Coaching changes spark turnarounds for Philly, Portland & the Crew | Matchday 18
The kids are breaking through in Philly, the sun's shining for Portland, no Lewy bump for Chicago and more from Matchday 18
And we're back. Just like that the World Cup is in the rearview, new legends have been made, and the MLS season has re-started. And so now, for the first time in more than two months, it's time for the big Sunday column.
A reminder that we'll be talking through all of this on Soccerwise this week. And also, we'll be debuting a new, weekly, USMNT-focused Soccerwise episode every Wednesday, starting this week.
Let's dive in:
Teen Age Riot
I'm not going to pretend one week fixes everything that went sideways in Chester this year. But sometimes a club just needs a jolt, and that's exactly what Philadelphia got.
You probably remember that the Union moved on from Bradley Carnell in May with the club sitting rock bottom in MLS with a 1-10-4 record, and you might remember they handed the reins to Ryan Richter, who'd been running Union II. In part, this felt like a stopgap as they tried to move on from the toxicity of the late Ernst Tanner/Carnell era. But in part, this is very clearly an audition, as Richter started his coaching career with the Union academy, and nobody in the league has been as committed to playing their academy kids as the Union have been (at least until the last six months).
Thus the remit is: get out there and win some games. And do it while playing the kids, because the guys Tanner spent $10 million on the past couple of windows aren't getting the job done.
Two games in, Richter is unbeaten – Philly beat the Red Bulls 3-1 on Wednesday to snap an eight-game winless streak, then knocked off Seattle 1-0 Saturday to win just their second and third games season.
The engine here is Milan Iloski. He's found the net in five straight matches, which coincided with his move back up top on a full-time basis (credit where it's due, it was Carnell who made that call a few weeks before he was fired), and that kind of finishing streak from a striker is the sort of thing that changes a club's trajectory. It leads to wins, as was the case on Saturday:
That’s now seven goals in five matches as Milan Iloski chips in the opener in Philadelphia!
— Soccerwise (@soccerwisehq.bsky.social) July 25, 2026 at 8:35 PM
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Obviously this is a disaster from Seattle 'keeper Andrew Thomas (more on that in a second), but this is also an example of the kind of attacking clarity that was missing from Philly over the first half of 2026.
