CHESTER — Officially, Tai Baribo’s lowest moment in a Union jersey doesn’t statistically exist. It remains in the state of suspension that the Israeli’s MLS career seemed destined for.
The box score for the Union’s April 30, 2024, game against Seattle doesn’t bear Baribo’s name.
That Tuesday night, the Union and Sounders reconvened at Subaru Park to resume a game flooded out after six minutes on March 9. Per MLS resumption rules, the teams could freely sub players that had been on the bench in the original game to replace starters unavailable due to injury in the resumption. But they would have to use a substitution to bring someone not on the original bench into the game.
Then-manager Jim Curtin had started Markus Anderson in the original fixture, rotating the squad between legs of a CONCACAF Champions Cup tie with Pachuca, but Anderson was out with a leg injury for the resumption. Curtin could have inserted Baribo for Anderson without burning a sub.
Instead, with Julian Carranza available in April as he hadn’t been in March, Curtin slid Baribo into the lineup for Anderson then effectively subbed him straight off for Carranza.
That substitutional sleight of hand — erroneously recorded in MLS’s official stats — doesn’t technically count among the nine appearances (one start) and 173 minutes that Baribo played from the time of his acquisition on Aug. 2, 2023, through the middle of June 2024.
Sitting in Subaru Park that night, watching his team go down three goals in a 3-2 loss, registers as one of the lowest moments.
“This was a time where they said, OK, we don’t believe in you,” Baribo said last week.
That moment seems distant in Baribo’s memory.
Since Curtin’s hand was forced by the exit of Carranza to Europe in June, Baribo has started 24 games in all competitions. He’s scored 21 goals and three assists, dispelling any doubt that once clouded his time in Philadelphia.
The 2025 MLS season is only two weeks old, but Baribo’s five goals are the talk of the league, which includes MLS Player of the Matchday honors last week.
Most importantly, it’s repaid the striker’s own faith, who took that slight and pushed on, instead of allowing it to permanently sour his time in MLS.
“I just continued to work,” Baribo said. “It was really, really hard. It was a bit depressing for me, my wife, my family. It was really, really tough. I can’t tell you all the time that I was happy and I was waiting for my chance with a smile, no. But it is what it is, and you have to deal with it.”
The decision to stick it out wasn’t easy.
When minutes hadn’t materialized in 2023, the Union allowed him to get playing time with Israel, playing outside the FIFA international window, even during their playoff series with New England. Carranza’s impending move hung over the 2024 season, but the coaching staff’s response was to maximize the Argentine’s minutes until summer arrived and he exited for essentially a free transfer to Dutch club Feyenoord, where he’s now playing in the Champions League.
Baribo at various times fell behind Anderson and Chris Donovan in the striking pecking order, despite his arrival in some ways a direct counter to the roster failure that was having only Donovan to deploy in MLS Cup final in 2022 when LAFC could bring Gareth Bale off the bench.
Baribo is upfront about relying on his Jewish faith, especially in tough moments. The Seattle game was one of the tougher ones, when even the positive reinforcement from family ran low.
“But I saw the team and I saw the league, and I really think that I fit the league,” he said. “It’s a very offensive league, and I wanted to fight for my place. All in my career, it was not easy all the time, and I knew that when the Seattle game came, and this was really the bottom, so I had a tough moment with my family as well. But I’m a guy that believes in God, and I believe that everything happens for the best.”
Baribo has stayed, fought and adapted. He got the start on June 19 in Cincinnati and scored twice, a game that the Union lost, 4-3, on a penalty kick in the 10th minute of stoppage time, one of the parade of farcical losses in 2024.
He battled a minor back injury but then blitzed New England for a hat trick on July 17, giving him six goals in six starts.
He’d add seven goals in six games in the Leagues Cup, around a phantom second yellow card in the quarterfinals, to win that competition’s Golden Boot.
A return of three goals and two assists in the final nine league games was indicative of a team-wide stumbling to the finish, taking one point of the final 12 on offer to finish in 12th place in the East.
But an offseason in which he got married and a fresh start with coach Bradley Carnell has Baribo firing in goals again. Part of that is an outstanding chemistry with left back Kai Wagner, the club’s all-time assist leader, who has assisted on three Baribo goals this season.
“First of all, Kai is a really good friend of mine,” Baribo said. “I think it starts from last season. He had a couple of assists to me. And you know, we are really happy to play with each other, and he understands my movement. I understand his ball. So it’s a good combination.”
The adjustment from Curtin to Carnell has been slight but consequential.
The formation has changed somewhat, starting Daniel Gazdag wide instead of centrally. But the new system retained the two-forward look, the imperative of outside backs to provide width and similar pressing cues, if more sternly emphasized. Baribo’s biggest improvements have come in his pressure against the ball, and Carnell’s deployment of that pressure magnifies how it creates easy looks at goal.
Baribo’s guiding light in these changes, as in his tribulations upon his arrival, has always been faith in himself. He’s succeeded in Israel, in Austria and now in the U.S., and he’s represented his country internationally. The current success is about the past perseverance.
“I think as a soccer player, you have to get your confidence from yourself, because you have to continue to believe in yourself,” he said. “Because sometimes, maybe your family doesn’t believe in you, maybe the staff don’t believe in you, maybe the fans don’t. So you really have to continue to believe in yourself, continue to work hard and consistently, and just to be there.
“I knew that I would get my chance. I just wanted to be ready when I got it.”
Source: Berkshire mont