Red Bulls season-ticket holders and the thousands of fans who buy single-game tickets are experiencing something very different this year. They’re sitting home on Saturday nights.
That’s right. Major League Soccer’s prime playing day each week has mostly been without the Red Bulls, who have played the majority of their 10 games on Wednesday, Fridays and Sundays, and the few times they have played on a Saturday it has been a road game.
“That’s just an element of the schedule and you really have no choice,” midfielder Dax McCarty said. “You play whatever schedule they put on the docket for you. With the evolving league, it’s getting bigger, more TV time, more channels, bigger network of people they want to reach, you have to come up with unique ways to get ratings higher, and television dictates a lot of that.
“It’s obviously more difficult for the players without the consistency, but we’ve just dealt with it. Every team in the league has to deal with it so there’s no point dwelling on it.”
Still, the Red Bulls have yet to play a home game on a Saturday night, and that trend will continue this weekend when they host the Philadelphia Union Sunday night at Red Bull Arena. And it won’t end there. The next two weeks the Red Bulls are at Seattle on Sunday, May 31, then at Houston on Friday, June 5. Then comes an off week before they have their first Saturday home game, June 20 against Vancouver.
For those keeping track, June 20 will be 16 weeks into the 34-week season.
“We saw from the beginning the schedule has changed from years ago,” defender Roy Miller said. “They put the games on Friday, Wednesday, but right now, for the team, it’s good. We don’t have a problem to play those days. Every three days is tough because we need to recover, to get in form for the next game, but things are good right now. It’s a little different, but for us it’s not a problem.
“For the club, it’s important to play on the weekend, like Saturday or Sunday, because it’s a good time for the fans to come to the game, but sometimes they have contracts with TV or the sponsors. We can’t do anything about that. We just go out and enjoy it and play the games. It’s always good to have a full stadium, but that’s the schedule and you have to play it.”
The situation would not have been as bad if the Red Bulls had not changed their schedule to accommodate the Montreal Impact’s advancement in the CONCACAF Champions League. That game would have been at Red Bull Arena on Saturday, April 4. Now it’s on a Wednesday in October. Also, the Red Bulls switched the home game against the Colorado Rapids from Saturday, July 25 to Wednesday, April 29 to clear that week for the International Champions Cup.
But even with those changes the schedule is still a bit lopsided. The Red Bulls opened the season on a Sunday at Sporting Kansas City, played D.C. United at home, also on a Sunday, then played two straight Saturdays, against the Crew and D.C. United, both on the road.
They followed that with three straight home games – a Friday vs. the Earthquakes, a Sunday vs. the Galaxy and a Wednesday vs. the Rapids – before another Saturday road game, this one against the Revolution. The past two games were home against New York City FC on a Sunday and at FC Dallas last Friday.
“It has been a little strange, but you just have to make do with what we have,” coach Jesse Marsch said. “We said from the beginning we won’t worry or make excuses, just focus on the job that needs to be done, and we’ve done a good job with that.
“It’s made for some lopsided work weeks, that’s for sure. Like (Monday,) we used an extra day to go over some tactical things and some things that, on the field, weren’t normal training sessions. That was a little bit lighter. We’ve tried to figure out things in the schedule to use to our advantage instead of worrying about the challenges, and so far it’s been good.”
Marsch says the odd schedule hasn’t affected the players, which is strange considering all athletes are usually creatures of habit.
“Typically, if you play Saturday to Saturday, you use Sunday as a (regeneration day), then have Monday off and train Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. You kind of have the normal ebb and flow of the week,” he said. “We haven’t had that. It’s meant we’ve had a lot of midweek days off. This week wehave Thursday off, train hard (Tuesday) and (Wednesday) and build our way toward the game. I think it’s been good mentally and physically.”
As football players have gotten used to playing on Monday nights, and now Thursday nights, soccer players are getting used to playing pretty much any day of the week, especially as MLS has expanded its television package, but playing on different days each week also throws off the practice routine.
“It’s very strange,” McCarty said. “You’d obviously like to play on Saturdays because that’s when you think you can get your best home-field advantage. That’s when you think people can make it out to the game the most, but obviously we just play with whatever MLS puts together for us and we move forward from there.
“It keeps you on your toes. It keeps you tuned in to what you have to be ready for. With quick turnarounds you have to be aware of taking care of yourself and taking care of your body. We’ve seen in the highest level of competitions in Europe and South America, these teams are playing once every three or four days once the meat of the schedule gets going, so MLS wants to be on par with those teams and I don’t think it’s that big of a deal for the players.”
