Photo: Marjorie Elzey

Philadelphia Union are back in training ahead of the 2023 campaign, a season that will be unlike any that has come before.

Playing games on “short rest,” i.e. the sequence of a midweek game bracketed by games on the preceding and following weekends, describes the pace at which a majority of the Union’s 2023 schedule will be played.

The 2023 Union will play not only their MLS schedule. They also will play three “in-season” tournaments:

• the Scotiabank Concacaf Champions League (SCCL)
• the Lamar Hunt U. S. Open Cup (OC)
• the newly expanded Leagues Cup (LC) involving Major League Soccer and Liga MX

The first two have official schedules with announced match windows. The Leagues Cup has announced only the start, the finish, fifteen three-team groups, and a five-stage knockout round.  World Cups are cited as informative examples for what is not yet officially known.

The tournaments could add as many as 20 games to MLS’s regular season of 34. The additions themselves will create many midweek games. And the thirty days cleared of MLS matches from July 21 to August 19 to allow the Leagues Cup’s expansion will create more.

A maximized “all competitions” first-team regular season schedule for 2023

The “worst” case, the one creating the most short rest games, would occur if the Union made all three tournament finals. We illustrate that “quadruple” in the schedule estimate charted below.

In each match’s vertical column the third item from the top indicates on what day after the preceding game a specific match would be played. All times are eastern.

• Where a detail has a question mark, it is estimated not official.
• Exponents indicate the round of the tournament.
• We have guessed Leagues Cup’s schedule using its announced parameters and officially cited examples. The Union are the top MLS seed in the group stage.
• All officially announced schedule information is subject to further adjustment as need arises.

Schedule adjustments will be needed

In the schedule above, the 23rd match — the bold-faced, italicized, underlined one — is scheduled for the exact same day as the first leg of the SCCL final. We do not guess how the conflict might be resolved because there are too many variables and no way to reduce them. (Hence, we detail only 53 matches, not 54.)

Two times above in the chart, games fall on back-to-back days (June 3-4 & August 19-20). The juxtapositions involve MLS’s regular season and the second leg of the SCCL final and the Leagues Cup final respectively. Should they occur those sequences would probably be changed.

One time above, a match is scheduled on the second day (June 6). It involves SCCL’s final and the Open Cup quarterfinal.

Fully combined as currently announced and estimated from May 31st to June 6,  the Union could have five games in seven days.  TV would probably govern any adjustments. Concacaf and USSF would be involved in addition to MLS, other leagues, and the individual clubs.

Midweek-style “short rest” will be a year-long challenge

In 2023 playing on midweek rest will not be exceptional. It will be normal. Depending on how far the Union advance in their three tournaments, as many as two-thirds or perhaps only five-ninths of all matches will occur on the third or fourth day after their predecessors.

In the unlikely event that the Union reach all three tournament finals (the schedule charted above), we estimate that 35 times out of the 54 games, a match would be scheduled on the 3^rd or 4^th day. At 64.8%, that would mean slightly less than two out of every three matches of the entire regular season would be played on a midweek game’s short rest.

In the equally unlikely event that the Union were immediately eliminated from its three tournaments, 24 out of 39 matches would occur on the third or fourth day. At 61.5% that would be slightly less than five out of every eight on short rest.

To illustrate only one of the myriad “middle” scenarios, if the Union were to make all three quarterfinal rounds but fail to reach any semifinals, 25 of 44 matches would occur on the third or fourth day. At 56.8% that would be slightly more than five out of every nine on short rest.

Conclusion

Every player on the Union’s 27 or 28 man roster, Ernst Tanner’s stated size expectation, will have to pull every bit of his own weight in 2023. Long-term competitive survival will depend on squad rotation, especially if the team strives for success in all four competitions, a strategy Tanner and Jim Curtin  have advocated in the past. Injuries could trigger short-term extreme hardship emergency promotions of professionals from Union II, but only of professionals.

The technical staff must rotate the squad. The reserves, particularly the deep-lying developmental ones, must meet the challenge. The sports science staff must continue to minimize injuries.

After everything described above occurs, the Union will  face the MLS Cup playoffs. Whether the playoffs will follow last year’s model or undergo significant revision as leaked in late October, the public does not yet know.