Union (4-2-3-1) 

Blake 

Fabinho-Marquez-Yaro-Rosenberry

Creavalle-Bedoya 

Pontius-Barnetta-Herbers 

Sapong 

Bench: McCarthy, Gaddis, Tribbett, Fernandes, Alberg, Restrepo, Davies 

Sporting KC (4-3-3) 

Kann 

Medranda-Besler-Opara/Abdul-Salaam 

Espinoza-Mustivar-Feilhaber 

Zusi-Dwyer-Peters 

Bench: Kempin, Alvarado, Hallisey, Appiah, Nagamura, Davis, Rubio 

Preview 

- In naming an unchanged side from Wednesday’s win in Columbus, Union manager Jim Curtin again tries to strike the balance between consistency and squad rotation. His team is 3-0-2 in midweek MLS games this season, but 0-4-2 in weekend games immediately following those midweek affairs. If something changes, it’ll have to come from within this group, which includes a second straight start for Fabian Herbers. - It’s the third time this season that the Union’s set of three rookies all start, with Josh Yaro preferred to Ken Tribbett in central defense.

- No surprise that Ilsinho (foot) and Brian Carroll (foot) remain out. Curtin said Friday they’re on pace for a return next weekend in Chicago.

- SKC gets a little relief from its defensive injury backlog with Ike Opara back in central defense. That allows Graham Zusi to move back into midfield to cover for Brad Davis, who misses out. The front six is first-choice for SKC, but they are very thin on the bench and have an exploitable backline that the Union have to attack from the start.

Union goalie Andre Blake faces a tall task in Jamaica's two
World Cup qualifiers next week. (AP)

The mandate for Jamaica and Andre Blake leaves no room for error. If the Reggae Boyz can’t return from Panama City Sept. 2 with some kind of result, their hopes of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup will be dashed with two barren years to go.

That’s the understanding Blake carries as he departs next week for the final two fixtures of the fourth round of CONCACAF qualifying.

“It’s big games,” Blake said Friday after Philadelphia Union training. “I think the guys have been in this situation before. I don’t know what the result’s going to be, but I know for sure when it comes down to these situations, the guys go out and give their best. So hopefully their best will be good enough.”

Jamaica is up against it. It sits third in four-team Group B with four points from four games. It finishes the six-game round robin Sept. 6 with a winnable game at home against bottom-dwellers Haiti. But that could be academic if it can’t eke out at least a draw against second place Panama (2-1-1, 7 points) in the opener.

Only the top two in each of the three groups advance to the fifth round of qualifying, the Hexagonal. Costa Rica leads Group B with 10 points. Read more »

Something unusual will happen Saturday evening when the Philadelphia Union host Toronto FC at Talen Energy Stadium: Of the 22 players chosen to start the game, nearly half will have experience playing for the U.S. National Team. And for once, the Union will actually contribute significantly to that tally.

The Union’s summer dealings can be characterized by many lenses. But one is the acquisition of players in Alejandro Bedoya and Charlie Davies, who’ve represented the U.S. internationally.

And so Saturday, using the Union and Toronto rosters, you can cobble together a fairly cogent starting XI of fully capped American internationals.



There’s some fudging position-wise. Chris Pontius is included, and while he has never appeared for the U.S., he’s twice been invited to camps and traveled internationally without getting in a game, and it’s reasonable to assume that had he not experienced such bad injury luck, he’d have that cap by now. (Consider this the start of the campaign for Pontius to play the role Ethan Finlay did at January camp and beyond last year.) There’s also no capped goalie, but Alex Bono, the former Reading United player, has played for the U.S. Under-18 team, so he’ll do.

The spine of the team is formidable. It features, when healthy, the U.S.’s top striker for the next World Cup cycle (Jozy Altidore), its captain (Michael Bradley) and arguably one of the first two or three names coach Jurgen Klinsmann pencils into the lineup in Bedoya.

That isn’t a bad team, if you could swap a forward for a truer fullback. It’s certainly a darn good one from a marketing standpoint, and it reveals a point about the Union’s direction.
Read more »

Back in 2012, a youthful Brian Carroll helped the Union navigate
a late-summer rough patch akin to the one they've just endured.
(AP)

The sky was never quite falling in on the Philadelphia Union in the last month or so, even as they won one MLS game in seven and slid from jockeying for first place in the Eastern Conference to fifth. But it was a certified rough patch as the club came to terms with its early success and was forced to adjust, no longer able to take teams by surprise.

