Daily news roundups

News roundup: first Union-Steel doubleheader tomorrow, MLS announces expansion and more

Photo Credit:Philadelphia Union

Union

Tomorrow is the first Union-Steel doubleheader of 2019, the Union will kickoff at 1pm and the Steel will kickoff at 4pm. Fun fact, you only need one ticket to get into both matches, but here are some other things to know before tomorrow’s matches.

The Union will be wearing their light blue Parley kits during tomorrow’s match against Montreal. You can buy yours at the Union shop if you missed out on the online sale last week.

You can watch the match en español on Saturday as UniMás partner offers the club’s first-ever Spanish broadcast partnership.

Brenden Aaronson, Auston Trusty, Derrick Jones, Cory Burke are among some of the top talent to come to the Union from their connection with the Bethlehem Steel.

Learn everything about all the special events surrounding the double header tomorrow. And no, it’s not 4/20-related, it’s Kids Day!

Speaking of Kids Day, try to guess who these kids are

The U15 academy team’s GA Cup match against Chivas slid down a muddy hill once the downpour hit, resulting in Chivas winning off of a late goal.

Steel

Coach Burke is getting the Steel ready for their match against the Indy Eleven at home tomorrow at 4pm, after the Union’s match.

Chavany Willis talks about scoring his first goal on Tuesday night against the Charlotte Independence.

MLS

MLS announced plans to expand to 30 teams in the next few years. Sacramento and St. Louis have been asked to make formal presentations and the league has been in discussion with several other ownership groups in other cities.

In the rise of #PlayYourKids, these five teenagers are among the best in the league, but they left Aaronson out, so…

Oh, VAR, we can’t live with you and can’t live without you apparently. Take a look at the key video review decisions from Week 7.

Here’s what clubs did for Greener Goals Week of Service this past week.

US

The USMNT will face Venezuela in Cincinnati for a friendly on June 9th in their last match before the Concacaf Gold Cup.

World

Some of the top Premier League players will boycott social media for 24 hours today in protest to the many recent incidents of racism.

Ajax beat Juventus in a shock to many in the soccer world, learn about the beauty and fragility of their Champion’s League run.

VAR had a huge impact on the Man City vs Spurs Champions League match, sending Tottenham  but is just one angle enough to catch everything clearly?

13 Comments

  1. John O'Donnell Jr says:

    You missed MLS announcing that they will start accepting and paying training fees and solidarity payments.

    https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/04/18/faqs-about-training-compensation-and-solidarity-payments

    • This is probably the biggest MLS news of the day. Now MLS clubs will get compensated when players like Weston McKinnie leave an MLS academy for Europe before signing with the senior team. It’s a little late for Union to get anything for Zach Steffan or CJ Santos, but it will be good going forward if Ernst can do for the Union what he did at Salzburg.

    • el Pachyderm says:

      Correct and good of you to point out. I am of the opinion its a job half done….
      .
      …MLS insulating itself further from the rest of US Soccer.
      .
      If a kid is an FC Delco player or a PA Classics player and signs abroad these DA Academies at the very least should receive the same benefit.

      • Yeah, this is a little disingenuous by MLS. Hopefully this does lead to all academies being compensated by MLS.

      • So if you as a parent pays FC Delco or PA Classics $5K-$10K per year for kid to play for them…………………they should then be able to make ADDITIONAL money from your kid?

      • el Pachyderm says:

        Yes. The USDA teams need to be elevated from PTP. I figured this was a given within my comment.
        .
        If Johnny is in FC Delco but isn’t good enough to make the academy he’ll need to pay. If he makes the academy, US Soccer mandates the exact same environment as MLS Academy. This raises the tide for all boats.
        .

        100%.

  2. They should keep expanding to the point that they have to separate the two conferences for the regular season

    • OneManWolfpack says:

      I am ok with this, as long as it happens. You have to stop at some point. Or do you go to 40 and then split it 20 and 20… maybe an MLS 1 / MLS 2 – pro rel style league? The issue I have is that at some point the bubble will burst. The fees being charged to get into the league can’t just keep going up, can they? Do you take it to 40 and then take the training wheels off and let some clubs fail, so you can contract the league as a whole? I think fans of the league would like to know – at least I WOULD – what the plan actually is. That’s what drives me nuts. It’s all about the money grab of the expansion fee and in 10 years I wonder how many of these teams will be thriving and still doing well in their markets.
      .
      On the flip side though… if expansion could stop so Sugarman can stop enriching his franchise and then maybe he would finally sell this club… that would be great. Thanks!

    • If pro/rel is impossible, I support this.

    • I just don’t see pro/rel in the future. The entry fee is now $200 million so nobody is going to put up that kind of cash to play in the 2nd tier. I see this going to 32 teams with 4 divisions of 8 teams. Each team plays the teams within their division twice and outside of the division one time. That’s a 38 game regular season.

      • part of the reason I like expanding is i like that more people would have a local top tier team to support. i think the country is large and diverse enough to support many more teams than there are now. the other reason i want this to happen has nothing to do with promotion and relegation- its the travel. i don’t know if this is something that bothers anyone else but I hate that teams have to travel thousands of miles for a regular season game. it seems insane and the quality of those games really suffers. you can see how crappy teams play after having to sit on a plane for 6 hours, it sucks to watch. I want the league to break up and be more regional to cut down on that and to increase regional rivalry with more fans traveling to away games

  3. el Pachyderm says:

    the Ajax result is not a surprise at all. The only thing surprising is they didn’t hang half a dozen on Juve in the return leg —the domination was so thorough.
    .
    I said it after group play and I’ll say it again, don’t be surprised if Ajax are finalists.

    • Agree. What is surprising is how they got the formula right between young and older players. They tried for years unsuccessfully to get good results with just young players. Was only after spending some money on older players that they got as far as they did this year. With all the money they are getting now they can be very selective on who they sell in the next few years.

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