Author: Jonathan Tannenwald

Milan Iloski’s opening salary with the Union is just over $550,000, according to data from the MLS Players Association released on Wednesday.

It’s a healthy raise from the $156,000 he was earning at the start of the year with San Diego FC, until he was released from that contract by mutual agreement. The Union acquired him in early August, signing him to a deal with funds from MLS’s Targeted Allocation Money system.

That was the big local news in the autumn edition of the labor union’s salary data. The twice-yearly release is always welcomed by fans and amateur capologists as they dig into the big earners, the bargains, and the busts.

Topping the list of summer newcomers, both in salary and name recognition, is Los Angeles FC’s Son Heung-Min. The South Korean superstar’s paycheck is $11,152,852, second-highest in the league behind Lionel Messi’s $20,446,667.

Messi has stood at No. 1 since his arrival at Inter Miami two years ago, and with the same number. He just signed a new contract that will keep him on the field in South Florida through 2028, including when the Herons open their new stadium next to Miami’s airport next year. We’ll find out the numbers in it next spring.

The second-biggest summer arrival was Thomas Müller in Vancouver. His starting salary with the Whitecaps is $1,436,956, just below the threshold for loading up a contract in MLS’s Targeted Allocation Money system without hitting Designated Player status.

Müller agreed to a deal that would give him less money up front in exchange for a bigger paycheck next year. The arrangement got the German legend in the door without Vancouver having to make other roster moves.

Miami’s vice?

Next on the marquee is another Miami newcomer, and another of Messi’s good friends, Rodrigo de Paul. His guaranteed compensation is $3,619,320, despite not being a Designated Player.

How is that possible? Plenty of people will say it shouldn’t be. It was no secret that the Herons had to do some pretty serious gymnastics when they signed him, with all three of their DP slots already taken: Messi, Jordi Alba (an even $6 million), and Sergio Busquets ($8,774,996). All three of those numbers are way too big to buy down with Targeted Allocation Money (TAM).

Let’s start with a reminder that the MLSPA always publishes two numbers: base salary and guaranteed compensation, which includes signing and guaranteed bonuses, plus marketing bonuses and agents’ fees, annualized over the term of a player’s contract, including option years.

Also, the numbers in these databases are also always annualized, which means they don’t necessarily reflect what a summer signing takes home down to the cent.

De Paul’s base salary is listed as $1.5 million, the maximum you can earn with TAM without being a DP. But even with that number being prorated to something lower, a lot of skeptics will say Miami is getting away with one.

The trick, it seems, lies in Miami signing de Paul on loan for the rest of the year before signing him for good this winter. That passes some of the salary burden back to his previous club, Spain’s Atlético Madrid.

ESPN reported when de Paul moved that MLS rules mandate “that no promise has already been made to exercise the permanent deal following the loan spell.” The Herons supposedly claimed that was the case, but no one believed them — and that same report said a new contract is ready for de Paul to sign this winter.

But at that point, things will be much easier, because Alba and Busquets are retiring after this season.

Miami has been caught bending the roster rules too far once before, in 2021. (The punishments were part of how Julián Carranza ended up with the Union.) But Messi and his friends weren’t in town yet back then. Now that they are, it seems the club might get away with this one.

Other names to know

The rest of the big summer signings leaguewide include two notable Americans: Medford native Paxten Aaronson and longtime U.S. national team goalkeeper Matt Turner.

Aaronson is earning $2,228,063 in his first year with the Colorado Rapids, which paid a nearly $8 million transfer fee to bring him back to the U.S. from Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt.

Turner is earning $1,942,886 with the New England Revolution, which signed him on a year-and-a-half loan from France’s Lyon so he can have regular playing time before nex tyear’s World Cup.

Among international arrivals, New York City FC’s Nicolás Fernández is earning $3,650,000, and he paid some of that back by helping the Pigeons win at Charlotte in Game 1 of their playoff series on Tuesday.

