Union forwards Tai Baribo, left, and Bruno Damiani celebrate the former's goal in the first half of Saturday's 3-0 playoff win over Chicago. (Courtesy of Philadelphia Union) Courtesy Philadelphia Union
The state of the opponent and the field meant there wasn’t much to glean Saturday night regarding the Philadelphia Union’s title prospects.
The Union were decisively better than the Chicago Fire in a 3-0 win that clinched their best-of-3 series in two games. Against a poor Fire side in comical conditions at their again-home of SeatGeek Stadium, Saturday was a pass/fail exam with the stakes lessened by the certainly of a home Game 3. In their last road game of 2025, the Union for the final time brandished a skillset they won’t need again until 2026.
But what did come out of Saturday’s encounter was a reason to hope that the Union can disrupt the conventional thinking of how successful playoff teams are built.
The Union are headed into the Eastern Conference semifinals not with one star striker, like many of their Eastern foes possess, but three effective forwards in discreet roles. In two games against the Fire, the Union got goals from both starting attacking midfielders and goal contributions from their three most prominent forwards. It’s the balance that has long eluded the Union in their thrifty roster builds.
Tai Baribo and Bruno Damiani supplied the goals Saturday, Baribo’s the second multi-goal playoff game in club history. Mikael Uhre, who missed out after failing a pregame fitness test on his knee, had been the in-form striker.
All three getting hot at the right time bodes well for how the Union could match up with teams in the East built around one star scorer.
Baribo, who led the Union with 16 goals, had last scored on Aug. 23, against Chicago. Through the magic of MLS scheduling, that was only eight games ago, including the first round of the playoffs and a U.S. Open semifinal, with Baribo suspended from one game via yellow-card accumulation.
The Union didn’t much feel the absence, though. Damiani shook off his debut-season struggles with a stretch of three goals – all game-winners – in four matches, culminating with the opener in Washington to drub D.C. United. Damiani didn’t have a goal contribution in either of his last three starts.
Baribo scored on international duty with Israel in October, energy he brought back to the Union.
“I thought he was excellent with his national team, and the way he came back felt like a weight off his shoulders,” coach Bradley Carnell said. “And then the way he's been playing has been very productive. … We've seen a good shift of energy, positivity, quality, we've seen a lot of things about Tai’s game that's getting back to usual.”
Saturday’s goals weren’t rocket science, though they exemplified the Union’s road approach. Baribo pressured backup goalie Jeffrey Gal, pressed into duty when Chris Brady sustained a midweek injury in training, in the 8th minute. He took the ball off his foot on a loose touch and rolled it into an empty cage.
A similar goal transpired in the 31st, when Milan Iloski charged down a Gal goal kick. It deflected straight to Damiani, well-positioned and attentive at the top of the area, to one-time a volley into an open cage, a better finish than the cartoonish circumstances required.
Baribo’s second goal, in the 16th, came off a second ball from a knocked-down long throw, Baribo and Kai Wagner connecting on the left back’s swerving service into the 6-yard box. It’s the 10th goal in the last two seasons in which Wagner has directly assisted Baribo.
Philadelphia punched their ticket to the Conference Semifinals behind Tai Baribo's early brace. 💪 // Audi MLS Cup Playoffs pic.twitter.com/QwYj0RVPrL
This all occurred without Uhre, who endured a stop-start season that included the writing on the wall of his soccer future being elsewhere. Uhre’s contributions have been notably clutch. He was the game-changer against both D.C. and in the lifeless opening leg against the Fire. His assist in the latter was his fifth goal contribution in four games. The player who scored it, Indiana Vassilev, wasn’t 90 minutes fit Saturday and came in off the bench.
Game 2 was more about the Union out-thinking and out-preparing the Fire. The game was moved to SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, the stadium the Fire abandoned in 2019 to move back to Soldier Field. The Bears’ home stadium was booked for an international rugby game Saturday, and the Fire had played their Wild Card game in Bridgeview on Oct. 22.
Targeting Gal was not a deliberate tactic. But targeting the possibility of mistakes created by slipping on SeatGeak’s surface was. It fit in with what would’ve been the plan in any road game: To concede possession and instead control field position, look to force mistakes and launch counters.
“We control field tilt usually in the games, in the opponent's end, but I think it was a little bit more deliberate how we did it tonight,” Carnell said. “And tonight wasn't about the beautiful, 100-pass possession sequences. I don't think this field applied. You could see even what they were trying to do. It was just the state of the game and the state of the field that dictated what both teams could do. We couldn't really play our game. They couldn't play their game.
“It was just a bit of a lottery. But we take opportunities when they come. We're a proactive team on the front foot, and we trying to force mistakes. And the way the game played out, we were able to create a couple of mistakes.”
The Union won’t have to deploy those plans again this year. They’ll host the Eastern Conference semifinal on Nov. 22 or 23, a one-off affair. If they keep winning, teams will keep coming to Chester, culminating in the Dec. 6 MLS Cup final.
Many of the teams the Union could face along the way are built differently. Inter Miami, which has to sweat out a Game 3 against Nashville, is driven by Lionel Messi, who has 29 goals and 19 assists this season. Nashville’s Sam Surridge and Hany Mukhtar have a combined 52 goal contributions for a team that scored 58 times in the regular season. New York City is driven by Alonso Martinez, Cincinnati by the combination of Kevin Denkey and Evander. Take any one of those individuals out of the game – not easy, but doable over 90 playoff minutes and something the Union achieved in regular-season meetings – and their team will struggle for alternatives.
Only Miami, with Tadeo Allende, has a third scoring option comparable to Uhre. None has someone like Iloski, who has 14 goals and eight assists in less than 1,400 minutes in all competitions for San Diego and the Union this season, as fourth option.
History is instructive here. When the Union reached MLS Cup final in 2022, it owed to their rotation of three strikers, with Julian Carranza and Uhre starting and Cory Burke off the bench. (Burke, long a close friend of Andre Blake, was in attendance in Chicago as a fan, his season with USL Championship side Lexington SC having ended.)
Burke walked after that season, and while Daniel Gazdag and the two starters were prolific in 2023, they missed that third option. Baribo, brought in that summer, was banished to the bench by Jim Curtin, not freed until Carranza transferred to the Netherlands and the Union needed to start Baribo.
Now, the Union have balance. It’s a fleeting moment, if these are Uhre's last weeks in a Union jersey. But it's an opportunity to capitalize on.
