{"id":295008,"date":"2026-09-27T12:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T12:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/295008\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T12:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T12:08:17","slug":"philadelphia-union-hit-historic-form-behind-milan-iloski-hat-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/295008\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Union hit historic form behind Milan Iloski hat trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/milan-iloski\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Milan Iloski<\/a> delivered a man-of-the-match performance, netting a brilliant hat trick to lead a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/competitions\/mls-regular-season\/2026\/matches\/phivsorl-09-26-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">4-2 home victory<\/a> over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/orlando-city\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Orlando City<\/a> and extend the Union&#8217;s\u00a0unbeaten streak to a club-record 12 games (10 wins, two draws).<\/p>\n<p>Philadelphia are also entering the <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MLS_PR\/status\/2104029455698051289?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">MLS record books<\/a> thanks to their extraordinary post-2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/competitions\/fifa-world-cup\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FIFA World Cup<\/a> form: with 32 points over their last 12 games, the Union are tied for the most points in any 12-game span in league history.<\/p>\n<p>The last team to accomplish the feat was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/seattle-sounders-fc\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seattle Sounders FC<\/a> (2018).<\/p>\n<p>\n      No homegrowns? No problem<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of Saturday&#8217;s match, the Philadelphia Union had plenty to be proud of as three of their young homegrown stars \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/cavan-sullivan\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cavan Sullivan<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/neil-pierre\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Neil Pierre<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/francis-westfield\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Frankie Westfield<\/a> \u2013 made their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/us-men-s-national-team\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">US men\u2019s national team<\/a> debuts in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/competitions\/international-friendlies\/2026\/matches\/usavsper-09-26-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">4-1 victory<\/a> over Peru.<\/p>\n<p>For interim head coach Ryan Richter, those very same players have become key catalysts of what has turned into an improbable comeback, helping push the Union from last in the East Conference heading into the World Cup break to sixth place &#8211; firmly in contention for an Audi 2026 MLS Cup Playoffs spot.<\/p>\n<p>On the night, however, Iloski was the star at Subaru Park. With his hat trick, the club&#8217;s top scorer improved to 16g\/6a on the season to enter the MLS Golden Boot presented by Audi conversation.<\/p>\n<p>\n      More milestones<\/p>\n<p>Iloski also joined <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/daniel-gazdag\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">D\u00e1niel Gazdag<\/a> and Juli\u00e1n Carranza as the only players in Philadelphia Union history to record multiple hat tricks in the same season. Gazdag and Carranza both accomplished the feat in 2022, while Iloski followed up his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/competitions\/mls-regular-season\/2026\/matches\/miavsphi-05-24-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">three-goal performance<\/a> vs. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/inter-miami-cf\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Inter Miami CF<\/a> in May with his second hat trick of 2026 on Saturday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of hard work. We made sure we set that standard first,\u201d Iloski shared with Apple TV. \u201cOf course, scoring a hat trick is great. But a lot of guys really stepped up tonight and played really well.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So it is a full team effort, and we really showed our depth tonight. So it is a big performance for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Union will have their international talent back when they return to action on Oct. 10 to host <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/real-salt-lake\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Real Salt Lake<\/a> at Subaru Park (7:30 pm ET | <a href=\"https:\/\/tv.apple.com\/us\/sporting-event\/philadelphia-union-vs-real-salt-lake\/umc.cse.6gwczf6zkz39yo4sxv364aonf?ctx_brand=tvs.sbd.7000%2Ctvs.sbd.4000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Apple TV<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milan Iloski delivered a man-of-the-match performance, netting a brilliant hat trick to lead a\u00a04-2 home victory over Orlando&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11896,11938,69,71,70,10227,121418,65417,10226],"class_list":["post-295008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-match-reaction","tag-milan-iloski","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-union","tag-phivsorl-09-26-2026","tag-priority-match","tag-sendtonews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}