Portland’s Kristoffer Velde is earning $3,027,000, and he scored his first Timbers goal in Sunday’s Game 1 at San Diego. Alas, it was too late to salvage a 2-1 loss.

Columbus’ Wessam Abou Ali is earning $2,157,375, but unfortunately he suffered a fracture in his right ankle in late September and is out six weeks. That might not be enough time to save the Crew’s first-round series against arch-rival Cincinnati, which won Game 1 at home on Monday.

Game 2 is Sunday in Columbus, and Game 3 would be Nov. 8 in Cincinnati.

Speaking of Cincinnati, they’ve got a case study on how to bring back a former star on a midseason deal. Brenner was a Designated Player striker from 2021-23, with a salary of over $2.2 million. He was sold to Italy’s Udinese, then reacquired this summer on a loan for the rest of this year with a purchase option.

His salary for now is just $280,120.

The Union’s payroll

Each player’s salary figure officially includes two numbers: the base salary and guaranteed compensation. The latter number includes signing and guaranteed bonuses, plus marketing bonuses and agents’ fees, annualized over the term of a player’s contract, including option years.

For conversational and reporting purposes, the guaranteed compensation number is the one usually used here and around the league.

Along with the team’s summer signings (Iloski and third-string goalkeeper George Marks) and departures (prospects Nelson Pierre and David Vazquez), you’ll notice that another name is missing.

Centerback Ian Glavinovich agreed to a mutual contract termination a few weeks after being given season-ending injury status for his rehab from a torn meniscus.

The only Union player who got a raise this summer is Jakob Glesnes. He signed a new contract in August, and his pay for the year went up by $71,875, where he’s pulling in $1.31 million this season.

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The annotations in parentheses mean the following:

(1) — Senior roster player; (2) — Supplemental roster player; (3) — Supplemental roster spot 31, loaned to the Union’s reserve team for the entire year; (4) — Off-roster supplemental player

(5) — Designated Player; (6) — Young Designated Player (age 23 or below); (7) — Cap hit bought down with Targeted Allocation Money; (8) — International status; (9) — Homegrown Player status

(10) — Under-22 Player status (via age) to reduce salary cap charge; (11) — Also has a “professional development role” with the team for work beyond the field; (12) — Currently loaned out

The big numbers leaguewide

Across the landscape, MLS teams are paying a total of $597,372,429 to 944 players.

The average salary is $632,809.78, down a little bit from the spring, the first time that number has exceeded $600,000. The median salary of $300,000 has not changed. The lowest salary in the league, which is set by the CBA, is $80,622. It’s also the most common salary leaguewide, as it often is, with 78 players earning that sum.

Atlanta has the most players on the minimum with eight, followed by Dallas with seven. Colorado has five, followed by Nashville, San Diego, St. Louis, and Seattle with four. The Union have none.

Team payroll comparison

This section is often unpleasant reading for Union fans, and it is again this time. The team’s payroll of $13,365,549 is the third-lowest of MLS’s 30 teams right now, ahead of only Dallas and Montréal.

Salary data do not include transfer fees, which occupy a significant portion of MLS team budgets and, these days, are often bigger than salaries. But the payroll comparison is still a snapshot of how teams handle the salary part of the equation. To learn more about teams’ histories with player sales and purchases, check out the data at Transfermarkt.us.

It’s also important to note that players loaned out internationally are usually still counted on the MLSPA’s books. That can have a significant impact on the payroll rankings. For uniformity’s sake, all players listed in the MLSPA’s records are included in the calculations here, whether they’re big names or not.

The most attention here usually goes to the top of the table, but this time the big headline is near the bottom. Toronto finally freed itself of big-money busts Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi, cutting the payroll from over $34 million in the spring — the second-highest total leaguewide — to $13.6 million now.

That’s fourth from last, and just over $200,000 above where the Union have been all along. The Reds will no doubt reload this winter, but it’s quite a sight for now.

Click here to see the team payroll comparison from the previous data set this past spring.

