24-year-old midfielder signs new contract guaranteed through June 2027<\/p>\n
CHESTER, Pa. (January 7, 2025) \u2013\u00a0Philadelphia Union announced today that the club has reached an agreement on a new contract with midfielder Ben Bender. The former Union Academy player and 2022 MLS SuperDraft first overall pick is guaranteed to be under contract through June 2027 with and option through June 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cBen has been a positive addition and has made meaningful contributions since returning to the Union last May,\u201d said Philadelphia Union Head Coach, Bradley Carnell. \u201cWhen given opportunities, he\u2019s consistently made the most of them, bringing a high level of competitiveness and a strong work ethic to the pitch every day. We\u2019re confident in his continued development and future impact with the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
After joining the Union on May 9, 2025, Bender made his first-team debut just 12 days later in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Round of 16 against Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC. In MLS play, he appeared in seven matches (four starts), posting a career-best 82% pass completion rate across 320 minutes.<\/p>\n
TRANSACTION: Philadelphia Union sign midfielder Ben Bender to a new contract through June 2027 with an option through June 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"24-year-old midfielder signs new contract guaranteed through June 2027 CHESTER, Pa. (January 7, 2025) \u2013\u00a0Philadelphia Union announced today…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[41011,139,69,71,70,4093,14742],"class_list":{"0":"post-80970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-ben-bender","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","12":"tag-philadelphia-news","13":"tag-press-release","14":"tag-transaction"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80970","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=80970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}