Welcome to Tactical Sips, a semi-regular pre-match post featuring taurine-spiked breakdowns of the upcoming game.
The New York Red Bulls opened the season with a 2-1 loss to Sporting Kansas City. Undone by a catastrophic two minutes, Gerhard Struber’s trademarked tactics and personnel choices were on full display, letting loose a bombardment of vertical long passes and speculative crosses. This was not a gradual implementation, but the challenge of a steep learning curve that will last many months and likely result in the departure of several more players. To paraphrase Danny Boyle’s 2000 cinematic adaptation of The Beach, “Get better or transfer; it’s the hanging around in between that really pisses people off.