Photo courtesy Philadelphia Union II Communications

Philadelphia Union’s new rebuild — it might be called Union 4.0 —  is beginning to take shape. It has started to undergo testing. Tests began this week in Chester, will continue for the next 13 days after that in Spain, and then finish in Clearwater, FL.

It took Ernst Tanner a few years to finalize the Union 3.0 squad that almost made it to the mountaintop in 2022, so it should take some time to create Union 4.0 in its final form. It is not yet clear who is now and later will be guiding the process.

This rebuild should have more money to spend than its predecessor. The proceeds of 3.0 player sales should be available to some degree. But the bigger reason might be that the single comprehensive unified campus is substantively complete and should no longer be consuming large sums of money without generating any return.

A different year

Given the schedule demands Philadelphia faces from the opening day of the 2026 season, (Wednesday, February 18^th In Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago), and our best detection of who is practicing with the first team in Chester, we suspect 30 players will go to Spain. Last year with a more set squad it was 28.

We think they will be distributed as below among Bradley Carnell’s 4-2-2-2 positions.

Carnell must prepare them to play probably nine games in the season’s first 32 days, before FIFA’s 2026 March international break intervenes on day 34. (Typos are deliberate to accommodate layout).

Because Milan Iloski made his splash with San Diego last year as a striker not an attacking mid, and because the Union need game-ready striker depth to address the opening of their season, we have assumed Iloski will play there in 2026.

Carnell might possibly have three starting caliber center backs again, as he did last year until Ian Glavinovich got hurt. We place Sery Larsen as a starter because of his 98 Norwegian top flight games, and also the price they paid for him.

But the identity of the third CB is far from clear. We all need to see Finn Sundstrom play for ourselves, since highlight reels edit out all the errors.

Geiner Martinez from Uruguay’s to league is the other possibility. But  Martinez’s acquisition has not yet been officially announced. nearly six weeks after it was unofficially reported by Tom Bogert. (Bogert has been entirely reliable in his details since having to satisfy the NY Times’ sourcing guidelines by going to work for Times’ subsidiary The Athletic.) But there has been no news of Martinez since December 7th. He has not appeared in any visual products reporting earliest training sessions prior to the Union’s departure for Spain. We are sure the first four CBs are part of the squad. We are not sure of Martinez.

In the reporting around Kai Wagner’s departure, Bogert also said the Union will acquire another left back, but we have no further details. Our placeholder is therefore labelled “unknown.”

Key

Given the Martinez situation we set him off with spacing, “t  h  u  s  l  y.”

Italicized players were on Union II contracts in 2025. As of publication no official Union II end-of-year roster decisions have been announced, so we are guessing on our own.

• Striker Stas Korzeniowski is too old for off-roster status but might qualify as a Homegrown. His second half of 2025 suggests he deserves the opportunity to prove himself worthy of promotion, and he is identifiable in one of this week’s videos of practice in Chester.
• Defensive mid Oscar Benitez is not eligible for Homegrown status but is young enough to be an off-roster player, although as far as we know a player cannot be off-roster unless he is also Homegrown. He probably needs another development year with Union II. We have not seen him for certain in this week’s visual products.
• Goalkeeper Lou Liedtka can be neither off-roster nor Homegrown, and will back up whichever keepers come down for Union II game minutes this season.

Observations

• We think Korzeniowski is ready for MLS.
• We wonder whether Benitez can distribute the ball from defensive midfielder at MLS’s level; he can certainly tackle and cover ground well enough.
• Liedtka will be the fourth keeper in Spain, but for practice purposes only as per Director of Goalkeeping Phil Wheddon’s usual practicing methods.

Final miscellany

A comment-worthy structural characteristic of the Union’s 2026 schedule is  the 59-day hiatus in play before and during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Fifty-nine is not an error; they do not play any games after Sunday, May 24th (away at Miami) until Wednesday, July 22nd (home to Red Bull New York).

The Leagues Cup will occur after the World Cup and will add at least three games and perhaps as many as six to the first part of August.

Fans of Union II should note that Brooklyn FC’s men’s team will join the USL Championship as an expansion side this year. Brooklyn will be led by former Union II head coach Marlon LeBlanc as their inaugural head coach. Union II’s former teacher is stepping up from division III to division II.

The Union’s new 19-year-old center back Finn Sundstrom has been called up to “U. S. Way” U-20 training camp in Arizona. That means he has not been in Chester this week but will return almost certainly in time to join the club to go to Spain. A highlight video of him on YouTube indicates he is a right center back.

A similar highlight reel of recent CB signing Sery Larsen shows him playing as a left center back. We discovered no such highlights for Martinez, although there was an interview with him about his team having earned promotion to Uruguay’s top flight this past June (winter in the Southern Hemisphere.)

Postscript

So far all information discovered  since coach Carnell’s comments during the end-of-season joint press conference with Director of Academy and Professional Development Jon Scheer concerning Philadelphia’s preseason has originated from the other sides involved.

Philadelphia itself has written nothing substantive about preseason since December 3rd, barring the three signing announcements (striker Ezekiel Alladoh, center back Finn Sundstrom, and center back Sery Larsen).

Perhaps the biggest decision of the preseason concerns a sporting-side decision-maker.