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The millionaires club

The number of millionaires leaguewide is up to 138, another record, from 131 in the spring and 126 at the end of last season.

As with the payroll rankings above, the table below may include some players who are loaned to clubs outside the league, but technically still on MLS teams’ books.

The positions listed here come from the MLSPA’s database. They might not all be perfect matches, but they’re close enough.

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Historical charts

Here are the latest versions of other charts that are recurring features in this analysis, showing changes in key MLS salary metrics over time.

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Two years isn’t a long time to wait between playoff games, in MLS or any other sport. But the Union’s return to the postseason brought an intensity to the air at Subaru Park that hadn’t been felt for a while, even with the many soccer spectacles that have come to town since then.

It also brought a very compelling game, if not always for the right reasons. At the end of the night, it felt like the series-opening win over Chicago had been four games in one: the scoreless first 70 minutes, the Union’s surge to a 2-0 lead, the Fire’s comeback, and the penalty-kick shootout.

Let’s take each in turn to go inside how the home team prevailed.

Three is a magic number

The first stanza was defined as much by referee Sergii Boyko as by the lack of goals. He seemed to have little interest in calling most of the first half’s contact as fouls, less interest in the crowd’s opinion of him, and the least in Chicago goalkeeper Chris Brady’s repeated time-wasting on the ball.

Those antics took much of the energy out of a crowd of 19,019 that for once was in the stands well before kickoff. Perhaps that was helped by the starting time being advertised in some places as 5:30 p.m., though it was long known and correctly printed elsewhere as 5:55. (Cue the joke that the time should be printed wrong more often.)

The fans were alive when Chicago’s starting lineup was introduced, launching a storm of boos at manager Gregg Berhalter for his previous tenure with the U.S. men’s national team. Then they shook the rafters when Quinn Sullivan was unveiled as the pregame drummer, a few weeks after surgery on a torn ACL that ended his season.

And they were touchingly silent during a pregame tribute to Brad Youtz, one of the Sons of Ben supporters’ club’s founding members, who died earlier this month. His loyalty began even before the Union existed, as he helped lead the fan movement that brought an expansion team here.

The view of what transpired next looked familiar to any watcher, from Youtz upstairs to the new generation in his old River End seats.

With the Supporters’ Shield mounted in the River End, an impeccably-observed moment of silence at the first Union home game since Brad Youtz’s passing.

My longtime friend has the best seat in the house today.

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— Jonathan Tannenwald (@jtannenwald.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 5:51 PM

Berhalter’s 3-4-3 tactics had helped the Fire build a six-game winning streak heading into their first playoff berth in eight years. That setup turned the screws on the Union, the latest proof that for all that has improved in Bradley Carnell’s first year as manager, the team can still struggle to solve three-back defenses.

Uhre delivers again

The game changed when Carnell turned to his own toolbox, with the first substitutions in the 64th minute. One of them, Mikael Uhre, broke the game open.

It was a classic quick move down the field, with Milan Iloski sending Uhre down the right side. He was one-on-one with former Union teammate Jack Elliott and drew on some inside knowledge.

“He probably knows that normally I would go on my right,” Uhre said. “So I was thinking, let me cut it in and then see how it opens up. And then I could see Indy making the run on the back post.”

That was Indiana Vassilev, and Uhre found him with a dazzling, lofted pass across the 18-yard box. A quick trap, a quick shot, and Brady was flattened.

Five minutes later, the player who arguably changed this team’s whole season had another defining moment. Here came the Union again, this time with Iloski on the ball on the right flank. He had Vassilev and Uhre charging up the middle, and Chicago’s defense was expecting a pass.

Instead, Iloski kept the ball, cut left on Elliott, and slammed a shot into the top corner.

“As I was dribbling forward, I noticed there wasn’t a lot of options,” Iloski said. “I knew off the dribble I could beat anyone in this league. Once I let the guy kind of get close to me … I just got the ball out of my feet and then focused on hitting the ball on target.”

