The New York Red Bulls finally overcame their home jinx in the MLS playoffs by beating Sporting Kansas City 2-1 at Red Bull Arena on Thursday night, to win the Eastern Conference elimination game.
In a game that featured two sides clearly showing the stresses of a long season, Bradley Wright-Phillips added two more goals to his already record-breaking haul for the year, including a headed winner in the final minute of normal time, as New York came from behind for their first ever playoff win at their home stadium.
Sporting came into the game as defending champions, but had been knocked out of the Champions League, then beaten at home by the Red Bulls in their final regular season game, as their season slowly unraveled at the end in a welter of injuries, suspensions and World Cup absences for key players, that along with a packed schedule had strained the side to breaking point
As jubilant Red Bull players celebrated Wright-Phillips winner, the stadium screens cut to close ups of the exhausted faces of Sporting’s center backs Aurelien Collin and Matt Besler. Normally the rocks at the heart of a redoubtable Sporting defense, the two men’s loss of a yard at crucial moments had been symbolic of Sporting’s faltering campaign.
Sporting had invited pressure after sitting back behind Dom Dwyer’s 53rd minute goal — the result of an interception and brilliant through ball from Benny Feilhaber — and ultimately it caught up with them, as the Red Bulls found spaces they hadn’t been able to fashion earlier in the game.
Many of those opportunities came down the left, as Thierry Henry, playing in what could have been his last game, tormented the third string right back Kevin Ellis, with a series of flicks and feints that made up for the yards he has lost in pace in recent years. It was Henry’s cut back for Wright-Phillips that brought the Red Bulls level in the 77th minute, and from the Red Bulls crowd thinking they’d seen this version of a home playoff game play out in disappointing many times before, the mood switched completely to one of expectation that a tired Kansas City team could be killed off.
So it proved, though there was an element of fortune about the winner. Peguy Luyindula’s perfect through ball down the line for Ambroise Oyongo in the 90th minute, looked to have been wasted as the Cameroon international skewed his cross high into the air. But neither goalkeeper Eric Kronberg or Besler came for the ball and it fell to Wright-Phillips, whose glancing header crept in off the far post.
It wasn’t the cleanest of goals this season, from the man whose regular season MLS record-equaling 27 goals had been celebrated before the match with a giant fan tifo riffing on the BMW logo and calling him the “ultimate scoring machine”. And after the striker had missed a routine first half header, the suspicion that yet another Red Bulls striker may be about to go missing in the playoffs began to grow. But as it turned out Wright-Phillips would hit his mark when it mattered.
Cue pandemonium in the Arena, and a few minutes later there were more cheers as the Red Bulls celebrated that first playoff win. It’s only a first step in their campaign and a reunion with the Conference winners D.C. United, who knocked them out in a storm-ravaged series two years ago, will offer sterner challenges. But having lost the last four home playoff games in successive years, the Red Bulls will feel they’ve finally shaken a demon that had haunted even last year’s Supporters Shield winning team.
The Kansas City coach Peter Vermes had tried to rally his side with the frequently stated playoff maxim that a new season started with the playoffs, but after the game he had to concede that “we ran out of bodies” as his side’s famed high tempo pressing game made only fleeting appearances. Sporting’s season ends now. New York’s season, and perhaps Henry’s career, continues a little longer at least.
New York Red Bulls: Robles; Eckersley, Olave, Sekagya, Miller; McCarty, Alexander (Luyindula 65); Sam, Cahill (Lade 90 +3), Henry; Wright-Phillips
Sporting KC: Kronberg; Ellis, Collin, Besler, Sinovic; Nagamura, Claros, Feilhaber; Zusi, Dwyer, Sapong (Peterson 81)
Eastern Conference semi-final first leg:
New York Red Bulls vs D.C. United, Red Bull Arena, Sun 4pm
