Orlando City celebrates its goal with a “selfie.” (Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports)
The Red Bulls summer swoon continued Saturday night as they suffered a 1-0 home defeat to Orlando City SC at Red Bull Arena.
Facundo tallied the lone goal of the match in the 17th minute as Orlando snapped a five-game winless streak. Goalkeeper Pedro Gallese recorded the clean sheet.
The struggling Red Bulls, meanwhile, own a five-game winless streak across all competitions (0-4-1) as they have been blanked in two consecutive matches.
For all of you who are interested in the statistics are for losers department:
The Red Bulls outshot the Lions, 15-2, but couldn’t score. Orlando City had one shot on target and the visitors scored off of it.
“We’re in fourth place and it feels like we’re at last right now,” defender John Tolkin said.
“It was not enough,” head coach Gerhard Struber added.
Orlando head coach Oscar Pareja had another view.
“A deserved result for the team. A great effort,” he said.
Despite the setback, the Red Bulls (10-8-7, 37 points) remained in fourth place in the MLS Eastern Conference while the fifth-place Lions improved to 9-10-6 and 33 points.
“We just want to win every game and put ourselves in the best best possible spot for playoffs and get a home game,” Tolkin said. “we’re going to look ourselves in the mirror. We can’t keep losing games at home. This is the fortress for us. So it’ll be better.”
Struber could not believe the Red Bulls did not force the issue.
“We have in the end, 60 minutes time to change that,” he said. “I see a team, they try to do it but we have so many nice moments, but not the urgency to go on their personal limit what we what we want to do. They [Orlando] stay very deep, but in situations like that, you have to force it more. The desire was not on the highest level in the end and that determination to bounce back. It’s disappointing evening.”
The Red Bulls haven’t won since a 4-3 victory at Austin FC on July 24.
Facundo Torres off the post and in!#OrlandoCity take advantage to open the scoring. pic.twitter.com/BxDvzqUHqR
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) August 13, 2022
Since then, it has been a wicked downward spiral for the team.
It started with an awful second-half performance in a 5-1 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup semifinal defeat at Orlando on July 27.
It continued with a 2-0 home setback to Barcelona in an international friendly on July 30.
It still continued with a devastating 5-4 home defeat to the Colorado Rapids, which hadn’t won the road all season as the Red Bulls gave away a two-goal lead on Aug. 2.
The losing was stopped in a scoreless draw at D.C. United on Aug. 6.
And now this result.
The Red Bulls attack, quite frankly, was absent and horrible. The offense lacked cohesion, and that is putting it nicely. And not surprisingly, Patryk Klimala endured another frustrating, scoreless game.
Orlando City tallied the lone goal of the match off a counterattack that was started by Gallese’s long punt that Kyle Duncan, returning to the Red Bulls’ lineup after a stint in Europe, misjudged. The ball eventually found Gallese, who beat goalkeeper Carlos Coronel from an acute angle on the left side that hit the post and went into the net.
“It’s incredibly frustrating, obviously coming off of a shutout last game and we felt defensively strong,” Tolkin said. “It’s like it’s like a FIFA game today with the Xbox. You get one one shot. It happens to go in.”
The hosts had one last opportunity to equalize as Cristian Casseres Jr. whipped in a free kick from the left side into the box, but Orlando City managed to clear it out of harm’s way five minutes into stoppage time.
The Red Bulls haven’t found the net since Tom Barlow accomplished the feat in second-half injury time of the team’s 5-4 loss to the Colorado Rapids on Aug. 2.
“You can see in all these games,” Tolkin said. “We’ve played well. We’ve had chances, the Colorado game. Obviously this happens with every team in the season. We promise we’ll turn this around for you fans. It’s going to come.”