{"id":326356,"date":"2026-08-21T02:20:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/326356\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T02:20:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T02:20:30","slug":"red-bull-new-yorks-youth-movement-more-than-an-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/326356\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull New York’s youth movement more than an identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

About 10 minutes into Wednesday night\u2019s match vs. Nashville SC<\/a>, a sequence unfolded that perfectly encapsulated both the promise and pitfalls of Red Bull New York<\/a>\u2019s current youth-oriented project under Michael Bradley, which will meet its next big test with a Walmart Saturday Showdown visit from Robert Lewandowski<\/a> and the red-hot Chicago Fire<\/a> on Matchday 22 (7:30 pm ET | Apple TV<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Turning inside the center circle, Ronald Donkor<\/a> (age 21) spotted a gap between gold jerseys and dribbled forward, then played a short vertical pass to the feet of Adri Mehmeti<\/a> (age 17) in a pocket of space. With two tidy touches, Mehmeti turned and laid a perfectly weighted through ball into the path of Julian Hall<\/a> (age 18), whose clever movement had created a one-on-one<\/a> with Nashville goalkeeper Brian Schwake<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In seven seconds, with just three touches, the “Baby Bulls” \u2013 who have fielded eight of the 10 youngest starting lineups in MLS this season, with three teenagers in their usual XI \u2013 had slashed right through the rugged spine of MLS\u2019s top team, the odds-on favorite to win the Supporters\u2019 Shield. It involved one of Mehmeti’s game-high three key passes.<\/p>\n

Alas, Hall scuffed his finish wide of the target, letting Nashville off the hook. Thus, despite doubling the league leaders\u2019 expected-goals total (2.1-0.9), the Red Bulls allowed their visitors to escape Sports Illustrated Stadium with all three points via Maxwell Woledzi<\/a>\u2019s injury-time header, RBNY\u2019s fourth loss in five matches since MLS\u2019s resumption of play following the FIFA World Cup<\/a> break.<\/p>\n

\u201cI choose to believe that if you are watching this team closely, that you see a lot of growth, a lot of improvement, a lot of things that are going in a really good direction,\u201d Bradley told reporters postgame, urging his side to \u201ctake the next step\u201d after showing so much promise and inconsistency over the season\u2019s first half.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s frustrating when you feel like it’s not quite coming, it’s not going the exact way that you want. But this is the work. This is the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Unique identity<\/p>\n

Situated amid one of North America\u2019s largest youth talent pools, having earlier this year opened a new 80-acre, $100-million training facility for both the first team and academy, RBNY have indeed invested a great deal in youth \u2013 both ideologically and financially.<\/p>\n

Hall and Mehmeti are the most prominent prospects of the moment, tracked by top European clubs and widely slated as future US men\u2019s national team<\/a> call-ups, perhaps as soon as next month. The plan is for them to be just two of many talents moving along a pipeline that\u2019s already produced Euro-based USMNTers Tyler Adams and John Tolkin and a raft of other standouts scattered across MLS.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel strongly that we can be a club that is unique, and different,\u201d explained Bradley during an in-depth conversation with MLSsoccer.com last week. \u201cWe want to be a club that develops young players. We want to be a club that plays young players. We want to be a club that wins with young players. And then ultimately, part of the process with young players is when opportunities come, bigger clubs come calling, then the opportunity for them to take the next step in their career and move on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like the identity that we have as a club certainly fits with what Red Bull is as a brand, and the identity of Red Bull in terms of giving young people opportunities and not being afraid, and doing things that other people are hesitant to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Right man for the job<\/p>\n

It is both striking and fitting that Red Bull has entrusted so much of its leadership to Bradley, himself a teenage phenom at the dawn of an illustrious playing career that included two World Cups, 151 USMNT caps (44 of them as captain), stints in four of Europe\u2019s top leagues, a historic treble with Toronto FC<\/a> and myriad other team and individual honors across 20 years as a professional \u2013 even though this is his first stint as a first-team head coach.<\/p>\n

