NEW YORK – The New York Red Bulls have developed a long and storied enmity with D.C. United over the 20+ years of both teams’ existence. But with a hugely ambitious New York City FC team making waves in Year Two of its existence, is D.C.’s status as RBNY’s main rival in jeopardy?
According to a couple Red Bulls players, there’s no doubt: the intra-city rivalry trumps all.
“I haven’t been able to experience the D.C. rivalry so much,” midfielder Mike Grella, a Long Island native, told reporters at Thursday’s New York Derby media day. “I think just based on sports history, and sports and sharing the same city, which is New York City – one of the biggest cities in the world – I think this has to be the biggest rivalry in my mind, and it certainly feels that way to me.”
Even though Saturday’s clash at Yankee Stadium (3 pm ET, FOX) marks just the fourth time these two teams will meet in their history, the two teams and their fans set a high benchmark with the attendance, passion and play displayed in the 2015 edition of the series. The Red Bulls took all three games last season, including a 3-1 win in the lone match played in the Bronx, but their appetite for beating their rivals hasn’t dulled in the slightest.
“For me, it’s a war,” said Red Bulls midfielder Felipe of the rivalry with NYCFC. “We want to be ready to battle and ready to fight, to put our flag up there and always demonstrate what is the best team in New York.”
Both Felipe and Grella also pointed to the differing approaches by the two teams in building a club and a roster as a key element in the explosion of the rivalry.
“[They’re] a team that has a completely different business approach to the Red Bulls, a completely different philosophy in terms of building a team and building an identity,” Grella explained. “You think of blue, and you think of really a little bit of, I wouldn’t say hatred, but a little bit of, a brand new team comes in, gets a huge fan base right away, we’ve been there for who knows how many years, 20 seasons, and you feel you kind of want to make sure they know we’ve been here for a while and we’re a good team…”
“Last year’s over and now it starts a new chapter, and we have to make sure that people know the Red Bulls are one of the biggest clubs in MLS.”
Red Bulls manager Jesse Marsch took a slightly more measured approach in his remarks on the rivalry, but still brimmed with optimism about what it could turn into, even as he admitted he wasn’t quite ready to say the New York Derby was on the same level as the Cascadia Cup clashes between the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders.
“I think we were all hoping that it would have a lot of energy and for those of us who were at the stadium for all three [New York-New York matches in 2015], the energy was remarkable and bigger than anything I had ever experienced in this league,” the Red Bulls’ second-year head coach enthused. “My best comparison, I guess, would be what I went through when I was with Chivas [USA] and Chivas against LA but I would say that us playing New York City in all three of those matches blew that out of the water.
“The other piece for me is that I saw during the World Cup what kind of a soccer town New York City is, but I really felt like with the whole ‘New York Is Red’/’New York Is Blue’ [campaign], the energy of the city, you could see that this is truly a soccer town.”
