The Philadelphia Union are 2-0 after throttling FC Cincinnati 4-1 at home on Saturday night. They’re first place in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference and Tai Baribo is the league’s leading scorer after a week one brace and week two hat trick.

Baribo is on pace to score 85 regular season goals. That is PROBABLY not going to happen, but in 34 appearances across all competitions he already has 21 Union goals, which launched him over Roland Alberg and into the top-15 in franchise history over the weekend.

Here’s the all-time list, courtesy of Transfermarkt:

That is an incredible goals per match number, or G/90 as other sites describe the statistic. It means that Baribo is scoring a goal in almost two-thirds of his Union appearances, or one goal every 105 minutes if you look at the column to the left. The most prolific goal scorers in Union history aren’t even close to that number. Sebastien Le Toux, who is in the Ring of Honor and played a lot of games on the wing, has a 0.28 G/90 number. Daniel Gazdag, still active and the franchise leader in goals, is a goal-every-other-game type of scorer playing in the attacking midfield (penalties included). When you look at the pure strikers and non-PK takers on this list, only Julian Carranza is close to Baribo, who will probably jump five of the guys in front of him by the end of the season and find himself just outside the top six. He’d need 10 more goals across all competitions this season to do it.

The thing about Baribo is that he seems like a really good fit for this high press, Red Bull-type system the Union are playing. He’s not firing home rockets from outside the box or climbing for headers or doing anything fancy, he just has this brilliant positional awareness and calm finishing ability. The obvious MLS comp is Chris Wondolowski, who would always get to the correct post and sniff out a sequence before defenders could react. These are the types of strikers who sort of hover on the back shoulder and get lost and know when to take off, which is why so many of their finishes look like easy tap-ins or side-footed hits from inside the penalty area. And Baribo has a high work rate and links up very well with Gazdag and Mikael Uhre. He’s not a selfish guy at all. He immediately starts moving when the ball turns over and busts his ass to get into these good positions. This is a high pressing 4-2-2-2 on paper and out of possession, but plays more like a 4-2-4 in transition and everybody up top knows exactly where to go and what to do when the ball turns over.


He’s been fun to watch. The Union are off to a great start. There’s a perfect storm type of thing going on where they are getting the motivational bump from the coaching change, they finally added to the squad and have some interesting young players with fresh legs, and they also don’t have to play in the Champion’s League, so the focus can be solely on the MLS campaign in the early months. It’s good. They are stacking points and playing well. As long as the backline holds up and the press is effective, they will be a playoff team.