With a land area roughly comparable to the state of New Jersey, Israel is a small country. Almost by definition, there are few truly far-flung areas, at least by North American standards. Except, perhaps, for Eilat.
It’s an awfully long way from Tai Baribo’s hometown to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Inter Miami CF will host his Eastern Conference-leading Philadelphia Union before a global broadcast audience on Saturday night (7:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass).
Eilat sits at Israel’s far southern edge, perched on a distant corner that provides precious access to the Red Sea. With miles of rocky desert separating it from the population centers to the north, it feels like an outpost, albeit one bursting with new construction driven by burgeoning tourism and gambling industries that make it feel a bit like Las Vegas.
It’s a world apart from the Israeli footballing establishment. The nearest top-flight club, Hapoel Be'er Sheva, lies some 230 kilometers away, and it’s about 340 kilometers (more than 200 miles) to Tel Aviv. So when Baribo’s father realized his middle child had a unique talent that could someday lead to a professional soccer career – a conclusion he reached when Tai was only about 10 years old – he knew special measures were needed to nurture it.
Childhood sacrifices
Itzik Baribo, who manages an aquatic sports facility in Eilat, saw limited high-caliber developmental opportunities in a small city where the local side, Bnei Eilat FC, has never climbed past the third tier on the nation’s pyramid. The technical staff at Hapoel Rishon LeZion, a club near Tel Aviv with a respected academy program, took an interest. However, while Itzik later became familiar with the long drive north to watch his son’s matches every weekend, it was hardly feasible to make it on a day-to-day basis.
So young Tai would hop on a plane instead.
“Almost every day, from when I was 10 years old until 14,” the Philadelphia Union striker explained to MLSsoccer.com during a wide-ranging one-on-one conversation at Philly’s Independence Blue Cross Training Center. “From Eilat to Tel Aviv, then I would take a taxi, or my family [members] or a friend took me to the train, then come back the same day.”
Sometimes he could stay the night at an uncle’s house closer to the club, but that became more difficult as he rose through the ranks. Mornings were spent at school in Eilat, then his dad would whisk him to the airport, his lunch usually eaten in the car. Afternoons and evenings were devoted to his soccer education in Rishon LeZion; he’d get some homework done in flight. There was precious little time left in the day for anything else.
“I still lived at home,” he said. “But with all the flights, you don't really have friends. Not because they don't like me or something, because I didn't have time. Imagine, everybody after school connects with each other, go to play, and I need to go to the plane. And then I came back around 11 – I was landing at 11 pm, so most of the time I was alone.”
Tai’s schedule got a bit less hectic around age 14, when Hapoel’s sporting director offered a room at his own home to lessen the rigors of travel. That, too, was a challenge, being apart from his father and siblings for long stretches. In retrospect, Tai recognizes how unusual it all was. Yet he considers himself to have had the easy part.
“My father, he did all the sacrificing. Imagine: He paid for the flights, he drove every Saturday to my game – the games started at 8:30 in the morning, he drove from Eilat, maybe he left at 4:30, 5 [am], like this every Saturday,” said Philly’s star striker, the early leader in the MLS Golden Boot presented by Audi race with six goals in four matches.
“I wanted to be a professional from the first day, but when I did it, I didn't see this first as a sacrifice, [but] opportunity. As a kid, now I have the opportunity to do what I love. In Eilat, I didn't have this opportunity. So now, wow, it's amazing for me.”
Maturing at a young age
What’s that much more remarkable is that Tai lost his mother, Maya, when he was just 11, a victim of an aggressive cancer that cut her life short at age 38. Even at the lowest points of that agonizing process, she urged him to keep his soccer development on course. On the day she died, in fact, Tai was playing – and scoring – in a cup match, his mom having insisted he take part in the game.
He dedicated his career to her memory and believes she continues to watch over him. He used a photo of his mother as the basis for a tattoo of an eye on his forearm; when he scores a goal, he often kisses it.
“My mother was hospitalized at Tel Hashomer [Medical Center] and I would come visit her a lot,” he said in an interview years later. “This transition, between training and games and being by her side in the hospital, when she was in the condition she was in, was very difficult for me. But it also made me realize that if she was fighting so hard, then who am I to give up on anything in my life?”
These experiences sped Tai’s maturation. He realized earlier than most what was required to attain his dreams – and what was possible. He says he can still vividly recollect his father’s expression of belief in his potential, early on in the routine of those long commutes to and from his academy team.
“One time he told me, ‘With all these flights and all the things that you are doing, you are not crying and you're not looking for excuses – you will be professional, for sure,’” Baribo recalled. “That day, I knew. If my father believed me like this? Wow, so for sure I will be.
“Look, it’s one sentence. But that I remember for all my life.”
Working while waiting
All those arduous steps on his soccer journey turned out to be useful preparation for the challenges that greeted him when Philly acquired him in 2023. Baribo blossomed into a clever, reliable finisher, joining Israeli Premier League outfit Maccabi Petah Tikva, then earning a move abroad to Austrian club Wolfsberger AC, steadily dialing up his scoring productivity at each stop. Signing with the Union half a year after their run to the MLS Cup final, he seemed a timely, useful reinforcement for then-coach Jim Curtin’s squad.
