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HARRISON - A lot has changed since May 16.
Specifically in the soccer world, the FIFA World Cup took over North America and by all metrics, it was an incredible success. For most casual soccer fans, their perception of the sport changed drastically.
Over the past few years, the attendance numbers at Sports Illustrated Stadium have varied depending on who was playing on the field. In the case of Red Bull New York (6-7-4, 22 points), it’s been a mixed bag. Saturday, however, the stadium was lively and the post-World Cup boom appeared to bring in more fans than usual.
It helps that Red Bull are running a program called “First Match on Us” in an effort to bring new fans to the stadium.
Playing in their second match since returning from the extended break, Red Bull wanted to get back to their winning ways quickly. Following a disastrous 3-1 away loss to the Philadelphia Union Wednesday night, the results had to be better against Charlotte FC (7-6-4, 25 points).
For New York, their first home match since that aforementioned May 16 date didn’t start the way they hoped it would. Truthfully, it wasn’t pretty.
Charlotte star Pep Biel commenced the scoring on the pitch with a goal in the seventh minute to hand his squad a 1-0 lead. Moments later, Ashley Westwood quickly put the away side up 2-0 in the 12th minute.
The problems on New York’s backline have been an ongoing issue for them and fans have demanded better play out of them all season.
Postgame, head coach Michael Bradley gave the press his overall assessment of Saturday’s match and detailed what improvements need to be made.
“Generally, I thought our ideas and our way of trying to push the game from 2-0 down were pretty good,” Bradley said. “We missed the last pass, the last cross, the last shot and the last dribble. We got into really good spots, but we weren’t quite able to find the decisive bit of quality, speed or execution. That’s certainly something we have to continue working on.”
Entering Saturday's match, Charlotte were actually the club that gave the New York backline their worst outing of the season a few months back. In their previous meeting in March, Charlotte thrashed Red Bull badly with New York allowing six goals to “The Crown.” In large part to a red card handed to Gustav Berggren, New York had one of their worst defeats in that contest.
On the attack, the opportunities for New York were there in the first half. With 12 total shots in the first 45 minutes plus stoppage time, there were moments for Red Bull. Unfortunately, Kristijan Kahlina is one of the best goalkeepers in Major League Soccer (MLS) for a reason and he proceeded to save four shots in the first half.
Into the second half, momentum favored Red Bull heavily and yet, nothing appeared to work. For Charlotte’s sake, they did enough to hold on to their 2-0 lead. This was not the case on Wednesday night when they allowed two second half goals to Atlanta United FC at home.
Interestingly, Bradley decided to sub off captain Emil Forsberg in the 70th minute in favor of 19-year-old Mijahir Jiménez. Forsberg was responsible for five of New York’s 24 total shots and he had played strong throughout the match so the decision was questionable. Jiménez was fine, but it was still interesting to see.
New York also saw their fair share of bookings in the second half in a match where their emotions caught up to them. Notably, youngster Adri Mehmeti was sent off after being shown his second yellow card late in the match.
Bradley addressed the media postgame about Mehmeti getting sent off.
“He and I spoke inside. At that point, it was just about making sure he went inside and didn’t do anything that was going to get him into more trouble. He and I spoke, and that part was important after a situation on a night like this. Adri is a really, really talented young player. He has so many good qualities. He’s been so important for us this year, and it’s all part of growing and maturing. He’ll learn from it in good ways. He’s going in a really good direction.”
Following the league’s All-Star Game on Wednesday, Red Bull will host Orlando City SC on Saturday, August 1 at 7:30 p.m.