One month into the regular season, Major League Soccer is buzzing with the revival of the New York Red Bulls, who are tied for the league’s best record and can extend their record of 360 minutes (four complete games) without a goal to start the season when they travel to Real Salt Lake this weekend.
Does it mean we’ll soon see players mingling at Studio 54 and sellouts at Giants Stadium, a la the New York Cosmos of the mid-1970s? Not quite.
“It’s way too early to get excited about anything,” said Red Bulls assistant coach John Harkes. “It’s good to get the results, and you put them in there, and you look at the standings every once in a while, but you don’t stare at it. It’s like trophies, you put them away and you don’t glamorize them, you recognize the hard work it took.”
Intriguing story lines abound, from the return of U.S. national team hero Claudio Reyna and former New York darling Clint Mathis, to the emergence of 17-year-old forward Jozy Altidore and the arrival of Colombian sharpshooter Juan Pablo Angel.
Harkes would prefer to steer clear of the storylines and growing media hype, but it’s clear that head coach Bruce Arena and his staff has already begun to positively affect the attitude of the organization as a whole, perhaps their biggest hurdle when they took over last fall.
“We knew what we were getting into,” said Harkes. “It’s been hard work with the way things have been going here in the past and trying to change that. It’s difficult, it doesn’t happen overnight, so we know there’s a lot of work ahead of us as a staff, for the players and the club itself.”
