Supporters’ Shield best chance for first trophy
This time last year, if the mind can strain to recall it, the caveat to the Philadelphia Union’s season was one that had begun to rankle manager Jim Curtin.
They had just wrapped up the best season in franchise history, albeit with losses in three of four to finish the campaign. Now came the real test: Never had the Union won an MLS Cup playoff game. A home date with New York Red Bulls held the power to erase that qualifier.
This hectic year, the standard the Union are chasing is rapidly rising, pushed higher one professional performance, one avoided letdown, at a time. And in year 11 of the franchise, the last limitation rests in the postseason. The Union have done just about everything – the stadium, the playoff appearances, the coherent ideology and organizational stability now being emulated, even (soon) the first player sold to Europe – except win that first trophy.
And in the final six games of this chaotic season, the Supporters’ Shield presents perhaps the best chance yet.
“The discussion of the Supporters’ Shield has come up, not just with our team but every team, and most importantly, what it leads to is getting home games, which in our league are valuable, whether there’s fans here or not,” Curtin said Tuesday via Zoom. “It’s a real important thing for us and certainly something we’re going to give everything we have to go forward these last six games.”
Those are anodyne coaching platitudes. And don’t forget how fond Curtin is of saying that “there are only two trophies you can win in this country,” a statement that excises the Supporters’ Shield, reserving hallowed placement for MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup.
Ordinarily, the Supporters’ Shield for best regular-season record is held up by purists as the only trophy that matters. By representing the top pointgetter over an eight-month season, it’s the purer distillation of excellence, compared to the winner of an autumn tournament where luck can intervene. The fact that the Shield is the equivalent of a European league trophy is surely coincidence.
The Shield’s value has fallen as MLS has grown fat on expansion dollars. It’s been years since the league had a true homeand-away schedule, as every European league does. Even balance within a conference is fleeting. Yet
2020 has made a mockery of those quibbles with a
23-game schedule, held in home markets or Orlando, in front of fans or not, on short rest, short flights, satellite home bases and against an occasionally random assemblage of teams. With a month left in the season, only 15 of 26 teams have played a full complement of 17 games.
The Union, for instance, haven’t played Western opposition since March, while many Eastern teams in the Midwest play an overly inter-conference schedule, with travel distance the priority over conference fidelity. The Union will have played four league games against New England, two games in Columbus, and none against Atlanta or Nashville, in 10th and 11th place, respectively.
So whatever happens, the circular silver plate will house a hefty asterisk, which Curtin admits. (Should the Union win the Shield with just nine true home games, I’d argue, that asterisk is less pronounced.)
But flaws aside, the Union (10-3-4, 31 points) stand three points behind Toronto (11-2-4, 37 points) in the Supporters’ Shield race. Both have six games remaining. Toronto has been on fire, with five straight wins. They finish with two games with the surging Red Bulls, one with fourth-place New York City FC and an Oct. 24 trip to Subaru Park. Their “home” games remain at Hartford’s Rentschler Field, where last week they overturned an early deficit to beat the Union, 2-1.
The Union have tough games looming – two more with the sixth-place Revs, the trip to third-place Columbus – but have plenty of winnable points, starting with Wednesday’s trip to last-place D.C. United. They finish with three of four at home.
For years, the Union have pursued the most
available to get a piece of silverware. Often, that was the Open Cup, which Curtin prioritized. Three times the Union made the final, losing all three. Two of those seasons, they didn’t qualify for the MLS Cup playoffs. It was the philosophy to prioritize one-off games, rather than the team’s actual aptitude, that led to that success.
The Union can do that again by emphasizing the Shield as an end unto itself. The playoffs, usually a crapshoot, will be even more so. The Union should get home games, and they’ve won all six outings at Subaru Park. But in a one-off, do-or-die encounter, you’d be hard-pressed to call the Union a favorite against TFC, which has made three of the last four MLS Cup finals. You might not give the Union the edge against Portland, which beat them in the MLS Is Back semifinals.
Or against Seattle, the reigning MLS Cup holder. Or even LAFC, a dynamic if flawed team capable of explosions of brilliance.
But if the Union can pull a surprise in Columbus, or if they can catch Toronto on a bad day in October, or get a little help, then maybe they’ll get that trophy before the playoffs even start. And if that happens, they’ll end the conversation about firsts once and for all.
“I think there’s an asterisk on everything that we’re doing, but it’s still a goal of ours to have the most points we can,” Curtin said. “And it would be a big honor.”
An honor that is within their grasp if they push for it.