BANG THE DRUM, PHILLY!
This city owns October and now it’s comin’ for November! Philadelphia Union booked the club’s first-ever ticket to the MLS Cup Final by knocking off NYCFC in front of one of the best atmospheres Major League Soccer has ever produced.
When the final whistle blew, the stadium shook as fans that carried the team to an undefeated season at home roared with the passion of a city that waited a full year for the redemption they deserved.
Few teams will ever go on such a magical journey: From the pain of losing 11 players for the 2021 Eastern Conference Final, the Union discovered an unbreakable mentality, and they arrived in 2022 with a ruthlessness that unleashed one of the best end-to-end performances in league history.
Was it perfect? No. But Philly is not a city that asks for perfection. It simply asks that when you kiss the mat, you remember it when you throw your next haymaker; and the Union didn’t lose two games in a row all year.
MLS Cup Ticket Information
Philadelphia Union is headed to Los Angeles to take on LAFC in MLS Cup 2022 on Saturday, November 5th! Learn more about ticket information by clicking the link below.
How could they? Andre Blake sat the rest of the league down and gave a lesson on goalkeeping while a 35 year old midfielder put together one of the best seasons of any American player in the league. That’s not hyperbole, it’s simply heroic. And where those leaders went, the rest of the team followed. At various points in the season, pundits could point to three MVP candidates on the same roster, and the team’s primary attackers, Daniel Gazdag, Mikael Uhre, and Julian Carranza — who had a combined seven MLS goals entering the season — collected 49 in 2022. Sixteen teams scored fewer than 49 goals this year, by the way.
But the numbers don’t tell the story of the season. That story can only be heard in the collective noise that emanated from Subaru Park when the final whistle blew and the Union were crowned Eastern Conference Champions.
In a month when the Eagles remained undefeated and the Phillies made the World Series, Philadelphia embraced the Union in a beautiful, complete, and appropriately raucous way.
The Philly Way.
The only way that mattered.
