Philadelphia Union have a shot at redemption in MLS Cup final rematch

Philadelphia Union face LAFC in the second leg of their Concacaf Champions League semi-final on Tuesday, a rematch of last year’s incredible MLS Cup final.

The two sides played out a thrilling 3-3 draw last November, with LAFC’s Gareth Bale scoring a crucial equaliser in the eighth minute of added time. LAFC went on to win the cup on penalties and Philadelphia Union are still yet to lift the MLS Cup.

On Tuesday they meet with the scores tied at 1-1 from the first leg in Philadelphia. The victor will win a place in the final of the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL) and the chance to become only the second MLS side to taste pan-continental glory.

Ahead of this crucial match we spoke to Ryan Bross, president of the Union’s largest supporters’ group, about the journey so far…

Fans without a club

Every club has a group of particularly hardy supporters who claim to have been there all along. But Philadelphia’s Sons of Ben are a rare example of a supporters group that actually existed before the team did.

Ryan is the group’s president and director of tifo and has been involved with Sons of Ben for more than a decade.

“For a long time we didn’t have a professional MLS team in Philadelphia,” Ryan explains. “We were on the shortlist when they first started talking around the 1994 World Cup but we weren’t part of the expansion… For a long time Philadelphia was never really talked about for a team.”

Sons of Ben, who take their name from Philadelphia-born Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, were founded in January 2007 in a bid to convince league officials that there was real demand for a professional club in the city.

Thanks in part to those efforts, Philadelphia were finally added as the sixteenth MLS team in February 2008 and Ryan began going to games soon after.

“I got season tickets with my family around 2009, it was originally a present for my dad,” he says. “We started going to the games together and I actually ended up going to every game that year. By the end of that season I joined Sons of Ben.”

Forging a bond

Sons of Ben is more than just a group of like-minded fans; its members play an active organisational role at Philadelphia’s Subaru Park. They pride themselves on the atmosphere they help to create from the singing section, stationed directly above the players’ tunnel.

“The seats there are metal so it is very loud in the tunnel as you come out,” Ryan grins. “When we’re allowed to use it, smoke fills that whole area. It’s very overwhelming sensory-wise, I’ve heard from players on both sides, it’s very intense.”

In 2013 Ryan was voted the group’s ‘director of tifo,’ the man in charge of the flags and banners displayed before matches. Tifo culture has really taken hold in MLS and supporter groups are desperate to out-do each other in the stands.

For the first leg against LAFC last week, Ryan had a special something prepared.

“I thought of it while I was in the stands at the MLS Cup final last year,” he explains. “They did a Dragon Ball Z character, Gogeta. I thought, when they next play us at home we can do something with that…”

Their next league meeting is scheduled for September but as both teams progressed through the CCL Ryan began to wonder whether they could meet again sooner than expected. However Ryan, fearing that any prior preparation could jinx his dream of a rematch, declined to make any plans for the enormous 50-foot banner until both sides were definitely through to the semi-final.

“I was waiting and waiting for us both to make it through so it was a bit of a rush,” he says. “It was like ‘OK, now I need to plan this, get the material, sew the material and find a time to paint it,’ all while we’ve been having awful weather.”

Philadelphia Union are in five competitions this season, which means a lot of games and a lot of preparation for the Sons of Ben. But this is also a sign of the team’s development on the pitch, something that Ryan believes has been mirrored off it.

“Now, I’ll walk past kids on game day and they’re singing the chants that they heard at the last match,” he says. “There’s definitely a shift in the culture around the stadium.”

A shot at redemption

After failing to reach the MLS playoff stage for much of the 2010s the Philadelphia Union are now much improved. Their point totals have risen steadily and in the past three seasons the team have twice finished top of the Eastern Conference. However they are yet to make that final step to lift the MLS Cup.

Last season’s dramatic defeat to LAFC was tantalisingly close but there is now a confidence that they have the team to lift some silverware this year.

“We’ve never really had depth in our squad before,” Ryan says. “Now we have, with very limited resources, probably the deepest roster that we’ve had in our history, with the idea that we’re going to compete in every competition.”

For many Union fans beating LAFC on the way to a CCL final would seem like poetic justice, but LAFC have also suffered heartbreak in recent seasons.

In 2020 LAFC lost in the final of CCL to Mexican side Tigres. Now, with Tigres leading in the other CCL semi-final, LAFC are eying up another potential rematch in the final.

Teams from the United States have typically struggled to compete with the Mexican giants in Concacaf competitions. However last year Seattle Saunders became the first MLS team to lift the CCL trophy and both of this year’s semi-finalists will be desperate to repeat the trick.

Tuesday’s second leg between Union and LAFC brings together two teams who proved almost inseparable in last year’s MLS Cup. Yet again they find themselves face-to-face, but for once they share something in common.

“This time we’re both fighting for the same thing,” Ryan says with a smile. “The chance to redeem ourselves.”