Football Season Guide

2025 is a year that will go down in New York Red Bull’s history, but for all the wrong reasons. The team suffered the infamy of failing to make the play-offs for the first time in 15 years! In truth, they only scraped into the post-season in 2024 and their surprise run to the MLS Cup final papered over the cracks of what had been a lacklustre campaign overall. The Red Bull’s trajectory in the 2025 Regular Season ended up being similar to the previous year. A strong start was followed by inconsistency and a dramatic dip in form towards the end of the campaign. This time around, they didn’t have enough points on the board to finish in the top nine places. Sandro Schwarz didn’t have enough currency from the 2024 run to keep his job. An astute coach on his day, but the stench of being the first man since 2009 to fail at leading the club into the play-offs was always going to linger. The club promoted from within as Michael Bradley was named the new head coach after leading New York Red Bulls II to their first ever championship in 2025. That wasn’t the only major change. Julian de Guzman replaced Jochen Schneider as Head of Sport and several high-profile players departed including first-choice goalkeeper Carlos Coronel, New York native defender Sean Nealis and key attacker Lewis Morgan. In fact, less than a handful of starters from the 2024 side that reached the MLS Cup final remain at the club. Bradley’s experience coaching the youth team will come in handy as the squad looks set to have one of the youngest average ages in the league, and there haven’t been many big-name arrivals in the transfer market. Jorge Ruvalcaba joins as a Designated Player for a club-record fee and the hope is that he can provide much-needed support to the two other star men in the team. Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting and captain Emil Forsberg carried the Red Bulls at times last year. Chupo-Moting struck 17 goals in his debut season, and Forsberg added another 19 goal-contributions to his tally. The duo will be pivotal both on and off the pitch in mentoring this young group. It’s a completely new era for NYRB and it could go one of two ways. Either this is the perfect time for a refresh after missing out on the play-offs or it’s the start of a tough transitional period for the club.