You may or not care about soccer, but if you’d like to see a Philadelphia team play for their first trophy in franchise history, turn on ESPN 2 at 8 p.m. to watch the Union take on the Houston Dynamo in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final.

The Open Cup is a side competition that takes place concurrent with the MLS regular season. Think of the latter as your normal American sports season: the Phillies play the Mets, Nationals, and other teams and compete for the World Series. Now add a separate competition in the summer that involves the Phils, Mets, Nats, Augusta Green Jackets, and Toledo Mud Hens, and that’s basically what the Open Cup is. It’s just a competition that allows teams from all levels of the sport to compete for a separate trophy during the same calendar year.

Hopefully that makes sense. All you really need to know is that the Union get a chance to lift their first piece of hardware tonight, which would go a loooooong way towards getting them some respectability in town. This is a team that has underachieved dramatically from day one, and maybe they turn a corner and do the city proud by putting a piece of silverware in the trophy case.

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It doesn’t get much more Union than the past five days.

OF COURSE this team would find a way to concede four goals to Montreal at home in a must-win game, jeopardizing their playoff seeding and postseason hopes in general.

Then they turn it around in bizarro world fashion by going out to Seattle on short rest and shutting out the Sounders 1-0 with a 93rd minute smash and grab goal, ending the opponent’s MLS record nine-game winning streak in the process.

This Union season just continues to distort reality and redefine everything we previously knew about space, time, and human existence. It really does. This team was dead and buried not three months ago. The final nails were being driven into the coffin as the sporting director took off for greener pastures. The stadium was mostly empty and fans were fleeing the sinking ship without a second thought.

Fast forward to September 20th, and this group is now the winningest in franchise history.

“Winningest” isn’t a word, but whatever – thirteen victories is a franchise record, eclipsing the twelve-win mark John Hackworth’s squad put up in 2013. In more simple terms, no Philadelphia Union team has won more games than this squad of overachievers.

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