Photo from X (formerly Twitter) @PhilaUnion

After 90 minutes the score was AGF of Denmark’s SuperLiga 2, the Philadelphia Union of MLS 1. Ater 60 minutes the score had been Philadelphia 1, AGF 0, thanks to Kai Wagner redirecting a poor corner kick clearance to Quinn Sullivan who scored in the 24^th minute.

Given Philadelphia’s preseason process, the match score is irrelevant. Game conditioning is the most fundamental purpose whose progress can be assessed, and in the second appendix we chart Philadelphia’s total game minutes in Spain.

These observations come without benefit of having seen the match. The only game footage we saw was a 13 second clip of Quinn Sullivan’s goal.

Shape

The shape discussion is guesswork based on last season’s game footage, the Slavia Prague friendly, and the application of logic to what we know so far about head coach Bradley Carnell’s principles of play. Because of those principles we exclude the possibility that the five-man midfield suggested by the Union’s tweet of its starting formation could be a straight-across-flat-five. We base that conclusion on Carnell’s interchangeability principle.

Given who started, we suspect all six players in front of the back line were interchanging constantly as circumstances dictated, as they did last week. We also suspect that Mikael Uhre was perhaps hanging a little further forward than the rest, and that Jesus Bueno was hanging a little further back to compensate for Jack McGlynn’s runs forward into the attack. The other assumption we made is that usually McGlynn was positioned deeper than Daniel Gazdag when the Union took over possession. The diagrams representing the four Union lineups are almost certainly overly static representations of this match, as they were for Slavia Prague.

At tap

After HT

Coach Carnell

As in the first match the starting group was primarily veteran. Two exceptions were Olwethu Makhanya at – we presume – left centerback, and Cavan Sullivan at– again, we presume – left channel midfield. It was an excellent chance for Carnell to see two things about the two youngsters:

• how they blended with the veterans under game pressure, and
• how they met the challenge of unknown strong European opposition.

The only assessments we can offer are

• the clean sheet score line kept for 60 minutes by this group (incorporating three halftime adjustments),
• the absence of any emergency substitutions, and
• three AGF yellow cards between 35 and 38 minutes with no corresponding Philadelphia ones, which might indicate Philly played well enough to have surprised and frustrated the Danes.

Carnell’s two controlled experiments with young starting personnel were not disasters.

The South African boss then showed his disregard for a preseason score line, and his willingness the use the match to discover and expand his team’s capabilities more thoroughly. He completely replaced a defense that had been holding a clean sheet. Only the double pivot in front of it contained veterans of any kind.

60 min

75 min

First, at the 60^th minute he changed three quarters of his backline personnel and moved the lone holdover to a position the holdover had not played in a game for over a year, since a 2023 Union II emergency. Match newcomer Isaiah LeFlore played the last 30 minutes at left back. Fellow newcomer Neil Pierre played the last 30 at center back, on the left side we suspect. Holdover Westfield probably moved to right center back where he had played in emergencies for Union II in 2022 and 2023. And newcomer Nick Pariano re-auditioned at right back repeating his brand new adventure from a week ago.

The new unit surrendered goals in the 67^th and 78^th minutes. More than that we don’t know.

Second, Carnell probably changed formations at halftime before switching out all  his remaining original attackers after the 60th. We are guessing that the shape might better have  been called a 4-2-2-2, although the three pairs were probably interchanging constantly.

At the 60th Chris Donovan paired with Markus Anderson who had come on at halftime. Eddy Davis got 15 minutes as a left channel midfielder to discover how he would adjust to a position at which as far as we know he had never played in a Union game at any level. CJ Olney reprised his Slavia Prague experiment in the right midfield channel but for 30 minutes not 15.

Aside from the score line, we have no evidence how well any of these tweaks succeeded.

Third, probably, he subjected his double pivot of Danley Jean Jacques and Alejandro Bedoya to a last half an hour of significant stress. Since we did not see the match we cannot say what the stress revealed.

At the 75^th minute Jeremy Rafanello ended the Davis experiment in the midfield and Oliver Semmle replaced Andrew Rick in goal.

A “did not stop” and some “did-not-plays”

 Westfield played the full 90 minutes, suggesting that he came to camp in superb condition and that other defenders have been unavailable. He deserved a business class sleeper for Monday’s flight home.

Nathan Harriel has not appeared in either friendly in Spain. Our guess about the US v Costa Rica match was clearly wrong. He has continued to appear in social media photos. We conclude there must be some type of on-going minor knock that allows some practice activity but does not yet allow play in games.

We wonder how quickly and well Olivier Mbaizo is adapting to Bradley Carnell’s new principles and concepts.

After the match Carnell said that Ian Glavinovich and Tai Bribo were held out because they were struggling after Thursday’s extra hard two-a-day workouts.

We do not know why Mike Sheridan, David Vazquez, and Sal Olivas did not play.

Appendix 1: Minutes vs AGF January 26, 2025

Appendix 2: Total game minutes in Spain