When you’re down in Clearwater this year watching Phillies Spring Training, especially keeping an eye on [player name] and [player name] who we got in return for Jimmy Rollins, you’ll also be able to check out [player name] and [player name] of the Philadelphia Union.
According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, the Union have agreed to a multi-year deal that will bring their pre-season training camp to the Joe DiMaggio Complex in Clearwater, right across from the Phillies’ Brighthouse Field home. The Union’s pre-season training takes place in February. So when you’re checking out the anonymous dudes the Phillies invited down there (or just the guys you wish were anonymous), you can pop across the street and check out the anonymous dudes on the Union. They’re cool, I swear.
The Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, which stands as the oldest ongoing national soccer competition in the U.S. and the world’s third-longest-running open soccer tournament, will be decided tonight. The cup can be entered by pro clubs, amateur squads, and even club teams, but it’s now down to two: The Seattle Sounders and the Philadelphia Union. The Union will face off against the Sounders at PPL Park at 7:30 p.m. tonight for the cup — shown locally on the Comcast Network.
The now long-gone Bethlehem Steel F.C., after which the Union modeled their third kits, are in the top spot for the most U.S. Open Cup wins of all time with five. To their advantage, the Union have former Sounder Sebastien Le Toux, who currently sits as the all-time leading scorer in the Open Cup with 14 goals. The Sounders’ Kenny Cooper is second with 13. It’s going to be a great game, and maybe having something on the line will help the Union grab a little more of the fan-share in a city that sadly still has a pretty large blind-spot covering PPL Park in Chester. But there is a silver lining to that, as tickets to tonight’s Cup Final are still available.
This article first appeared on the site a year ago. Re-posting. Some of the team stuff might be a hair dated. COYS.
If you want to become a soccer fan, or even just sample what the sport has to offer, then I suggest you start with the English Premier League, which opens its season on Saturday.
I jumped in two years ago and haven’t looked back.
Soccer can be an extraordinarily confusing sport to follow. Forgetting for a second about learning the game, there are countless teams in countless leagues in countless countries with countless titles and cups and championships. It’s like the first time you played Mario Kart and tried to figure out the difference between the Star and Gold cups, and then you had to select for 50, 100 or 150 cc. The fack?! For a new fan of the sport, it can be an extremely daunting task to jump right in. That’s why the English Premier League – also referred to as the EPL (by lifers), Barclays Premier League (by people who want to acknowledge a large multinational bank every time they talk about their favorite league), Premier League (by everyone else) - is for you. It’s the most watched and probably the best sports league in the world. All the teams are in England or Britain or Great Britain (the differences have been explained to me three times and I still don’t get it, nor do I care) and there’s one winner at the end of the season, with no playoffs, no tournaments, no divisions, no conferences, no bullshit. Just soccer. Three points for a win. One point for a tie. None for a loss.
Perhaps you’ve heard of some of the more popular teams: Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs and Newcastle.
This isn’t a column on what team you should choose to root for (Bill Simmons already wrote that)– it’s a post on why you should choose the league.
High-level European soccer teams play in a variety of leagues, tournaments and cups. Each team has its national league (English Premier League in England, La Liga in Spain, Serie A in Italy), often a secondary regional league (Champions League, Europa League), friendly matches, and random national and international cup tournaments. It’s a dizzying array of matches that can be difficult to keep track of, especially from across the Atlantic. That’s why you should start with one league, the Premier League. Or the Barclays Premier League, if you’re an asshole.
The season is long (August-May). Games are played almost every week (soccer has breaks for international competition and local cups, and it will piss you off when you turn on the TV one Saturday morning only to find archival footage of things with weird names like the London Derby). It’s easy to keep track of. And many of the world’s best and most recognizable players are in the league (the two best, however – Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi – play in Spain).
There are 20 teams in the league. No playoffs. The team with the most points at the end of the season wins. It sounds anti-climactic, and it can be, but take, for example, the 2011-2012 season, when Manchester City beat out Manchester United (bitter rivals) on the last day – no, the last minute – of the season.
Manchester City needed a win over lowly Queens Park Rangers to win the league. A tie would give it to Man U, who, while the City game was drawing to an end, had just beaten Sunderland, 1-0.
City was down 2-1 in extra time. They needed two goals in four minutes, which is unheard of in soccer.
They got it, much to the shock of Sir Alex Ferguson and Man U, who learned of their misfortune while still on the pitch.
That was how the season ended. Two games, in two different places, drawing to an end at the same time. It may be the greatest finish to a sports season ever.
