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Feeling Better About the Union’s Playoff Chances After a 4-1 Sullivan Brothers Thumping to Cap Off the Regular Season
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Union 4:1 Toronto to cap off the regular season at Subaru Park.
For the first time ever, we got a Quinn Sullivan to Cavan Sullivan goal:
Toronto isn’t a great team, just 39 points and a 12th place finish this year, but this looked much more like the Philadelphia Union we saw after the World Cup break. It looked like the team that went 15 games unbeaten between July 22nd and October 17th.
The Union wrapped up the regular season with 50 points and a 14-12-8 record. They’ll go into the postseason as the 6 seed and play New England in a three-game series that begins on November 21st.
For as much as we talked about the unbeaten streak, the Union had gone four games without a win since October 17th, which was due to a combination of things. They had some untimely injury absences and suspensions, missing Cavan, Milan Iloski, and Bruno Damiani at an inopportune time. The schedule toughened up, with Charlotte, New England, Nashville, and Cincinnati in consecutive weeks. All four of those teams are in the postseason.
But the U don’t always finish strong or go into the playoffs on a high note. They finished draw/loss in 2023 and draw/loss/win in 2022, with the Shield on the line. It was draw/win/draw in 2021 and then loss/win in 2020. They’ve made early postseason exits in the two years that they’ve won the Supporters’ Shield.
Maybe it’s a real storyline, maybe not, but it just feels like they slow down a bit in October and November before the playoffs start. They play their best ball through the end of the summer and then cool off, which is why it was good to see them thump Toronto on Saturday and end on a high note.
The problem is that the MLS playoff schedule is negatively impacted by international fall windows, which makes for these big gaps between games. You beat Toronto on Saturday, now you don’t play again for two weeks. It presents the possibility of just falling out of rhythm, which we’ve seen in the past.
Thankfully, the winter schedule switch will take care of this issue moving forward. This is the last time we’ll ever have to deal with this fugazi-ness.
Either way, the Union avoided Lionel Messi F.C., which finished 2nd and will play Columbus to start. The Union lost twice to New England this year, once with Bradley Carnell and once with Ryan Richter, but they were tight, 2-1 games that could have gone either way. I think you’d rather play on the crap turf of Gillette in 40 degree temperatures vs. having to go down to South Florida to tangle with Messi, but that’s just like, my opinion man.
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