The New York Red Bulls fell to the Columbus Crew, 3-0, Saturday night in Columbus. Despite winning two of their first three games of the season, Red Bulls head coach Sandro Schwarz's team could not keep the momentum going against the defending MLS Cup champions.
Columbus opened the scoring in the 13th minute when a long ball was played over the top by a Columbus defender for Yaw Yeboah. Yeboah dribbled in down the left side of the field and passed across to Cucho who beat Red Bulls defender Noah Eile to the ball and roofed the ball into the net past a diving Carlos Coronel.
They say, 'defense wins championships,' Columbus indeed showed why they are the defending MLS cup champs against the Red Bull's dynamic midfield duo of Emil Forsberg and Lewis Morgan. In stoppage time of the first half, Red Bull earned its first shot on goal when Morgan made a short backheel pass to Forsberg who took a shot easily saved by the Crew goalkeeper.
In the 56th minute, Morgan made an uncharacteristic mistake, losing possession of the ball at midfield, which led to the Crew's second goal. Cucho took possession and played a perfect through ball up ahead for Jacyn Russell-Rowe, who went in one-on-one with Coronel and scored with his right foot.
In the 57th and 58th minute, Schwarz made two substitutions; recent signing Dennis Gjengaar came on for Frankie Amaya, and Corey Burke came on for Elias Manoel. Despite these moves, the Red Bulls' chances of getting back in the game dried up when Columbus scored off a corner kick in the 66th minute to make it 3-0.
In the 74th minute, Kyle Duncan was shown a yellow card for taking down Yeboah outside the 18-yard box. Cucho took the free kick, curling it about a foot over the bar, which let the Red Bulls off the hook. In stoppage time, insult was added to injury as Daniel Edelman was shown his second yellow and sent off for a hard challenge.
The Red Bulls left Lower.com field with bitter tastes in their mouths for being shut out after such a strong performance the week before. After the game, Coach Schwarz described where the Red Bulls had difficulties with the reigning MLS Cup champs.
This was a learning game, and after I said the same words that we had to learn from this game. And you saw the difference, the team that won last season the MLS Cup. They played with confidence in all positions, and you saw the speed. We had some troubles, to be honest. In the first half in all phases of the game, we lost.
We also lost too easily the balls in some transition moments and Columbus was especially in the first half. We were better at the beginning of the second half but then an easy mistake then the transition goal from Columbus and yes, but we deserved today. This one also deserves these three points for Columbus.
Not much time has passed since Emil Forsberg was given the Red Bulls captaincy, but the Swede is already starting to speak like a leader.
We saw today a lot of things that we have to do better as a team like defending the ball and with the ball as well. So, it was a lesson for us today. I think we lost against a better team, no question about it. It's okay to have these kinds of losses. Sometimes you have them in a season. The most important thing is for us now to bounce back and how we bounce back. And I'm sure of that, I think we have been developing well.
Today, we played against a better team. We did some stuff we normally don't do so I mean it's kind of a tough result, but we deserve to lose and yes, it's not a good feeling. But we are going to bounce back, and we have to bounce back and do better next time.
New York's 'red and white' will have a chance to bounce back in front of their home fans on Mar. 23 when they take on Inter Miami CF.
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