Photo courtesy Philadelphia Union Communications

The Philadelphia Union has not started its 2026 Major League Soccer season well. That should surprise no one. It is a different team from the veteran one pictured above that won the 2025 Supporters Shield. Its 2026 Major League Soccer start now matches the poorest in the club’s MLS history.

The 2026 challenge of the Concacaf Champions Cup is now compounding the poverty. Right now, the contrast between 2026’s version of the first team and 2025’s is stark.

Then

In 2012, the Philadelphia Union’s 3^rd season of play in Major League Soccer, they opened with three consecutive losses.

1. March 12, 2012: Portland Timbers 3–1 Philadelphia Union
2. March 18, 2012: Philadelphia Union 1–2 Colorado Rapids
3. March 24, 2012: Chicago Fire 1–0 Philadelphia Union

On May 26^th, 2012 they lost to winless Toronto in Toronto and the then managing executive Nick Sakewiecz fired head coach Peter Nowak, replacing him with John Hackworth. Their record in their first 11 games had been two wins, seven losses, and two ties.

Now

This year the Union has again opened the MLS season with three consecutive MLS losses.

1. February 28, 2026: D. C. United 1-0 Philadelphia Union
2. March 1, 2026: Philadelphia Union 1-2 New York City FC
3. March 7, 2026: Philadelphia Union 0-1 San Jose Earthquakes

Overall to date in both MLS and the Concacaf Champions Cup, Philly has won two, lost four, and drawn none.

The losses themselves are a concern.

But they are perhaps less of  a concern than having gone a full 270 MLS minutes without scoring from the run of play (plus 90 more if you add Tuesday night’s CCCup shutout by Club America). The Union have seemed mostly inchoate when in possession of the ball in the offensive half, especially in the final third, and most worryingly they have not been clinical at all when trying to finish against opponents who play at their level or higher.

When they have managed to create play and connect passes with sustained consistency against comparable teams, the opposition has been parking the bus at the ends of games, as Club America did successfully on Tuesday night, March 10^th in its 1-0 Concacaf Champions Cup Round of 16 first leg win in Chester.

Consider the number five.

Many pundits have incorrectly focused much verbiage on the number four, the four starters the Union sold away or let walk during the offseason. But four is incomplete. Those pundits omit the fifth key starter who is also unavailable, but not – at least not until he proves full knee recovery – due to his being sold. Full marks to PSP colleague James McCrone who first mentioned him.

Quinn Sullivan is not in 2026’s attacking midfield. In 2025 he started 24 of his 28 MLS game appearances before tearing a knee ligament. Sullivan, Milan Iloski and Indiana Vassilev were last year’s three top attacking midfielders after Iloski had joined in late summer. And 2025 had many fewer midweek games than does this. That means missing an attacking mid from rotational availability matters more this year than it would have last. 2026’s attacking midfield is also weaker disproportionately because it is Sullivan who is missing, His speed, endurance, and ground coverage are hugely important defensively in the press.

Vassilev is less of a creator than the other two. He works hard and complements Sullivan and Iloski very well but he does not create as much offensive play as they do. And Iloski, while he is effective at attacking mid, when there he is playing away from his better position which is striker. Sullivan’s absence means the Union’s attacking midfield is weaker this year than it was last.

Another major point flows from the number five.

As many as half the ten starting field players may be having to learn the Union’s system all together at the same time, especially to the instinctive “without thought” level that has been proven necessary for success in MLS. By memory, that is the highest percentage of concurrent new learners since the Union first switched to the press after Sporting Director Ernst Tanner’s  arrival. Of this year’s neophytes a center back (Japhet Sery) and a left back (Philippe Ndinga) come from the defense. No one comes from the defensive midfield. Two (Agustin Anello and Ezekiel Alladoh) come from the strikers. We have already discussed the older Sullivan’s attacking midfield absence, the replacement of which is being covered by Iloski who only began playing Carnell’s system last August.

Further related to the number five but indirectly so is a part of the reason newly promoted striker Stas Korzeniowski has been showing so well. He already knows Carnell’s version of the club’s system and how to maximize his play within it. His presence increases the percentage of field players who know it by ten. By comparison fellow strikers Alladoh and Anello are in only the first stages of learning. Under Jim Curtin it sometimes took six months before a new player became instinctive, sufficiently conditioned, and fully integrated at MLS’s level.

Getting to know the system

We have no data for how long a new person may take to learn from Bradley Carnell because in the only potential example from last year was derailed by Ian Glavinovic’s early injury and Olwethu Makhanya’s concurrent success. Since Makhanya had had a full year and more in the system with Union II, no one new to the principles had joined the primary players under Carnell until Iloski arrived August 5th.

In 2018 when Tanner arrived and changed the formation to two strikers integrated with a pressing midfield, it took Jim Curtin months of 2019 to teach the team how to play together that way. Later on, older players with lots of experience integrated into the side more rapidly, but they were doing it one at a time. Daniel Gazdag joined in June 2021, just before leaving to play for Hungary in the Euro tournament of the day. He had deliberately jump started his learning process. And the most experienced of the earlier group Mikael Uhre hit the ground running in 2022, although his defensive instincts were not as immediate as they later became.

In 2026 the new players are less experienced, younger, and they are all learning simultaneously. Julian Carranza had already been here when Gazdag arrived. In turn Gazdag had already learned a lot before Uhre arrived. Alladoh and Anello have joined almost simultaneously. Especially for attacking play, Carnell’s 2026 pedagogical challenge is greater than any Curtin faced after his initial one in the 2019 season.

An additional major point is that it may have been deliberate that the Union’s 2026’s preseason included less difficult opponents than it had in 2025. They needed to experience some initial successes. But there are follow-on consequences. The Union is not as ready for MLS competition as it might be.

