Red Bulls Draw Dynamo in Tucson

The New York Red Bulls opened their second leg of their pre-season by playing a one-all draw against the Houston Dynamo at the Visit Tucson Sun Cup tournament at the Kino Sports Complex that is the home of FC Tucson of USL League 1.

The Red Bulls got on the board first with a goal from the near side corner that somehow squeaked in, Kaku delivered a corner that missed everyone towards the near post, but Dynamo keeper Marko Maric misplayed the ball, as it deflected off his chest.

The Dynamo was able to get on the board in the 59th minute as Memo Rodriguez ripped a fantastic ball just inside the Red Bulls 18yd box. The only shot that Ryan Meara had a problem with as he made several solid saves in goal for the Red Bulls.

Head Coach Chris Armas changed up the formation going to a 4-2-2-2 as he tried to get more creative and built up several attacking chances. While the Red Bulls looked good in the attack, the finishing was lacking.

Seeing Mathias Jorgensen on the attack looked good, but unfortunately, his finishing was lacking a bit. He had several chances to add on to the lead, but his final touch failed him.

There was a scare in the first half as Florian Valot got tackled down hard from behind. Right away thoughts in everyone’s head thought he was going to be lost again for the third time in consecutive seasons, but thankfully he was able to shake it off and continue the first half.

“My impressions of the game were mostly positive. I think nights like this and games like this, where there are people in the stands and the intensity is there feels like a real MLS game.” said Head Coach Chris Armas “They [these types of games] reveal a lot about ourselves and what we can take away from that is we are pretty clear about what we are doing, therefore we can be proud of guys pushing minutes, we got some positive performances.

“Tim Parker, Ryan Meara, Sean Davis were excellent on the night, real leadership, real quality of what they were doing. In the end, if you talk about goals we scored, we created a bunch of chances, we did not give up much. So in many ways, it went the way we wanted to, of course you want to get little victories out of this but we found some victories within the game.”

While Ryan Meara made a great save in the 84th minute, the reality is that he wasn’t that busy or had any issues that bothered him, but the Red Bulls will no get ready for their second opponent in Tucson as they face the Columbus Crew on Wednesday.