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Tai Baribo Says He Wasn’t Celebrating “Against Philly” After Scoring the Game Winner in Ugly Season Opener
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The Union lost their MLS season opener in the D.C. swamp, 1-0 on Saturday night. Scoring the goal was Tai Baribo, who was, uh, the leading goal scorer for the Union last season when they won the Supporters’ Shield with 20 victories and 66 points
He celebrated hard, but said this week that it wasn’t any kind of gesture “against Philly” –
“I celebrate first of all not because it’s against Philly, but because I celebrate with my own fans. For me, every goal is important. It’s not easy to score goals, so you can see all my goals in the past, in Philly, in Austria, in Israel, I always celebrate with passion because it’s not easy. And I appreciate it and I’m grateful and I always thank god after a goal because, again, it’s not easy. So it’s not because of Philly. I love Philly. I love the fans, I love the club. But here I celebrate with my club, and I love the club here and love the fans here.”
There’s this cultural thing where sometimes players don’t celebrate if they score against their former teams. Depends on the situation, but the gist is that you’re being respectful to the players and fans and coaches and everybody from the club that used to employ you. It’s more of a soccer thing but it does creep into the four majors from time to time.
At surface level, I believe Baribo. The D.C. celebration looked just like what he used to do up here, when he was bagging Union goals. He was a pretty demonstrative and passionate player.
The bigger story from the game is that the Union looked like absolute shit. Tough situation having to play in Trinidad earlier in the week, in the CONCACAF Champions Cup. They’re also banged up coming into this season. They were missing three shoo-in starters in Jovan Lukic, Quinn Sullivan, and Frankie Westfied, and they’re reportedly at the finish line for this new left back, Philippe Ndinga, but he’s not here yet so they’ve had to deputize in that spot for the time being. Ezekiel Alladoh was red carded in the second half, Olwethu Makhanya didn’t look great, and Bradley Carnell is working in a lot of new pieces this season.
One thing they really need to do is figure out their on-ball identity. They’re a Red Bull pressing team and excellent without the ball, and in transition, but they looked raw in possession on Saturday night. For the last half-decade, they had Kai Wagner as an easy path up the left side, where he would bang in crosses, but they don’t have much in buildup play right now. That will improve as these players get to know each other, or they could just do what they’re really good at, which is play direct, maybe literally just kick the ball to the other team and/or boot it over the top to the big boys at striker.
fuckin DOOP
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com