HARRISON, N.J. (June 29, 2026) \u2013\u00a0Red Bull New York II winger Dennis Nelich has been named MLS NEXT Pro Player of Matchweek 17, the league announced today.<\/p>\n
Nelich earned the honor after scoring his first career MLS NEXT Pro hat-trick in the club\u2019s 5-0 victory against Philadelphia Union II at MSU Soccer Park.<\/p>\n
After scoring the lone goal in the first half in the 35th minute, the 18-year-old scored twice in a six-minute span during the second half.<\/p>\n
At 18 years and 117 days old, he became the second-youngest in club history to record a hat-trick in MLS NEXT Pro play.<\/p>\n
In the last two matches against Philadelphia, the winger has found the back of the net four times.<\/p>\n
With five goals this season, Nelich leads the team in scoring. Earlier this campaign, Nelich earned MLS NEXT Pro Rising Star of Matchweek 9 after scoring the match-winning goal in their comeback victory at Philadelphia on May 3.<\/p>\n
Next on the schedule for Red Bulls II is Cincinnati, who they will face at Scudamore Field at NKU Soccer Stadium on Sunday, July 5. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. ET with coverage available on OneFootball and MLSNEXTPro.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HARRISON, N.J. (June 29, 2026) \u2013\u00a0Red Bull New York II winger Dennis Nelich has been named MLS NEXT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5075,9,11,10,5076],"class_list":["post-281433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-mls-next-pro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-red-bulls-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}