Lionel Messi and Inter Miami CF beat them in the semifinals, so they didn’t get to host the Leagues Cup Final at Subaru Park. This left them feeling sad and hurt.

But the Philadelphia Union had a clear goal: if they won, they would be back in the Concacaf Champions Cup. The hosts did that by beating a different CF Monterrey team 3-0, and they did it by looking like the Union.

“Good performance, we’re happy about it,” Union head coach Jim Curtin said after the game on Saturday. “It’s great to get into the Champions League. The team played very professionally. It’s not easy to get up for this kind of game, but I thought they did a great job.”

CF Monterrey didn’t have the same drive because their Liga MX play had already earned them a spot in the 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup.

Rayados played with a talented but young team, which was a different group than the one Curtin said “played the best in this whole competition in terms of the most attractive attacking soccer, the most dangerous team.”

That could have made things harder for the Union, especially since they changed their strategy in their 4-1 home loss to Inter Miami on Tuesday.

“Tonight was let’s get back to the 4-4-2 diamond, let’s run, let’s fight, and let’s be together,” Curtin said. “If we make a mistake, we help the person out by picking them up. We helped them out with some dirty running and recovery runs, so I think we looked like ourselves, which was important.”

Jess Bueno scored the first goal for Philadelphia in the first minute, and Mikael Uhre scored in the last second of the first half to give Philadelphia a two-goal lead going into the locker room.

Then Alejandro Bedoya came off the bench and scored the game-winning goal in the 69th minute. This was a big moment for the Union’s captain, who was coming back from an injury, and for the rest of the team.

“He’s an incredible player, incredible person and to get him back now for the most important part of the season where we have now 11 games in the league – six at home, five away against some good teams for sure – but we need him at his max,” Curtin said. “It’s a great time to get him back going into the playoffs.”

It’s a quick turnaround for the Union from a third-place finish in a competition with 47 teams to the MLS regular season, where they’ll head to Audi Field to take on D.C United next Saturday.

Before the first-ever World Cup-style club tournament stopped the regular season, Philadelphia was third in the Eastern Conference with 40 points from 23 games.

“I think that tonight’s success gives us confidence. I think we were ourselves. We wanted the ball, everybody passed and moved together,” Curtin said. “Do we still get things wrong? Absolutely. But we had good responses to those mistakes. We weren’t throwing our hands up at each other. There were two of us. And we bailed each other out when the errors were made.”

And while the disappointment of not lifting a trophy at the end of it will be there for Curtin and the Union, Leagues Cup was an “incredible success” according to the Philadelphia head coach.

“Obviously what Messi has done has boosted that, there’s no question about it,” Curtin said. “But overall, if you look at the talent of the top Mexican Liga MX teams, the top teams in MLS, I think there’s some really positive rivalries that are starting to form.”