In the end, the first-ever match between the Red Bulls and New York City FC was everything you could have hoped for. It had goals – early and late – great saves, yellow cards, a red card, tempers flaring and a sold-out stadium that was rocking from the first minute to the last.
There’s something that clicks in a player when a stadium is full and the crowd is behind him. There’s a lift to his game, an energy that propels him above and beyond the norm. And Sunday night at Red Bull Arena, every Red Bulls player felt it from the 25,217 fans that stood, sang and chanted right to the final whistle of the 2-1 victory.
You heard all week how records didn’t matter, and it proved to be true, but the pressure to win the first-ever meeting was clearly there, whether the players wanted to admit it or not. But the Red Bulls did have an edge. They were the established team in the city, they had the home field and they had a healthier, more cohesive team.
They also had an edge in coaching, and that played a huge part in the victory.
That may not seem apparent looking at both resumes, but this game was not about a resume. Yes, NYCFC coach Jason Kreis is in his eighth year in the league and guided Real Salt Lake to a championship in 2009. And yes, Red Bulls coach Jesse Marsch only had one year as a coach, with Montreal in 2012. The difference that night was apparent in which coach had his team prepared for the unexpected, and in the derby, that was clearly Marsch.
“Jesse said earlier in the week, be prepared for red cards, be prepared for a lot of goals, be prepared for craziness,” midfielder Sacha Kljestan said. “So I think we dealt with it pretty well.”
And that’s just what happened.
“Yeah, that sums up Jesse,” said forward Bradley Wright-Phillips, who scored both goals. “We have done a few sessions playing against a man up, so he leaves nothing to chance. Every little detail, we know. What I was thinking on the pitch, I have played against 10 men and it’s very difficult.”
Marsch also had his team playing with energy and emotion from the start and it paid off with a goal by Wright-Phillips just four minutes into the match. But the Red Bulls kept the pressure on and NYCFC never had a solid scoring chance in the first half while the Red Bulls could have scored at least two more before the break. Felipe had his shot pushed aside by NYCFC goalkeeper Josh Saunders in the 25th minute, and Wright-Phillips was denied by Saunders one-on-one in first-half stoppage time.
But it was how the Red Bulls reacted to the red card to defender Matt Miazga in the 36th minute that proved telling. The team rolled up its sleeves and went to work because they knew it would be a battle the rest of the way.
“We have talked about if we go a man down what the tactics need to look like,” Marsch said. “We still want to find moments to try and press and now compress the field and win balls, and then when we do play forward and see if we can catch teams on the counter we were able to do that effectively tonight.
“… In the end, the test of the will of this team and the mentality and what it takes to be when you're a man down, I thought we grew so much today, and it was a character win and I'm proud of our team. I'm proud of our team probably more now than ever.”
By the time the Red Bulls made it 2-0 seven minutes into the second half you’d forgotten they were playing a man down.
“I think the early goal was huge. We've been talking about better starts so obviously that was big,” Marsch said. “I think the second goal was probably even bigger because when you're down a man, and again, with the way that we're trying to play even when we're down a man, to get that second goal gives you a little bit of breathing room and knowing that you can still make one mistake, but keep yourself moving forward so every goal's big in every game, but I thought the timing of both goals was very vital.”
But all the energy expended playing 10v11 finally caught up to the Red Bulls. NYCFC scored with 14 minutes to play and pressed for an equalizer before time ran out.
“I think that this cements a lot of the things that we've been trying to build and trying to put together, and now to see the team go on the field, especially in the second half, and understand what it really meant to play for each other, what it meant to be tactically aware, to react, to stay tuned in,” Marsch said.
“I felt like the focus on the details of what it was going to take to win that game was at the highest level for just about every single guy on the field for us, and that's going to make us better, and somehow we've got to follow all that and harness it and make sure that every time we step on the field that as much as we've been playing well that we can do that at the highest level every time.”
So the first of many New York derbies is in the books. The game, for all it was built up to be, lived up to expectations. And here’s the best news. The next one is just seven weeks away.
Frank Giase has covered Major League Soccer since the league's inception in 1996. Follow him on twitter at @Frank Giase. He can also be reached at fgiase@gmail.com.
