“Richter’s at the wheel, at the wheel. Richter’s at the wheel!”
Sports Illustrated Stadium emptied quickly after the Philadelphia Union’s 3-1 win over Red Bull New York on Aug. 29, except for the upper-deck section, where the traveling support lingered to celebrate their side’s emphatic road win over their I-95 rivals.
The DOOP faithful bellowed that tribute to the coach who’d overseen their team’s undefeated streak after MLS’s FIFA World Cup break – a streak that rolls on, 11 matches and counting, as the Union welcome Orlando City to Subaru Park on Saturday for one of Matchday 28’s tastiest fixtures (7:30 pm ET | Apple TV).
The Philly faithful know Ryan Richter isn’t just the guy in charge of the Eastern Conference’s hottest team. He’s truly one of their own, a local kid from just up the road (Southampton, Pennsylvania) who’s worn the club’s colors for a large chunk of his adult life and worked at every level of its academy-centered developmental pyramid, marinated in the ethos of the Union and the hard-nosed region they represent.
MLS has no official homegrown designation for coaches. But if there were, Richter would be a textbook example.
“For the club, I think it's a great proof of concept,” noted sporting director Jon Scheer to MLSsoccer.com, “that we're a platform to develop players and staff.”
Historic turnaround
The names that grab the headlines are Philadelphia’s latest crop of homegrown players, led by teenage phenoms Cavan Sullivan and Neil Pierre, who along with 20-year-old right back Frankie Westfield are currently away on US men’s national team duty. Yet much the same process has produced the 37-year-old leading them on an interim basis.
After coaching at all levels of Philly’s system over the past decade, Richter was elevated from Philadelphia Union II, the club’s MLS NEXT Pro squad, to take the reins upon the May departure of Bradley Carnell, who’d earned Sigi Schmid MLS Coach of the Year honors in leading the Union to last year’s Supporters’ Shield before everything came crashing down in a brutal 1W-10L-4D start to the current campaign.
The DOOP squad have since resurrected their season in the most dramatic fashion imaginable: An 11-game unbeaten streak from dead-last in the overall MLS standings into sixth place in the East, and hungry for more down the home stretch.
“Something we take a lot of pride in right now and always is our culture,” said Scheer, who himself worked in Philly’s academy for many years. “And the environment that we have at the moment in the building, on the practice fields day to day, if you ask the players or ask the staff, I think it's an enjoyable atmosphere to be a part of.
“With Ryan,” he added, “right after the World Cup break you could see that he started to gain more and more confidence as that second preseason went on, and his voice and his sessions, there was more clarity, more conviction.”
Instilling belief
This remarkable rebirth was sparked not so much by a raft of new signings or splashy summer transfer spending – though the Union did pay a reported $4 million fee to bring back playmaking left back Kai Wagner just a few months after his sale to English Championship side Birmingham City – as a conscious turn inward, a renewal of the club’s guiding philosophy: the commitment to development from within.
Sullivan’s role grew, despite external concerns about handling the 16-year-old phenom with care. Pierre was ushered back into the fold after a loan spell with Danish outfit Lyngby. And Richter stepped up to orchestrate it all with a few tactical tweaks and a wider vibe shift.
“Ryan Richter and the whole club’s kind of turned everything around, from obviously me and the youngsters to Kai and everyone. I think the biggest thing was fixing the locker room,” Pierre told reporters at USMNT camp outside Atlanta this week when asked about the Philly renaissance. “The first thing, [Richter] came in with was, ‘Hey, we’re good enough. This is a whole new season.’ So I think that led us in the right way.
“Then with the youngsters, we still [hear] side things like, ‘You guys are good enough to play. I have the confidence in you guys.’ And I think when you have confidence, there’s no ceiling. So I think when he gave me [those] words of confidence, I think it was the biggest thing for me for the second half of the season, to do well.”
Hometown hero
As a recent Philadelphia Inquirer profile delightfully depicted, Richter’s is a deeply Philly story.
He played almost as much basketball as soccer in his youth, idolizing NBA legend Allen Iverson and playfully anointing himself with brash nicknames like ‘Shaq Daddy,’ faint traces of which live on in his social-media handles. He grew into a standout at nearby La Salle University long before the local MLS organization became a youth powerhouse.
He caught on with the Union via the 2011 Supplemental Draft, but ironically never made an MLS appearance for his hometown team, instead playing for their second team in its Bethlehem Steel FC incarnation, where he played alongside prospects like Mark McKenzie and Auston Trusty, who would go on to million-dollar European moves and USMNT careers.
“I always try to keep in mind of where some of the younger guys are at, and remember what I was like,” Richter told the Inquirer. “When I was 16, I was driving around with a Jordan logo on my car, and who knows what kind of trouble I was getting in.”
Rising up the ranks
Richter was a second-division star with the New York Cosmos and Ottawa Fury; in 2020 The Athletic named him to its USL and NASL combined team of the decade. Yet he turned out to be an even better coach. Over the past decade, he worked his way up the ladder from the Union’s youngest age groups to the helm of the second team, including a few of Sullivan’s youth sides, and spent time as one of Jim Curtin’s assistants on the senior squad. He’s also made time to work extensively with The SWAG, a free training program for kids ages 4-8 in the city’s most marginalized communities.
All of this seems to have made him particularly adept at guiding Cavan and his fellow wunderkinds. They “climbed the pathway together,” as a Union social-media post with then-and-now photos pointed out in July.
“My job as their coach is to help them this week, and keep their feet on the ground,” Richter told MLSsoccer.com of his youngest pupils last month. “Take steps forward, stay in the present and focus on all the good things they're doing, and keep trying to improve their game week to week.
“Whatever the case is of what happens in the future, it does happen fast, so I have to make sure that I'm preparing them the best I can for whatever that next step does happen, whether it's national team, whether it's a move to another club or whatever the case is.”
To borrow a phrase from his beloved 76ers, Richter, Scheer and the players in their care trust the process. Because they’ve been immersed in it for so many years, and have seen it work – not just for academy kids but under-the-radar imports, late-blooming renovation projects and yes, even coaches.
“It's never easy to go through the moments we went through at the start of the season,” said Scheer. “What we're really happy about right now is that we're not only having success in terms of results, but I would say that the success has come in alignment with our competitive strategy.
“We're doing it in our way, within our philosophy.”