Then Baribo simply… didn’t play. He started just one match for Philly that year, the Designated Player striker duo of Julián Carranza and Mikael Uhre firmly entrenched in Curtin’s lineups. He was rarely their first option off the bench, either, despite the frugal Union having paid a transfer fee to acquire him. This pattern continued well into the 2024 campaign.
“It was a tough moment for me. I didn't play almost for 10 months, something like this – I play a little bit, like, five minutes here, 30 minutes there,” Baribo said. “You need consistency to get the confidence. So it was a really tough moment for me, for me and my family. I was depressed, you can call it, a couple of months. Your head is starting to think what will happen? I mean, I don't play. I'm doing my best, but nothing's happened.”
He and his wife Linoy had settled smoothly in the Philadelphia area, welcomed with open arms by a large Israeli community, surprised by the deep tradition of Jewish culture and faith across the region. Here, they connected with a synagogue, quickly made friends, and found ready access to kosher food options, a relief compared to the three-hour drive into Vienna to find such provisions in Austria.
“They also really supported me. They came to every game, even though they knew that I will not play,” Baribo said of their new circle of friends. “They just came to the game to support. There are amazing people here.”
That comfort clashed with the sudden stagnation of his soccer prospects.
“The thing is, I knew that I will get the chance. I didn't know when,” he said. “I needed to prepare my mind. Because when you will get your opportunity, you need to take it. Because if you will not take it, everybody say, ‘OK, there is a reason why you didn't play.’”
Extra edge
So Baribo sought to control the controllables. He’d worked with a sports psychologist earlier in his career, and struck up sessions with him again. Both then and now, he does weekly film sessions via Zoom with an analyst in Israel who walks him through his previous performances and scouts upcoming opponents.
“Here, you have everything – but when you are young, what you get from the team is not enough,” he noted. “You have to do extra training. And I built around me, like, I can say it’s a net or web, how we call it, like with nutritionists, with the personal training, with analyzing, with mental training. So everything, everything, I have my own guys on every angle that you need to improve.”
Baribo even sought out a boxing coach, with the Union’s permission, for intense one-on-one workouts, having concluded he needed an extra edge in the absence of full match fitness.
“I knew that if you don't play, you will lose the ability to run, even if you run in the trainings,” he explained. “In the game, it's different. But when I started to box, I started to feel like, 'OK, I'm getting in shape.' And then the first game that I play against Cincy – imagine, I didn't play a long time, and then I play, like, 85 minutes without a problem. I mean, I had cramp at the end, in the calves, but I succeed to run, so I believe this has helped me.”
That Cincy game he referenced? With Carranza sold off to Feyenoord, Curtin handed Baribo his first start in months when Philly visited FC Cincinnati on June 19 of last year, and he responded with two goals, the second a 91st-minute equalizer, in a wild 4-3 loss. It sparked a torrid scoring streak that reaped 9g/2a in barely half a season of league play and a tournament-best seven tallies in Leagues Cup.
Breakout campaign
The intelligence, instinct and methodology of an elite poacher has been revealed. The vast majority of his 22 overall goals for the Union, and all six of this year’s, are one-touch finishes. Most are struck inside the penalty box. Many have capped habitual patterns of play wired into the team’s press-oriented game model. All have their origins in Baribo’s extensive, self-assigned homework, plenty of which features Luis Suárez, the crafty Uruguayan still leading Miami’s front line with distinction at 38 years old.
He’s hit another gear, it seems, since the arrival of new coach Bradley Carnell and his emphasis on directness in transition.
“I call it ‘clean the box.’ This is your job, to take every mistake, every random ball. It's your job to score it at the end,” Baribo said. “I was looking at a lot of video of Suárez, of Lewandowski, Haaland – Haaland is big, he can create his own space. But I'm trying to see where is the empty spaces. Everybody say, 'OK, all the goals is from close, it's easy.' But it's not easy. It looks easy, but you need to give, all the time, these sprints.
“Sometimes, actually most of the time, you don't get this ball, but you need to do it, maybe 20 times. One time you will get the ball. So it's your job not to put the head down, and do it again and again and again. And then you will get the ‘easy goals.’”
Baribo partnered Uhre up top in Philly’s first four matches, then was spelled by new arrival Bruno Damiani in last week’s win over St. Louis CITY SC as he joined Israel on international duty. Any pairing of the trio figures to test Miami’s error-prone back line.
“Tai and Mika, as well as Bruno, have a good understanding – if one's going, one's coming,” Carnell told MLSsoccer.com. “Intrinsically, they have it built in, some of the movements and the nuances, but now we've given them tools to use. And yeah, combinations and relationships, I would say it's a lot of relationism tactics that we're trying to build into the daily business of how we do things. It's all about two vs. ones, three vs. twos, overloading in certain areas, with and without the ball.
“They've taken it on to another level now.”
Facing off against the likes of Suárez, Sergio Busquets and perhaps Leo Messi if he’s sufficiently recovered from an adductor injury, represents the Union’s biggest test so far. Whatever the result, Baribo and Philly aim to make the Herons work for every inch, every moment.
“I grew up with this mentality,” Baribo said of the Union’s blue-collar identity. “It was easy for me to adapt.
“You can have a bad day with passes, you can miss the goal, and miss a shot or something. But there is no bad day for work … This is the basic for everything. So yeah, this is Philly.”
