Photo courtesy Indy Eleven
The Philadelphia Union will host Indy Eleven of Division 2 USL Championship Wednesday May 7th at Subaru Park at 7:30 pm.
The Philadelphia Union is one of the 16 MLS teams that will participate in the 2025 Lamar Hunt U. S. Open Cup. They will join the tournament in its fourth round, which by recent custom and tradition is called the Round of 32. Philadelphia applied to host its match and U. S. Soccer accepted.
In the United States’ country-wide, all-inclusive tournament, geography has always challenged less wealthy sides with hardships of expense, both the amateurs and the less wealthy lower division professionals. The challenges include amateur or semi-professional players having to miss work and absorb travel expenses. Amateur sides customarily drive to games, pooling gas money and sleeping four to a motel room. Lineups can be affected by who can and cannot get off work.
Therefore, only after geographic groupings are made can random drawings determine opponents. Philadelphia was grouped with Indy Eleven and Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL Championship (Division 2), and New York City FC of MLS (Division 1) in the Landon Donovan Group. The Union were drawn first, so if they advance they will host again on Tuesday, May 20th or Wednesday, May 21st,
The Open Cup’s third round had finished Wednesday night, and the draw for the Round of 32 happened at 9:15 AM, Thursday the 17th , after the aforementioned geographic groups had been determined.
The potential opponents
Indianapolis is about 590 miles from Philadelphia by air. Flight time is slightly more than two hours. To drive would take nine hours over roughly 650 miles.
While it is too early in the season for conference standings to speak conclusively about a team’s strength, they do indicate something. Standings below date from Thursday, April 17th at 10 AM.
USL Championship teams (Division 2)
| Team | Pts | W | D | L | |
| 6th | Pittsburgh | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| 7th | Indy Eleven | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
MLS team (Division 1)
| Team | Pts | W | D | L | |
| 10th | NYC FC | 11 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
Carnell’s choices
Philadelphia will be playing on the third or fourth day after its previous league match, with the same interval before its next. We will learn how much Bradley Carnell and the technical staff now value the Open Cup from the degree to which he rotates his squad.
We will be able to compare Carnell’s sense of priority to Jim Curtin’s since the two head coaches are the major change in the decision-making technical staff.
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