A year ago, with a berth in the MLS Cup Final on the line, the Red Bulls needed to win a game against the New England Revolution in Gillette Stadium, a building they had rarely won in before. And they couldn’t do it.
Tonight, with the Supporters’ Shield on the line, the Red Bulls need to win a game against the Chicago Fire in Toyota Park, a building they have never won in before.
If there was ever a time to break the streak.
“I don’t know what it is,” goalkeeper Luis Robles said. “It’s crazy because we really haven’t played well there. As I look back, since 2013, it doesn’t even feel like a tough place to play. It’s not like they have rambunctious fans. It’s strange.”
The Red Bulls are 0-9-4 in their 13 games at Toyota Park, and they haven’t won on the road in Chicago since the 2005 season, when they captured a 3-0 victory at Soldier Field. All told in the Windy City, the Red Bulls are 3-15-7.
“I had never lost at Toyota Park with other teams,” defender Sal Zizzo said. “… I think it’s just a coincidence, as most curses are. It happens like that. There’s weird things in life and that’s just the way it goes.”
But in all those years, the Red Bulls (17-10-6, 57 points, first place) have never been this good, and the Fire (8-19-6, 30 points, last place) have never been this bad. So this is as good a time as any to break the winless streak at Toyota Park, especially with the Supporters’ Shield on the line.
“It’s a challenge every game, especially now at this point of the season,” Red Bulls midfielder Felipe said. “It means a lot. Going there, we have to be really focused in knowing that they’re a good team. They didn’t have the best season but they’re still a good team. They still have a lot of guys that could be dangerous, so we still have to go 100 percent and take three points because we can get the Supporters’ Shield.
Red Bulls midfielder Dax McCarty prefers to look at it another way.
“We have to approach it almost like a play-in game, where the winner moves on to the next round because, to us, it’s a must-win game,” he said. “We don’t want to leave our fate in the hands of what any other team does. We put ourselves in a position to be successful this year, top two in the Eastern Conference was one of our goals, we’ve secured that, and now that the Supporters’ Shield is within sight that’s our next goal, and that’s the only thing we have on our minds.
“It’s a tough team. They’ve given us a lot of problems this year. We’ve learned from those mistakes. We have to play with no fear. We can’t worry about the past or our history at Toyota Park. We haven’t won there. We’re not going to think about that. We’re just going to go into it as just another game, but it’s a big game we have to win.”
A victory will clinch the Supporters’ Shield, guarantee home field advantage throughout the playoffs, and ensure MLS Cup will be played at Red Bull Arena, should the Red Bulls advance that far. They can also capture the Shield with a loss or a tie, depending on what FC Dallas does in its game against the San Jose Earthquakes, which begins at 7 p.m., the same time the Red Bulls-Fire game starts, but nobody on the Red Bulls wants to even consider that scenario.
It's win and come home and get ready for the playoffs.
“I don’t think we’re going to play situations so much, maybe we get an update at halftime of what the other team is doing,” Zizzo said. “For the most part we’re going to play our game, we’re going to play what’s gotten us to that point. If Dallas is up 4-0 at half, and we need to really push at the end, we’re gonna.”
Robles agreed.
“This team responds well to pressure,” he said. “With all the variables at play it helps us out because not only do we have the resolve, but the hunger to do well. There was a lot of things stacked up against us, but this whole season the team’s been playing with a chip on our shoulder, so let’s just keep the chip on our shoulder and let’s go and see what happens.”
The first meeting this season came at Toyota Park. The Fire used its speed and counter-attacking ability to record a 3-2 victory. The second meeting, at Red Bull Arena, saw the Red Bulls down 2-0 midway through the first half, but rallied for a 3-2 victory.
“They’ve given us trouble both games we played them,” Red Bulls coach Jesse Marsch said. “So they’re dangerous, we know that, they’re explosive. They should fancy their matchup against us because they’ve done well, and at the same time we feel like we learned a lot from those two games and they made us better, so we feel when we step on the field this time we’ll be able to manage their strengths better then we have in the past. We’re aware how they can hurt us and we’ll make sure we deal with it.”
Defender Matt Miazga is ready to return to the lineup after missing four games – two to international duty and two to a red-card suspension – and he expects the Red Bulls to take the game to the Fire just like they did against the Philadelphia Union last weekend.
“Nothing really changes,” Miazga said. “We always focus on ourselves the way we want to play, the way we want to go about things. Obviously the Fire is going to prove to be a good test on the road at a place that’s very difficult in the past for us, but we’re going to change that.”
With the Fire long out of the playoff race, the big question is which Fire team will show up, the one that gave the Red Bulls fits this season, or the one that seemed to go through the motions in a 4-0 loss to D.C. United last weekend?
“That’s a good question,” midfielder Mike Grella said. “Some of those players have a lot to prove. You’re always playing for your job, ultimately, so it’s a tricky one. They’ll be up for the game, try to spoil it for us. They’re a very good team, they just didn’t get the results they wanted this season, so it will be interesting to see how that game plays out, but to be sure, we’ll be ready for it.”
So the Red Bulls are a game away from claiming their second Supporters’ Shield in three years and, of course, all the spoils that go with it.
“It would be awesome,” Zizzo said. “Coming down the stretch run I think all of us had in our head when we’d speak to each other, it was kind of the chatter that we wanted to win the Shield. It validates all the hard work we put into it, all the fitness we’ve done.
“Obviously there wasn’t too much hype about us coming into the preseason, coming out of the preseason even, but all of us really believed in our abilities and kind of knew what type of team we were even if the public didn’t think that. Obviously the public has caught on lately, but we want to prove we are the top team.”
All it will take is a victory in a stadium where the Red Bulls have never won. Doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it?”
