HARRISON, NJ — One New York club showed up for Saturday night’s Hudson River Derby, and the other one did not.
New York City FC (NYCFC) scored four first-half goals, including two from Alonso Martinez, on its way to a 5-1 drubbing of the New York Red Bulls at Red Bull Arena to sweep the season Hudson River Derby and, more importantly, draw level with their rivals for a potential top-five spot in the Eastern Conference.
Both clubs now have 44 points with three matches remaining in the 2024 regular season, though NYCFC moves ahead on goal difference.
The result snaps NYCFC’s nine-match winless streak in MLS play, during which it had drawn six and lost three. Meanwhile, red flags continue to rise around the Red Bulls, who have just one win in their last 11 games to finally squander their long-standing position in fourth place in the East.
Maxi Moralez and Martinez’s goals, scored within two minutes of each other in the game’s first 10 minutes, gave NYCFC a commanding, immediate lead it would not relinquish.
Red Bulls keeper Carlos Coronel gifted the visitors its opener in the fifth minute when his pass was telegraphed straight to Moralez in the box. After deking a defender, he slotted a low right-footed finish home.
Two minutes later, Martinez doubled NYCFC’s lead off another calamitous Red Bulls mistake. On the left wing at midfield, Daniel Edelman’s back-pass intended for defender Andres Reyes served more as a through ball for Martinez, who was able to play it in stride, get into the Red Bulls box, and convert his chance past Coronel.
Martinez nearly had a second — and NYCFC a third — in the 11th minute when he got on the end of a lofted pass at the edge of the Red Bulls box. Hechipped effort rang off the crossbar and stayed out.
Dante Vanzeir pulled one back for the hosts in the 28th minute off a corner kick — a low, centering feed from the right of the box made it through a forest of legs to find the Belgian, who muscled it home to halve the host’s deficit.
It was his second goal in as many games after going the previous 18 without one.
Their one-goal deficit lasted just two minutes, however, as Andres Perea put NYCFC up 3-1 when he headed home a Tayvon Gray cross. The Red Bulls protested that he pushed defender Dylan Nealis in the back, prohibiting him from clearing the cross, but they fell the deaf ears of the officials.
Martinez nabbed his second in the fifth minute of added time at the end of the first half. He was shockingly left unmarked in the box, received a low cross, and finished with ease for his 14th goal of the season.
Red Bulls star midfielder Emil Forsberg, who had missed the last three months with a lower leg injury, made his first appearance since late June as a substitute in the 58th minute.
It did nothing to provide a spark, however, as Gray curled a left-footed effort from outside the box past the outstretched glove of Coronel in the 67th minute to make it 5-1.
