Chester – While a lot of the energy heading into Sunday’s match was positive, the Philadelphia Union ultimately fell to Nashville SC, suffering their first loss of the 2025 MLS regular season.

“Disappointed to lose at home, obviously. First and foremost really proud of the guys for the last couple of weeks. What they’ve put on, it’s been really impressive, and we go against a team that was very resilient on the day and came here to do a specific job and they did just that and it was a tough day,” said Bradley Carnell post-match.

The Union started the match with the same lineup from their last three games. And while they played hard for 90 minutes, it was not enough on the day.

Nashville struck first in the 15th minute when Sam Surridge found the back of the net thanks to an assist from Walker Zimmerman.

However, the Union responded in the 33rd minute, with Jovan Lukic scoring his second goal in as many games on a wonderful one-timer to tie the match at 1-1, igniting the home crowd.

The tie was short-lived, however, as in the 44th minute, Ahmed Qasem found the back of the net to give Nashville a 2-1 lead heading into halftime.

“We lose momentum at certain moments in the game and conceding before halftime was probably one of the killers. So the football gods didn’t want us to go 4 and 0 or you know to compete in this game, and unfortunately we get the short end of the stick and we move on from there. But incredibly proud of this group, and we wipe this one off and we go again next week.”

The final dagger came in the 82nd minute when Nashville was awarded a penalty kick, and Hany Mukhtar beat Union goalkeeper Andre Blake to make it 3-1, securing all three points at Subaru Park.

At the end of the day, credit goes to Nashville. They capitalized on the Union’s mistakes, a rough performance from Jakob Glesnes, and ultimately outplayed the Union. Quinn Sullivan had his penalty kick saved by Nashville keeper Joe Willis, and Olwethu Makhanya lost his cool, earning a red card that will leave the Union short at the center-back position for next weekend’s match against St. Louis City.

“I mean for every goal there has to be maybe a row of errors, and we have a set of principles. If we don’t stick to our principles unfortunately, you know… but like I said the guys have been amazing the last couple of weeks, implementing a tactical system- a new system, a challenging system, and they’ve done excellently. So I’m really proud of the group and really proud of the boys for playing the way that they do. It’s not every game is going to be a cakewalk, not every game’s going to be as easy as we would like it, right? So we have to dig deep, and today we dug deep and we just lost momentum at certain times. We’re not going to say there was one mistake on one position for one player. For us it’s a culmination- we believe in the collective, and this is the classic ‘we all go down together.’”

The Union will look to regroup this week and get back on track ahead of Saturday’s match, where they face a St. Louis City club that has yet to concede a goal in the 2025 regular season. Kickoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. and will be available on Apple TV as part of the MLS Season Pass.

Main Article Photo Credit: Philadelphia Union