Before Chester, the Union Made the Eagles’ Stadium Feel Like Home

The Philadelphia Union’s first home did not look like the one they were building.

On April 10, 2010, the club played its first home match at Lincoln Financial Field, the Eagles’ stadium in South Philadelphia. Its own soccer ground was still under construction in Chester, and the move there was scheduled for June. For the moment, a new team with Philadelphia in its name had a borrowed field, an opponent with a long Major League Soccer history and one night to introduce itself to a home crowd. (inquirer.com)

The Union won that night, 3–2 over D.C. United. Sébastien Le Toux scored all three goals. Those facts make a fine entry in a club record book, but they leave out what made the game such a fitting beginning. Philadelphia built a two-goal lead, lost it through D.C.’s comeback and a goalkeeping mistake, then won on an 80th-minute free kick. The temporary home provided a grand setting. The match itself was anything but settled. (inquirer.com)

The Union had existed as an MLS team for one game. Their opener had ended in a 2–0 loss at Seattle, and the schedule ahead offered little chance to get comfortable: with the Chester stadium unfinished, they were set to play 10 of their first 12 matches away from home. Only two early dates had been assigned to Lincoln Financial Field, against D.C. United in April and FC Dallas in May. The planned opening in Chester was June 27, against Seattle. (inquirer.com)

That arrangement made the D.C. match both a home opener and an exception. Philadelphia had a place to welcome its team, but not yet the place designed for it. Lincoln Financial Field could accommodate a crowd and stage an occasion; it could not erase the fact that this was a brief stop on the way to Chester.

Still, the occasion had unmistakably local dimensions. The announced attendance was 34,870. The Sons of Ben, the supporters group whose grassroots efforts had helped bring an MLS club to the region, occupied much of the north end of the lower deck. The pregame ceremony included then-Vice President Joe Biden and Walter Bahr, the Philadelphia-born member of the United States team at the 1950 World Cup. A new club was taking the field in an NFL stadium, while one of the area’s links to an earlier era of soccer was there to mark it. (inquirer.com)

Not everyone even made it to a seat in time for the first goal. Long security lines kept some fans outside as the Union took the lead in the fourth minute. Those who missed it missed an early glimpse of how Le Toux would turn movement into opportunity. (inquirer.com)

D.C. failed to clear the ball, Alejandro Moreno recovered it and played it to Roger Torres. Torres crossed, and Le Toux headed the ball in. In the contemporary Philadelphia Inquirer match report, Le Toux said he had not expected to be in the box. On a night built around an introduction to a new team, its first home goal came from a player arriving where he had not anticipated being. (inquirer.com)

The opponent gave the moment its scale. D.C. United was not another expansion side finding its feet; it was an established MLS club, one that had played in the league’s first game in 1996. Philadelphia was playing only its second match. That contrast did not guarantee anything about how the night would unfold, but it made the Union’s first-half command notable. (inquirer.com)

In the 40th minute, Moreno sent Le Toux through again. This time the finish came from his right foot, and the Union went into halftime up 2–0. The first goal had rewarded alertness in a crowded attacking move. The second suggested that the new side could also find room behind D.C. and use it. (inquirer.com)

Le Toux later recalled a less promising sign from the day before: he had struggled during finishing practice, and teammates had teased him about his purple cleats. He wore them for the match anyway. It is a small detail, memorable because the game turned out as it did, not an explanation for it. Nothing about two first-half goals made a hat trick inevitable. Nor, as Philadelphia soon learned, did two goals secure the result. (philadelphiaunion.com)

D.C. began to undo the lead in the 63rd minute, when Santino Quaranta scored. Five minutes later, Jaime Moreno equalized after an error by Union goalkeeper Chris Seitz. A match that had appeared to be heading toward a comfortable first home victory had become a test of whether the Union could finish the night with one at all. (inquirer.com)

That reversal matters to the story of the venue as much as the attendance or the pregame ceremony does. A borrowed stadium could give the club a stage; it could not give a new team the habits of an established one. Years later, Union defender Jordan Harvey recalled the players’ sense that they had let D.C. back into the game. He also credited the group’s veteran leadership and work rate. Both parts of that recollection belong to the night: the avoidable damage and the response to it. (inquirer.com)

The chance to respond came late. D.C. defender Dejan Jakovic was sent off for a foul on Alejandro Moreno, and Philadelphia received a free kick near the top of the penalty area. Le Toux had already scored with his head and his right foot. In the 80th minute, he drove the free kick into the net for his third goal and the winner. (inquirer.com)

For anyone who watched that night, the late free kick may be the part that has lasted most vividly. It completed the hat trick, but its greater importance was simpler: after surrendering a 2–0 lead in their first home game, the Union had found a way to win. When the match ended, midfielder Andrew Jacobson leaped into the Sons of Ben section. It was one player’s spontaneous celebration, and a fitting image for an opening night on which the team and its supporters had finally shared a result at home. (inquirer.com)

The Union’s circumstances beyond the stadium remained modest. Harvey later recalled players changing at Lincoln Financial Field before riding in vans to train at a public park in Wallingford. A dedicated practice facility belonged to a later stage of the club’s life. The first home victory did not mean the organization was already complete. It meant it had begun playing in public, with all the rough edges of a new operation still visible. (inquirer.com)

Nor did the night decide what it would mean for a Philadelphia team to play in Chester. The club and stadium had grown out of support from the Sons of Ben and a public-private effort involving the state, Delaware County and the City of Chester. Lincoln Financial Field was where the Union first appeared before a home crowd; Chester was where their purpose-built home awaited them. Both places were part of the club’s beginning, though they served different purposes. (philadelphiaunion.com)

The move came roughly eleven weeks after the D.C. match. By then, the two games at the Eagles’ stadium had done the job the schedule required of them: they had given the Union somewhere to play at home until the new ground could open. April 10 had done something less easily planned. It had given the club an early story that was neither a flawless launch nor merely a famous individual performance. (inquirer.com)

Le Toux’s three goals won the match, and his free kick supplied its lasting highlight. But the full shape of the evening is what makes it distinctive: a first home crowd in a temporary stadium, a new team’s bright first half, the sudden loss of its lead and the late recovery. Philadelphia’s soccer home was still being finished in Chester. Before the Union reached it, they made a home night out of the Eagles’ stadium.