What now? Philadelphia Union, FC Cincinnati bow out in Conference Semifinals | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

Our annual collection of post-mortems rolls on with the vanquished Eastern Conference semifinalists, FC Cincinnati and Supporters’ Shield winners Philadelphia Union.

You can find…

Ok, in we go, examining the seasons of two teams that will again head into the offseason hoping that next year will be the year they finally win a Cup.

Philadelphia Union

2025 in a nutshell

They made one of the most shocking coaching decisions in league history almost exactly 12 months ago, parting ways with the legendary Jim Curtin after his vision and the club’s had become, to paraphrase sporting director Ernst Tanner, misaligned.

What this meant was that in 2025, the Union would:

In came Bradley Carnell, he of the pure Red Bull DNA, and folks, there was no more misalignment. The head coach and the sporting director (and presumably owner Jay Sugarman) all saw eye-to-eye-to-eye on how the team was going to play, and who they were going to play. And so they won right out of the gates, and then they (for the most part) kept winning all year long. Right up until this happened:

What comes next?

The second Supporters’ Shield – the second major trophy – in club history. By definition, a monumentally successful year. Tanner’s gamble paid off.

Let’s tease apart that “for the most part” bit, though: they went 13W-1L-2D against non-playoff teams in league play, with a +24 goal differential. If you were unprepared or gappy (non-playoff teams are almost always one or both of those things), they were a bulldozer.

Against what I’ll call the “less good” or at least “less structured” playoff teams, they went 6W-1L-2D with a +13 goal differential. You couldn’t just out-talent this Philly group; you needed to have everything arranged just so or you, too, would get bulldozed.

That’s what the best of the best do, though, right? Have talent and arrange everything just so? And those are the teams you have to beat to get deep into tournament play, right?

Well, the teams with really good players and a really good structure, both of which make them less vulnerable against high pressing… Philly went 1W-6L-2D with a -12 goal differential against them in the regular season. They lost against one of those teams in the US Open Cup semifinals (3-1 at Nashville), and they lost against one of those teams on Sunday night in the Eastern Conference Semifinals (1-0 vs. a weakened NYCFC side).

The Union's record over the course of the entire season against the best teams in the league suggested they absolutely were not among the MLS Cup favorites entering the playoffs. And, well, here we are. Again.

What to watch for this winter

DP No. 9 Mikael Uhre is out of contract, and folks around the club do not expect he’ll be back.

That’s one. An even bigger move could end up coalescing around leading scorer Tai Baribo. The Union have an option for the final year of his deal, and I don’t disbelieve those summertime rumors that he was being shopped within the league. Age 27, proven reliable MLS goalscorer, works hard defensively, doesn’t need the ball to affect the game… there is a long, loooong list of teams that could use this guy. Including the one that ended Philly’s season.

Moving both those forwards out would necessitate some backfill, but I’d actually be very bullish on a front-line pairing of Milan Iloski (shoehorned in as a wide attacking midfielder upon his midseason arrival) and Bruno Damiani, especially if Cavan Sullivan graduates into big minutes next year.

Player I’m excited for

Sullivan. He’s still just a kid – you could see he wasn’t quite up to the speed of MLS games when he got onto the field this year – but he’s an exceptionally talented kid on a very good trajectory: one of the very best players at the U-17 World Cup, and arguably the best player in MLS NEXT Pro this past year on a per-minute basis.

There is a ton of evidence that NEXT Pro excellence consistently translates to the first team. Sullivan, who’s barely 16, has hit all his marks so far; if he doesn’t play 2,000+ first-team minutes across all competitions as one of the Union’s two attacking midfielders next year, I’ll be shocked.

Notes

FC Cincinnati

2025 in a nutshell

They won the offseason for sure – or at least tied with Atlanta, anyway. Cincy started things off by setting what was then the league record for an incoming transfer fee by buying Belgian Golden Boot winner Kévin Denkey from Cercle Brugge for reportedly more than $16 million.

