“I’m pushing 20 years playing this game as a professional,” Alejandro Bedoya said, the 38-year-old Philadelphia Union midfielder and club icon. “And I can tell you that chances to play for a trophy are few and far between.”
The veteran captain’s message is simple: Titles of any kind do not come easy. Rare are the moments when a trophy, white-glove buffed to a mirror shine, rises up into the night on a bouquet of grateful hands – smiles frozen in time forever. Bedoya will be the first to tell you that “you have to earn” those highlight moments, the ones that hang on clubhouse walls for decades. “They’re extremely hard to come by.”
Philadelphia Union, the best team in MLS so far this season and among the league’s most consistent clubs of the last decade, are two wins away from lifting the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup – or any non-Supporters’ Shield trophy – for the first time. Should they claim the country’s most-historic prize on the first of October, the dirty work it took to make it happen – the hard graft and midweek grind of the early rounds – might get lost in a tornado of celebratory confetti and Final-night fireworks.
The Union’s razor-thin win against Division II side Indy Eleven, via penalties after a 1-1 draw back in the Round of 32 in early May, will have become just another hazy step on the road to glory.
But Bedoya will remember it in vivid living color. It was his sixth-minute goal, a sneaky header at the back post, that guided the Union to a hard-earned penalty shootout win (1-1, 5-4). That opened the door to a Round of 16 rout of the Cinderella Pittsburgh Riverhounds (4-1) before a Quarterfinal grudge match with MLS rivals New York Red Bulls (3-2) booked them a place in the Semifinals against Nashville SC.
Depth Required for Deep Cup Run
“Those games, against teams from the lower leagues, are really hard,” Bedoya said of the peculiar nature of the Open Cup, where top-flight pros are often upset by lower-league opponents eager to make a statement. “You have to match their intensity; earn the right to compete and have the right mentality.”
The U.S. Open Cup, perhaps more than any competition in American soccer, requires an entire squad’s earnest efforts. That was in evidence back in May when Bedoya, pushing 40 and with appearances in the Starting XI more and more rare, lined up alongside 15-year-old teammate Cavan Sullivan against Indy Eleven, the second-division side who roared to the U.S. Open Cup Semifinals in 2024. Young and old alike, with fixture congestion a reality and schedules packed with games, need to lace up and do their part in the early rounds so the spotlight of an Open Cup Final has a chance to become reality.