That same self-confidence would come in handy just over 20 minutes later. But there was still a long way to go.

Chicago’s comeback

Even after Jonathan Bamba’s goal out of a corner kick traffic jam in the 84th, there was little reason to believe the Union would blow the lead.

But between Chicago’s goals, Berhalter made a tweak that turned the game, subbing in attacking midfielder Brian Gutiérrez for centerback Sam Rogers. Removing a defender ended up helping Iloski, but the Fire benefited more, and for the second game in a row Gutiérrez showed why he’s a U.S. national team prospect.

“He was playing in these half spaces — that was really difficult for us, and they had some success to the end of the game,” Union goalkeeper Andre Blake said. “We couldn’t stop him from getting on the ball and he’s a great player, so he was able to create some dangerous plays for them.”

At the start of stoppage time, Jakob Glesnes tripped Mauricio Pineda just outside the Union’s 18-yard box. And just as happened a previous time when Glesnes tripped Lionel Messi against Miami in May, this was a game-changing moment.

Bamba shot the free kick into the wall, the ball came right back to him, and he laid it off for Elliott to fire from 30 yards — low, hard, and straight past his former teammates. That he did not celebrate made the moment even more resonant.

When Boyko finally blew the whistle to end regulation, the game headed straight to penalty kicks. It was a moment that both elevated the drama and exposed again the strangeness of the MLS playoff format: a best-of-three first round and single-game knockouts the rest of the way.

Plenty of other competitions around the world these days go straight to penalties after regulation, as a kindness to players’ health. But none so contort things by making a score barely matter over the course of a series.

MLS used to do what the rest of the sport has long done: single-game rounds all the way, or a two-game, home-and-away series in which the aggregate goal tally decides the winner. In this best-of-three setup, it doesn’t matter if you win 2-0, 2-1, or by any other score; or if the tie after 90 minutes is 2-2, 1-1, 0-0, or 5-5. All that counts is which team wins.

It helped the Union this time, and it’s certainly an American tradition. But that doesn’t make it a good soccer principle.

Blake’s shootout heroics

Carnell offered the zinger of the night when he called the game “a contrasting of two styles — one team just trying to waste every second and try and get out of here. Probably, they got what they wanted, [which] was penalties.”

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

Blake had studied Chicago’s takers with the Union’s outstanding goalkeeper coach, Phil Wheddon. A veteran of the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams and American clubs going back to the early 2000s, Wheddon delivered again this time, working out a set of signals from the bench that Blake needed only a glance to see.

While Brady ran his mouth, the best goalkeeper in MLS for a decade running did his job. Blake stuffed Elliott, got a big piece of Hugo Cuypers’ shot even though it went in, and psyched Joel Waterman into hitting the crossbar.

That easily overcame Uhre being saved on the Union’s first turn of the shootout. Iloski, Frankie Westfield, Tai Baribo, and Jesús Bueno were perfect afterward.

“In truth, I was a little bit nervous before my penalty kick,” Bueno said. “But when Blake gave me the ball, I just looked at him in the eye, and we laughed, and we knew that everything was going to be OK.”

So it proved, and now it’s on to Game 2.

NEW YORK — Here’s something that Union principal owner Jay Sugarman has in common with his team’s fans.

He, too, has spent much of this year seeing Lionel Messi, Son Heung-Min, and Thomas Müller dominate the headlines, even though his team topped them all in the standings.

And he, like those fans — well, let’s keep things polite in the C-suite — would like to see the spotlight spread out a little more.

“Any press for MLS, I’m good with,” he said. “Messi’s been fantastic for this league. Son’s been fantastic, Müller’s fantastic. We don’t want to take away their press. We just want more coverage for a different kind of story.”

So Sugarman decided to put himself out there this week. The Union invited a group of media outlets, including The Inquirer, to MLS headquarters, and Sugarman held court, as he spent an hour talking about the success of his team.

