The Union know they have doubters, but their latest win keeps them atop MLS for another day

When the halftime whistle blew Wednesday night at Subaru Park, Union manager Bradley Carnell walked to his office next to the locker room before going to address the players.

That’s one of his usual rituals, but what happened a few minutes earlier wasn’t. Carnell’s players had just allowed an awful goal in stoppage time, the kind a first-place team gives up when it steps off the gas in the middle of the summer against a last-place opponent.

After a quick bit of analysis, Carnell figured out what he wanted to say to his players. And by the time he walked the few steps over to them, he didn’t have to.

“I love it when I walk into the locker room and the message has already been spoken about within the team,” Carnell said. “That’s part of a good team who challenge each other. I could hear it from my coach’s office for sure, and then walking in there it was business.”

The business that got done at intermission translated to a spark early in the second half, and that produced a 2-1 win over CF Montréal.

“The players know that whether a lapse here or a lapse there, [it’s about] just being collective in good times and in bad times and riding challenging moments,” Carnell said. “That’s a galvanizing moment for us as a group, to be open to challenging each other, and then to come out and really, in certain moments, control and dominate the second half.”

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Certain moments is one way to put it. Montréal’s Prince Owusu hit Andre Blake’s left post with an open header in the 77th, and Blake had to make big saves in the 81st and 84th. But when the final whistle blew after six minutes of stoppage time, the Union still had the best record in all of MLS (14-5-4, 46 points), and most of the rest of the night could be forgotten.

One moment in the first half wasn’t worth forgetting. Tai Baribo opened the scoring in the 38th minute with his team-leading 14th goal of the year, and this one meant something extra: He and his wife, Linoy Barlev, announced a few days ago that they’re expecting their first child.

Baribo celebrated by blowing a kiss and sending a heart gesture toward the terrace above the west stands where she stood, then he offered soccer’s universal celebration: sticking the ball under his shirt and pretending to suck his thumb.

“Every game is a good time to score, obviously, but obviously today it’s more special,” he said. “And I’m happy to score, because I didn’t score for a long time. I was injured, I was stuck in Israel [last month when war escalated with Iran], it was a bad situation for me. But I’m happy to be here to score and to win.”

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There likely would have been more celebrations at halftime if not for Montréal’s equalizer. But Baribo backed up Carnell’s story with his own account.

“The locker room was not calm, let’s say, because everybody had [their] own opinion [about] what we should do,” he said. “Because we saw that in the first half, some things were working, some things didn’t work. But as a team, as one unit, we all the time speak about this. Nobody’s keeping nothing inside, because we believe we have to speak — it was respectful, obviously.”

Five minutes into the second half, Olwethu Makhanya headed in a Kai Wagner corner kick to score what proved to be the winner. It was the 21-year-old centerback’s first goal for the Union’s first team, and made him the 16th player to score a goal for the squad this year.

“I’m happy to score my first goal for the team and it means a lot for me and to contribute in this manner for the team,” he said. “I was just asking the guys to make runs in front of me so that the space can open up and then I can just come in behind.”

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The play happened just as he envisioned.

“As soon as I saw the ball touch the net, I was just so happy,” Makhanya said. “Because at that moment I realized what the goal means, because we let ourselves down just before the first half [ended when] we conceded a goal.”

This team has a lot of doubters. They are local, among long-suffering Union fans awaiting a second trophy; and they are national, for two reasons. One is the firepower on the teams lined up behind the Union in the standings — Cincinnati, Nashville, Columbus, and of course, Miami.

The other is Carnell’s history of taking St. Louis to the top of the west in 2023, only to crash out of the playoffs in the first round. This Union team can’t be fully judged until the postseason, when Carnell will have to show what he learned from that failure.

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There’s nothing wrong with a team manufacturing a chip on its shoulder, even a first-place one. But this squad does have doubters, and Carnell signaled he knows it.

“People often talk about, ‘Can they do it through the summer months? Can they do this? Can they do that?’” he said. “Right now, there’s an intensity in the group, and a passion in the group, and most of all a hunger in the group to succeed every single day, regardless of result [or] of the outside world. We’re competing against ourselves right now, and keep challenging ourselves all the time, every single day in training.”

Baribo took the subject with some welcome humor.

“To be honest, as a foreign player, I’m sorry, but I don’t read the media so much,” he said. “So I don’t know if someone believes in us or doesn’t believe. … I just hear from the coach that some people don’t think we belong there. But everybody has their own opinions — we don’t really care about what people think.”

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It’s a quick turnaround to the Union’s next game, a visit to Houston on Saturday (8:30 p.m., Apple TV) for the team’s first game against Jack McGlynn since selling him to the Dynamo. He’ll bring extra spice to what will be another sultry summer night.

“We feel the fatigue in the legs,” Baribo said. “But it’s so tight, so we can’t really think about the Supporters’ Shield. Of course we want to be first, but we want to win. Every game we want to win.”

Mikael Uhre also stated the obvious after his first game back from a five-game injury absence, but it was worth stating.

“Winning is always a very good recipe to keep the energy high,” he said. “We saw it in 2022 when we got on a roll, and then it was really tough for guys to play against us when you’re on that roll and you have that momentum. So it’s just about keeping that going. And sometimes you’ve got to win the ugly games as well.”

This was certainly one of those.