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Even With Five Starters Missing, the Union Clobbered Another Opponent and Set a Franchise Record
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There’s a lot going on this week with the Eagles on Monday Night Football, the Sixers hosting Media Day, and the Phillies playing the Braves at 2 p.m. because the MLB schedule makes are idiots.
But the Union deserve a blog post because they beat the brakes off Orlando City on Saturday night, extending their unbeaten streak to a franchise-record 12 games:
The Union haven’t lost an MLS game since the World Cup break. They have 10 wins and two draws in that time frame and are separately on a six-game winning streak that has pushed them all the way up to sixth place in the Eastern Conference. If the postseason began today, they’d go down to Miami to start a series against Lionel Messi F.C., and they might even jump Chicago for 5th place by the time this is all said and done.
What made Saturday night special is that the Union continued their clobbering with half of the team missing. Five starters were on international duty, playing pointless friendlies, so they brought in Andrew Rick, Sery Larsen, Ben Bender, and Jesus Bueno for Andre Blake, Neil Pierre, Frankie Westfield, and Danley Jean-Jacques. Quinn Sullivan came into the starting lineup with brother Cavan unavailable. Then they proceeded to blitz Orlando with a hat trick from Milan Iloski, who, by the way, is now tied for fourth in MLS goals this season.
This is some of the best soccer the Union have ever played. We’ll see if they run into that playoff ceiling again, but for now these guys deserve a ton of credit for turning their year around and going on an absolute tear.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com