Moral victories are usually for those outside of a professional sports organization to hang their hats on after a loss. Still, consolation does exist after the New York Red Bulls’ 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy in the 2024 MLS Cup Final on Saturday evening.
One of Major League Soccer’s inaugural franchises, founded in 1996, had made an MLS Cup Final just once in its history prior to this season — a loss to the Columbus Crew in 2008. Despite holding the active North American record for most consecutive postseason appearances at 15, the Red Bulls had been bounced from the first round of the playoffs in each of the previous five years, which featured four different head coaches and a staggering lack of goalscoring.
However, one of the more prominent offseasons in recent memory saw head of sport Jochen Schneider bring in head coach Sandro Schwarz, a 46-year-old with experience managing Germany’s top flight, the Bundesliga. Swedish international and former Red Bull Leipzig star Emil Forsberg, with his Champions League and World Cup experience, was signed.
With forward Lewis Morgan back and healthy, the Red Bulls suddenly were a top-four team in the Eastern Conference for the first half of the season before an injury to Forsberg spared a second-half nosedive. They dropped to seventh in the Eastern Conference, snuck into the playoffs once again, and were heavy underdogs in the first round against the defending MLS Cup champs, the Columbus Crew.
But Forsberg, back and healthy, coined the team’s rallying cry, telling amNewYork, “F—k it, we can win. Why can’t we?”
And they did.
New York upset Columbus, sweeping them in the first-round best-of-three series. They followed it up with a 2-0 win over rival NYCFC and a narrow 1-0 victory over Orlando City to become the lowest seed ever to reach an MLS Cup Final.
Against a Galaxy team that had lost just one game at home in Carson, CA this season, the Red Bulls appeared as though they were going to be run out of the stadium before the halftime whistle. Jonathan Painstil and Dejan Joveljic scored within the first 13 minutes of the Final to put Los Angeles up 2-0.
But the Red Bulls found their fight. Sean Nealis found a thunderbolt on a half-volley off a corner kick in the 28th minute to halve the deficit, but an equalizer eluded them. Forsberg hit the post in the 72nd minute and then couldn’t get his foot on a deflected ball deep in the Galaxy box just two minutes from the final whistle.
“What I can say is always the same, I love these guys, [and their] reaction [in the second half],” Schwarz said. “Now they are in the locker room. For sure, some guys, they are crying … It’s tough when you lose the final, but also [we need] to use this experience to create the next energy, the next intensity.”
It is obviously too early to tell if this run to the MLS Cup Final was an aberration. Perhaps it was a team overachieving and getting hot at the perfect time to win its second-ever Eastern Conference crown. Maybe it is a sign of things to come for a team that is just a piece or two away from becoming a legitimate and perennial championship threat.
Forsberg believes that it is the latter.
“I think we have fantastic possibilities and I’m sure of it,” the 32-year-old Swede said. “Very sure of it. With these players, the coaching staff, and everything we’ve got going, I’m positive that we’re going to achieve big things next year as well”.
