It won’t be long until Chris Armas and his coaching staff will count with Samuel Tetteh and Dru Yearwood’s presence at Red Bulls Training Facility.
New York’s Head Coach was able to share details with the media on Tuesday afternoon on their tentative itineraries in the upcoming weeks, which will require the players to quarantine for a period of time after arriving to this side of the Atlantic.
“It's looking like Samuel Tetteh is arriving any day now, tomorrow [Wednesday] is the plan,” said Armas. “There's a natural quarantine period when players arrive now, and then we will see the players out at the training field, and we will be able to work with those players on some level and get them ready, physically ready, style of play ready with conversation through a Zoom call meeting just to transfer information.
“We've been in touch with the players, but yeah it's right there in the next few weeks we will have them ready to go, that’s the plan, which is really exciting to inject some new faces. It's just a natural process of how teams evolve, so yeah, we want to add freshness, some quality, and some different qualities into the team. Both of those players, we believe have that.”
Back in England, Yearwood still has to take care of his visa process before heading to the United States.
“Dru is just slightly behind with the process with the visa, just getting into the country, and the appointments with the embassies,” said Armas. “He's just slightly behind that, but everything's moving forward and in a good way. We're expecting him just slightly behind.”
Tetteh is coming off a season with LASK in which he played a total of 1,967 minutes across all competitions, scoring seven goals and grabbing seven assists.
Yearwood, who spent the last season with Brentford FC, is expected to increase the internal competition in the Red Bulls midfield, which has seen Sean Davis, Cristian Cásseres Jr. and Marc Rzatkowski all play this 2020 season.
“As we add players, we want to add players that make us better, and we want to add players that give us some different options and different looks. Dru is a very aggressive central midfielder, a ball-winning six in many ways,” said Armas. “He's an interesting player that way and can get forward as well, but he has a natural ability to compete in a good way in the midfield.
“If stepping out and forward defending, second balls, interceptions and tackles are a big part of any high level game, he can be a nice addition. How does that translate? Well listen, we have to see how he fits into our group and how the speed of play of Major League Soccer, the speed of play of our team and our style of play are not common all the time, and we see players that come into our team that as talented as they are, sometimes it takes a little bit of time, but we see that his qualities will fit nicely with our group. We will push him in the right way, get him ready as soon as possible and kind of fast track that process, so we can use him right away.”
