Union midfielder Dániel Gazdag has all but perfected the penalty kick. We asked him his secret.

Scan the standings of any soccer league’s top scorers, and your mind might start to wander.

How many of those goals were scored with long-range blasts, and how many with tap-ins? How many with a darting run toward a defense-splitting through ball, and how many with a crashing header of a corner kick?

It’s a nice little dreamland to be in. But alas, here comes a cynic, approaching your comfy chair uninvited. A blast of reality stirs you awake: How many of those goals were penalty kicks?

“Penalty merchant,” the cynic taunts, a classic soccer insult. Padding the stats like they’re the golden boot’s insole.

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Cynic, meet the Union’s Dániel Gazdag. Seventeen times this year, he has stepped up to the spot after a foul in the box, awaited the referee’s whistle, and swung his right leg on cue. All 17 times, he has scored. Eleven have come in the regular season, an MLS record.

Merchant? He just about owns the mall.

“I can’t say too much about it,” Gazdag told The Inquirer in a recent interview. “Obviously, I’m confident. That’s the most important part of it.”

It’s not surprising that Gazdag initially hesitated. Penalty kicks are up there with Fight Club as something you don’t talk about, a karmic risk like the old Sports Illustrated cover jinx. But it turned out he had plenty to say.

“We got a lot of penalties this year, which is a lot [of] one side, and the other side [is] we are working a lot for them,” he said. “And I just try to score all of them, and I’m confident, as I said — that’s the most important thing.”

Penalty kicks aren’t just a test of skill and muscle. Almost any soccer player who takes one will tell you they’re much more of a mental exercise than a physical one.

So many questions arise during the wait for the whistle. Will the goalkeeper guess where you’re shooting? Will you guess where the goalkeeper’s jumping?

Will you smash the ball or try to place it? Will you drop a stutter-step feint along the way — or drop a few of them and draw the crowd’s ire? (Or the referee’s, if you do too many of them?)

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Many watchers prefer when the shooter just hits it hard and fair without overthinking things. If you’re that way, you’ll be happy to know Gazdag is a kindred spirit.

“Sometimes I smash it with the laces; sometimes I just pass it,” he said. “But obviously, I’ve gotten so many PKs, so I can’t always do the same thing because then the goalkeepers would know where I go. So I have to change it sometimes. But the good thing is, I can do that. I have a couple of different shots in me.”

As for the mental side, he said: “When I’m getting there, I’m always calm. I try to be as calm as I can. So yeah, I’m not thinking too much about them.”

That doesn’t mean the 27-year-old Hungarian goes only by instinct. No, he does plenty of thinking about his craft, from the film room to the practice field.

“The goalkeeper coach [Phil Wheddon] sends me videos about the [opposing] goalkeepers before every game, so he helps me a lot,” Gazdag said. “Also, Joe Bendik [the Union’s backup goalkeeper] helps me a lot — he always says a lot about statistics. So it’s not only me. Obviously, I’m taking the PKs and I score them, but there is a little bit of back [room] work on it.”

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Gazdag’s teammates have been impressed by his proficiency from the spot.

”That many penalties, it’s actually quite incredible,” centerback Jack Elliott said. “People always think it’s easy to do, but it’s the mentality that makes it difficult.”

Midfielder and captain Alejandro Bedoya also highlighted the mental aspect.

”It’s all about staying calm,” he said. “I think he’s got a special technique where he’s able to look [before shooting] until the last second, which very few guys can do. And he’s just been on target. ... You’ve still got to make them, he’s been able to make them, and it’s helped us a lot in a lot of matches.”

The records show that Gazdag failed to score just one of the 32 penalty kicks he has taken in regulation in his pro career. The first he converted came on July 11, 2019, with his previous club, Hungary’s Honvéd — and, coincidentally, that lone failure came in the same game.

Martin Berkovec, then of Lithuania’s Žalgiris Vilnius, owns the honor of having saved Gazdag from the spot in a Europa League qualifying playoff game. Sadly for Berkovec, though, he’s also on the list of goalkeepers Gazdag has scored penalties against: in the 69th minute of the same game, before the save in the 85th.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve surely sat there thinking — knowing — you’ve seen Gazdag fail from the spot. And you are correct. The use of in regulation just now is intentional. Shootouts are a different matter.

“It’s a different mind situation,” he said.

There’s no more infamous example than last year’s MLS Cup final. Gazdag stepped up for the Union’s opening attempt, slipped on the grass, and skied his shot into LAFC’s supporters’ club. This year, Gazdag was stopped by D.C. United’s Alex Bono in the Leagues Cup round of 32, but his teammates stepped up to carry the day.

So he isn’t truly perfect from the spot, counting everything there is to count.

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“Obviously I’m not happy with those,” Gazdag said. “In the MLS Cup final, I slipped, so I was unlucky. I didn’t think too much about that — obviously I was angry, but I couldn’t do anything with that.”

The one in D.C., he said, “I was angry because it wasn’t a good PK for me. Maybe I was too confident.”

But he doesn’t dwell on those moments, he added, so he can keep his mind focused on the present.

“I just try to be positive, always,” he concluded.

That includes a willingness to continue being the Union’s leadoff taker in shootouts. It wasn’t his idea, in the way that some players want the task. (Others, like Cristiano Ronaldo, insist on shooting fifth so they can hog the cameras if they score the final kick.)

“The coaches always say that I should start it,” Gazdag said. “So that’s why I take the first, mostly, but it doesn’t really matter for me.”

And he has the same mindset in a situation that’s even rarer: taking multiple penalties in regulation of the same game. Or at least it’s rarer in most of the soccer world. Remarkably, it has happened three times for the Union this year: Feb. 26 and July 13 in the regular season and July 27 in the Leagues Cup.

“Most of the times when I got two PKs in a game, I changed the side” to shoot at, he said. “I think it was only one time that I went to the same side. But I’m just trying to look at the goalkeeper, how he’s behaving before the penalty, and then I bring my decision.”

The words of an expert, revealing a few details but no secrets. Now to see how long the streak keeps going for, and how far it takes the Union this year.

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