“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.
“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.
“He’s young enough to be my son,” Bedoya chuckled about the 23-year age gap between him and Sullivan, before getting serious about his role as a leader among much younger players in the locker room. He stresses the stark truth that trophies aren’t handed to you just because you’re a mega-talent.
“We’re competing for a trophy, for an Open Cup that’s part of American soccer heritage and tradition, and it’s my job to make sure everyone understands that,” Bedoya said, who’s getting a sneak peek of life after the playing field these days as a host of the U.S. Soccer Podcast.
“It’s part of my job to get that message out – we’re one game away from a Final,” said the 66-time capped Bedoya, who played every game for the USMNT in the 2014 World Cup and lifted a pair of Concacaf Gold Cups wearing the Stars and Stripes. He’s now in his tenth season with the Union after seven years in Europe, where he was beloved by fans at Sweden’s Orebro and in France with Nantes.
The last stretch of the road to the 2025 Open Cup Final is on the other side of a treacherous mountain known as Nashville SC. The Semifinal, on September 17 at Geodis Park in Tennessee and LIVE on Paramount+ and the CBS Sports Network, is a clash of MLS Eastern Conference titans. “They [Nashville SC] will have the advantage as the home team,” Bedoya admitted about the Last Four meeting against an NSC side, unplayable when they’re in the mood and who beat the Union in their last league meeting in July with a last-gasp penalty from former MLS MVP Hany Mukhtar.
“It might be a little bit cagey, but the Open Cup is about surviving and advancing. It doesn’t always have to be pretty,” Bedoya said, who like the Union, is still waiting patiently for his first non-Supporters’ Shield trophy at club level. “Our goal, no matter how it gets done, is to be in a Final.”
If you think all this talk about the meaning and rarity of Finals is just canned patter, you’re wrong. Those so-close-yet-so-far moments stick with a player. Bedoya still recalls the details of losing the 2018 U.S. Open Cup Final in humid Houston, a game threatened by severe thunderstorms that eventually ended in a 3-0 win for the Dynamo and a third loss in an Open Cup decider for the Union.
“It was an early own-goal that killed us,” remembered Bedoya, who, alongside All-Star goalkeeper Andre Blake, is one of only two remaining Union players from that losing 2018 Final. “The losses don’t leave you and when your playing time is said and done, you’ll think about your legacy – and trophies are always mentioned in that conversation. I want one and I want the club to have one too.”
The Union – having booked a place in the 2025 MLS Cup playoffs with time to spare – have yet to lift an MLS Cup or an Open Cup since the club’s founding in 2010. And on the Open Cup side of the ledger, they’ve been as close as you can be, on three separate occasions, without winning.
“It’s kind of a dark spot for the club,” Bedoya said about the Union having been to three Open Cup Finals in the space of four years (2014, 2015 and 2018) without yet lifting one. As a wily veteran, a leader and an elder statesman, he sees the opportunity flashing bright on the horizon.
“It’s what you compete for. To get into Finals and to be in the big games and to have a shot at a trophy and to put silverware in the cabinet,” Bedoya said on looking ahead to a massive test in Nashville, having already done his part and more in the Union’s charge for a long-overdue Open Cup crown.
Fontela is editor-in-chief ofussoccer.com/us-open-cup. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.