How different are the Union this year? The team they just beat knows best.

Not even the most optimistic Union fan could likely have imagined this start to the season.

For the second game in a row, the team fired in four goals, this time in a 4-1 rout of FC Cincinnati in Saturday’s home opener. Tai Baribo scored a hat trick, and record signing Bruno Damiani capped his debut with a sliding finish in the final minutes.

Does this call for raising the bar on a team on which outsiders’ expectations were just making the playoffs? No, not yet. The teams the Union have beaten so far are a flawed Orlando squad and a Cincinnati group whose big-time talent might have had an eye on an upcoming Concacaf Champions Cup series with Mexican power Tigres.

Nor will the bar likely move after the club’s next three games, all of which are winnable. First is a Saturday visit to a New England lot that will contend for last place. Then comes a March 16 home game vs. Nashville, a club starting a rebuild under Ventnor City-born former Union assistant B.J. Callaghan. Finally, on March 22, Bradley Carnell’s former employer St. Louis City SC visits for their first-ever matchup with the Union. That game is during a FIFA national team window, so both teams will be shorthanded — in particular Andre Blake on the Union’s side.

Still, the Union could be 5-0-0, with more than half of last year’s nine wins in the bag, heading into a March 29 game at Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami. That might be when we find out how good this team really is.

» READ MORE: Tai Baribo’s hat trick powers the Union to a 4-1 rout of FC Cincinnati in their home opener

What we do know so far is that this team is clearly better than last year’s, even with only two games of evidence; and that it is clearly different from last year’s, even with a lot of the same players.

Carnell’s tactical changes have made a big impact, in particular the shift from a diamond-shaped midfield quartet to a box-shaped one. Players look fitter, and new defensive midfielder Jovan Lukić has helped revive the team’s preferred high-pressing style.

There were many witnesses to this on Saturday, even though the cold wind that blasted Subaru Park hit many empty seats. But the best expert to consult wasn’t anyone in the new fancy sections in front of the end lines, and not just because quite a few of those seats were empty, too. He was standing in front of Cincinnati’s bench.

Pat Noonan has been on that side of one of MLS’s more underrated rivalries since 2022, when he left Jim Curtin’s Union coaching staff to take his first top job. Neither he nor general manager Chris Albright, the former No. 2 in the Union’s front office, like to say aloud how much they enjoy topping their ex-employer. But it’s an open secret in both cities, and around much of the league.

So it doubtless got noticed that Saturday marked the Union’s first regular-season win over Cincinnati since November 2021, a month after Albright moved west and a month before Noonan joined him. The Union’s only two wins of any kind in the series since then came in the 2022 playoffs and last year’s Leagues Cup.

» READ MORE: Inside the play that symbolized the Union’s potential in their impressive season opener

This called for a detour amid the usual postgame conversations, to head to the visitors’ side of things before the home one. Noonan knows better than almost anyone how different this team is, with the bonus of having also seen the Union in a preseason scrimmage last month. And he didn’t mind talking about it.

“They’re a very good pressing team, they’re a good transition team — not a lot of that has changed,” he said. “I would just say the structure is something that’s a little bit different than what we’ve seen. Outside of that, it’s still a very good team that, while they had struggles last year, when they’re on, they’re very, very difficult to play against.”

Noonan also knew that Carnell was hired — after his former boss and still-close friend was fired — to restore the defensive ethos to a team that conceded 55 goals last year, and its most shots per game since 2017. Asked if he expected that to be a renewed emphasis this year, Noonan again didn’t hesitate.

“That was something we anticipated, yes,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s an aggressive 10-15 minutes and then maybe it drops off a little bit, but it’s pressing moments that they do very well. I think we saw that from our preseason game as well as the Orlando match, and we needed to be ready for them to come at us pretty strong.”

Carnell’s changes have also helped the Union’s attack, and not just through the goals scored. In recent years, this team struggled to create scoring chances against three- or five-back defensive lines compared to four-back lines. Cincinnati has played a 5-3-2 for a while now; on Saturday the Union’s wide players ran right past it.

» READ MORE: Amid the hype over Cavan, the Union’s Quinn Sullivan continues to make a name for himself

“Credit to Kai [Wagner], to [Frankie] Westfield, [Quinn] Sullivan,” Noonan said. “There were some really good crosses, and dangerous crosses to deal with. They were better in the execution of those moments than us defending it.”

In the Union’s locker room a few minutes later, Dániel Gazdag reflected on that execution.

“I think the key was that we turned them over in their half so many times, and we created chances after the turnovers,” he said on the eve of his 29th birthday. “They were, I wouldn’t say undisciplined, but they didn’t have enough guys behind the ball, because they didn’t expect that we were going to turn them over so many times. So I think that was really good.”

Then Gazdag was asked if the Union’s first two games have sent a message to the rest of the league. His answer was as robust as his team’s play.

“Personally, I don’t think these teams are better than us,” he said, laughing a bit but clearly meaning it. “We had a bad season last year, but before that, we’ve been really good, and we almost have the same squad now. I think we just have to find a way back to the way that we’ve been playing before, and I think we are doing a good job with that.”

So far, at least. But there’s still a long way to go.

» READ MORE: The Union likely won’t be good this year, but they might still be interesting