Wednesdays in Chester are historically a win for the Philadelphia Union

The Philadelphia Union may not be in the form they’d prefer heading into tonight’s Concacaf Champions League semifinal down a pair of goals to Club América, but if they could pick a night to play this game it would probably be a Wednesday.

Since their first season in 2010, the Union has been the home team 69 times and won 34 of those times with 17 draws and 18 losses.

Even more impressive than that is they haven’t lost on a Wednesday in 10 games and are 15-5-5 in their last 25 games played on a Wednesday.

You could say this is a meaningless stat but it’s something Union head coach Jim Curtin has mentioned on more than one occasion, which speaks to the focus and the preparation that goes into how the team approaches midweek fixtures and also to some of the past successes in the U.S. Open Cup, which is almost exclusively a Tuesday and Wednesday night competition.

Three of their most unsuccessful Wednesday night games were when they came up short in knockout competitions. That includes U.S. Open Cup finals in Houston (3-0 loss) and at home against Sporting Kansas City (1-1 draw, PK shootout loss) along with the MLS is Back semifinal against the Portland Timbers in Florida last summer.

You have to go all the way back to May 15, 2013 to find a Wednesday night game in the city of Chester that the Union lost. That was a 4-1 beat down to LA Galaxy. Their only two other home losses on a Wednesday were to Sporting Kansas City in the Open Cup semifinal in 2012 and to the Columbus Crew seven weeks later.

Their current string of unbeaten games on Wednesdays includes the team’s first two Concacaf Champions League matches when they won 1-0 at Saprissa and 4-0 over the Costa Rican side at home. Their most complete performance of the current MLS season — a 3-0 win over Toronto FC — was on the first Wednesday of August.

None of this of course will matter tonight.

But it’s something that should give fans a twinge of added hope that the boys in blue will come out and give their Liga MX visitors everything they have and make things interesting.