The Major League Soccer (MLS) is often mocked for being the ‘retirement home’ for prominent footballers. Yet there are some goofy moments that help the MLS stand out from European football leagues. One such hilarious incident happened in the recent game between the Philadelphia Union and New York City FC.
This game between the 2023 MLS Cup conference semi-finalist (Philadelphia) and NYFC saw both fighting for a top-six spot. Despite having home advantage, Philadelphia Union suffered a 2-1 loss to New York City FC – stretching their winless run to six games – while NYCFC won their second straight game to move to fourth place in the Eastern Conference table.
Yet the most memorable moment from this intense clash happened when a raccoon appeared out of nowhere and managed to invade the Subaru Park pitch.
This happened around the 22nd minute when NYCFC had already taken an early lead and the hosts were trying to find the equalizer. Suddenly, a little raccoon sneaks its way to reach the front of one of the goalposts. Predictably, security was put into action to capture the animal and escort it out of the ground, but this particular raccoon refused to comply.
This clip of the raccoon evading people inside the Subaru Park pitch has now gone viral and the MLS supporters just can’t get enough of it. They’ve embraced the fact that this isn’t embarrassing but a bit of a wild, amusing moment that you’d probably never see anywhere else but in the MLS.
There have been notable incidents of dogs or cats often running onto a football ground, but a raccoon is a unique case. Fans were quick to create brilliant memes based on this little funny incident and hailing the efforts of the raccoon. Someone even created a ‘heat map’ for the raccoon which tracks its movement and the areas of the pitch that it managed to leave its imprint on.
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There has even been a name granted to the animal, with some calling him as ‘Raquinho’. This is clearly a tongue-in-cheek reference to Brazilian icon Ronaldinho. It appears that ‘Raquinho’ managed to spend 161 seconds on the pitch evading those trying to capture it, setting a ‘new MLS record’ for most time spent on the ground by an animal.
Some fans are even convinced that moments like this makes it worth buying the MLS pack on Apple TV. The MLS pack isn’t cheap and comes at around $79 per-season or $12.99-per-month and Lionel Messi also reportedly gains a profit with every new subscription. Yet some supporters seem happy to pay that much as long as they can see entertaining stuff like this happening.
There has also been a lot of praise for the commentator for adding to the ‘thrill’ of this chase. ESPN’s Dave Leno was the one shot-calling this match when the incident happened. Leno did an excellent job at spotting the raccoon entering the pitch before brilliantly detailing his movement as if it were a player itself. The sheer emotions of the commentator and the on-field chaos made the incident all the more hilarious for those watching on TV.
.@DaveLenoTV's call on the raccoon in Subaru Park will go in the Hall of Fame
With that being said, this incident isn’t THAT shocking when you realize that there has been an ongoing raccoon problem in Philadelphia for years. The city has been tormented by wild raccoons for many years, leading to complains about raccoons invading into people’s homes to tarnish their bedroom and be a general nuisance. There is even a Philadelphia raccoon control division to tackle this issue.
Perhaps knowing this issue, the Philadelphia Union needs to work hard on securing its stadium more strongly to stop these ‘invasions’ from happening any further. But seeing how they’re getting more traction based on this raccoon, they’d probably hope stuff like this happens more often if that helps in a surge of popularity for the club.
