New York Red Bulls wunderkind Tyler Adams hasn't quickly forgotten how the Chicago Fire handed his side a rare home loss earlier this season.
Adams and Co. dominated that game, outshooting the Fire 22-4 and holding more than 63 percent of the ball but an Aleksandar Katai golazo and a Nemanja Nikolic penalty gave Chicago one of their two road wins in 12 attempts this season. Adams wants revenge.
"It will be important because you know they beat us at home and we want to beat them at their place now," Adams said.
The Red Bulls have been traditionally strong at home since opening Red Bull Arena, a trend that continued on Sunday when expansion up-and-comers LAFC came to town. The Red Bulls won 2-1 as the visitors fielded their strongest XI, something that head coach Chris Armas is not taking lightly.
“I think the people on the outside can judge whether it’s a statement win or not," Armas said. "On the inside, it’s a statement to ourselves that we can, once again, play against a really good team."
Tim Parker echoed his manager's sentiment, but always finds room for improvement.
“Yeah, you know LAFC I think is one of the best attacking teams in the league so it’s a lot of confidence," Parker said. "I think the chances that we let up, we were pretty confident that Luis [Robles] was going to make stops and we were going to be able to slow them down and the goal we gave up, we think that we could have prevented so I think it’s a stepping stone for us.”
The Red Bulls enter the weekend level on points per game with Atlanta United at the top of the Supporters' Shield race. They remain four points adrift of the Five Stripes in points, but have two games in hand. With the Atlanta off this weekend, the Red Bulls can put themselves top of the standings in points per game.
As such, Armas believes every game is a big game for the trophy-chasing Red Bulls.
“I think that’s going to be part of any team trying to claim to be a good team and to claim to be realistic about pushing far for a trophy is that every game you realize, in training, is a big game," Armas. "It is. If you start to slip on that level then you set yourself up for failure at some point."