“We’ve got to show it on the field,” he said. “But so far the results, you know, I think are worthy of people paying attention. And saying, whether it’s a player or a fan: ‘Hey, I kind of like that team. They work really hard, they don’t ever give up, they’re a tough team in a tough city, and they bring it every game.’”

Sugarman praised manager Bradley Carnell’s work this year, and Ernst Tanner’s work over many years. He praised the players for their feats and the culture they’ve all built together.

He laid out a series of impressive statistics: the fewest goals conceded this year, and the most total shots taken, corner kicks won, tackles, interceptions, and counter-press regains — those moments when high-pressing forces turnovers.

“It was a bit eye-opening to see how many categories we could track to say, when does a defense become offense?” Sugarman said of conversations he had with Tanner about this very subject.

This all came as the Union recorded the league’s worst pass completion percentage, the lowest number of touches in their own half, and the second-lowest number of one-on-one take-ons. But they also had the most goals scored from crosses.

A surprising admission

Sugarman then ran all this through the eye test.

“It means we’re putting the ball in places where the defense has to put it out of play — that’s their best choice,” he said. “But where we do pass to, where we do touch the ball, is usually pretty dangerous, and it leads to dangerous things, crosses, shots, corner kicks, throw-ins deep. Anything in that deep attacking zone, I think Ernst would tell you, is a good place to be.”

Then he offered something that many outsiders have felt instinctively, but might have never expected the team to admit.

“We don’t rely so much on guys creating their own shot,” Sugarman said. “We don’t expect people to dribble through defenders. … We’re not about individual moments of brilliance breaking down a defense. But we will get into dangerous places, and our team working together will create opportunities.”

The payoff for all of this has come in the statistics that matter most.

The Union have totaled the most standings points of any team in the league since 2020, and the second-highest total since Tanner’s first full year in 2019. They’ve won two Supporters’ Shields for the league’s best regular-season record, made the playoffs every year but one along the way, reached two conference finals, and came a breath from winning it all in 2022.

Sugarman believes in an organizational philosophy of continuous improvement, and there has been a lot in recent times. He also knows as well as anyone that the hardest part of improvement in sports is the last part.

So here came, and not for the first time, a moment when something spontaneous he said made the biggest impact.

A reporter from a sports business publication asked Sugarman how the team’s success on the field has translated to the team’s bank accounts.

“It’s a lot more fun to be part of a successful club,” he said to start his answer. “So we know that’s a helpful part of the conversation with sponsors and fans.”

The rest had nothing to do with spreadsheets.

“The one thing” missing

“Our goal right now is to win a [MLS] Cup,” he said. “You can feel it in the players, you can feel it in the coaching staff, you can feel it at the ownership level. It feels like the one thing we haven’t quite gotten our hands on.”

Now the heart of the matter was truly on the table. For as much as this year has been better than expected, there’s been real pressure on the Union to turn these many years of success into trophies.

It’s why there have been stern demands to win a U.S. Open Cup. It’s why, once that quest failed this year, the pressure skyrocketed to win the Supporters’ Shield.

It’s why the air was so thick as kickoff approached on the night they clinched it, earlier this month against New York City FC. And it’s why there was such an explosion of joy around Subaru Park when that final whistle blew.

“Everybody knows this is the best sports town, maybe the toughest sports town,” Sugarman said. “We said, maybe our MLS tagline should be ‘the toughest team in the toughest city with the toughest fans.’ They want, they demand, success — we knew that going in. So we can’t deliver anything less than that for them.”

He was still willing to defend his long-term vision for reaching success, even as he knew those same fans want it faster. But that’s for another moment.

This moment — this month, this week, this Sunday evening playoff opener against the Chicago Fire at Subaru Park (5:55 p.m., FS1, Fox Deportes, and Apple TV) — is about right now.

“It’s great that we’re going to be at home. Our fans are going to give us that extra 10%,” Sugarman said. “I think this is the year that everybody feels like we need to do everything we can.”

