Philadelphia Union\u2019s U-18s rose to the occasion when it mattered most, defeating CF Monterrey in a penalty kick shootout to advance to the 2026 Dallas Cup U-19 Final.\u200b<\/p>\n
The Boys in Blue jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the semifinal held at the home of the MLS side, FC Dallas, on a finish from Nehan Hasan.<\/p>\n
Philly then faced adversity for the first time in the tournament during their semifinal match against the Mexican side, surrendering their first allowed goal of the tournament after recording three-straight clean sheets in the group stage.<\/p>\n
Locked at 1-1, the final whistle at the end of regulation sent the match into two 10-minute periods of extra time in search of a winner. Despite the additional time, neither side was able to find a breakthrough, and the semifinal was ultimately decided from the penalty spot.<\/p>\n
In the penalty shootout, Philadelphia Union goalkeeper Alex Smith made a crucial save to help secure the victory, sending the MLS academy side through to face defending champsions SAF Botafogo in Sunday\u2019s Gordon Jago Super Group final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Union\u2019s U-18s rose to the occasion when it mattered most, defeating CF Monterrey in a penalty kick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40595,102,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-235778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-academy","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}