Photo PSP archives

Sixty percent of the Philadelphia Union’s 42 regular season games in 2026 will be played after insufficient recovery time. Only four times in ten will head coach Bradley Carnell be able to choose his lineup from a fully recovered side.

The reasons why

As any soccer fan interested enough to read an electronic sports page that focuses primarily on one MLS team already knows, the fundamental determinant of 2026’s Philadelphia Union schedule is the 2026 FIFA World Cup. By custom, tradition, FIFA’s considerable regulatory power, and its behind the scenes influence, first division leagues do not play during a world cup.

Therefore, the Philadelphia Union’s 2026 game schedule separates into two parts. It has a 59-day hiatus between games 20 and 21. Philly plays Inter Miami in Miami May 24^th (in their new stadium?) and does not play again until they host Red Bull New York July 22^nd in Chester. MLS play resumes six days earlier, and there is the necessary international break in advance of the Cup itself. But qualify it however you choose, Philadelphia does not play for two full months.

In consequence the key issue to analyze in 2026’s schedule will be midweek games.

Midweek games cannot and do not reduce the necessity for recovery and rehabilitation time, so they reduce teaching time for individual player development instead. Individual Development Plan activities that typically occur on second practice afternoons three days a week disappear.  Instead of playing the regular season in 34 weeks as they did in 2025, Philadelphia must play the same number of games in three fewer weeks, 31 or fractionally less. The frequency of MLS midweek games must therefore increase even before allowing for the impacts of other outside competitions.

Two secondary determinants of the Union’s schedule exacerbate the midweek match problem. By winning the 2025 Supporters’ Shield Philadelphia qualified for both the Concacaf Champions Cup (CCCup) and the Liga MX v MLS Leagues Cup (LC). We explain.

Barring a major, humiliating upset, because of the CCCup Philadelphia will open their season with nine total games in 32 days. Unless they lose in the first round to Defence Force of Trinidad & Tobago, they will add four CCCup matches to their five MLS openers before the March FIFA International Break intervenes on the 34^th day of the season.

And after the World Cup is over, the Leagues Cup will add three matches in eight days, between Tuesday, August 4^th and Wednesday August 12^th. The exact days and specific opponents of Philly’s Leagues Cup have not yet been released, only the three day/date ranges. Since only eight of the 36 participating teams move on to the knockouts, four of 18 from MLS, the chances of the Union adding a fourth, fifth and sixth match seem low. But the three additional matches in those eight days are certain.

Midweek games detailed

Having already unofficially mapped the Union’s fully combined game schedule for our own purposes, we can tabulate below how many games will be played how many days after the finish of the previous one. None of our data is official and schedules change for various reasons during the season.

Furthermore, accumulated conversations over the last decade with various Union II coaches, especially Brendan Burke, Marlon LeBlanc, and Steven Hogan (Burke’s primary assistant with Bethlehem Steel) have imparted to us a timetable of post-match recovery needs.

• A six-to-eight-day hiatus  from final whistle to tap-off provides a full recovery opportunity to well-conditioned, healthy, professional adult or late-adolescent athletes.
• Five days is a gray area, dependent on the individual and his characteristics. Quinn Sullivan would be fine. James Chambers might not have been.
• Only a three- or four-day recovery creates deficits, especially if such matches follow closely one after the other as they did for the first team in May of 2025, and as they almost certainly will again this coming February and March.

We chart our data.

Comments

1 Twenty-five of 42 games will be played with less than normal recovery time.

Sixty percent of the time coach Carnell will have to construct his lineup while allowing above and beyond the normal for how well squad members have recovered from the stresses of the previous match. Given his principles and philosophy of play, striker and midfield depth will be especially affected.

Seventeen of 42 games will be played with normal recovery time. Only 40 % of the time will Carnell be able to assume all of his squad has properly recovered from its previous game, barring injuries of course.

2 Midfield depth will be at a premium.

Quinn Sullivan’s work ethic, level of personal athletic development, and the quality of medical care available in greater Philadelphia should all mean that he will be back on the pitch to some degree after the world cup, That should help with Leagues Cup midfield depth. But Sullivan’s injury does not help the Union get out of the starting gate in Concacaf Champions Cup.

Comments from Bradley Carnell about the youngest Sullivan brother Cavan’s November trip to England suggest Cavan is expected to assume a larger first-team midfield responsibility in 2026. But the schedule described above creates a caveat. Is the 16.3-year-old ready to recover repeatedly from full 90-minute top-flight games every three or four days? His oldest brother did that for a remarkably long time at the beginning of 2025, and genetics does play a role. But Quinn is five years more mature physically than Cavan.

The youngest Sullivan proved last season he is ready to gut through the 120 minutes total of an added extra time match in the U. S. Open Cup. What he has not yet shown is that his body can obey his mind three or four days after playing a full 90, let alone do it several times in a row. Given his developmental track record, by the end of the 2026 season he may well achieve such stamina. But the first team will need that level of performance in its first 32 days, from February 18^th through and including March 21^st.

What can Ale Bedoya and Ben Bender contribute? Or CJ Olney? Or Markus Anderson? And it would ask a lot of nearly 17-year-old Willyam Ferreira and 17.8-year-old Kellan LeBlanc to move beyond cameo minutes immediately at the start of the season. Nonetheless those answers are — or may be — what preseason is meant to discover.

3 With Chris Donovan gone, and probably signed by Louisville City FC of the USL Championship, the fourth striker role in Philadelphia’s two-striker system is vacant and ready to be claimed.

If unofficial reports are to be believed, the club probably has spent all the money it had earmarked towards buying new strikers on Ezekiel Alladoh’s transfer fee. Officially it is described as a club record, and unofficially it is said to be north of $4 million. The money penciled in for Mikael Uhre’s return will not now necessarily go to a striker, given other needs elsewhere, e. g., left back.

 In our judgment there are three internal striker candidates to replace Donovan as the number four. They are Homegrowns Sal Olivas and Eddy Davis who are on guaranteed 2026 contracts, and 2025 Union II player Stas Korneziowski whose current status vis-a-vis Philadelphia is assumed but not officially known. Video evidence presumably filmed the second day of practice places him practicing with the first team currently.

Last year Davis received a single two-minute first team cameo. Olivas got four of them, three in MLS and one in the Open Cup, totaling 49 minutes.

Korzeniowski got no official first team cameos but did have a 25-minute appearance Saturday, June 7^th in a friendly at Subaru Park against Liga MX’s Club Atlas. PSP colleague Alex Hayden saw the match from Subaru Park’s stands and says that once the U Penn man took the field, he Hayden spent most of his time answering questions, explaining to his neighbors exactly who Korzeniowski was.

Korzeniowski certainly finished the second half of Union II’s season strongly with 10 goals in the 18 of 21 matches in which he played following his Atlas appearance. Nine of the goals came in the last seven games of the season from September 14th through November 1st including three games in the playoffs. He only missed three matches after the Atlas friendly. He seemed a transformed player.

When after the Huntsville playoff brace coach Ryan Richter was asked to explain the big man’s change, Richter said they had asked him to stop retreating into the midfield to serve as a target hold-up player while teammates transitioned forward from the defensive third to the offensive one. He was instead to get himself into the box as soon as possible and let others help move the ball forward. The numbers would seem to prove the suggestion a success.

Olivas was the leading candidate to replace Donovan until Korzeniowski finished his season so strongly. The fourth striker storyline should create interest in Spain and then Clearwater.