Early in the season, when the Red Bulls were scoring goals created by turnovers off the high press, you knew it couldn’t continue all year.
And it didn’t. Teams caught on and the offense dried up. But all that time the Red Bulls, with a number of new players this season, were slowly jelling and it was just a matter of time before it all came together.
Saturday night at Red Bull Arena, it all came together.
Playing without – and perhaps for – suspended coach Jesse Marsch, the Red Bulls passed the ball better than they have all season. Putting together a series of passing sequences and one-touch play, the Red Bulls scored three goals in the first 12 minutes and overwhelmed the New England Revolution, 4-1, to the delight of 18,640 fans.
“Credit to the guys,” said assistant coach Denis Hamlett, who took over while Marsch served a one-game suspension for his ejection late in the match against the Crew last weekend. “The message from me and Jesse this week was that when we are at home, we're in attack mode. We want to take the game to the team and tonight those guys were able to do that. I think once they got going, it was just a matter of finishing their chances. I think we've created a lot of that at home this year, but just haven't been able to finish them, and tonight we finished them and made the game look a lot easier.”
Easy indeed. The Red Bulls (7-6-5) vaulted into second place in the Eastern Conference as they took it to the team that eliminated them from the playoffs a year ago, one step from reaching MLS Cup.
“We talked before the game about having a good start and the word that I used was let’s just be ruthless,” team captain Dax McCarty said. “This is a team that has given us trouble the past couple of times we played them and it’s mainly because they outfought us and outworked us and beat us up on the physical end. We wanted to make sure we set the tone right from the opening whistle and get an early goal. Obviously getting three is like hitting the jackpot.”
Like the U.S. women in the World Cup final, the barrage of goals started early.
In the fourth minute, Sacha Kljestan sent a pass to Lloyd Sam on the right. Sam stopped, cut back, then dribbled back to his right and created enough room to loft a cross to the center of the box where Bradley Wright-Phillips found space between Revolution defenders Andrew Farrell and London Woodberry for a clean header into the net.
Five minutes later it was 2-0. Sam slipped a pass to Kljestan, who sent the ball to Wright-Phillips inside the arc. Wright-Phillips found Mike Grella at the top of the box and his pass led Sam on the right. Sam’s angled shot from 12 yards eluded Revolution goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth and settled into the lower left corner.
The nine-minute barrage ended in the 12th minute and was capped by a beautiful passing sequence. Kljestan pushed the ball up field to McCarty, whose one-touch pass was perfectly placed in path of Wright-Phillips in the right side of the box. From there, Wright-Phillips sped past Farrell and grounded a shot past Shuttleworth, again to the far corner, for his eighth goal of the season to make it 3-0.
“Excellent. Excellent performance,” Wright-Phillips said. “I said to Lloyd and Sasha when I got on the bench I was proud to be on the team. These are the type of things we do in training and it came off in 12 minutes and we won the game.”
Perhaps it was a coincidence that Wright-Phillips was back in his normal position as the lone striker up top. He said no, but the Red Bulls looked like the team that started the season on an offensive roll.
“We felt that with Lloyd back healthy, that was the team we wanted to put out on the field,” Hamlett said. “I think Lloyd's play opens up the middle of the field for Bradley, and I think his ability to cut under the defense helps us insurmountably, and when you get that package together you see what you saw tonight.”
And the Red Bulls could have had more. Grella lined a hard volley from 18 yards in the 27th minute that Shuttleworth did well to turn away, and Sam jabbed at the ball at the right post following a mix-up by the Revs in front of the net, but his shot went over the bar in the 31st minute.
The Revs (6-9-6) cut the deficit to 3-1 eight minutes before the break. Lee Nguyen’s cross from the right took a slight deflection off the leg of Red Bulls defender Matt Miazga and went straight to Andy Dorman in front of the net. With time and space, Dorman settled the ball, then slid it under Red Bulls goalkeeper Luis Robles.
The goal was originally called offside, but was changed after the referee and the referee’s assistant on the right conferred.
The Red Bulls capped the scoring in the 56th minute on defender Anthony Wallace’s first career goal. Sam’s cross from the right was headed away by the defense and settled by McCarty at the top of the box. McCarty played the ball back to Wallace, who drove a low, left-footed shot from 25 yards that deflected off two Revolution players and zipped into the lower left corner.
The goal was originally called an own goal but was later given credit to Wallace.
“(It’s) such a relief,” Wallace said. “It was a pleasure and an honor and a delight to be a part of something like that, especially what we did in the first half. You couldn't ask for a better start and I thank my teammates for that.
“It's been great getting games with the USL team. It keeps me sharp it keeps me tuned in and it keeps me fit most importantly, so it keeps me at a high level when I get a chance to step in with the first team.”
Hamlett was impressed by the play of Wallace, who was making just his second start of the year with the Red Bulls shorthanded on the back line due to injury and international call-ups.
“He’s been around, he's been patient, and although his name hasn't come up that much, I think he's been able to take advantage of being able to train with the first team and then applying that to Red Bulls II,” Hamlett said. “I think he felt that when his moment came, he'd be ready for that, and this wasn't an easy game for him to go into dealing with Teal (Bunbury) and sometimes (Juan) Agudelo.”
The Red Bulls should have had a fifth goal, but midfielder Sal Zizzo had his penalty kick in the 87th minute – and the resulting rebound shot – saved by Shuttleworth. The play capped a miserable night for Revolution defender Jose Goncalves, who was the victim on a couple of goals, was one of the defenders Wallace’s shot deflected off of, and who was ejected for his second yellow card of the match for the foul that led to the penalty kick.
Asked if he is beginning to feel like the player who scored 27 goals last season, Wright-Phillips said “I don’t know, because I haven’t felt like I’m not going to score. Every game I think that I’m going to get a chance. I just feel that it’s one of those seasons for me. Like I said at the beginning of the season, I wanted to balance out. I wanted more assists. I don’t think you are going to get 27 goals and 27 assists. I think I’m doing more for the team and I’m enjoying it.”
Grella feels the offense had been building and it was just a matter of time before it exploded.
“I think honestly, in my opinion, it was just time,” he said. “We did all the same things, we just did them a little bit better, executed a little bit better, cut out some of the mistakes that were clear as day, some of the easy goals we were letting in, some of the easy chances we were missing, and not creating. We just sort of tweaked what we wanted to do and that’s been proving to be working big time.”