He caught himself for a breath, but not much more.

“It’s hard to put the kind of pressure on to say we must do it,” he said, “but this feels like the moment where — I’ve watched the joy on this team when they win. It is infectious. When they get rolling, I think it’s going to be hard to stop this.”

Now to see if that really happens.

When the ball rolls on Sunday at Subaru Park in the Union’s playoff opener vs. Chicago (5:55 p.m., FS1, Fox Deportes, Apple TV), most of the spotlight will be where it usually is: on the players.

But a little more than usual will be on manager Bradley Carnell, and not just because he’s a finalist for MLS’s Coach of the Year award.

A lot of people have been waiting all year for his first return to the playoffs since 2023, when he guided St. Louis City SC to the Western Conference’s best record in their expansion season.

The club crashed out of the playoffs in the first round to cross-state rival Sporting Kansas City. They weren’t just being swept in the best-of-three series but lost decisively: 4-1 at home in the first game and 2-1 on the road in the second.

How much of a fluke was that? How different are the circumstances with this Union team, having not just many veterans but many players who’ve been here for a while?

Given how much Carnell dislikes talking about himself, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t want to answer those questions in his pregame news conference Friday. Nor was it surprising that the media present tried to find multiple ways to ask them.

Everyone knew they would come, and that this was the time.

“I think that’s a loaded question — it needs maybe a lot more time,” Carnell said when asked one of them.

“I do a disservice now planning for three games, as opposed to just planning for one every match day for 34 match days,” he said to another.

A moment later, he came the closest he got, but that was as far as he went.

“We don’t want to go back in the history books,” Carnell said. “It’s a clean slate now. It’s three games, and it starts with one, and everyone has to be dialed in from the very get-go.”

‘We all enjoy the process right now’

He preferred to talk about the team as a whole and how far it has come since he took the reins at the start of the year.

“I think everyone has grown” Carnell said. “You have to face a bit of adversity to see what you can battle through and fight the demons and come out on the other side. And I think as a staff, as players, we’ve all been through this adversity from January, to find ourselves now to fight for something that’s greater than each and every individual one of us.”

Bradley Carnell gets an ice water bath at the end of his speech:

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— Jonathan Tannenwald (@jtannenwald.bsky.social) October 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM

He praised his group for its sacrifices, then realized he wanted a different word.

“If you have to call it a sacrifice, it means somebody’s forcing you to do something, right?” he said. “I think we all love to do what we do, and I think we all enjoy the process right now. So for us to give willingly, whatever, we’ve gone to great lengths to to get where we are and to earn ourselves [being] in a position where we are, credit to everyone.”

Carnell even admitted that his team has exceeded its own expectations.

“Now that we’ve won the Supporters’ Shield, I can tell you that our target was top four” in the standings, he said. “We wanted I think, 55, 58 points — [that was] the target was for the boys, and that’s thinking big picture. You have a big picture, break it down into small cycles, and that’s the way you go about building the puzzle.”

The one moment where Carnell did talk about himself was when he was asked about being a Coach of the Year finalist.

“I’m so grateful to be in this community, the soccer community in the States,” he said. “It’s been eight years now, just growing and pursuing what I love to do, and what I love to do is my job and [to] help players develop.”

It means something to him that honor comes partially from his coaching peers, along with media, players, and front office staff.

“We look out for each other,” he said of the coaching fraternity. “And, yeah, we’re competitive, but we also have a lot of compassion for each other because we know what sort of job this is We’re the first ones when people are talking good things, and we’re the first ones when it doesn’t really go your way … and I’ve experienced both in a short span of time.”

Union’s reserve team also in playoffs

The Union’s reserve squad has reached the second round of the MLS Next PRO league playoffs, and will host Huntsville City — Nashville SC’s reserve squad — on Saturday at Subaru Park (6 p.m., Apple TV).

