The New York Red Bulls lost to Orlando City SC, 3-0, on Saturday evening at Red Bull Arena.
The Red Bulls gave up an early goal, were forced down to 10 men due to a second yellow card to Andrés Reyes, had a penalty called against them and were victimized by a breakaway while throwing everyone forward trying to find a goal.
"The first goal, we obviously don't get this play right, but I think we get a lot of things right in the first half and again, we create some good opportunities, and even whenever we go down a man, we still stay in and we fight," Head Coach Troy Lesesne said. "I think you have to give the guys a lot of credit to the output that they had on the night and everything they put into the game."
New York played the final minutes of the match with just nine men on the field following Lewis Morgan leaving the field due to injury while the team was out of subs.
"Even going down, when Lewis was down, we still continued to fight to try to get a goal back in the game," Lesesne said. "That's not a moral victory. I think it does say a lot about the group through this long stretch, we are four wins, two loss, two draws. I think that we made a lot of positive progress and tonight is disappointing not to finish it off with the win."
The Red Bulls had early chances, but failed to put them away. New York out-shot Orlando 14-to-7, with seven of their shots blocked.
"Nobody gave up on the field," Lesesne said. "You can tell by everyone's body language that we were just still fighting, still clawing back no matter what the score was. And that's a good thing here. It's a good sign for things ahead that we will be resilient. And we got a young energetic group here and we're going to fight back in the second half of the season."
Sean Nealis made his 100th appearance for the club across all competitions in tonight’s match, while Dru Yearwood made his 50th career MLS start in tonight’s match.Â
New York will face Charlotte FC after the international break on June 21st with a kickoff time set for 7:30 p.m. ET at Red Bull Arena. Coverage will be on Apple TV+, and New York Red Bulls Radio in English and Spanish via TuneIn, the New York Red Bulls app and NewYorkRedBulls.com.
