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Who Gives a Rat’s Ass About a Meaningless USA Game when the Union are on the Verge of Setting a Franchise Record?
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You want the good news or the bad news?
Let’s do the good news first.
Philadelphia Union homegrown trio Cavan Sullivan, Frankie Westfield, and Neil Pierre were all called into the USA’s senior team camp for the first time. It’s a very nice moment for three promising young players.
The bad news is that they’ll miss this Saturday’s game against Orlando City, along with Andre Blake and Danley Jean-Jacques, were called up by Jamaica and Haiti, respectively.
So the Union will be down five starters as they try to extend their unbeaten streak to 12 games, which would set a franchise record and put them 3 or 5 points ahead of Saturday’s opponent, which is trailing the U by two points at the current moment.
The reason this is happening, this schedule conflict, is because Major League Soccer plays through FIFA international windows. It’s always been a problem. We historically have not matched the FIFA calendar because we can’t play through the cold winter months in North America and so the MLS calendar overlaps with international dates, giving us these games where multiple teams are missing several players each. Orlando has five players receiving call-ups as well, including four who started their last game against New England.
Sometimes it comes out as a wash, sometimes it doesn’t, but it shouldn’t happen in the first place. You’d feel a lot better about the Union on Saturday night in a full strength vs. full strength matchup, but they’ll have to go out there and play with half of the normal squad missing.
Thankfully, this won’t be an issue moving forward, because MLS is flipping the calendar in July of 2027 after short “sprint season.” This means the league will match all FIFA international windows and transfer windows and eliminating this annoying overlap.
In the case of this weekend, it’s nice that Cavan, Frankie, and Neil are getting call-ups. You want to see local guys progress to the national team and represent the Philadelphia region. It was great to see guys like Auston Trusty and Mark McKenzie and Matt Freese and Brenden Aaronson on the World Cup roster.
But Saturday’s USA game is a friendly against Peru in Florida. It means nothing. The Union are on fire and playing some of the best soccer they’ve ever played. Now the pursuit of a franchise record is in jeopardy because of a stupid exhibition that doesn’t even matter.
Honestly, fuck the Peru game. These guys should be at Subaru Park this weekend and going for the record. 12 games unbeaten. I would love for someone in the Union front office to say, “You know what? No. Kiss my ass. We’ll send these guys after they play on Saturday night.” That will never happen, but it would be awesome if it did. And what would the lasting negative impact be anyway? None. Because the Union are gonna sell all of these guys eventually and Poch will be calling them from their new European teams.
A regular season Union game will always matter more than a USMNT friendly. In this case, it’s club over country.
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