Photo by Ryan McElroy
Saturday night at Subaru Park, the Philadelphia Union pummeled an ineffective FC Cincinnati team 4-1.
The win was a statement of intent from the home team, not just for their ambitions as a club in 2025 but for their ethos as an organization going forward: the Union are value investors, focusing on the relative worth of a player as a part of their system and over time, rather than spenders who can only pay the market value of the player they want the moment they want them. Their opponents on the night have a similar foundation to the Union’s but are going about things quite differently when dollars are involved, and this dichotomy could not have been more evident than on Saturday night.
On one bench were the Ohioans – seeded of course with branches off of the Union mothertree in Head Coach Pat Noonan and Sporting Direction Chris Albright, both Union alums, as well as role players Sergio Santos and Alvas Powell – who showed up with roughly $20m of new attacking talent. Striker Kévin Denkey arrived this offseason for more than $16m and his central attacking midfield partner Evander did the same for $12m.
On the other bench were the Pennsylvanians, who have spent in aggregate transfer fees since their inception in 2010 somewhere between the figures for the two aforementioned opponents. One Reddit thread – just a month old, and perhaps already #agedlikemilk – is simply the latest in a long line of loud lamenters, wondering when the pocketbooks of their beloved team will be opened so that the group can finally become truly competitive.
And yet…
The competition itself
The Union were the better team, definitively so in the final score, the underlying data, and the eye test.
Specifically, the Union’s players performed better than their opponent’s – regardless of the cost. Sure, Tai Baribo scored a hat trick, was the league’s Player of the Matchday, and supposedly only cost the Union $1.4m, but that’s beside the point.
Really!
More important than the like-for-like comparison is the man-to-man one, as marking this attacking duo nouveaux were Union center backs Jakob Glesnses and Olwethu Makhanya. Glesnes was brought to Chester for $770k in 2020, while Makhanya came last year as a 19-year-old, destined for Union II, and was making just his second start as a first division professional over the weekend, with a transfer market value somewhere around 1/32nd of his mark’s.
In layman’s terms, it was a pair of high-priced, I’m-all-in players against two nobodies.
And the nobodies dominated.
Money talks, but ________ walks
Evander found a goal, but only after spending the night being forced backward (only 3 of his 41 dribbles went forward) while having the third lowest passing completion percentage of anyone in his team’s eleven.
Denkey outing was worse, with only 32 touches to his name, only one attacking dribble and a similarly lonely shot (a chance he shouldn’t have had in the first place, had Andre Blake’s hands not completely frozen before it).
Sure, it was only one match. Sure, Cincinnati has some new talent to bed in and multiple competitions to distract them; qualifiers to the merits of this performance abound.
For at least one night though, the team who spent the money were left wondering where it all went, while the team that invested it wisely reaped the rewards, over and over again.
I think Ernst’ has done it again
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(But it should be noted he spent like money to replace Carranza, no it wasn’t $6M but he got pretty close)*
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*granted this is still somewhat laughable considering every other team bought a guy like that¹
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1) MLS spent over $300M on players in this last window alone
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-still bringing muskets to a tank fight-
My concern was never that the were not big spenders. My concern was that last year they sold key players with almost no additions during the year, and they were running what they had into the ground. The additions this year changed that narrative.
That’s how it felt for sure, but here’s the thing: Only one starter on Saturday was new to the organization for 2025. The rest were already here last year.
The issue wasn’t spending big, it’s that they didn’t spend at all. After the loss to LAFC they would run the same team back, sell some and replace from academy. There was always a net reduction in players over the last few years. This year they did make positive additions which they should have been doing.
IF they play as a unit and IF they avoid the injury bug and IF they get the lucky bounces they can probably do pretty well until other teams get more video/experience of how to play against them and then it becomes harder. IF everything goes their way then might even make a push in the playoffs but in a league with this much parity it often comes down to a single playmaker if things are otherwise even and I don’t know that the Union has that at this point. Scrappy upstarts that play as a team and upset the favorites are so rare they get movies made about them and get names like “Miracle on Ice”. I dunno, maybe we will get a movie someday. Money doesn’t but happiness but it sure helps to keep the blues away.