Chris Armas on Bradley Wright-Phillips: “I think goal-scorers, they can ride the waves. When they get going, there is nothing, they cannot miss.” (Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports)
CHESTER, Pa. — That huge gulp you might have heard came from the right of Major League Soccer Sunday night.
That’s because Bradley Wright-Phillips go his mojo back in the Red Bulls’ 2-0 victory over the Philadelphia Union.
He turned the game upside down over a five-minute span late in the match, connecting twice for his seventh and eighth goals of the season at Talen Energy Park.
Like many goal-scorers, BWP can be streaky and when he is on a streak, well, watch out. He has been known to score goals in bunches.
Wright-Phillips, however, wasn’t impressed by his overall performance.
“I didn’t do anything, just two tap-ins,” he said. just great play by the wide players, Kemar and Sal.
“It was a bad performance by me generally, but happy to get a win. Terrible performance by me.”
Red Bulls assistant coach Chris Armas hoped that the brace will move BWP forward for the rest of the season.
“I think goal-scorers, they can ride the waves,” he said. “When they get going, there is nothing, they cannot miss.”
A two-time MLS Golden Boot winner, Wright-Phillips has scored 77 goals, moving past Steve Ralston for No. 18 on the MLS’ career goal list.
“Brad has a good mentality,” Armas said. “I know we always say the next day, the next day the work was there and he was showing up in spots, he put himself in some good spots. He wanted to be out there, you could tell he was still working, still running hard.
“He is a goal scorer, it is the reason why in the last two- three years he is No. 1 in the league. We believe in him, he knows that and he is our guy up there.”
The Red Bulls were considering replacing Wright-Phillips late in the match, something they have done in the past, including in the 1-0 Lamar Hunt/U.S. Open Cup win over New York City FC Wednesday night.
“We could have made a change, but we know exactly what we discussed and to leave him in and it paid off,” Armas said.
And guess what? The Red Bulls’ next opponent is NYCFC, a team that has lived off of the last two years in the Hudson River Derby.
It will be intriguing to see if the man who got his mojo back can continue filling the net against his archrivals.
