One thing that never gets old is listening to the WHYY host saying the word Concacaf when talking about the Philadelphia Union on a game day morning radio broadcast. That happened this morning dropping my kids off at school because the Union are in Costa Rica ready to take on Saprissa in the Concacaf Champions Cup. Vamos!

In the email today:

1. 🏟️ Game Day in Costa Rica

The Philadelphia Union are back in Costa Rica ready for another two-legged match with Saprissa to kick off their 2024 campaign.

Unlike the last time in 2021, there will be fans in the stands at the 23,000-seat Estadio Ricardo Saprissa and they will most certainly be hostile.

There’s plenty of time to kill until the game actually kicks off locally.

Kick off is at 10 p.m. eastern time and you’ll have to remember how to find FS2 if you have cable or work out some other way to watch the non-Apple TV game.

Saprissa comes in riding a four-game unbeaten streak and has a 4-2-2 record to start their 2024 campaign. The Costa Rican side with a logo very similar to Swarthmore College will be more game ready from that standpoint and will have the crowd behind them but the Union still hold plenty of advantages in a fixture they won 5-0 on aggregate in the club’s first ever Concacaf appearance.

The Union also have less pressure since they get to return home for the second leg. A clean sheet would be enough to put them in the driver’s seat again even if they don’t find the back of the net.

2. 🏆 MLS Inviting More Criticism Over U.S. Open Cup Treatment

If you enjoyed the nonsense of MLS trying to prohibit their first teams from competing in the oldest soccer competition in the U.S. you’ll love the sequel of them still acting like a toddler not wanting to share on the playground.

Reports have indicated that the entire 2024 edition of the U.S. Open Cup is being essentially “held hostage” by MLS.

There’s plenty of doomsday scenarios floating around about what could potentially happen but the bottom line is that MLS appears to have the power to basically do whatever they want and U.S. Soccer is too weak to force the status quo.

A compromise to all of the hand wringing could see a limited number of the U.S.-based MLS teams competing this year. The number 8 has been thrown around but under any scenario where Champions Cup teams are taken out of the competition, the Union will likely not be part of it.

One of the saddest aspects of that prospect is that Union head coach Jim Curtin is one of the biggest supporters of the competition having won it as a player. Middletown, Pa. native Ben Olsen and his Houston Dynamo team would also not be able to defend their title if Champions Cup teams are taken out of the field.

What it all seems to boil down to is MLS wanting only to participate in a competition they (and Apple) can control from a scheduling, revenue and marketing standpoint.

Clearly there is little concern on the part of the largest U.S. pro league for the history of the sport in the country, the fans who support it and the players and coaches who want to win trophies with real weight and significance attached. The backlash around a decision to field Next Pro teams only and U.S. Soccer saying they couldn’t seemingly did little to change their minds. MLS, after all, famously loves to dig in on bad ideas and swap one bad idea for another on a whim.

Perhaps the worst idea of all is central to the league’s desire to further isolate themselves from the sport: the Leagues Cup.

From the initial pre-2023 launch of the competition they no longer even acknowledge the Leagues Cup always seemed to be a cynical move to get U.S.-based Liga MX fans to buy tickets. Now that it requires a month-long pause on the regular season and it’s still not even played at all in Mexico it’s morphed into something even worse than first imagined.

Like their fights with USL, the drama around U.S. Open Cup ultimately isn’t really about the Leagues Cup though. It’s about control. MLS wants to control every level of soccer, from the youth, academy, adult amateur and lower division to the top flight. If they’re able to get away with trashing the U.S. Open Cup, it will only prove just how right the loudest critics of the league have been all along.

3. 🐍 Tweet of the Day: A True Honor

4. 💧 Water Cooler: Jersey Poll Results

Luke McClung’s limited edition Union v Saprissa Part II poster is available to annual or monthly members of Philadelphia Soccer Now or annual subscribers to The River End newsletter.

5. 🔗 Link Roundup

• Kai Wagner will be available for selection for Saturday’s regular season opener after he was reinstated by MLS. Wagner served two games of a three-game suspension for violating the league’s anti-discrimination policy in a verbal altercation with New England Revolution forward Bobby Wood.

• Philadelphia native and former Union Academy, FC Delco and Germantown SC standout Femi Awodesu has signed an MLS Next Pro contract with Houston Dynamo 2.

• Former Union keeper Joe Bendik has signed on with Vancouver Whitecaps with a one-year deal that includes a 2025 club option.

• Wyomissing, Pa. native Jailene DeJesus and Puerto Rico qualified for the Concacaf W Gold Cup after a big 1-0 win over Haiti.

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