To Union, Leagues Cup opponents beginning to have a familiar ring

Nov 19, 2023

CHESTER — You’d be forgiven for looking at the Philadelphia Union’s half of the Leagues Cup bracket and wondering just how MLS brass managed to reinvent a slightly gilded version of the U.S. Open Cup.

Thanks to the magic of regional scheduling and the shocking finding that three weeks in a hotel in a foreign country might diminish the performance of Mexican clubs, the Leagues Cup boondoggle designed to pit Liga MX teams against MLS teams has … brought you divisional play without the playoff stakes, to fill the month where the league is on hiatus.

So Thursday night, you had a bonus installment of the Union flapping away at D.C. United in a scoreless draw in the Round of 32, settled in penalty kicks (mercifully, no extra time) via Olivier Mbaizo in the sixth round. And you have the Union now getting a Monday visit from New York Red Bulls, after they attritioned their way past exotic foe New York City FC, 1-0.

The winner of that game gets either Queretaro, which the Union beat in the group stage, or New England, a multi-time opponent over the last five years.

So, yeah, Thursday’s game at Subaru Park, before a loud but distinctly Open Cup-sized crowd (low enough that MLS exercised its right not to publish the attendance) came with a certain feel.

“I think it’s solely because of the teams that we’ve drawn – it’s D.C., and now it’ll be Red Bull – that it feels like Open Cup, which I hate to say, because it’s so regional, and I understand why it has to be,” manager Jim Curtin said. “But I would love to be playing a Portland or an Austin, who we’ve never played in the history of our club, or a Liga MX team, just for the uniqueness of it.

“We know DC so well and they know us so well that unfortunately the games look like tonight. Red Bull is going to be the same; it’s going to be organized fighting.”

Thus far Leagues Cup, shy of Messi mania, has done whatever the opposite of runneth over is. Of the first nine teams to reach the Round of 16, eight are American. Queretaro is the exception, having upset Pumas in Washington despite the Union drubbing them, 5-1, last week. Scoreless draws turned PK losses for Pachuca at Houston and Cruz Azul to Charlotte (in Frisco, Tex.,) have allowed objectively inferior MLS teams to advance and taken some of the sizzle out of the competition.

That’s in stark contrast to the two ripsnorters played at Subaru Park in the group stage with Queretaro and Club Tijuana, which featured 10 goals, two red cards, four PKs and all the attendant chaos you want from CONCACAF acquaintances being renewed.

Curtin’s team, though, doesn’t have the luxury of being quite as flip about it once the whistle blows. There’s still something to be accomplished from this tournament, however lifeless the play. For a team whose season ended last year in penalties in the MLS Cup final, breaking a streak of having lost five of six penalty-kick shootouts can’t be a bad thing. Both Mbaizo and Jesus Bueno, who stepped up for the fifth-round PK in a make-or-go-home scenario Curtin called “the big boy” kick, converted for the first time in their Union careers.

“I wanted to be the one to finish the penalty kicks,” Bueno said via a translator. “I wanted to be the last man.”

Andre Blake didn’t make a save, but he inspired D.C.’s Chris Durkin to miss badly and Pedro Santos to hit the post in the sixth round. He is unsure how much can be taken from the result, but winning a shootout probably doesn’t hurt.

“Penalties are always tough,” Blake said. “It’s a coin toss and it comes down to how well are you able to hold your nerves because it’s a tough pressure moment. It’s a lonely walk from the half field. It comes down to guys who can really hold their composure, keep it together, even though they’re probably so nervous, and to be able to find that moment and execute.”

However dull the road ahead may look, it will run through Subaru Park as long as the Union win. Thanks to MLS’s all-in bet on Leagues Cup, they’ve got nothing else to do for the next two-plus weeks.

So why not try to win a trophy, some money, and a place in CONCACAF Champions League for next year while they’ve got the chance?

“I’d prefer it to be different, but this is the competition,” Curtin said. “And we’re at home, so that’s also a huge advantage for us.”

Sign up for email newsletters