{"id":860557,"date":"2025-07-06T20:12:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T01:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/06\/cavan-sullivan-makes-historic-first-mls-start-for-philadelphia-union-mlssoccer-com\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T20:12:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T01:12:44","slug":"cavan-sullivan-makes-historic-first-mls-start-for-philadelphia-union-mlssoccer-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/06\/cavan-sullivan-makes-historic-first-mls-start-for-philadelphia-union-mlssoccer-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavan Sullivan makes historic first MLS start for Philadelphia Union | MLSSoccer.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soccer <\/p>\n

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As the adage in soccer goes: If you\u2019re good enough, you\u2019re old enough.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The time finally arrived to unleash Philadelphia Union<\/a> wunderkind Cavan Sullivan<\/a>, who made a historic first MLS start at Nashville SC<\/a> on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

At 15 years and 280 days old, Sullivan became the second-youngest player in MLS history to start a match, staying intertwined with Freddy Adu (14 years, 334 days).<\/p>\n

Sullivan played the first 60 minutes before exiting for Ben Bender<\/a> with the match scoreless. The homegrown midfielder completed three of his five passes before a late Hany Mukhtar<\/a> penalty conversion gave Nashville a 1-0 win<\/a> in stoppage time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to roll Cavan out in a little bit more of a wingback position with the ball,\u201d Union head coach Bradley Carnell said postgame. \u201cAnd I think he got one or two looks in the first half where in a transition, we could start creating something.<\/p>\n

\u201cCavan\u2019s a natural counterpresser of the ball, so he\u2019s busy. These experiences are good for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan broke one of Adu’s accomplishments with his first groundbreaking piece of league history<\/a> just under a year ago as the youngest-ever debutant<\/a> at 14 years and 293 days old.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Upward trajectory<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

Taking on a thriving Nashville SC now carrying a 14-game unbeaten run across all competitions, Sullivan\u2019s first start came in one of the toughest environments in the league at GEODIS Park.<\/p>\n

Sullivan also experienced another MLS rite of passage, taking his first yellow card just after halftime.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other side, just calm everybody down,\u201d Carnell continued. \u201cBecause yeah, there\u2019s a lot of hype around Cavan, and at times he gets muscled off the ball, which is totally natural. So he\u2019s not quite where he needs to be from a physical standpoint, but he\u2019s a very talented kid, and I think this was a good indicator of where Cavan is.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u2014 Major League Soccer (@MLS) July 5, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

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The narrow loss dropped Philadelphia from first to third in the Eastern Conference and Supporters’ Shield standings, but only two points off new leader FC Cincinnati<\/a>. Sullivan’s next milestone could be getting on the scoresheet for the first time in MLS.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to now progress him and make sure we\u2019re not putting him in any way under pressure,” Carnell said. “Cavan\u2019s performing right where he needs to be.”<\/p>\n

Could that first goal contribution come soon? Philadelphia are set for back-to-back faceoffs with rivals New York Red Bulls<\/a> in the US Open Cup<\/a> quarterfinals on Wednesday, and again in league play on July 12 (7:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>Bong Serna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soccer As the adage in soccer goes: If you\u2019re good enough, you\u2019re old enough. The time finally arrived to unleash Philadelphia Union wunderkind Cavan Sullivan, who made a historic first MLS start at Nashville SC on Saturday evening. At 15 years and 280 days old, Sullivan became the second-youngest player in MLS history to start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":860558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135009,2005,30572],"tags":[135008,15319],"class_list":{"0":"post-860557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cavan","8":"category-soccer","9":"category-sullivan","10":"tag-cavan","11":"tag-sullivan"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}