Philadelphia: Hypothetical Champions
Even fictional championships deserve celebration.
The Declaration of Independence. The Constitutional Convention. Cheesesteaks. A fictional boxer running up steps. Throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. These are the iconic things that Philadelphia, the self-proclaimed City of Brotherly Love, is most known for. However, for fans of Major League Soccer, Philadelphia is known for something else: crying like pestilent children when they choke and don’t win the MLS Cup.
When New York City Football Club raised its inaugural championship banner in 2021, fans will fondly recall not only the magnificent combination of Taty Castellanos and Maxi Moralez and Alexander Callens’ clutch penalty but also the delicious tears of the Philadelphia Union whom the Pigeons had beaten in the Eastern Conference Finals.
In the postgame press conference, Union manager Jim Curtin attributed the loss to the absence of 11 players and six starters, lamenting, "We had 11 guys who are healthy to play a soccer game that aren’t here because they have a version of the sniffles." Only it wasn’t merely the sniffles Curtin was complaining about, but COVID-19 during the Omicron era and the league protocols that kept them out were the same protocols that every other team in MLS had been following the entire year.
Matthew Ralph of the Brotherly Game memorialized the defeat echoing Curtin’s sentiment:
The point is no one outside of NYCFC’s fanbase should feel good about what happened last night and conclude that one of the two teams on the league’s biggest stage this Saturday didn’t get a huge assist to make it.
…Would a full strength Union team have won the game on Saturday? We’ll never know but it’s hard to watch what transpired and not think there would’ve been a different outcome if those tired legs late in the match from guys who were pushing their fitness levels well beyond anything they had been prepped for up until two days earlier hadn’t had to be there in the first place.
The club, their manager, and a whole lot of firstname+number guys on Reddit and Twitter passionately argued that the MLS Cup was unjustly taken from them, advocating for an asterisk to be placed beside NYCFC’s victory. Though they didn’t secure the championship in 2021, in their beautiful minds, they transformed into something more significant: hypothetical champions.
However, for a team like the Philadelphia Union winning a solitary championship— even hypothetically—was not enough.
In 2022, the Union somehow surpassed their previous hypothetical triumph, by blowing a late lead in the 2022 MLS Cup Final. Gareth Bale, the renowned golfer, capitalized on a critical moment, rising in the middle of the box to slot home a header deep into stoppage time of extra time, forcing the match into penalties. After succumbing in the penalty shootout, referee Ismail Elfath’s stopwatch and agonizing nine minutes of stoppage time would be forever immortalized as Philadelphia claimed their second hypothetical championship.
Remarkably, following the Union's exit from the playoffs in 2023, they secured a third consecutive hypothetical championship. This feat was achieved on the back of the suspension of Kai Wagner, a 2022 MLS Best XI selection, during the playoffs for allegedly using a racial slur towards New England’s Bobby Wood. As a result, the Union became the first team in league history to win back-to-back-to-back hypothetical MLS Cups.
The disappointing reality for the city of Philadelphia is that these championships have never been celebrated, even hypothetically. However, that changes today! The Outfield proudly presents the Philadelphia Hypothetical Champions t-shirt. Despite COVID, the passage of time, and woke culture, which have relegated Philadelphia's three championships to mere fan fiction, your commemoration of this special piece of MLS history can be entirely real.
So if you are looking for a very special gift (especially anyone named Joel), make sure you check out The Outfield merch store today. ❧