Now, not every season will conclude that way. 2012-2013 didn’t. Man U ran away with it, because they’re the Yankees and you should hate them accordingly. If you’re finding any of the information in this post to be new information (as in, you’re not already a soccer fan) and you decide to root for Man U, I hate you, and so does every other soccer fan. You’re the guy who likes the Yankees, Cowboys and Lakers. You’re a sick fuck. And a frontrunner.
But there are other things to consider besides first place:
Despite what ESPN would like you to think, no, the MLS isn’t going to become the next great American thing on the heels of the World Cup. It’s not a good league. Matches are fun to attend, and the atmosphere at PPL Park is great, but the league stinks. It’s borderline unwatchable when the EPL, Champions League and others are so readily available on TV. But, this goal by the Union against THE RAPIDS on Saturday night was awesome, and the diagram tweeted out by team today is almost as good (huge additional props for recognizing a tiny mistake and fixing it).
Philadelphia Union announced today John Hackworth has been relieved of his duties as team manager. Union assistant coach Jim Curtin will take over as interim team manager effective immediately.
A native of Oreland, Pa., Curtin, 34, played over two hundred games for the Chicago Fire and was named an MLS All-Star and the Fire’s defender of the year in 2004. He helped the squad to two U.S. Open Cup titles in 2003 and 2006, as well as the 2003 MLS Supporters Shield. Curtin played his final two seasons in the League with Chivas USA before retiring in 2009.
The new manager is a Villanova grad, so he must be good! The Union were 23-30-20 under Hackworth.
This isn’t exactly the best time to be a Philly sports fan (or a ticket reseller…). With the Flyers out of the NHL Playoffs, and the biggest event of the Sixers season being the draft, times are lean. Even the Phillies are struggling to fill seats and doing a fine job of losing money. The Eagles are months away, which leaves us with the Union.
If nothing else, you can sit with the Sons of Ben in River End and take your frustration about Philly sports out on opposing players. Those seats cost only $27. Of course, you’ll be standing.
If you’re looking to experience the Union first-hand in an actual seat, tickets are available from both the Primary and Secondary market for all games. The Union website has tickets as low as $27, which is right in line with the secondary market. If you want to get tickets in River End, the Union’s Website is the only place you can go.
Over the course of the next three months the Union will play five home games for which tickets start at only $17. If you’re not bullish about hating on the Mets, you can try it out on the Red Bull when they come to town in July. They’re easy to dislike. Of course, for any Philadelphia Union tickets, visit Crossing Broad tickets.
If you’re also interested in the American football, we’ve also got Eagles tickets for all pre-seaon and regular season games, starting in August.
My phone rang yesterday. I didn’t answer it. I never answer it. I currently have 16 missed calls and voice mails, 6,044 unread emails and 57 unread text messages. I’m not popular (only the emails are really impacted by the site), I’m just lazy. But when I saw I had a voicemail from an unknown Minnesota number, I had to listen. The call was from someone (call him G, for short) claiming to be “from the Philadelphia Union.” He used my first name and said that he was sorry to have missed my call, which I most certainly didn’t place. That piqued my interest. I figured it had something to do with the site. Maybe it was someone in the promotions department trying to spread the word about an event, or someone from the PR department responding to my All-Star Game request from two years ago. I tried to think of anyone I contacted regarding the Union. That list is small, and I was drawing a blank. But I called back anyway.
I found out rather quickly that G wasn’t from the Union specifically. He was from the MLS, and he was trying to sell me tickets. Ostensibly.
Ignoring his scummy sales tactic of claiming that he was returning a call I didn’t place, I humored him for a moment and then informed him that I wasn’t interested in Union tickets and that I only called him back because I thought he was actually with the Union and that he might have been calling me based on the fact that I run a sports blog. I’m sure G rolled his eyes at me identifying myself as a “sports blogger” and assumed that I was just some guy who posted his incoherent thoughts about the local team when he had a few moments to spare (which wouldn’t be entirely untrue…). Maybe he knew exactly who he was calling (he did have my name and number). But I didn’t bother telling him that I make a good living running the blog and that 250k people read it each month. I just politely told him that I wasn’t interested in buying tickets.
This is all very exciting, I know. The Union unveiled their new home kits yesterday. They feature substantially more gold.
That’s it. That’s the whole story. The Union have a slightly different new home kit. These things could be made out of fine silk and actual gold, and they’d still look terrible because of that hideous Bimbo logo.
