HARRISON, NJ — New York Red Bulls head of sport Jochen Schneider is stressing more established, veteran presences to add to his team this offseason in hopes of getting over the top following an MLS Cup Final loss on Saturday to the Los Angeles Galaxy.
The hope is to sign another player comparable to Emil Forsberg, the veteran Swedish midfielder who made the jump from Red Bull Leipzig of the German Bundesliga to New York this season. The 32-year-old captain was the focal point of a team that overcame a dreadful second half to sneak into the playoffs and pull off three straight upsets to win the franchise’s second-ever Eastern Conference crown. They also became the lowest seed ever (No. 7) to reach the MLS Cup Final.
The Red Bulls pulled this off with the youngest roster in Major League Soccer, beginning the year with an average age of 24. Four of the five midfielders who started the MLS Cup Final, the other being Forsberg, were 23 years old or younger. Center back Noah Eile, 22, was also called into the starting lineup at the last minute to relieve an ill Andres Reyes.
“You can see how much a player like Emil Forsberg was helping our crew on and also off the pitch,” Schneider said during the Red Bulls’ end-of-season media availability on Tuesday. “I was talking about this amazing group of talented players, young players. But from time to time, they need a little bit of experience on the side, some guidance. And this is what we want to add to our roster — a little bit more quality, a little bit more experience, a little bit more leadership. This is because we are convinced that you need that in critical, crucial moments of the season, in these big games. This is our plan to add that to our roster this offseason.”
Schneider broke his team’s season into three phases. The first was when they occupied a top-four spot in the Eastern Conference during the first half of the season. The second was when they won just three of their remaining 18 regular-season matches to sink to seventh in the conference. The final was a memorable playoff run that saw New York upset the defending MLS champion Columbus Crew, beat NYCFC in the first-ever postseason edition of the Hudson River Derby, and eke out a 1-0 win down in Orlando.
Had the Red Bulls been able to lean on one or two more proven veterans, especially during the mid-summer struggles while Forsberg was out with a lower-leg injury and Lewis Morgan was with Scotland at Euro 2024, perhaps their road to the Final would have been less arduous — and perhaps they would have found a way to find an equalizer in Los Angeles in the 2-1 season-ending loss.
“We should have easily had eight, 10, 12 more points in July than we had, but it is what it is,” Schneider said. “…There were some difficulties, but the team was fighting.”
Recent reports out of Germany have disclosed that veteran striker Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting is set to join New York next season. The 35-year-old played for French giants Paris Saint-Germain and, most recently, the legendary German club Bayern Munich.
