ONLY IN AMNEWYORK
HARRISON, NJ — When Emil Forsberg first arrived in New York last winter with his sterling European resume that included Champions League play and World Cup appearances, he made it clear that he signed with the Red Bulls to win.
While his teammates might not have believed the heights he foreshadowed at the start of 2024, they were completely bought in by season’s end. Despite a seventh-place finish, the captain Forsberg implored his side that they were good enough to make a run — and that is exactly what they did.
New York won the Eastern Conference title as the No. 7 seed and made just its second-ever MLS Cup Final appearance, losing 2-1 to the Los Angeles Galaxy in December.
“Last year was an ‘A-ha!’ experience for the whole team in that we realized, ‘oh, we can do it.,'” Forsberg told amNewYork on Wednesday. “When I said it then [how good we could be], everybody was just like, ‘OK, we want to be a little bit better. We want to be better.’ But now it was, ‘Oh, we can be this good.'”
Former captain and veteran center-back Sean Nealis almost could not believe how good his team played down the stretch.
“Some guys even today were saying while watching those [playoff] clips and said, ‘wow,” Nealis told amNewYork. “It gives you an excitement, it gives you a buzz.”
Now with an abundance of belief, the Red Bulls prepare for their 2025 MLS season opener on Saturday on the road against FC Cincinnati (7:30 p.m. ET) in what they hope will be the first move toward the next step: Winning the franchise’s first-ever MLS Cup.
“You should [put these high expectations on your shoulders],” Forsberg said. “It’s always easy to say it, but it’s important to put that pressure on us because we know we can do it.”
It is also just as important to pull off the fine balancing act of taking the positives of an enormous step taken last season while understanding that none of those accomplishments carry into this campaign.
“This is a thin line because just reaching the final doesn’t mean we’re going to reach it again,” Forsberg said. “It’s going to be tough for us. Every team wants to show they’re better than us: ‘Oh, this team played in the MLS Cup Final.’ But it’s important for us to realize what we’ve done, but also to say to ourselves, ‘OK, it was good, but we can do better.’ We want to do better”
“I told this to the guys: It’s important not to compare the end of last season and the beginning of this season,” head coach Sandro Schwarz added. “That, first of all, is very, very important for us… We just want to be ready directly to win games, and that starts in Cincinnati.”
New York made significant changes to its conference-winning side. Strikers Dante Vanzeir (KAA Gent) and Elias Manoel (Real Salt Lake) are gone. Former Bayern Munich and PSG striker Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting is in.
Rising American defender John Tolkin was sold to Bundesliga side Holstein Keil in January, a move which was met with the signings of young Chilean Marcelo Morales and MLS veteran Raheem Edwards. German center-back Alexander Hack was also brought in to shore up the back line.
While Lewis Morgan will continue to provide the goal-scoring flair up front alongside Choupo-Moting, Forbserg will remain the engine at the heart of the Red Bulls — the man with the captain’s arm band pulling the strings to ensure a side with championship expectations does not get too high, or too low.
“This year, we’ve got more to do,” Forsberg said. “We have to demand more from each other, and we want to win everything we can win. Easy as that. I said when I came here last year that I want to win. We won the Eastern Conference, which was a step forward, but this year, we want to take another step forward.”
