At the end of the World Cup, the Philadelphia Union were at the bottom of the Eastern Conference and all of Major League Soccer with only seven points, moving on from Supporters' Shield-winning head coach Bradley Carnell and turning to 36-year-old Ryan Richter to save the season. Given Richter's path as someone who oversaw the Union's MLS Next Pro side before becoming an assistant under Jim Curtin with the first team, it seemed like a moment where the Union would be in the process of preparing for next season and seeing what they did next. But with the return of a familiar face in Kai Wagner, a meeting at Two Persons Coffee in South Philadelphia between captain Alejandro Bedoya and Richter, and one of the most impressive runs that we've seen of youth talent in league history, the Union were able to clinch a place in the MLS Cup playoffs, and they did it in impressive fashion, too, by playing Nashville SC to a scoreless draw away from home without 17-year-old phenom Cavan Sullivan being available for the match.
It caps off a turnaround that has seen the Union pick up 40 points since the World Cup, winning 12 matches, drawing four, and only losing two. Those 40 points outpace the second-best team in the time range, which is Nashville SC, by five. Sullivan has been one of the spark plugs of this improvement with seven goals and 11 assists, with most of that coming after the World Cup break, but with 38 of the Union's 59 league goals absent for that game as Bruno Damiani and Milan Iloski missed out on the match, it truly showed the mentality that the squad has.
Plenty preach about "next-man-up" mentality, but matches like this one show why no one should want to face the Union in the playoffs. If the season ended today, they'd face Inter Miami in a three-game series, which would be sure to bring fireworks after the scuffle that their last meeting created, but there's still more work to do with two games remaining, as the Union could slide down to the eight-versus-nine play-in game if they lose their final two games of the regular season. Under Carnell, the Union were a traditional high-press team that tried to force their opponents into mistakes.
While it worked with only MLS games to play, adding in the Concacaf Champions Cup saw the team unable to keep up that intensity, especially without Wagner at left back and with Neil Pierre on loan in Denmark instead of being with the squad. While Richter did benefit from both of these players being in the mix, he has also dialed things back to more of a zonal press, allowing the midfield to have time to rest in between plays so that they can keep the same intensity at minute 90 as they have entering the game. Pierre and Nathan Harriel on the back line have assisted greatly with that, being mobile centerbacks in their own right.
Richter knows the impact of having a 6-foot-7 defender like Pierre, who is also comfortable when being on an island, and it's clear how he helps the attack function. "We can be super aggressive because Neil is comfortable in one-on-one situations. If it's a direct ball, he wins; he eats all of these.
If it's open space that he has to defend, physically, he can deal with that, and he's also a good defender," Richter said. "The way he puts out so many fires allows us to be aggressive higher up the field, because we know when they play the ball long that we have someone who cleans this up almost every time." Putting that in front of three-time MLS Goalkeeper of the Year Andre Blake, it's easy to see why the Union's defense has improved from the first half of the season, but the attack is where major strides have been made. You'd have to be living under a rock to have not heard the name Cavan Sullivan by now, and for good reason, as the 17-year-old has been taking MLS by storm and helping push the Union attack forward with his creativity.
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