Dániel Gazdag is fully deserving of the Union’s all-time scoring record

The Union suffered their first regular-season loss of the year on Saturday, and the 2-1 defeat to Real Salt Lake at Subaru Park was pretty unsatisfying.

A team with a 14-9 advantage in shots, including 5-4 in shots on target, and a 1.84-0.48 advantage in expected goals shouldn’t look as disjointed as the Union did, especially after a bye weekend of rest.

So not for nothing did captain Alejandro Bedoya offer some stern words in the locker room, telling reporters that “we should never be losing this type of game at home.”

“Honestly, two big, big, freaking chances that we should be putting away in the box, that we should be finishing. So that’s disappointing,” he said. “I’m really frustrated, because I wanted to keep this [unbeaten] streak going, and it was there for the taking. Tonight at home, [in the] second half, we did more than enough to win this game and we come out losing.”

But something else happened in the game that bears highlighting, and remembering for a longer time. Dániel Gazdag’s 50th-minute goal didn’t just tie the game, it tied him with Sébastien Le Toux atop the Union’s all-time scoring charts across all competitions.

» READ MORE: Union are no longer unbeaten in MLS regular season following home loss to Real Salt Lake

Le Toux will forever be part of Union lore, the first star in team history and the first player — sometimes the only player — whose name many casual Philly fans knew. He’s still part of the organization today, working on in-house media platforms including radio broadcasts and a weekly TV show on PHL17.

As cherished as he is, though, he shouldn’t have been alone atop the scoring charts for the last eight years. Records are made to be broken, and it matters that no Union player has even come close to Le Toux’s 56 goals until now.

Consider the strikers who’ve come through Subaru Park since Le Toux’s last Union game in July 2016. Kacper Przybylko scored 40, C.J. Sapong scored 38, Cory Burke scored 30, and Jay Simpson (remember him?) a whopping four. (If you want to go back a way, Carlos Ruiz had seven, and Fernando Aristeguieta? Just five.)

There are lots of reasons why the Union has won just one major trophy in their 15-year history, but the lack of serious goal-scoring firepower for so many of those years is the biggest. It says a lot about the arc of that history that the team’s No. 3 all-time scorer isn’t Przybylko (who’s No. 4) or Sapong (No. 5), but Julián Carranza: 41 goals in 89 games over two seasons and change.

» READ MORE: The Union want to expand Subaru Park, but know it won’t be easy: ‘We want to be better, bigger’

Even Mikael Uhre is in the top 10, for all the criticism he gets, with 28 goals. That’s tied with Jack McInerney, another blast from the past, and Bedoya.

It also says something that the player who will soon stand alone at No. 1 is a midfielder, not a striker — though as Bedoya correctly pointed out Saturday night, Gazdag often gets as far forward in attacks as strikers do.

“I think it’s a credit to him and his movement, because I don’t think he’s like the typical ‘number 10′ as we see some of the guys in the league play,” he said. “He’s always getting in the box, coming with some great late runs, and always playing off the back shoulders of the defenders and in support of the strikers. And whenever balls bounce out, in, and around the box, he’s there.”

That instinct has been honed over many years of hard work, and Bedoya knows it when he sees it.

“There’s a magic to that,” he said, “to have that ability to find the ball in the box, and he has that ability.”

» READ MORE: The Union opened a new brew hall next to Subaru Park on Saturday

Some critics might poke a hole in Gazdag’s feat by pointing out how many of his goals have come from penalty kicks. The counterargument is pretty quick: They all count, penalty kicks test mental strength as much as skill, and converting 18 of 18 attempts last year is quite a feat.

Goalkeeper Andre Blake put Gazdag’s achievements in perspective as the last remaining Union player who played with Le Toux.

“There’s been guys at teams long enough that didn’t do it, so hats off to Dani,” Blake said. “He’s really effective, he’s efficient, and he goes out there and he gets the job done. He deserves it, and hopefully he can keep going.”

How did Gazdag feel about the milestone? Jim Curtin predicted in his postgame news conference that the Hungarian “would give anything for the three points tonight,” and the player proved his manager right.

“Yeah, it’s still annoying that we lost today,” he said. “It would have been much better if we’d won the game and I’d scored. It’s a nice number, but it’s still annoying, the game today.”

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

That’s the way he should have reacted, of course. The rest of us can tend to the history books.

A while back, Uhre scored a nice goal in a game — exactly which one has faded from memory — and a colleague sent me a note saying he was better than Le Toux.

Yes he is, I responded. They all are.

I didn’t mean that as a knock on Le Toux as much as I meant to show how far the Union have come since those early years. The current team is miles better than Le Toux’s era, and that’s how it should be. The overall talent level of players always gets better over time.

Saturday’s loss will sting, and should until the Union get back on the field Tuesday against Seattle. But there’s nothing wrong with appreciating Gazdag’s milestone, and how long it took for someone to finally match Le Toux.

» READ MORE: How the Union can play in next year’s Club World Cup