The causes for that tumble are myriad and not entirely cured by Saturday’s 4-0 thrashing of New England, though that road result goes a long way in augmenting players’ intangible confidence category.

Using history as a guide, though, there wasn’t much reason to panic, and Saturday’s result more affirms that the Union can turn things around rather than providing the outright proof.

The Union’s past is limited; instances where they have been in playoff position as they are now are even scarcer. Time and again this season, I’ve returned to the 2011 season as the blueprint of a playoff campaign, the only time the Union have qualified for the postseason. And while the seasons are vastly different in construction and approach, the ebb and flow of a playoff chase in a marathon season remains applicable. And through that lens, the Union from late June on have merely been ticking off another box on the 2011 replication checklist.

Travel back to that summer, and you may recall the dreadful stretch the Union endured, an eight-game winless run (0-3-5) from late July to mid-September that threatened to derail their playoff hopes. Read more »

Midfielder Alejandro Bedoya, right, defending Colombia's Juan Cuadrado
for the U.S. during this summer's Copa America, can play multiple positions.
But where will he fit with the Union? (AP)

The press conference at Talen Energy Stadium Wednesday took an interesting turn midway though, pivoting on a simple premise. The Philadelphia Union, a team in desperate need of a No. 8, signed a midfielder who isn’t known for playing as a No. 8.

In itself, the signing of Alejandro Bedoya to be an integral part of the Union’s multi-year rebuild is an excellent move. We can quibble over the rumored cost paid or the cost at which Bedoya’s services come. But as the Union have proven all season – and proved again Thursday with the signing of Charlie Davies – Bedoya falls in line with the prevailing trend of acquiring players of a higher caliber than ever before.

Within the framework of a team struggling in MLS and coping to fill a gaping void in central midfield, Bedoya’s acquisition is more quizzical. In the grand scheme, 12 games only mean so much (though I’d argue the Union’s playoff fate over the last dozen games is instrumental to several figures’ futures).

This is where an unusual degree of friction (you can watch the video and read the transcript here) was introduced Wednesday, as manager Jim Curtin was pressed on how Bedoya would fit into midfield. And Curtin said everything but what is likely to be the truth, that Bedoya will be slid back into the No. 8 midfield role.

Now a dose of pessimism: The Union last year spent considerable funds to acquire a career winger in Europe with better credentials from a better league at a lower cost, then moved him centrally and eventually into an ill-fitting No. 8 role. As with Tranquillo Barnetta for the last two months, it’s easy to see Bedoya as not quite a square peg for a round hole, but at least one that requires some sanding.

Here’s what the Union could look like at this time next month, provided that Bedoya’s former Rangers teammate Maurice Edu returns to health:

Read more »

The chemistry between Chris Pontius, left, and Charlie Davies, center,
goes back to their days with D.C. United in 2011. The hope is that it carries
over to the Union. (AP)

The Philadelphia Union were among the most active teams in the last day of the summer transfer window and beyond, with Alejandro Bedoya and Charlie Davies coming in and Sebastien Le Toux heading out, with all manner of MLS financial devices switching hands.

What did all that mean at Union training Thursday? Some reaction from Chester:

- Davies, acquired from New England Thursday morning some eight hours after the close of the transfer window, will arrive late Thursday. He played last week for New England after three months out for what was revealed to be cancer treatment for a disease now in remission and will likely be available for selection Saturday at D.C. United.

- Bedoya, coming in from French club Nantes, will meet the team in D.C. He’s ramping up his fitness from the European preseason, and manager Jim Curtin said Bedoya played 60 minutes in a friendly this week. But the travel calendar makes it unlikely he’ll debut Saturday.

- The Union, Curtin said, are not done in the summer window. Though the MLS secondary window is closed, teams can still add out-of-contract players in the coming weeks ahead of a mid-September roster deadline that is hard and fast. Curtin said, “there are a few trialists that will be coming in for the next few weeks,” primarily on defense. Expect a long-term solution at left back to be one of the top priorities. The Union have one roster spot to play with.

