St. Louis CITY SC<\/a> just a year after leading the then-expansion side to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference during their inaugural 2023 season, he still boasts the chops to win in MLS.<\/p>\n“This is what we’ve seen from the guys all the way through the season: this hunger and this desire just to prove people wrong last year, whatever happened,” Carnell said.<\/p>\n
“For me personally as well, whatever happened. It was this combination of, I would say two failures, right? To grow it together, to build something together, for them to absorb information and then execute. It’s amazing.”<\/p>\n
While the attitude from those outside observers may have been skeptical, the belief never wavered inside the locker room.<\/p>\n
“I think there was always a lot of chatter before the season, obviously with the way things went last year,” noted Bedoya. “But I’ve always said that this locker room is special. We’ve created a great culture in here. The guys always believed that we could do something special.”<\/p>\n
\n Moment of vindication<\/p>\n
The last time the Union lifted the Shield? In 2020, in front of just 2,775 fans after the Covid-shortened season and attendance restrictions put a damper on what should have been a cathartic moment. This win, says Carnell, bookends that moment.<\/p>\n
It’s also a personal bit of vindication for him.<\/p>\n
“I had a moment in 2018, winning the Supporters’ Shield [as an assistant with the New York Red Bulls]. Never got to hold it. And I regretted that moment all the time,” he said with a smile.<\/p>\n
“To get to hold it today was really special, to get the players to hold the real shield. From 2020, [they had] the makeshift Shield. And I was like, ‘I want you to hold the real one!’ you know? This means something, right?”<\/p>\n
\n Eyes on MLS Cup<\/p>\n
Despite the Union finishing the season as MLS’s top side, Carnell is clinging to the idea that his squad can somehow fly under the radar in the playoffs \u2013 beginning with their Round One Best-of-3 series against the Eastern Conference Wild Card winner in late October.<\/p>\n
“We’re not the superstars,” Carnell laughed. “I’m not the super coach. We don’t care. We like it this way. We fly under the radar.”<\/p>\n
Flying under the radar or not, they’re far from content with just the Shield. As Bedoya emphasized, they want a first-ever MLS Cup.<\/p>\n
“Supporters’ Shield is \u2013 it’s great. I’m very happy to get that other silverware for the club. But we want to win an MLS Cup,” Bedoya said.<\/p>\n
“I want to win an MLS cup so bad. And so I think we’ll celebrate tonight, but the focus has to be on winning the Cup.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The league’s best team during the regular season were hardly a favorite to make the Audi MLS Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":278890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,44504,1448,2830,1311,8895,139334,44204,37638,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-278889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-match-reaction","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-union","14":"tag-phivsnyc-10-04-2025","15":"tag-priority-match","16":"tag-sendtonews","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115320092974815924","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}