The Philadelphia Union kicks off its 2025 season in just two days! As the team has been preparing for the season to start, we have had loads of preseason coverage looking at the team and the expectations that are on this version of the Union. with this being the first year of a rebuild, with a new coach and a lot of new players, it’s not quite clear what we will be seeing from Philadelphia in 2025.
As part of our expectations series, we took a look at Philly’s MLS campaign, the US Open Cup, and their player development and set what success and failure. We are going to do the same thing now with coaching tactics, and as has been said before, this rebuilt 2025 version of the Union is in unfamiliar territory.
- The MLS Campaign
- The US Open Cup
- Player Development
- Coaching Tactics/Adaptability
- The overall club culture/vibes
What will the Union look like under new manager Bradley Carnell? Will we see similarities to Curtin’s teams, or will it be very different? The answers are out there already for us to look at, but the play on the field will really determine if the things being said are the things that will happen.
Philadelphia Union Coaching Tactics Expectations
Carnell was hired as the Union’s head coach to replace Curtin because he comes from the Red Bull style of coaching. He loves high-paced, pressing football—the kind that doesn’t want the ball at all if the team isn’t pushing for a chance to create. Ernst Tanner hired Carnell to do what Curtin was not doing at the end of his tenure in Philly: listen to Ernst.
Philly is going to be a narrow and compact team that flies around the field looking to create turnovers and fast counter-attacks. If you thought Ernst Tanner was going to bring in a coach to play any other way, you’re kidding yourself. Curtin was let go because he didn’t follow Tanner to the letter; Carnell is going to have to do just that. It’s the ultimate “bet on yourself move,” and it can either lead to success or failure in 2025.
Baseline Success: Sticking to the system and making game-dictated changes
‘Bradley Carnell showed that he can play the car-crash style of energy drink soccer from his time as interim head coach of the New York Red Bulls in 2020 and with St. Louis City in 2022. He’s a proven MLS coach who plays the way that Tanner wants Philly to play. The crux of the matter will be how Carnell’s Red Bull style works in games, and if it isn’t working, will he be able to make effective in-game chances to get points?
Over the past few years, we have seen so many times that when plan A didn’t work for Philly, Jim Curtin was limited in his ability to find ways to change the game with a formation change or substitution that turned a loss into a draw or a draw into a win. Baseline success in 2025 will be if Carnell can do just that. If the high-paced press isn’t beating other teams down, can he flip personnel to make a game-saving adjustment? Time will tell, but that will be the basis of success vs failure.
Unmitigated Failure: Only having Plan A and never-ever changing
I know a lot of fans were intrigued when they saw some of the starting XIs for preseason games. In some, it looked like Philly was using just one striker and playing with wingers. However, this was not the case at all. Just a few days ago, when questioned about this, Ernst Tanner said that this team will not play with wingers, and any width the team gets will come from moving out of their 4-4-2 diamond formation into more of a 4-2-2-2, where attacking midfielders are allowed to stretch the field in wide areas. This does make things feel a bit uneasy.
The Union has been stuck playing in the same style and shape for the past four years now. At first, it worked really well, but last season it became predictable. What will happen if this is the case again in 2025? Does the overhauled roster have enough talent to change things? If the team stays in plan A even when a change is needed, all of the pressure is going to fall on the player’s backs. If they start feeling the pressure, then it may cause rifts in the locker room if results don’t go their way.
This would lead to failure for this club, which would be not making the playoffs or crashing out of the US Open Cup early.
Overachieving Success: Executing an Energy-Drink pressing style to become an elite team
Remember the 2022 season? That was the Union at the pinnacle of playing the best they ever had, and they were using a version of a high-pressing style of play. That outcome is attainable for Carnell and the 2025 team as well. Philly has just as much talent on paper in the current squad as they did back three seasons ago. The true test will be to see how it translates on the field. If this Union team can execute the energy-drink style soccer and win games doing it, they could just wind up with the elite of the Eastern Conference.
While that is hard to believe right now, Philly has done this before. When the expectations are not as high, then this team has done some surprising things. Has the perception of this team dropped so low in MLS that other teams underestimate how the tenacity with which they will play? If so, we could just see a young and hungry Union side press their way to a top-four finish in the East and go far in the US Open Cup. MLS is so topsy-turvy that that sound’s just crazy enough to happen, right?
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Featured Image Credit: Photo by Kyle Ross/Icon Sportswire
