saturday, in front of our home crowd on our last regular season match here. I’m excited to hear hopefully it’s a sellout and have the fans loud as they can be for the full 90 [minutes].”
At the time of writing, only General Admission tickets were left on the team’s website. You can also watch it on Apple TV with an MLS Season Pass subscription. After Saturday, the Union close out the regular season at Charlotte FC on Oct. 18.