A first half Jordan Morris goal ended up being the difference as the Seattle Sounders shut out New York at Lumen Field on Saturday night.
It was Seattle's only shot on target of the night.
"We started the match too slow," Head Coach Troy Lesesne said. "And when you start to slow and you let Seattle a team like this, control the tempo and create chances then they're going to be good enough to hurt you. That's exactly what they did."
The second half saw chances to equalize for the Red Bulls, but despite Seattle going down to ten men after Joao Paulo received a second yellow card, New York couldn't find a way to equalize and the match ended 1-0.
"We finally started coming into the game with some of the ideas that we that we are trying to work on, we created chances ourselves," Lesesne said. "Would have loved to have seen a couple of the chances materializing to a goal because I think they're really point blank efforts from Elias, two really good efforts from him. But I feel confident he's going to keep getting in those positions.
"The more we're there, we're going to score goals. There's no doubt about it," the Head Coach said. "That's a positive to continue to see the fight in the group. The fight never stopped. And that's important going forward because we got to fight again on Wednesday."
The Red Bulls were without key players like defender Andrés Reyes, but midfielder Luquinhas made his first MLS appearance since April 2.
New York and Seattle are now tied for the most points at home in MLS since 2010 with 436.
The Red Bulls will now travel more than 2,700 miles to Miami to take on Inter Miami CF on Wednesday, May 31. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET with coverage on New York Red Bulls Radio in English via Tune In, the New York Red Bulls app, and NewYorkRedBulls.com.
