The Phillies start their Red October push on Saturday night with Game 1 of their Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s safe to say that most of the city\u2019s sporting attention will be focused on fall baseball and the Phightins\u2019 quest for another World Series title.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this game preview isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re casting our gaze on Subaru Park in Chester, where tomorrow the Philadelphia Union have the chance to lift its second-ever Major League Soccer Supporters\u2019 Shield with a win against rival New York City FC.<\/p>\n
The Union have led the race for the shield \u2014 which is the title and silverware given to the team with the best regular-season record \u2014 for the majority of the year. The math became clear on Tuesday night after title rivals Inter Miami lost, 5-3, to the Chicago Fire. Now, Philly can clinch it at home, against a rival, with a game to spare, in front of what\u2019s likely to be a sellout crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stakes are high for head coach Bradley Carnell and his side as they look to make an emphatic statement in his first season in charge. Last year, the team finished 12th in the 15-team Eastern Conference last season and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2017.<\/p>\n
The Union booked a playoff spot this season before September, and they\u2019ll be riding the momentum of a record-equaling, 6-0 away win over D.C. United<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to go into the playoffs playing well and getting a big win like that, where we have a lot of different goal scorers,\u201d forward Milan Iloski said, via the team\u2019s website, on Tuesday<\/a>. \u201cI think it\u2019s something that\u2019s really important for a lot of guys, to feel confident and to feel like we\u2019re firing going into the playoffs.<\/p>\n Carnell said the final game after a successful season can be its own challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve always come up with narratives of can we stay the hunters, as opposed to the hunted,\u201d Carnell said Thursday<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve always come up with different ways to push the season where it hasn\u2019t felt comfortable, even though we were always in a comfortable position. There\u2019s never been a bit of comfort within these walls. There\u2019s always been some added, driving initiative to keep the competition, to keep it humble, on the ground and just moving one step at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n D.C. has been one of the worst teams in the league this year, so last Saturday\u2019s result was not a surprise. NYCFC are significantly better, and are one of the few teams that have bested the Union this season, winning, 1-0, back in April<\/a>. Like the Union, New York has won four of its last five games.<\/p>\n Carnell said he looks forward to games like these, \u201cbecause you always want to measure yourself against the best teams.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey are really comfortable with the ball, they are feisty, they are edgy, their one-v-one dynamic is excellent and they have a real good attacking threat,\u201d he said. \u201cHave we got ways and means to go around that? For sure, and we\u2019ve shown it a bunch of times this year.\u201d<\/p>\n The Union won its first Supporters Shield in 2020, and made it to the final game of the playoffs in 2022, where the team lost to Los Angeles FC<\/a> on the same day that the Phillies lost the World Series to the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n The shield guarantees the team will face the winner of the Eastern Conference wildcard game, between the 8th and 9th seeds. The top spot also guarantees that all but one game \u2014 part of the best-of-three series in the first round \u2014 will be a home match.<\/p>\n