In only the second  half of its last preseason scrimmage did Philadelphia face the intensity and physicality of a Major League Soccer team’s number ones, against CF Montreal in Clearwater on February 10^th. Preseason installed the system effectively for play against lesser sides, as the performances against Defence Force of Trinidad and Buducnost Podgorica of Montenegro suggest. The Czech side Olomouc and Danish one Nordsjaelland had been more challenging opponents on the Costa del Sol. But in Florida the Tampa Bay Rowdies were not MLS quality. The absence of the usual Florida match against FC Cincinnati figures prominently.

Philadelphia still has to learn how to play against MLS speed, intensity, and physicality. They must use their the earliest MLS regular season games as their classroom. In some ways it seems that the first nine games of the regular season are not being treated a full regular season events. The top eleven are not being run out consistently. Yet it would be wrong to call these games an extended preseason because they count. Right now teaching, evaluating, and conditioning remain major objectives equal in value to winning.

Roster players need to gel

The final roster piece only just arrived stateside last Friday, February 27^th. Left back Philippe Ndinga from Congo (Brazzaville) debuted impressively for 80 minutes against Club America Tuesday night. He will be catching up to his fellow new arrivals who are themselves catching up to the Union’s system and the nature of MLS play.

Carnell’s side has made progress. Except for a prominent veteran of Europe’s top levels perfectly picking the penetrating pass to barely catch out a Union II player making his MLS debut with the first team at left back, the San Jose match would have been a mutual clean sheet draw. Such optimism could not have been credibly voiced after the club’s first half of play down in D. C.

Jim Curtin always commented that for Philadelphia to be successful the whole had to be greater than the sum of its parts. Bradley Carnell must create a new whole from yards of fresh new cloth this year. Last year he only had to revive and re-inspire a veteran side that already knew how to play together within a pressing system. This year we will discover how well he can teach new material to multiple new students at once. He will need time to carry out the process.

Our final point concerns the opening-of-season schedule. Had the league’s commissioner directly ordered the Union to be screwed deliberately – he did not as far as we know – the schedule could not have been any less kind to Philadelphia than it has been and is. They began a self-declared roster rebuild year with nine games in their first 32 days. Only once in that first month did they have a proper full recovery interval between games, and that recovery interval was six days not seven.

Travel and schedule

In our discussion of the opening schedule we have not mentioned either travel or altitude.

A Washington, D. C. tap-off three days after a final whistle in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad presented a major challenge. That the Union flew home to Philly for the first time since having arrived in Clearwater, before turning immediately around to travel to D. C. the next day compounded the challenge. If they existed at all, preparation time and practice opportunity must have been tight .

And while the timing of the trip to Mexico City for Club America will be less difficult, play will occur at an altitude of 1.4 miles, between 7,200 and 7,300 feet. Altitude matters. In the People’s Republic of China the trucks in a convoy of goods from the lowlands onto the Qinghai plateau may make the entire journey unbroken, but the drivers cannot. Drivers must be replaced above 10,000 feet.

Two years ago when Philadelphia attempted something similar against Pachuca in the same competition, Mexico took yet another installment of its revenge for General Winfield Scott’s 1848 invading success in what U. S. history textbooks call the Mexican War. At 7,843 feet on March 12, 2024, Pachuca beat the Union 6-0. It was the second leg of the Round of 16 of the 2024 Concacaf Champions League (as the competition was then called).

It remains the heaviest individual match defeat in Philadelphia Union history.

What lies ahead

By the time FIFA’s late March international break arrives, Philadelphia will be battered and bloodied. Time will unfold how badly, and only time will tell whether Union spirits remain unbowed.

April and May will follow with two months of continuing teaching and further refining of both their defensive competence and their offensive coherence. Then June and July will provide a 59-day break — specifically Philadelphia’s case — from official play while MLS accommodates FIFA’s World Cup.

Based on internet rumor we suspect Olwethu Makhanya may have departed for Europe by the end of the break. And we expect Neil Pierre will come back from Denmark by June 30^th as scheduled. If correct that would mean another major roster adjustment to the defense. By then Geiner Martinez’s current full-game endurance issues will need to have been resolved. Pierre and fellow 19-year-old Finn Sundstrom are strong prospects but not proven MLS center backs.

Coach Carnell already knows how the club intends to handle two months off. He played seven seasons in the Bundesliga from 1998 through 2005 and must have experienced a full blown World Cup hiatus in 2002.

Union fans will have no long-term idea what their rebuilt side may look like until mid-August at the earliest this year. MLS will have resumed and the Leagues Cup will have recurred. Not even Philly Soccer Page’s infamous, cracked, cloudy, and inaccurate crystal ball is producing any predictions about playoffs. There are too many unknowns.

Postscript

After 2026 finishes, Philadelphia will essay the truncated transition of the so-called “sprint” season. There will be 14 games in something more than two months, from some time in February up to May of 2027. Then  will come playoffs in May, but completing them in a month implies a tighter schedule and a probably a format change.

The “sprint” season’s results will qualify teams for follow-on Concacaf events as previous full-year seasons have done. The 2027 iteration of the Leagues Cup between Liga MX and MLS may prove “interesting” for that year’s manifestation. We doubt it can be suspended since Leagues Cup generates three participants for the Concacaf Champions Cup. But after the sprint season, the two leagues’ calendars will start and end more or less together thus synchronizing future Leagues Cup competitions more simply.

One datum about the sprint season transition deserves further note. The 14 games of that truncated event exactly equal the number of games that would exist were an MLS team to play every other team in its conference once. For every team involved those games would split home-and-away equally at seven since 14 is seven multiplied by two.

Such a “sprint” season’s schedule would be both balanced and complete. Our arithmetic is incontrovertible and sensible. But we have no confirmation of any kind for our logic.