Photo @PhilaUnionII

On January 27, Philadelphia Union II published its 2025 regular season MLS NEXT Pro game schedule. Union II is considered the defending Eastern Conference champions, even though the vast majority of the starters have moved up to the first team, with several being on the flight back from Spain as we type.

Schedule details

Union II will play 28 league games, 14 will be home, and 14 will be away. Nineteen will be against the other seven Northeast Division members, and nine will be against the Eastern Conference teams in the Southeast Division. Once again Union II will have no games against any teams from the Western Conference.

The announcement confirms that in 2025, MLS NEXT Pro will have 29 teams, 15 in the east and 14 in the west. While the announcement does not say so explicitly, the game schedule itself implies that the eastern conference’s divisions will enumerate as they did last year, eight in the Northeast and seven in the Southeast. The schedule itself implies division membership is the same as in 2024, an inference further reinforced by the distribution of Union II’s games against the two divisions. Nineteen are against the Northeast, and nine are against the Southeast.

The regular season starts the weekend of March 7-9, with the Union starting on Sunday the ninth away to New England at 3 PM. The home opener is the following Monday, March 17, at 7 PM, hosting New York Red Bull II at Subaru Park, the one time the north Jersey rivals will be in Chester at “the Soob.”

The season’s final game, aka Decision Day, is Sunday, October 5, at 1 PM and will be against the other New York rival, New York City FC II, at Subaru Park. All Union II’s 2025 regular season home games are scheduled for Subaru Park.

2025 home venue

While the playing surface of the Championship field at the WSFS Sportsplex has been game-ready since the middle of last summer, the rest of the future Union II stadium’s support facilities are not. There are not yet locker rooms, stands, entry gates, food and beverage concessions, public restrooms, live-streaming and broadcast facilities, a press box, medical facilities, and other essential details a game stadium needs that we haven’t remembered. They will be built into, onto, and around the new field house, which is currently under roof but continues as a beehive of construction activity whenever the weather allows.

2025 playoffs 

The other detail the announcement provided is that the 2025 playoffs will duplicate last year.

Eight teams per conference will qualify with none receiving a bye. The first three finishers in each conference will choose their first-round opponent from among the bottom four qualifiers, leaving the fourth-place team to host whoever has not been selected. In the second round, the top surviving seed will exercise choice, and the second will host the fourth side. The conference finals are determined by winning, as is the MLS NEXT Pro Cup.

All matches will be played at the home field of the higher seed. All rounds are single elimination and will be played over four consecutive weekends beginning the weekend of October 12. That puts the MLS Next Pro Cup on Saturday, November 1.

An observation and a guess 

Unlike the past three seasons, the rhythm of Union II’s early season schedule is uneven. In past years, there has been one game every weekend for several consecutive weeks, from the middle of March to the latest weeks of May. Not so this season.

Union II in 2025 has three long gaps between MLSNP games in March and April. Two hiatuses are 13 days, and one is 10. They do not correspond to FIFA’s international breaks; in any case, MLS NEXT Pro has never before taken notice of those.

A final point

The slow pace of game frequency in the first two months means that game frequency in early August is intense. That will be especially difficult for Union II because early August sees the late summer transition in the Academy that follows graduation.

Late July and early August will see the class of 2025 who are off to college or university end their Union II playing careers and depart for their next destinations. New players will be trying to prove themselves to coach Richter and the wiser technical staff as the games are coming thick and fast.

The usual midsummer slump may be incredibly challenging this year.