Surging Red Bulls back in East title race
After all the hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing over a slow start, the Red Bulls have seemingly turned the corner — and found themselves in the same place they were a year ago. And that season ended in a Supporters’ Shield.
The odds of defending that silverware aren’t great. But after an attitude adjustment, Saturday’s 7-0 destruction of rival New York City FC has them back in the mix in the Eastern Conference and nearly right on with last year’s pace.
“We’ve put ourselves back on good ground. We’re up there in the East. We’re moving towards the top and we have a bit of momentum now. Now we have to carry that into our next few games,’’ said midfielder Sacha Kljestan, who has had six of his MLS-high eight assists during the Red Bulls six-game rebirth.
“For this moment right now it’s a defining win, because we’ve had way too many losses at this early point in the season. We’ve started to right our ship.”
It took some work for the Red Bulls to get back on their feet at all. They’d stumbled out of the gate just 1-6, outscored 15-5. But since an April 24 comeback win over Orlando, they’ve gone 4-1-1 — outscoring their foes 16-5 — to claw back into the Eastern Conference race.
The Red Bulls are just two points behind first-place Philadelphia and only a point off last year’s pace.
No, they won’t put up a touchdown every game, or get four set-piece goals off amateurish marking. And yes, NYCFC’s preference for playing out of the back and Yankee Stadium’s small confines both played right into the Red Bulls’ hands and made their high press dou- bly-effective. But coach Jesse Marsch held the locker room together and kept the frustration from turning into finger-pointing.
“The first seven games we were 1-6 and there was a lot of frustration in the locker room and around the organization, because we know we’re better than that, but for whatever reason it wasn’t working,’’ goalkeeper Luis Robles said. “Now looking over the last six, we’re 4-1-1 and you start to see why we were successful.
“The defending was good. We’re winning second balls, putting balls in the net, we’re dangerous on set pieces. That turned out to be the difference. Wednesday in Chicago [a 1-0 victory) we knew they were going to counter. [Saturday] we knew they wanted to play. For us to be that flexible and still execute the way we want to play gives us confidence we’ve got so many things that can work.”
Why did it take so long to work? A hangover, essentially. They were drunk on their own success.
Granted, they’ve had to deal with teams adjusting to the second year of their high press by either playing long-ball or laying back and daring them to build their own attacks. And their centerback injuries (lessened by the acquisition of Aurelien Collin) hurt. But their biggest problem wasn’t a matter of tactics, but temperament.
“After coming off a good year, there’s something to overcome, some built-in overconfidence and complacency,’’ Marsch said. “But now with a tough start, it just knocked some of that out, and we’ve tried to build back in all the little details and the work ethic to get us back to where we think we can be.”