Union II finished second in the Eastern Conference this year and beat FC Cincinnati’s reserves, 2-1, in the first round last weekend. This game’s winner will face the reserves of the No. 1 New York Red Bulls II or No. 6 Chicago Fire II next weekend in the conference final.

There have been strong performances this year some few young players on first-team contracts, particularly Cavan Sullivan (six goals and five assists in 14 games) and Neil Pierre (MLS Next PRO’s Defender of the Year). In this game, many eyes will be on two other players: midfielder CJ Olney and 16-year-old striker Malik Jakupovic.

Olney also is on a first-team deal, but he didn’t crack the squad this year and then plateaued with the reserves. The Union tried to spark some improvement with a loan to Lexington SC of the second-tier USL Championship, but he didn’t play much there.

Since his return to town, though, the 18-year-old has been in great form: six assists in five games, and his team has won them all.

“I’m really happy for him that he went through this,” Union II coach Ryan Richter said. “Trying to develop as a professional is also how you respond to setbacks and how you respond to adversity and some of the low moments that you might have in your career. … For him to get back in [and] get on with it after a tough couple months, that shows a lot about his character.”

Jakupovic has been getting hype from scouts for a while, and has started to deliver. The 6-foot-3 Michigan native signed his first pro contract in May — after the Union fended off many European teams that wanted him — and has scored eight goals in 17 games.

“If he would have signed up for playing significant minutes in playoff games, and scoring eight goals this season — we all would have signed up for that in the beginning,” Richter said. “But he earned every minute that he got, and he’s performed well in every opportunity that he’s had on the field.”

Tickets for Saturday’s contest are $17 including fees, with all seating general admission.

The Union had planned for some time to let teen phenom Cavan Sullivan go to next month’s under-17 men’s World Cup, the biggest stage he’ll have played on yet.

But between Quinn Sullivan’s ACL injury and other players being banged up – including fellow attacking midfielders Indiana Vassilev and Jeremy Rafanello – the club faced a lack of depth heading into the playoffs.

The Union still wanted to let Cavan go to the tournament. But they also knew they might need him, not just want to have him, for their first-round playoff series against Chicago or Orlando.

Multiple sources told The Inquirer that with agreement from Sullivan and U.S. Soccer, he will stay with the club for the first two games of the best-of-three set. Game one is Sunday at Subaru Park (5:55 p.m., FS1, Fox Deportes, and Apple TV), and Game two is Nov. 1 on the road (5:30 p.m., Apple TV).

Sullivan won’t actually miss any of the tournament, as the U.S. team’s opener against Burkina Faso isn’t until Nov. 5. He’ll mainly miss the pre-tournament camp, which will take place in Abu Dhabi before the tournament is played in Qatar. That no doubt made it easier to get a deal done.

The Americans’ group games after that are against Tajikistan on Nov. 8, then the Czech Republic on Nov. 11. The tournament runs through Nov. 27, so if the U.S. goes on a long run, Sullivan could be gone until the MLS conference finals.

Though the U.S. has played at every under-17 World Cup but one since the event started in 1985, the program has not reached the quarterfinals since 2017, and hasn’t gone farther since 1999 — when Landon Donovan led the way to the only semifinal in team history.

Donovan won the tournament’s Golden Ball award as the most outstanding player, and was one of many famous names on that U.S. squad. It also included DaMarcus Beasley, Kyle Beckerman, Oguchi Oneywu (who finished his pro career with the Union 18 years later), and Philadelphia native Bobby Convey.

This team has the potential for a deep run. Sullivan is one of its top names, along with forward Mathis Albert of Germany’s Borussia Dortmund and the New York Red Bulls’ Julian Hall. There are also three players from the Union’s youth academy, defender Jordan Griffin and forwards Jamir Johnson and Kellan LeBlanc – the last of them the son of former Union reserve team coach Marlon LeBlanc.

Fox and Telemundo have the broadcast rights, in English and Spanish respectively, with games airing on their cable channels and streaming platforms.