MLS
Analyzing the Philadelphia Union Offense: World Cup Hangover Edition
We’ve just been treated to a month of wonderfully beautiful and competitive soccer. We witnessed the world’s best put on a show in crucial moments. We saw up close what it means to be great. All of this happened in our backyard. What a treat.
Sadly, all of that is now over, and it’s time to embrace the reality that our local club is a shell of its former self and writing new chapters in the Book of Union Horrors. And it hurts my head to type this, but we’re now faced with watching the rest of this lost season.
The blame for this campaign runs across all responsible parties – the owners, the sporting director(s), the coaching, and the players have all failed in 2026. We could write tomes on each of these failures, but I’d like to take a moment to showcase the failures on the offensive end of the pitch, which has collapsed into the worst offensive side these stands have witnessed in well over a decade. This squad, at 1.2 goals per game, is running just barely ahead of the pace of the 2012 team, which was the worst offense in franchise history at 1.09 goals per game.
This season saw the Union FO jettison Tai Baribo, Mikael Uhre and Kai Wagner (although he is about to return). Bruno Damiani and Milan Iloski were supposed to step into bigger roles, and Ezekiel Alladoh, the club’s biggest signing to date, was added to augment the top of the shape. But somehow this offense went from above-average to terrible in very short order.
At a high level, offense is pretty simple to break down. We start with how many shots a team is able to take, and then examine the quality or difficulty of those shots. Lastly, we look at the rate of conversion adjusted for that difficulty. Through this quick lens, we see something pretty interesting.
According to data from American Soccer Analysis (@AnalysisEvolved), the Union have taken 224 shots so far this year, which actually ranks 3rd in the league. A good start! The team likes to shoot. And we like when they shoot. This is actually a characteristic of Carnell teams, as the Union shot 525 shots last year, 2nd only to Orlando. This team is certainly not afraid to shoot.
Now let’s take a look at shot quality. We can get a proxy of shot quality by looking at expected goals divided by shots. Because expected goals represent the average probability of a shot being converted into a goal, we can see just how good these shots are. The Union’s expected goal to shot percentage is 10.5%. For context, the league average this year is 12.6%, and the Union’s level is 3rd worst in the league. Last year, the Union weren’t great at shot selection either, but were still much better at 11.7%. Carnell’s philosophy must be: shoot a lot and don’t worry if it’s a good shot or not.
Lastly, we get to the actual shot itself. Here, the Union are also pretty terrible. Their xG over shot percentage is just 7.6%, while the league average is very close to the expectation at 12.5%. This shortfall is, not surprisingly, the worst in the league.
To summarize, the Union shoot a lot but take very low-quality shots, and they are the worst team in the league at converting the shots they do take.
Now let’s take a look at the season of some of the key players on that offense. The one we should get out of the way is Alladoh, because he has only registered 8 shots in the regular season while playing the equivalent of 7 matches. Even still, a single shot per 90 minutes is not what you need from your record signing. The team shoots a lot, but not their top striker. Got it.
Overall, the Union are 6.8 goals behind the expected pace of an average shooting team. We can allocate that deficiency across some key players. To no one’s surprise, the biggest issue is Damiani, who is 2.5 goals behind the average pace. The second biggest culprit is Alladoh, who should have given the team an exciting 1.2 goals so far this year but has yet to register a league goal. Damiano and Alladoh shoulder more than half the blame, but there’s a long list of players that make up the rest. Even debutante Cavan Sullivan is slightly underperforming expectations goal-wise.
The only notable player pulling his weight with respect to shooting is Milan Iloski, whose 7 seven goals have come from slightly above-average shooting.
Now that we’ve allocated the blame to bad shots, even worse shooting, and the individual failures, I can maybe offer some glimmers of hope. One bizarre aspect of the Union’s season offensively is that they have had some great games. In 3 of their last 7 games, they’ve scored at least 3 goals and have 11 total in those games. They have the ability to score in bunches, but unfortunately they’ve only tallied 1 point in those 3 matches.
And sure, if you do the math, that means they’ve only scored SEVEN goals in their other 12 matches, which is a level of futility the league has never seen.
But if you recall the last time we saw the Union, they did tally 4 goals against MLS Cup holders Miami and the GOAT. They clearly had to sacrifice their defensive shape to do that, which is never a good idea, but at least the offense was putting the ball in the net.
And beyond the more recent offensive performances, the return of two key offensive players also bolsters expectations. The aforementioned return of Kai Wagner, who might the best offensive defender in the league and Quinn Sullivan, who is set to make his return from injury. If nothing else, Quinn will add to the shot totals. But in seriousness, those two should provide more quality chances for an offense that desperately needs them.
And so, the show in the States flips back to MLS and the Union. The Union’s season is essentially over unless they turn into one of the hottest teams in the East down the stretch. I’m more hopeful for a return to more disciplined defense and a focus on taking higher-quality shots. That would be proof the team is headed in the right direction. Heck, I’ll just be happy if this isn’t the worst offense Philadelphia has ever seen.
