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In the 84th minute of the New York Red Bulls' 2-0 win over Columbus Crew on April 22, 2017, Sean Davis subbed in for Sacha Kljestan and carried a new team record on to the field with him.
Davis was the fifth RBNY Homegrown player to feature in the game: a record high for the club in MLS, per its official notes on the match.
The record-setting quintet comprised starters Tyler Adams, Connor Lade, and Alex Muyl, plus subs Derrick Etienne and Davis. Head coach Jesse Marsch appeared to change his mind at the last moment when Etienne subbed in, intervening to prevent Daniel Royer from being withdrawn and instead taking Muyl out of the game - but for that, we might have seen all five Homegrown players on the field at the same time.
The milestone is merely the latest illustration of the Red Bulls' commitment to its academy system, but a significant one. The club has had one of the better youth set-ups in American soccer since - arguably - before Red Bull took it over. And Lade's presence in the squad - he was signed in 2011 - serves to remind that the team has been making Homegrown signings for several years. But the RBNY regime change in 2015 brought with it a renewed focus on developing Academy players.
This happened to coincide with a league-wide "Play Your Kids" push that occasionally looks fetishistic, with cheerleading for Homegrown signings around MLS sometimes appearing to value a player's provenance over actual achievements on the field. After the team's win over D.C. United on April 15, head coach Jesse Marsch countered the fetishizing tendency in media coverage of Homegrown players:
Our Homegrowns aren't just guys that we have on the roster because they're Homegrowns.
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