New York Red Bulls II vs. Columbus Crew 2
MSU Soccer Park – Montclair, NJ
Sunday, March 26 – 7:00 p.m. ET
Apple TV MLS Season Pass
#NYvCLB
HARRISON, N.J. (March 26, 2023) – New York Red Bulls II (0-0-0, 0 pts.) will kick off its new chapter in MLS NEXT Pro with the home opener against the reigning champion Columbus Crew 2 (0-0-0, 0 pts.). Kickoff is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. ET with coverage available on Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass.
Sunday’s match will be the first time that New York will be competing in MLS NEXT Pro, which is going into its second season as a league. The club is going into this season with a 98-103-52 record but will be starting fresh with a new campaign in a new league.
Columbus is coming off a fantastic year in 2022, finishing with the best regular season record in the league (16-3-5, 55 points). Having secured the top seed in the Eastern Conference, Crew 2 rolled its way through the MLS NEXT Pro Playoffs to become the league’s inaugural champions.
New York will look to counter that success with some new faces that were brought in for this season. This offseason, the team signed players such as Ricardo Gorday, Oladayo Thomas, Amos Shapiro-Thompson, Will Meyer, Dylan Sullivan, and Frank Ssebuufu. There will also be some familiar faces on the II’s roster this year, as the team brought back O’Vonte Mullings, Yostin Salinas, Omar Valencia, and Henry Wise.
Head Coach Ibrahim Sekagya, who has been promoted from his previous interim title, looks to grab his first win in the new position. After seven and a half seasons as an Assistant Coach, Sekagya was named the Interim Head Coach on July 3, 2022, and guided the team for the final 17 matches of the season. For his staff, he has added Assistant Coach Daniel Gutierrez and kept Goalkeeper Coach Jeremy Proud to join him for this upcoming season.
The club looks to introduce themselves to MLS NEXT Pro in the best way possible at MSU Soccer Park for the ninth season in the team’s storied history.
