Philadelphia Union Academy teams go 1-2-0 in games against rival New York Red Bulls

A highly anticipated road trip to North Jersey produced mixed results for the Philadelphia Union Academy U19, U17 and U15 teams last weekend.

The New York Red Bulls U19 team continued their assault on the Atlantic Division with a 3-1 win to improve to a perfect 9-0-0 and the best record in the nation.

Jeremy Rafanello opened the scoring in the 10th minute for the Union off a cross from Seth Kuhn to extend his game-scoring streak to six games but it was short lived. John Murphy responded two minutes later for the Red Bulls and JP Marin added a brace to run the final score to 3-1 in a game that saw each side receive four yellow cards.

The loss was the first of the season for the Union U19s, which fell to 5-1-0.

To illustrate how dominate the Red Bulls have been this season, Rafanello’s goal was just the fourth conceded by the Red Bulls in nine games. It was also the ninth of the season for Rafanello, who is currently fourth on the league scoring charts.

An 86th minute goal from Scott Taylor was the difference in a 1-0 win for the Red Bulls in the U17 game. The goal was the 10th of the season for Taylor, who scored four goals in two Generation adidas Cup qualifiers in Chester last month.

Though they surrendered a goal, the center back pairing of Ian Graham and J.D. Wagner with A.J. Cousins and Donovan Wu at the backs in front of goalkeeper Kristopher Shakes kept the explosive Red Bulls offense off the board through the first 85 minutes.

The loss was also the first of the season for the U17s, which fell to 3-1-3.

The U15 team made sure the teams didn’t come back to Philadelphia completely empty handed through a player make his league debut and a familiar source.

Patrick Bohui, an Cotre d’Ivoire-born forward who joined the residency program earlier this year from Harrisburg but was waiting for international paperwork to clear, opened the scoring in the 16th minute in his first appearance in the U.S. Soccer Development Academy.

After a 28th minute equalizer from Thomas Tulgar, Nicholas Pariano put the Union back in front and Selmir Miscic added a brace with goals in the 58th and 79th minutes.

Miscic’s goals brought his season total to 14 in 8 games and 18 in 11 games counting the Generation adidas Cup. That’s tops in the country for the U15 division.

With the win, the U15s improved to 4-1-3 on the season and are in fifth place in the Atlantic Division despite having games in hand against the four teams in front in the standings.

Up next, the U19, U17 and U15 teams will travel to Maryland to play Baltimore Armour on Saturday and Bethesda SC on Sunday while the U12, U13 and U14 teams get a chance to knock off the New York Red Bulls in away games on Saturday afternoon.