Photo courtesy Philadelphia Union Communications

A compacted, therefore intensified Philadelphia Union game schedule affects not only the players and the technical staff who service those games directly. It also affects the segments of the front office that provide information about the team to the public.

Although we have never seen Media Day on the first team, we assume it introduces new players and new uniform kits while the information-publicizing segments of the front office accumulate basic photographs and video segments to populate their stock image libraries that will be used all year, from headshots to highlight snippets.

Because the team will be home for barely a weekend before it goes to Florida and thence directly to Port of Spain followed by D. C., we surmise that this year Media Day had to happen before the club left for Spain.

New information

Now that Media Day is over those information-providing front office departments have again resumed their usual activities beyond textual reports of signings.

PSP needs to correct mistaken estimates that we published earlier as we attempted to step into the temporary preseason informational breach. Our mistakes occurred primarily in the defensive line, although one involves a young striker. We also overestimated the possibilities of other younger players getting chances to prove whether they might belong.

This year Spain must prepare the club to play nine games in 32 days starting February 18th.

A first key new fact is that we recognized Rafael Uzcategui’s face several times in the video of Union practice in Chester that was published on social media Friday, January 16^th. It came from the last day of practice in Chester before Media Day and then the squad’s 21+ hour airplane, train, and bus trek to Spain’s Costa del Sol all night Friday the 16th and all day Saturday the 17th. Uzcategui’s presence changes our defensive line calculations.

A second key fact is the as yet unofficial possibility that Neil Pierre is leaving on loan to Philadelphia Union’s Danish partner club Lyngby Boldklub. First, there was a six-minute flurry on social media early Saturday evening that centered on a now-deleted post by a Pierre teammate.

Sunday morning @JoserNunez91 – again, unofficially – clarified Pierre’s movement as a loan to Lyngby, currently first place in the second flight of the Danish leagues. Philadelphia bought a minority stake in Lyngby May 28th, 2024 for player development purposes. Currently Lyngby have only four regular season games left before entering the process that determines their league’s champion and promotion back into Denmark’s top flight.

Nunez does not give a time length for Pierre’s loan. Logic and experience suggest Pierre will not immediately break into a side competing for a championship and promotion at the end of its season.

At first he will acclimate to being outside the Union Academy cocoon on his own for the first time. He will be adjusting to a foreign culture in a foreign language, and preparing to compete for a position next season.  We do not know whether Lyngby is a selling club. If it is, as Union fans are re-learning, a highly successful season creates sales opportunities. So there may be a hole for Pierre to fill.

When Uzcategui’s addition and Pierre’s departure are taken together, the probabilities of the Union signing Geiner Martinez return to credibility even though there has been no Union-related news of him since last December 7th. Academy director Scheer said more than once at the preseason press conference that further news was coming. Martinez might be part of it, although Scheer gave no specific hints. Martinez, plus Sundstrom plus Uzcategui added to Makhanya and Larsen would give the first team five center backs. Three are already established as starting caliber players.

Unless there is a position switch, an injury, or a mid-season sale, center back number four will be unlikely to get major minutes given Carnell’s past roster management behavior. Number five’s chances would be even less. Perhaps the front office is insuring itself against an offer for Makhanya that cannot be refused.

A third key fact which has taken us by surprise is that young striker Malik Jakupovic has travelled to Spain for preseason. We have doubted that he yet possesses MLS-level physicality but have not seen him since Union II’s late fall exit from the playoffs. Carnell mentioned him by name in the previously referenced preseason press conference. And the 16.6-year-old has himself posted a social media photo that locates him in Madrid, Spain this past Saturday while the Union were traveling. The Spanish capital is a logical airline terminus from which to transfer to a train to Malaga in Grenada. We subsequently learned that is how the club travelled in part.

Position switch?

Unless he can play left back well, Geiner Martinez will be starting caliber center back number three. Carnell started 2025 with three such players before Ian Glavinovich hurt his knee, and Carnell is willing to rotate his squad much more than his predecessor ever was. In addition to the intense early schedule we suspect three top CBs may be insurance against an unrefusable offer for Makhanya, especially at mid-season during Europe’s primary transfer window.

Finn Sundstrom’s YouTube highlight reel shows a right-sided center back exclusively. Jillian Almoney, of The Only Team We Agree on, rightly points out that earlier in his career Sundstrom played attacking mid. When asked to comment at the presser, Carnell thought Sundstrom might also play as a defensive midfielder as well as a defender. He made no mention of outside back.

As improbable as it seems among the center backs listed above, Uzcategui is the least weak candidate for a switch to left outside back. We call him the least weak because his candidacy is neither strong nor obvious. But repurposing a player is one of Philadelphia’s habits. From Union II recent history think Nick Pariano (AM to DM, LeBlanc) and Gio Sequera (RM to RB, Richter).

A most recent repurposing possibility emerged when Carnell mentioned Ben Bender as a possible left back at the preseason presser. In recent history Philadelphia’s track record in moving midfielders back a line to outside back is mixed. On Union II Gio Sequera did well in 2025. The previous year Bolivian midfielder Jamir Berdecio made too many defensive mistakes.

