Photo: Earl Gardner

The first person that I thought of as the halftime whistle blew was Chris Seitz.

Seitz, if you’ll recall, started the first-ever Philadelphia Union home game in net. With the Union up 2-1, the keeper went to the edge of his box, set to punt the ball downfield.

Instead of punting the ball away, though, Seitz got spooked by a sudden movement by D.C. United’s Jaime Moreno.

He dropped the ball at Moreno’s feet, gifting him the easiest goal he’d ever score.

Now, maybe Moreno should have been whistled for interference, and the Union did go on to win the game.

But I remember that moment as clear as day from my seat in the Linc’s section 122, and I think about it often as a symbol of what has bedeviled this franchise for its entire existence — a lingering sense that disaster is always a drop of the ball away.

This is, unbelievably, the start to a column about the first-ever playoff win in Union history.

All my friends are demons

The moments come to your mind without me even reminding you of them, I’m quite sure, like a nightmare that lingers with you even after you wake.

The 2011 home playoff game, starring sweeper Stefani Miglioranzi.

The detonation of the roster in the 2011-12 offseason.

Vincent Nogueira, hitting the post.

Andrew Wenger, missing a penalty.

Rais M’bolhi, generally.

Year after year of September swoons, no matter how hot the start to the season.

3-1 in Toronto. 3-1 in New York. 3-0 in Houston.

For a decade now, when the going gets tough, the Union have been happy to politely decline an invitation to get going.

And then, on the way out, slip on a banana peel and fall flat on their face.

The weight of those demons was for the 2019 Union, and their tortured fanbase, to bear as the club prepared to host its first home playoff game since 2011.

The signs weren’t promising. The club limped into the playoffs on a stretch where they earned just four points in five games. Kacper Przybylko, their seemingly unstoppable Striker Muffin, limped into Talen Energy Stadium, sidelined with a stress reaction in his foot. The skies, dark and gloomy, did their best to dampen the mood inside the park.

For 45 minutes, the Union played their part to perfection, seemingly overwhelmed by the moment. Andre Blake paid homage to Seitz, deciding to play the worst game of his professional career at the worst possible time. The backline looked terrified, the midfield out of sync, and the forwards listless.

When Tom Barlow made it 3-1 Red Bulls in the last minute of first-half stoppage time, I thought the game was over.

The demons had won.

True grit

All season, this iteration of the Union has been surprisingly resilient, unlike their weak-willed forbears. They shook off bad starts to come back in the second half. The scored stoppage-time winners rather than conceding them. They only lost two games in a row at the very beginning and very end of the season, a stretch of thirty matches in the middle unbroken by a pair of losses.

The regular-season Union hadn’t been a beautiful team or a particularly joyful one. But they were impossible to deal with for ninety minutes, possessed of a relentlessness that caused opponent after opponent to break down.

With the ghost of Chris Seitz lingering over the River End, the question in the second half was this: would the gritty Union we’d seen all season make an emergence? Or would they meekly accept their defeat?

We all know the answer. The Union came out, to a man, like a squad possessed. They won every loose ball, pinned the Red Bulls in, and began to bludgeon them into submission. As he has all season, Jim Curtin pushed the right buttons with his bench, with Fafa Picault accelerating to roadrunner speed from the minute he touched the pitch.

When extra time began, a familiar — but not too familiar — feeling settled over Talen. It was inevitability, but not the inevitability of defeat. Rather, it seemed only a matter of time before the Union got the goal they needed. Mark McKenzie, the team’s Homegrown centerback, urged the crowd to their feet. The sound from the stands nearly overpowered JP Dellacamera’s voice on the Fox Sports 1 broadcast.

How fitting it was, in the end, that the goal came from Marco Fabian? Emblematic in so many ways of how this franchise has failed over the years — a splashy signing that failed to pay off, an experienced player glued to the bench in favor of players with less talent — Fabian put in a titanic shift in extra time.

The goal itself was a fluke more than anything else, a cross (??) that took a wonky deflection, looped over a helpless Luis Robles, and nestled, improbably, into the far corner of the Union’s net.

It’s never pretty with this team, but it didn’t have to be.

The final whistle sounded, and after a decade of failure, a franchise and its supporters finally got the moment they’d always been dreaming of.

The ride isn’t over yet, of course, with a cataclysmic showdown with Atlanta looming on Thursday. All will be disappointed if the Union fall short.

But even if they do, things will be different.

I hope Chris Seitz’s ghost, and the other demons that have haunted the halls of Talen Energy Stadium, are at peace.

Because they can’t haunt the Union any more.