By Michael Heilman

The Philadelphia Union today announced that the Bethlehem Steel FC will be rebranded and will now be known as the Philadelphia Union II for the 2020 USL Championship season. The Union II will continue to play at Talen Energy Stadium. You can read the full announcement here.

The Bethlehem Steel FC were founded in 2015 and played their inaugural season in 2016 at their old home Goodman Stadium. The Steel moved to Talen Energy Stadium this year after spending three years at Goodman Stadium.

Tim McDermott, Chief Business Officer of the Union on the rebrand, saying “For the past several years, we have diligently explored numerous stadium options in the Lehigh Valley. Unfortunately, there still is not a viable stadium solution that will meet the current stadium requirements for the USL Championship. At the same time, we recognize the player development benefits from having our USL team located at the same campus and playing in the same stadium as our first team. As we will be based in Chester, changing the name to Union II appropriately reflects our player development pathway.”

The Union are the latest MLS team that have rebranded their USL team to name them after themselves. The USL Championship schedule will be released at a later date.