Photo @PhilaUnionII

Philadelphia Union II has played 16 of its 28 games, and the mid-summer transition, when YSC Academy Seniors graduate (birth year 2006s) and begin to be replaced by this summer’s “rising” seniors (birth year 2007s), is fully underway. It is time for Philly Soccer page’s midseason Union II roster analysis.

The analysis will appear as it is completed and will comprise four parts. The first two follow below.

• A brief initial category of two outliers
• First team deep reserves who have “played down” for developmental game minutes,
• Actual Union II professionals
• Those academy amateurs who have played major roles for the professional-level farm team

Two outliers

Twenty-and-a-half-year-old striker Jose Riasco from Venezuela and fourteen-and-three-quarters-year-old attacking midfielder Cavan Sullivan from Philadelphia do not fit within our usual analytical groupings, each for different reasons.

Riasco has been away in Uruguay on loan with first-division side CA Boston River (click here for the club’s official X [formerly known as Twitter] account) for at least 10 months and perhaps as many as 12. That means PSP has not seen him play with his club side for nearly a year.

Last fall for Boston River he made 11 appearances, six of them starts, totaling 510 minutes with one goal. This spring he made seven appearances with one start, totaling 134 minutes with no goals. In the final seven matches of the 2024 Apertura he was not in the squad four times, dressed but did not play twice more, and received three minutes in his only appearance. He has not been listed for any of the winter’s — Southern Hemisphere! — torneo intermedio matches. We do not know whether he is still in Uruguay.

When Ernst Tanner last mentioned him publicly, early last December, he indicated he intended to sign Riasco to the first team. There is no indication whether he meant it – our suspicion — or commented for other reasons, or whether the situation has further evolved in the following half year.

The younger Sullivan is also an anomaly but his future is the opposite of Riasco’s mysterious uncertainty . If unofficial press reports are accurate, his future is already known. The move’s timing seems already to have been negotiated contingent on the speed of his development. Unofficially, when he turns 18 he will leave for Manchester City in England, if he has not left earlier for a City group academy on the continent after he turns 16.

Sullivan became a signed professional only recently, on May 9, 2024, and has been practicing with the first team ever since. He has not yet sat their game bench nor stepped onto their game field.

He is at the very beginning of his professional career. He has four Union II starts along with five appearances as a substitute totaling 412 MLS Next Pro minutes. He plays effectively at Union II’s level, but he has not yet started multiple games and consecutively played full 90s. He has recently played a full 90-minute professional game. He has two assists and one goal while committing 10 fouls and suffering nine. Eleven of his 12 shots have been left-footed. His pass completion percentages indicate he boldly tries to make things happen, as should be expected of an attacking midfielder.

We speculate that he will not graduate to the Union’s bench until he has passed specific quantitative game performance benchmarks, but we have no idea what they are. We guess they involved “engine-building.” We are confident the organization will do everything possible to ensure the young man’s success in the actual event of his first MLS appearance.

Eight first-team reserves “playing down”

Andrew Rick: Recently, the 18 ½ year-old goalkeeper seems to be stepping ahead of Oliver Semmle as Andre Blake’s primary back-up. We suspect Rick’s future role with Union II will only be to come down for tune-up minutes rather than to be their primary starter.

Olwethu Makhanya: The 20 ¼ -year-old South African left center back is Union II’s lead center back when available. In the first 16 games of Union II’s season, he has started 12 times coming off only once, at halftime against FC Cincinnati 2 in northern Kentucky on April 4. When Damion Lowe has been away with Jamaica, Makhanya serves as the first-team’s top reserve center back, but he has not yet appeared on an MLS game pitch.

For at least the first half of Union II’s season, the development priorities for Makhanya seem to be making the 4-4-2 narrow diamond instinctive, integrating his play with Neil Pierre’s as his primary partner, becoming effective as the preferred distributor between the two, and having him take leadership between them.

Jamir Berdecio: The organization’s first job with the almost 22-year-old Bolivian has been to improve his conditioning. Only recently has that task begun to reveal his attractive combination of speed and quickness. They have also been repurposing him to right back from the midfield, we guess. The reliability of his individual defending judgments remains his greatest challenge. Courage is no problem. Picking the right risks sometimes has been.

We suspect his loan agreement may be extended into next season due largely to his outstanding athleticism. In the longer-term, his challenge will be convincing Jim Curtin to trust him.

Sanders Ngabo: The 20-year-old Dane’s  primary task has been to prove his recovery from injury, as injury was the primary reason the Union were able to acquire him from Lyngby BK in Denmark’s top flight. From the start he has played as a single-six defensive midfielder in Union II’s narrow diamond, and he has done it well. In addition to tackling and holding the ball, he distributes and makes forward runs.

His pass completion percentages are gaudy. The lowest was 77.5% against FC Cincinnati 2 in the aforementioned April 4 loss. High 80s and anywhere in the 90s are much more usual, and there is one example of perfection. He has 12 Union II starts with one substitution appearance for 1,047 minutes. Eight times he has played the full 90.

Recently he has begun to share time with Ecuador’s Randy Meneses. We do not know whether Ngabo is recovering from some type of minor injury or if the Ecuadorian loanee is being evaluated at the position.

Combining Ngabo with center backs Makahanya and Nelson Pierre has been central to Union II’s current success, sufficiently so that PSP guesses the trio are being groomed as the first team’s next central defensive triangle.

Nick Pariano: The 21 ¼ -year-old Homegrown midfielder is on season-long loan to Union II. We believe he practices with the first team primarily. He suffered injury on April 21 against Red Bull II and came back too soon against New England on May 19. He next appeared as a sub against Cincinnati on June 6.

He has eight starts and three substitution appearances totaling 652 MLS Next Pro minutes. He grew up in the academy system and knows it instinctively, as is clear when he plays alongside CJ Olney and David Vazquez.  He can play credibly as a double six defensive midfielder when necessary.

David Vazquez: The 18 ½ -year-old homegrown attacking midfielder/winger has had an eventful year of contract uncertainty. He signed a professional contract with Union II on February 29, and a Homegrown one with the first team exactly two months later  (April 29⁾. He is a fixture at left wing with the US U-19s and will miss time from the end of next week to be in Mexico at the Concacaf qualification tournament for the 2025 FIFA U20 World Cup.

He has been practicing with the first team, extensively all season and exclusively recently. He went with them to their first preseason session in Clearwater, playing well the second half of February’s Flamengo friendly alongside Pariano and CJ Olney.

Recent Union press releases and Major League Soccer’s May 1 Roster Profile describe him as an off-roster first team Homegrown player, a category previously unknown to Philly Soccer Page. Hence, when he was needed recently to sit the first team bench three times, he had to be signed to four-day short-term emergency contracts thrice. He has one such opportunity left this season.

He serves free kicks well for both the U19s and Union II, having scored one this year against Red Bull II and one last year against Germany’s U19s.

We expect to see the combination of Vazquez, Olney,  and Cavan Sullivan quite a bit during late summer and throughout the fall as the three interchangeable forward-most vertices of coach Marlon LeBlanc’s midfield narrow diamond.

Chris Donovan and Markus Anderson: both first team reserve strikers have come down for game conditioning and sharpness honing. Donovan now dominates at the MLS NEXT Pro level, and Anderson is getting close to dominating as well.