- Both of the Union’s moves were attacking in nature, for a team that has struggled mightily in giving up goals. Here was Curtin’s reaction when that apparent conflict was posed:

“It does need to be said that as you do improve with the ball, the other team can’t score. So we need to improve that part of things. Getting Alejandro, while he is a great attacking player, he will do the defensive running that strengthens our team in that regard. Our breakdowns right now, we are still looking. … We don’t neglect what our weaknesses are. I think we have a good idea what our weaknesses are and what we need to improve.”

Read more »

Charlie Davies, left, playing for New England against Orlando City last week,
is the newest member of the Union after a trade completed Thursday morning.
(AP)

The final move in a hectic final day of the MLS transfer window needed an extra eight hours to clear. But when the dust settled Thursday morning, the Philadelphia Union had achieved clarity on its aim this summer.

The Union capped a flurry of deals by acquiring forward Charlie Davies from New England along with a 2018 third-round SuperDraft pick in exchange for a 2018 first-round SuperDraft pick, general allocation money and targeted allocation money.

Capped with the transfer of designated player Alejandro Bedoya and the departure of Sebastien Le Toux to Colorado, the Union don’t exactly overhaul the roster but put on some important finishing touches for what they hope is a playoff run.

All told, the Union acquired Bedoya, Davies, the third-rounder and GAM from Colorado. They spent GAM, TAM (both to New England and Chicago for the top spot in the allocation order to get Bedoya), a discovery rights swap with Chicago and first-round SuperDraft picks in 2017 and 2018 while also bidding farewell to franchise all-time leading scorer Le Toux.

In Davies, the Union get a workhorse depth forward who brings as much off the field as on, though at a third of the cost of Le Toux and two years younger. Davies, 30, has been limited to just nine games this season as he battled cancer that was recently declared in remission.

He had a breakthrough 2015 season, scoring 10 goals and four assists in 33 games, but he was marginalized in New England with the arrival of Kei Kamara.

Davies, like Bedoya a Boston College grad, spent much of his career in Europe. Like Bedoya, he played in Sweden with Hammarby and France with Sochaux, where he was a teammate of former Union player Vincent Nogueira. He also used a successful loan stint with D.C. United to earn a season-plus in Denmark with Randers.

Davies, who becomes the fifth member of the Union with U.S. National Team caps, has played 17 times for the U.S. from 2007 to 2009, when his career trajectory was infamously altered by a car accident that cost him over a year on the field.

Davies’s cap hit is a shade under $107,000 this year, compared to Le Toux’s $300,000. More important than his role as a reserve forward could be his veteran presence with a young squad, and the wise-beyond-his-years Davies certainly provides a benefit there.

.@NERevolution striker @CharlieDavies9 beats cancer and is ready to take his life back and return to the field. https://t.co/Soq2kOBc1V

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 31, 2016

Alejandro Bedoya, playing for the U.S. National Team in Copa America
this summer, is set to be the Union's newest signing. (AP)

CHESTER >> The Philadelphia Union’s two-summer chase of Alejandro Bedoya is all but over.

The Union sealed the transfer of the American international Wednesday, per the website of his former club, French side FC Nantes.

The deal sealed the deal by reportedly shipping general allocation money, targeted allocation money and a first-round SuperDraft pick to Chicago to swap the Union’s No. 2 allocation order pick with Chicago at No. 1 to acquire Bedoya’s rights.

Reports indicate that Bedoya will earn a salary near $1 million in addition to a transfer fee of nearly $1 million to Nantes. Bedoya will occupy a designated player spot on the Union roster.

Bedoya, 29, is a native of Englewood, N.J., who’s spent his entire pro career in Europe. He played in Sweden with Orebro and Helsingborgs and Scotland for a season at Rangers alongside future Union teammate Maurice Edu. Since 2013, Bedoya has been at Nantes, the club of former Union young DP striker Fernando Aristeguieta. The Union attempted to sign Bedoya last summer, but the deal fell through.

“Alejandro is a good player,” Edu said. “I think anyone who’s seen him play for the national team or for his club teams, they know technically he’s a good player. He works hard on both sides of the ball. He’s a player who can create plays for himself and for other players. In any team that he plays, he’s shown that he’s a quality player and can impact a team.”

Bedoya has earned 53 caps with the U.S. National Team. He’s played primarily as a winger, but he’s likely to be deployed centrally with the Union to fill the void left by Vincent Nogueira at the No. 8 role.