The truth about the Leagues Cup was on full display at Subaru Park on Sunday

You may have heard by now that the Leagues Cup isn’t particularly popular among what business people would call Major League Soccer’s core fan base.

Supporters’ clubs from coast to coast have been protesting this year’s tournament since before it started, staying silent in the stands if they show up at all. They prefer the century-plus-old U.S. Open Cup, this country’s national championship, but MLS doesn’t because it’s less profitable than a tournament the league launched last year.

They also prefer soccer played by its traditional rules, instead of a tournament whose group stage games have penalty-kick shootouts forced upon ties. No other soccer event of any consequence on the planet decides group games with penalties afterward. A contest like Sunday’s — a 1-1 tie swung with a genuinely dramatic late goal from Dániel Gazdag — could have ended in regulation and been just fine.

The impact of all that was felt Sunday night at Subaru Park, and not just by a shootout that was irrelevant to the Union’s winning their group. (Cruz Azul, which won the shootout, did need the bonus point to advance as the group runner-up.)

Many Union season ticket-holders voted with their wallets: They opted out of the Leagues Cup portion of their package, or simply didn’t bother showing up. As a result, although the attendance was quoted as a full house of 18,680, there were plenty of empty seats. And the vast majority of those filled were taken by Cruz Azul fans and their wallets, which MLS loves to profit from.

» READ MORE: Union win Leagues Cup group with 1-1 tie vs. Mexico’s Cruz Azul

Union midfielder Alejandro Bedoya didn’t seem particularly surprised.

“I knew driving into the stadium, I saw all blue, and it wasn’t our blue,” he said, referring to the Azul in Cruz Azul, a Mexico City club that’s one of its country’s traditional powers.

But the Union’s longtime captain admitted to being “a little bit disappointed.” There were so many Cruz Azul fans in the building, and so many Union fans not in the building, that even the River End — the traditional home of Union supporters’ clubs — had many backers of La Maquina, Cruz Azul’s longtime nickname.

“The River End is supposed to be [fans in] our supporters’ group, and it didn’t feel that way,” Bedoya said. “I don’t know what the case was, but as a player I think we would have liked to see a little bit more support there.”

Bedoya knew this pointed at a deeper fact about the Union: The club has rarely done well at attracting the region’s Latino soccer fans. Ideally, when the Union play a big Mexican club, it should do enough on the field to persuade those fans to come back again and wear a Union jersey next time.

The son of Colombian immigrants spends part of his time in a marketing role as he prepares for retirement from the field. He’d like to make this subject one of his priorities.

“Since I’ve been at the club, that’s something that I’ve tried to always express myself to,” he said. “How can we tap into that market, the Hispanic market, Latinos, to maybe convert some of these Cruz Azul [or] Club América fans into Union fans too, [to] support the local team?”

» READ MORE: Jim Curtin wants the Union to win the Leagues Cup, but some fans are protesting it

Bedoya has seen this before, and not just in the Union’s games against Mexican teams — Club América’s visit in the 2021 Concacaf Champions League semifinals being the most prominent example. He also lived it often in his many years with the U.S. men’s national team, which routinely faces crowds at home games that have more of the opposing nation’s fans.

It’s been especially true against Mexico, and it was this summer in the Americans’ Copa América warmup games vs. Colombia and Brazil. (At least the tournament games themselves, as few as there were, drew pro-U. S. crowds.)

“I think a lot of these fans are able to come, and they’re obviously cheering for their team [from] where they’re from back in Mexico,” Bedoya said, “but also to see the atmosphere, and that Subaru Park is a nice stadium, and give them something to cheer about — we’ve been really successful the last five, six years. So hopefully a lot of those fans, yeah, come in and they support the Union in MLS, they can still support Cruz Azul in Liga MX.”

In the game’s final minutes, the Union did give those fans something to cheer about. When Gazdag scored, it looked and sounded like a decent number of them enjoyed it, though they certainly enjoyed Carlos Rotondi’s opening goal and the shootout win more.

» READ MORE: This soccer team missed Philly’s inaugural Unity Cup. Eight years later, they have ‘finally arrived’

The Union, meanwhile, got to enjoy topping their group. They’ll host CF Montréal in the round of 32 on Friday at Subaru Park (7:30 p.m., Apple TV). And there might actually have been one useful lesson from the night.

Union manager Jim Curtin likes to talk often about how the 4-4-2 diamond his team has played for years is the one in which his team does best, even though he has often tweaked his tactics this year.

There are times when it makes sense to try something different, whether it works or not. But Sunday night reinforced that the Union play their best when they play the tactics they know best. The traditional setup did to Cruz Azul what it has long done well: wear the visiting defense down to give the Union a chance to snatch a result against better talent.

“I think that’s our foundation, and you have to stay true to what you are,” Curtin said afterward. “We’ve tweaked and tried to add some different things, and there’s certain moments where we can maybe go in at the end of a game with a three-man back line to close it out. But I prefer to stick to what got us here, for lack of a better way to put it, and not get too cute.”

Curtin’s team suffered a lot on Sunday, but it knew how to thanks to its history of gutsy performances against Mexican teams. Cruz Azul was the seventh Mexican team to come to Subaru Park in an official competition, and América is the only team that has walked out with a win.

» READ MORE: The Union have serious striker depth again, and Jim Curtin is actually using it

The road games have been a different story, of course, as América and most famously Pachuca have shown. But there is a foundation to build from now, and it paid off when substitute Sam Adeniran forced Cruz Azul’s defense into a giveaway in the 88th minute.

Quinn Sullivan pounced, crossed the ball toward the middle, Cruz Azul goalkeeper Kevin Mier spilled it, and Gazdag got to the rebound first to force it into the net.

Cruz Azul manager Martin Anselmi said he was impressed by the Union’s intensity.

“I like when they do these kind of duels, when the rivals make you think … and you have to resolve it quickly,” he said. “At the end, the show is better when they do this kind of thing.”

Indeed it was, because the rest of the show spoke for itself.