Julian Hall notched a first-half brace for Red Bull New York as Michael Bradley picked up his first victory as Head Coach.
"There were a lot of good things, a lot of really good things," Bradley said. "We talked before the game about the idea that you work all preseason, and then you get your chance in the first game when the lights come on, to put it all to the test. And you can't ever predict exactly how it's going to go. But we wanted to make sure that we showed our ideas, our personality, our football and for the first game, there was a lot of good stuff."
Hall, 17, scored just eight minutes into the match, off an dazzling, dribbling assist from Emil Forsberg.
The second came off a corner kick, as 16-year-old Adri Mehmeti settled, drove to the endline and cut it across for Hall to smash it home.Â
"It's easy to forget how young [Hall] still is, because he's been a professional for a few years, but he has really, really big qualities, and we've got to keep pushing him so that he can take the next step," Bradley said. "And tonight was a really good start for him. He had a really good preseason. So we were all really excited for him, that he could take the good preseason and turn it into really strong performance."
Ethan Horvath made four saves in his MLS and RBNY debut. Orlando were able to scratch one back in the dying moments of the match.
Hall scored his first and second MLS goals of the season and the fourth and fifth of his MLS career. The Manhattan, N.Y. native recorded his first career MLS multi-goal game. He is the fifth player in MLS history to score multiple goals in a single game at 17 years or younger.
His eighth minute goal is the third fastest goal by New York in a season opener, only trailing Dave van den Bergh (2008) in the first minute and Andreas Ivan (2019) in the sixth minute.
Hall also became the 31st different player in 31 seasons to score the first goal of the season in franchise history.
Mehmeti tallied his first career MLS assist and became the second youngest player in franchise history to tally an assist at 16 years, 321 days old.
With Hall, Mehmeti and Matthew Dos Santos (17) all earning the start, it became the first time in MLS history three players age 17 or younger started for a club in the same game.
New York will host the New England Revolution for their 2026 Home Opener at Sports Illustrated Stadium on Saturday, February 28.
Kickoff is set for 2:30 p.m. ET with coverage on Apple TV in English and Spanish, and Red Bulls Radio in English via the Red Bull New York app and NewYorkRedBulls.com.
