CHESTER — For some with the Philadelphia Union, the message was not needed. But for others, Alejandro Bedoya obliged.
The MLS Cup playoffs are a different animal, the team captain and stalwart midfielder warned during film study Friday.
He did so before a room that is in this position precisely because of the need to hear that message, of veterans who’ve been part of past playoff triumphs and new faces that injected life into 2025’s Supporters’ Shield campaign.
That trophy has ceased to be an end unto itself and become a means to a larger goal.
The Union will have to leave Subaru Park just once this postseason as long as they keep winning. The journey starts Sunday evening when the top seed in the Eastern Conference hosts No. 8 Chicago (5:30 p.m., Apple TV/FS1) for the first leg in a best-of-3 opening round playoff series.
“Ale actually talked about a little bit about it today in the video, that people have to be up for it because it’s going to be intense from the first second to the last second,” said defender and fellow veteran Jakob Glesnes. “We have a few guys that haven’t been in this environment before, but also we have some guys that have been in a lot of them. So we have to manage that with them, to get them ready before the game and from the first second.”
Union forward Mikael Uhre chases a loose ball during last week’s loss to Charlotte. (Courtesy of Philadelphia Union)
The Union have a history of home playoff excellence to build on, even if its prevalence in the squad is faded by last year’s postseason miss. The Union are 4-1-1 in playoff games since 2021 at Subaru Park. In the draw, they advanced in penalty kicks vs. Nashville in 2022. The loss came in the 2021 Eastern Conference final when the team was missing 10 players due to COVID-19 testing.
They were also difficult to beat at home in 2025, posting a 12-1-4 mark at Subaru Park.
They face the polar opposite history from Chicago, the eighth seed that advanced via a 3-1 throttling of No. 9 Orlando City Wednesday night. Chicago is in the playoffs for the first time since 2017. Its playoff win was the franchise’s first since 2009, about six weeks after Cavan Sullivan was born.
The series is a best-of-3, with each game decided either in 90 minutes or penalty kicks. Game 2 is next Sunday in Chicago, with an if necessary Game 3 in Chester on Nov. 8.
It’s the third year of MLS’s cockamamie best-of-3 opening round.
A No. 1 seed has been felled in the first round each of the first two years, with Inter Miami falling to No. 9 Atlanta United last year and a Bradley Carnell-coached St. Louis City swept Sporting Kansas City in 2023.
“I’d do a disservice now planning for three games as opposed to just planning for one every matchday for 34 matchdays,” Carnell said of the best-of-3 approach. “So for me, the core principle stays the same. For sure, you have an eye on three games or two games. We’ve been good on the road, we’ve been good at home, so we want to make sure that we get off on the right foot at home and set the tone very early on, and we’ll take it from there.”
The Union won both meetings with the Fire this year.
The first was a 1-0 slog at Soldier Field sealed by Bruno Damiani’s penalty kick in the 9th minute. The return leg was more comprehensive, a 4-0 thrashing at Subaru Park on Aug. 23, starting a stretch of five wins in six. Kai Wagner and Milan Iloski had a goal and an assist each that night.
Chicago finished with 15 wins and 53 points, robust numbers for an eighth-place team. That point tally would’ve been sixth in the West this year and fourth in the East last year. It went 9-6-2 on the road.
Gregg Berhalter’s team has toggled between a back four and back five, adding nuance to the scouting this week. The Fire go as far as its front three takes them. Hugo Cuypers led the line with 17 goals this year, plus two vs. Orlando City. He scored 10 goals last year, two of them against the Union.
Jonathan Bamba is a creator on one wing. Philip Zinckernagel, who had 15 goals and 15 assists in being named a finalist for MLS Newcomer of the Year, is on the other.
The Fire also bring back to town Jack Elliott, the third-round pick who rose to third in Union history with 223 appearances before he was allowed to walk in free agency last season. The center back has been a key starter for Berhalter.
“It is special. Jack is a really, really good friend, family friend, if you can say it like that,” Glesnes said. “But when the game is on, it doesn’t matter who is standing on the other side. We just want to win, and then we can shake hands after the game and be good friends again.”
The Union have a relatively clean bill of health.
Indiana Vassilev, who played in last week’s loss at Charlotte, trained fully. Jeremy Rafanello, who missed that game, is also cleared to train.
Before the champagne was all the way out of the bottles on Oct. 4, the night the Union clinched the Shield against New York City FC, Glesnes, Bedoya and other veterans harped on the need to turn the page.
The Shield was an achievement, but it merely set the stage for the Union to chase MLS Cup. The tournament going through Chester is an opportunity they rued in 2022, losing the Shield on a tiebreaker to LAFC and then suffering the devastation of a shootout loss in California in MLS Cup final.
Carnell hasn’t needed to augment his players’ motivation this week. He’s long tried to reframe a team that was so good as underdogs as hunters rather than hunted in the Shield chase. He said this week they’re preparing “like the two seed” in a nod to that.
But he’s also read “urgency, competition, feistiness” into training, as it’s been all season.
“It’s just who we are and what we do,” he said. “We do it to each other Monday through Friday, and we’ve shown we can do it to the opponent as well on Saturday or Sunday. So for us, it’s been business as usual, and that’s what makes this team special. There’s no days where we felt we’ve taken our foot off the gas.”
