New York City FC went into Red Bull Arena and punished their rivals, putting a historic 5-1 hurting on the Red Bulls in front of their home crowd.
This felt like a breakthrough moment for a New York City team that’s been inconsistent and hard to get a read on for much of this 2024 season.
They’d gone nine MLS matches without a win and aren't too far removed from being on the receiving end of their own lopsided beating at home at the hands of a rival, when Philadelphia Union came to Yankee Soccer Stadium and steamrolled Nick Cushing’s squad 5-1 on September 18.
That was arguably the season’s low point, but the performance three days later against Inter Miami CF and Lionel Messi was improved, and offered glimmers of hope.
James Sands’s at-the-death equalizer gave the team a potential moment to look back on and say, “This was our turning point.”
The case for that Sands goal being a season-alterer got a lot stronger at Red Bull Arena in this commanding away derby win. This was a performance unlike any you’d seen before when a NYCFC team crossed the Hudson River to play the Red Bulls, their biggest margin of victory ever over their bitter rivals.
Hudson River Blue Staff
Away wins for NYCFC at Red Bull Arena have been rarities, and when they’ve occurred, they’ve been tooth-and-nail, tight affairs that hinged on one or two big moments and big goals, like a looping Ben Sweat header or a perfect connection between Santi Rodríguez and Taty Castellanos.
Tonight’s humbling of the Red Bulls was something different, a signature, almost unheard-of performance from a Nick Cushing team while playing away from home. This wasn’t a defensive-minded New York City looking to go into a shell and defend on the road, and maybe scrape a goal to earn one point max.
It wasn’t clear that this NYCFC team would come out on the front foot, playing without their most consistent playmaker in Santi Rodríguez, while also asking Justin Haak to deputize in at center-back while Strahinja Tanasijević was suspended and Birk Risa wasn’t ready to play a full 90 minutes.
From the jump, NYCFC was aggressive in its press and was all over the Red Bulls, forcing the home team into the kinds of mistakes and unforced errors that have at times plagued NYCFC in these derby matches.
Not even the lifeline goal the Red Bulls scored to halve NYCFC’s lead in the first half was enough to deter Nick Cushing’s team.
Rather than crumble at the first sign of adversity, New York City kept pushing at that Red Bull back line, and in turn kept expanding their lead. This was not going to be another one of those multi-goal leads that New York City let slip, not like in Cincinnati during Leagues Cup, or at Citi Field against Chicago Fire in the first post-Leagues Cup match.
This was a demon-exorcising win, and it arrives at a perfect time in New York City’s season. Questions can now turn from “Will they make the playoffs?” to “How far can they really go in the playoffs?”
A performance like the one this team just delivered at Red Bull Arena can qualify as a “signature win” for the team and its somewhat embattled head coach, and can also hint at more to come.
Nick Cushing got his team to deliver a best-of-the-season performance in what was one of the most consequential Hudson River Derbies in the history of the rivalry, and it feels fair to ask if this is the start of something bigger at this late-season stage. Is another 2021-like run really possible with this team, and can they find their collective peak right as the playoffs begin?
Winning the way they did at Red Bull Arena will have New York City supporters believing it’s possible, but not even that magical 2021 season featured an emphatic derby win like this one.
Hudson River Blue Staff
