Union ready for next installment in budding Red Bulls rivalry

The rivalries don’t start counting, Jim Curtin has long said, until the games begin. It’s fine to be plunked in geographic proximity to another team, but that’s only meaningful for rival fans’ viewing ease.

Now, with two playoff appearances against each other in three years, the dynamic between the Union and New York Red Bulls is shaping up to look more like a rivalry. The next installment comes Saturday, when the second-seeded Union (14-8-12, 54 points) welcome the No. 7 Red Bulls (13-12-9, 48 points) to Subaru Park for the first round of the MLS Cup playoffs.

The only playoff win in seven Union tries came in that same setting in 2018, the Union needing extra time for a 4-3 win over the Red Bulls, won by Marco Fabian in the 105th minute. That game looms mostly in the background, one of many factors in the growing animosity between the team.

The Red Bulls went 7-1-4 down the stretch to bull their way into the postseason. The Union finished on a 6-1-4 run.

“The proximity makes it a rivalry, but as more and more of these games come in and the stories that can get told through history and time, I think that’s how real rivalries are built, and they’re not manufactured,” Curtin said. “Now we’ll have another game to add to the folklore.”

Part of the appeal is the clubs’ shared DNA. Ernst Tanner was reared in the Red Bull system in Salzburg, and the ideals he’s installed are a modified version of the high-press-at-all-costs mentality New York favors. The Red Bulls’ late-season charge was owed in part to goalie Carlos Coronel, a Salzburg pipeline product who spent the first half of the 2019 with the Union.

Both teams in 2021 are plenty comfortable without the ball (Red Bulls would prefer it), and view the opponent in possession as an effective way to create chances. Both are excellent when they score first this year — 14-2-3 for the Union, 13-5-4 for the Red Bulls — but are winless in 23 games combined when conceding first.

Goals change games in all circumstances. But here, it’s heightened.

“Most teams play best with a lead and scoring first, when you do the data on most teams in the league. But with us, it’s magnified,” Curtin said. “When we get one, we usually get a second and we can kind of make it hard on teams. That first goal, in this game in the playoffs, is always very, very critical. But I think that gets magnified even more when you have two teams that are so similar, that know each other so well, (that) have good goalkeeping. Every inch is going to matter.”

Both teams are among the stingiest in MLS: The Red Bulls allowed the fewest goals this season at 33, tied with two other teams; the Union are next at 35 allowed. But with 39 goals scored, the Red Bulls were 10th in the East and last among the 14 playoff qualifiers in both conferences. They’ve scored multiple goals just twice in their last 19 outings. Hence even more emphasis on the Union scoring early to make the Red Bulls chase two.

Three meetings this year have been characteristically tight: A pair of 1-1 draws at Red Bull Arena and the 1-0 Union home win on May 15 thanks to a Cory Burke goal.

To Curtin, such elements indicate something weird is likely to happen. And he’ll have his team ready for that crazy turn that seems to happen whenever rivals collide.

“We said to our guys, the games between us are always very, very highly contested games,” Curtin said. “They’re always very close games. They’re usually, at the most, two-goal games. So they’re very tight.”