Although Uzcategui is right-footed, he played left center-back excellently in 2025 for Union II. That excellence included appropriate, effective offensive forays down the left channel into the box. But he has only one recorded professional experience as a left back. His first division experiences in Colombia were all right-sided, at first at right back and then at right center back. If he played left back at all for Union II last year, it was only in late game tactical emergencies when coach Richter had no other choice.

Revision 

Discussion

Gio Sequera may be arriving late because of the geopolitical situation near the Equator in the Western Hemisphere. Coach Carnell’s comments last fall reinforced the idea that he might well be returning to Philadelphia. We represent his presumed absence (and that of Geimar Martinez) with unconventional spacing “t  h  u  s  l  y”.

Italicized underlined players were on Union II contracts last year.

At the press conference Carnell confirmed that Sundstrum had returned from his U20s U. S. Way camp and would be on the plane for Spain. He also indicated that Uzcategui is going to Spain. And we do not entirely discount Tom Bogert’s earlier assertion that the Union will acquire a new left back in spite of Carnell’s comments about Bender.

If Frank Westfield has focused on being a left back ever since Kai Wagner actually left, he will be better at it than he was last season. In the past his concentration and focus produced excellent left back performance. They earned him his initial professional contract with Union II. And they helped get him promoted to the first team after Spain finished last year. He will not be Kai Wagner, but he will be better than he was last year on the left side.

We envisage that Cavan Sullivan might possibly become a starter but is definitely a primary reserve attacking mid. Because of recovery stamina he will need active support from the other reserves behind him. We will find out in Spain whether Markus Anderson and CJ Olney can provide it, and Bender too when he’s not being a left back.

Only early in the season will the almost thirty-nine year-old Alejandro Bedoya be able to help in the midfield. That will be while the overall pace of play is still accelerating slowly away from the start.  Bedoya will be quite useful during the season’s first month but not so much by summertime. Although Carnell refused to describe a time frame, Quinn Sullivan should return in August after the World Cup, so we doubt the Union will add a midfielder to cover only April and May. (For the Union there is a 59-day World Cup gap from late May to late July.) More likely the younger Sullivan will be force-fed to develop MLS-level recovery stamina to cover April and May.

We expect Stas Korzeniowski to replace Chris Donovan as the fourth striker, although Sal Olivas and Eddy Davis will give him the stiffest of competitions. By the end of last season the U Penn man had become a different striker. As discussed elsewhere his concept of the position had changed with impressive results.

Unlike last year only one young player has been brought along to discover whether he might be a candidate for promotion, striker Malik Jakupovic. Perhaps in some subtle way he is being showcased since he will be in front of lots of European eyes. Most other younger candidates for promotion have been left at home: Oscar Benitez, Kellen LeBlanc, Willyam Fereira, Jordan Griffin. Carnell is preparing his squad to play nine games in 32 days immediately at the start. Cases for promotion must wait to be made until after that.

A caveat

As it was last year during preseason (Harriel, Donovan, Mbaizo, Glavinovich) the bugaboo for this squad will be injury. As they prepared during the offseason all returning veterans this time knew what to expect from a Carnell preseason. They should be ready.

Hopefully new arrivals will be smart enough to avoid injury. They already proved themselves. They were invited to travel to Spain, and they are being counted on for roles in the season-opening game schedule’s month-long sprint. Pulling up before the tweak becomes a problem will be seen as taking a longer-term, team-oriented point of view not a weakness.

Preparing for nine games in the season’s first 32 days must be the dominant theme of preparation. And the foundation of that preparation will be enough healthy bodies to rotate the squad sufficiently to survive it. Carnell has proved he will be brave enough to make the rotations if he has enough healthy bodies to do so.

Rankest guesswork

 Thanks to a video posted on social media splicing together time-differentiated snippets of the Union’s trip from Philly to Marbella, we think we know it endured somewhere between 21 and 22 hours. It begins leaving home to Subaru Park, to the airport, to Madrid, to Malaga, and to the Marbella hotel on the Costa del Sol. (Thank you, Sage Hurley we presume!)

The first scrimmage taps off 62 hours after that arrival. The key word in the paragraphs that follow is the very first word of the very first paragraph, namely “If”.

If coach Carnell again does what he did in his first preseason scrimmage last year,  he will put out three more-or-less equally strong sides for more-or-less equal amounts of time, mixing starters with reserves in each group.

For the back six field players, i. e., the two defensive lines, he has two players per position in camp. For the goalkeepers and the two lines of attackers he has three. We conclude that the defensive field players will play forty-five minutes each and the keepers and attackers will play 30.

That assumption governs the chart below. We used purest guesswork to predict exactly whom he might deploy where, save for his comment about Ben Bender. Moving Bender made the rest of the chart fall easily into place.

On social media Monday @JoserNunez91 posted that Olomouc will provide live video of the scrimmage on its own website. PSP colleague Alex Hayden warns that a “VPN” may be necessary to bypass restrictions on where the video may be viewed by whom. We advise checking the Union’s website in advance to discover what other information may or may not be available.

Tap off has been announced as 9:00 AM ET.