Philadelphia Union beat Liga MX flop Mazatlan FC on penalties on Saturday night to advance to the Leagues Cup semifinals for the second year in a row. Andre Blake made a great save in regulation time and showed his heroics in the shootout after Tai Baribo was sent off for a double yellow card, forcing Union to play with ten men for 45 minutes.

If Blake were a baseball player, his WAR would be as good as Aaron Judge’s, and if we’re talking basketball, his VORP would be as good as Jokic’s. That’s how much of a difference he makes when he’s on the court. They’d probably be out of the tournament if Oliver Semmle or Andrew Rick had to play, and not because those guys suck, but because Blake is so good. That’s the exact definition of Wins Above Replacement.

But there is a certain cheeky irony in all this, for several reasons:

1) The Union have been so bad in the league this year that they have slipped to last place in the Eastern Conference, leading to fan protests and a town hall meeting that took place last week. Funnily enough, that meeting coincided with a seven-game unbeaten streak that included two penalty kicks against Mexican teams.

2) The team has sold Julian Carranza to Feyenoord and Jose Martinez to Corinthians, so if they want to win this tournament, they will have to do so without two of their best players from that incredible multi-year winning streak. Carranza has been gone for weeks, but Brujo’s last game was Saturday night, and he came off the bench to convert a penalty in a symbolic final Union moment.

3) Some fans hate the Leagues Cup and boycott it. This includes a section of the Sons of Ben who have not attended any of the games and a number of season ticket holders who have decided not to attend the tournament. They believe the Leagues Cup is a money-making tournament that is played entirely on American soil. They also dislike Major League Soccer’s hostile attitude toward the United States Open Cup, the historic FA Cup-style competition that features lower-division teams from around the country.

Unfortunately, we have the Union. They are much maligned and under scrutiny after selling two of their best players while fans and media rightly moan, and yet they have once again advanced to a semifinal of the tournament with a trophy and a Champions League spot on the line. Last year they reached the same point and were absolutely crushed by Lionel Messi and Miami in the most frustrating Union game I have ever seen (and there have been many). Now they head to Columbus midweek to try and knock off the reigning MLS Cup champions and face LAFC or Colorado in the final.

On one side of the spectrum, you may hear people say something like, “well, the fan protests look silly now; they just needed a healthy Andre Blake and the end of international duty in the summer.” That’s true, the absences killed them in the spring, but I think it proves the point that I and other people have been making for two years, and that is the idea that these remains a very good team and deserves reinforcements and additional spending. The core of Blake, Kai Wagner, Jakob Glesnes, Jack Elliott, Daniel Gazdag, (an aging) Alejandro Bedoya, Leon Flach, Nate Harriel and Mikael Uhre has remained mostly intact. They lost Carranza, Brujo and some fringe players. So the original and mostly consistent argument wasn’t really that they blew up a messed up team, but criticism of running them back twice without taking the necessary steps to help the core over the hump.

And you could say: “Well, they signed Tai Baribo, and Danley Jean-Jacques is here, and they have Sam Adeniran.” Yes, sure, but Baribo was inexplicably on the bench behind Chris Donovan and DJJ came on just two minutes ago. Adeniran is a substitute. It was all reactionary. They only introduced these reinforcements when the low point was reached, which coincided with the sale of Carranza and the transfer of Brujo to Brazil. We didn’t want to replace the entire squad, we were looking for Additions to win this second trophy and strengthen a team that:

• lost the semi-final of the Leagues Cup 2023 4-1
• lost the semi-finals of the 2023 Champions League with a total of 4:1
• lost the 2022 MLS Cup in the final moments
• lost the semi-finals of the 2021 Champions League with a total of 0:4

That was always the concept. This was a team that Really close; they just couldn’t get over the final hurdle and hit their head on the ceiling when they got there. We’ve seen it time and time again, twice in the CCL and most painfully in the MLS Cup when LAFC brought Gareth the fuck Bale off the bench to hand Philadelphia one of its three championship losses this season.

Now the situation presents itself again, strangely enough, as we all assumed that this team would not progress after the 6-0 defeat in the Champions League and the poor start to the league. If you are the owner of Union, what do you think? That this team is good enough and the strategy is still working? You don’t need to make a spectacular signing because the core is still good enough to make a semi-final like that? For me, that just strengthens the previous argument. This was still a very good team and there needed to be more urgency in the last two or three transfer windows.

Still, they can beat Columbus in Ohio. Why not? The Crew are mean, don’t get me wrong, but they crushed Cincinnati on the road last week and are in good form. If Blake continues to play at this level, he’ll keep them in the game. And if they get beaten again, we’ll add that to the list of semifinal losses with an asterisk, because this isn’t where they’re supposed to be.