They finished things off by setting a league record in the newly instituted "cash for players" trade market by shipping $12 million to the Timbers for Evander, a Best XI playmaker.

It mostly worked. Evander was awesome: He put up 18g/15a and was in Landon Donovan MLS MVP discussions all year. Denkey was very good, with 15g/2a in about 2,200 minutes. And along the way, Cincy came within one point of winning the Shield, which would have been their second in three years.

So then why did the season overall seem kind of underwhelming? And why is there now a small but very vocal (and, I want to make this clear: ultimately wrong) contingent of fans upset with the work of head coach Pat Noonan?

I’d say it’s because throughout the year, they felt like a collection of players whose whole was much less than the sum of its parts. Evander and Denkey put up numbers, but never really got on the same page. Luca Orellano – also purchased last winter – struggled with health and form, as did Obinna Nwobodo. Pavel Bucha was basically irreplaceable, while the center back trio was in constant flux (though Miles Robinson had a very good, borderline excellent year).

In the end, the underlying numbers were screaming that this was an outright bad team: 11th in the East on expected goal differential as per FBRef, 22nd in the league in the more granular goals added differential as per American Soccer Analysis.

What they did was win the game in both boxes. Evander and Denkey (and eventually Brenner) on one side of the field; Robinson and goalkeeper Roman Celentano on the other.

While that led to a bunch of one-goal wins, it also – the lack of overall game control, I mean, and the utter reliance on top-end quality – left them vulnerable to bad results against bad teams in a way that Philly weren't. So they took just four points from four games combined against Atlanta and D.C., which is what cost them the Shield.

And over at the other end of the spectrum… if you are kind of a gappy team that relies on talent more than structure, you will suffer when you meet other equally (or nearly so) talented teams that also have time to prepare for you. Those teams, often as not, will rip you apart.

Which is to say they played four playoff games – three of them at home! – and were outscored 9-3.

What comes next?

Chemistry lessons. More than any single acquisition, Noonan and his staff – and I have to wonder if there will be some thought put towards maybe refreshing the staff a bit, getting someone with a new tactical approach in there – need to sit down and figure out a plan to get Evander, Denkey and Brenner (if they exercise his purchase option) working in a way where they amplify each other’s skillsets. In 2025, it was more of a "your-turn, my-turn" thing they had going, and I think at times they actually made each other worse.

Even more important than that, the staff has to figure out how they want to play against the ball. Cincy were, frankly, very easy to build out against. Once you break that first line of pressure, you put any team into some version of a scramble. While, to their credit, they mostly scrambled exceptionally well, you don’t want to be living on emergency defense and unsustainable shot-stopping.

They need more control of the game.

What to watch for this winter

They hold contract options on Matt Miazga, Teenage Hadebe and Yuya Kubo, which add up to about $3.5 million in cap/budget space (those are all TAM deals, none are DPs).

How that works out is going to be the first shoe to drop. Miazga is obviously the most interesting one of the three to ponder, because when he was playing at a Defender of the Year clip in 2023 and the first half of 2024, they didn’t have these kinds of organizational or defensive issues. But sadly, he did not look like the same guy upon his return from injury this year. And Cincy did not look like the same team.

I have no idea which way this one is going to go, but it’s one of the most consequential decisions in the league this winter. Put the best version of Miazga into this roster and I think that fixes, like, 60% of their issues? But does the best version of Miazga exist anymore?

Player I’m excited for

It’s probably Samuel Gidi, the Slovakian d-mid they signed on a U22 deal midseason, who looks a lot like he’s got Nwobodo’s range and ball-winning ability, but with more juice as a passer and ball-progressor.

Winger/wingback Ender Echenique, another midseason U22 addition, is also worth a shout here. His end product isn’t quite there, but he seems to see the game well and is very toolsy both as a soccer player and an athlete.

Notes