HARRISON, N.J. — Hassan Ndam very well might have been faced with his toughest assignment yet as a member of the New York Red Bulls.
With Andres Reyes, the Red Bulls’ usual starting center back suspended for yellow-card accumulation, the 24-year-old Cameroonian made just his ninth appearance in his team’s 22nd match of the MLS season against the league’s best team in FC Cincinnati and one of its finest players in the Argentinian talisman Luciano Acosta.
That assignment only got tougher when a heavy challenge in the third minute on the very same Acosta — who is tied for third in MLS with 11 goals this season and will captain the All-Star team against English giants Arsenal next week in Washington, D.C. — warranted a yellow card that put him on thin ice directly opposite the star man.
“He’s a very shifty player,” Ndam said. “But I was very confident in myself that the yellow card wouldn’t stop me because I’m not a nasty player like that. So I felt like I could finish the game in a proper way.”
Until he was lifted in the 81st minute when he was subbed out for Peter Stroud, he did just that, limiting Acosta to just one low-danger shot in the 52nd minute as New York clung to a 1-0 lead.
“I thought Hassan until he got fatigued had a very good [match],” Red Bulls head coach Troy Lesesne said. “I think he’s grown in incredible ways over the course of this year. He’s so impressive.”
It’s not delving into hyperbole to suggest that Ndam would not have been able to have the same sort of success he had against one of the league’s top players last year — or even earlier this season as he’s seemingly settling down at the tail end of a convoluted journey to consistent time with the Red Bulls’ first team.
Ndam made two MLS appearances in his first two seasons with the Red Bulls in 2017-2018, working with the organization’s academy team — Red Bulls II — mostly after signing from Cameroonian side Rainbow Bamenda.
He was selected by FC Cincinnati in the 2018 expansion draft but was loaned to the Charlotte Independence of the United States’ second tier of pro soccer — the USL — five months later. After a loan to Miami FC, also of the USL, he was released by Cincinnati and wouldn’t resurface until he signed a short 25-day loan with Orange County SC in June of 2022. Just one month later, he was back with the Red Bulls’ academy side where he made just six appearances.
Quite a journey to end up where he was initially expected to be six years ago. Consider it a solid consolation prize on a night that saw the Red Bulls concede a pair of goals in the final 10 minutes — including an Acosta penalty in the 80th minute — in a 2-1 loss.
“That’s a guy who was with the club a long time ago and made a couple moves and had to work his way back into the first-team situation,” Lesesne said. “I’m proud of him. I’m really proud of the minutes he played.”