As a child in the 1990s, he had the rare opportunity to tag along with his father Bob to the training sessions of dynasty-era D.C. United<\/a>, where Bradley senior worked as an assistant under Bruce Arena before starting his own distinguished managerial career with the Fire upon their 1998 expansion launch. Whether practicing free kicks with the legendary Marco Etcheverry or picking up tips from future head coaches like Jesse Marsch or Chris Armas, young Michael got a priceless soccer education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now he and the rest of the RBNY brain trust endeavor to provide something comparable, albeit much more systematic, for every kid who moves through their academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was fortunate that I was exposed to certain environments and certain things at such a young age,\u201d Bradley noted. \u201cIn a world before any MLS teams had academies, in a world before so many MLS teams even had training facilities of their own, I was able to be in a locker room and be on the training field and be in a professional environment up close every single day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are able now to do that in more formal ways. On a day like today, our second team starts training 45 minutes after us. Our Under-18s are finishing up as we go on the field, our Under-16s are getting ready to go to Salzburg [RBNY\u2019s Austrian sibling club] next week, and so they’re also in this morning. So there’s football going on everywhere around this facility. We go out for lunch, and the Under-16s are finishing up their meal. There’s just the ability for everybody to be connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Youth-first mentality<\/p>\n

In designing the\u00a0RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center<\/a>, Red Bull made extensive efforts to facilitate this feeling at every turn. As Bradley delves into those details with gusto, it\u2019s easy to see how sporting director Julian de Guzman was convinced he was the right person for the No. 1 job only six months into his stint as head coach of RBNY\u2019s second team, which he led to an MLS NEXT Pro<\/a> championship last autumn.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things inside our club that we feel really strongly about is making sure that pathway, literally from our Under-10s all the way on up to our first team, that every single player feels like that path is real,\u201d explained Bradley.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the responsibility, when you’re first-team coach, to make sure that you are around and watching games and making sure that you know everything that’s going on inside the academy and that you know all the players. So we have created inside this club a real sense of football, of connection, of pride in the way that we do things, of pride in the way that we play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Setting up for success<\/p>\n

No one who watched much of Bradley the player \u2013 an intense, relentless, cerebral central midfielder \u2013 will be overly surprised to see that he\u2019s a meticulous, process-oriented coach.<\/p>\n

He knows the likes of Mehmeti, Hall and Donkor will sooner or later move across the Atlantic to test themselves in one of the world\u2019s top leagues. In fact, he reveals Hall very nearly did so last winter, adding that he made clear his eagerness to work firsthand with the clever young striker before he made such a move, and that only a huge transfer offer would have prevented it.<\/p>\n

Preparing players for those next steps is a central part of Bradley\u2019s job. Yet he says that\u2019s in no way separate from the work of making RBNY the most successful team they can be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day-to-day is about improving every player, trying to take the football that we play as a team and make it that much better,\u201d he said, \u201cso that when we get our chance every weekend and the lights come on, we are ready to play and we are ready to go after every single game, go after three points, and be ready to do it again and again. That part is actually easy \u2013 there is no balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sees himself as one cog in a larger machine, with the wider mission of elevating soccer in the United States and Canada so MLS and its domestic national teams can push past the limitations that again cut short their World Cup runs on home soil this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of Major League Soccer has to continue to get better. Individual players for our national team have to continue to push themselves to higher levels,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cThere’s no magic pill, there’s no golden answer that’s going to solve everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso we’re talking about tight margins, and we’re talking about trying to move ourselves into the absolute top level of world football, and just as we’re trying to get better, everybody else is trying to get better too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having dwelled under that hot spotlight for many years himself, he\u2019s equal parts wry, optimistic and realistic about the path ahead. There\u2019s work to be done, but he\u2019s seen the enormous progress of the past few decades. He\u2019s lived it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe part where every four years, depending on how we go out of a World Cup, then it’s the level of the discourse and the conversation,\u201d Bradley noted. \u201cIt’s always a little bit amusing that ultimately people are ready to come to such absolute conclusions based on what happens over the span of a few weeks. Certainly it’s a gauge, and it’s certainly a measure of where we are. But it’s not everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve said a lot lately: The game is here in this country. Nobody needs to feel like we’re a bad World Cup away from all of a sudden, like, soccer disappearing from relevance in the United States. The game is going to continue to grow. The game is going to continue to get better. Our teams, our players are going to continue to move themselves forward. And sure, now everybody involved in that, we\u2019ve got to continue to find ways to be even better, so we can make that all go faster.\u201d<\/p>\n