Glad to see this realization spreading across the league. Hopefully there’s a tipping point soon and some kind of effort is made to address the cheating that is Red Bull’s “style of play”, but I won’t hold my breath. Even their own fans admit the players are “a bunch of instigators” (saw that on Reddit somewhere)
You're reading the Cincinnati comments with a filter on. They're not calling out the Red Bulls as some sort of special case. Cincinnati thinks they are uniquely mistreated all the time.
"I'm angry. I'm angry at the result. I'm angry at the way the game was officiated and it's the same stuff every time," Acosta said via the interpreter. "It feels like it's against us"
So yea, yesterday they whined about refs and being fouled by the Red Bulls, because they played the Red Bulls, but they're really just whining about refs not treating Cincinnati fairly generally. This week the Red Bulls, next week Vancouver.
It's a confirmation bias party.
I do think there is something to the idea that teams who foul regularly have a bit of an advantage because refs just won't call every foul and do not hand out enough persistent yellows. The Red Bulls do lead the league in fouls committed this year by a hefty margin.
Just for giggles, here is where NYCFC has ranked in fouls committed in MLS over the last few years.
2019 1st
2020 1st
2021 3rd
2022 9th
Basically from Domé's first full season through last year we have been foul machines, and the fans of other teams in the now defunct MLS comment sections and Reddit and elsewhere definitely noticed. Everything this board is saying about the Red Bulls has been a unending topic of complaint about NYCFC since 2019. I don't know why we are lower down the foul table this year. But overall, when we lose the ball we aggressively try to win it back immediately and regularly generate body contact as part of that. You can't win the ball back regularly without contact, some legal some not. Torrent brought that style over from Man City It's been driving MLS fans crazy that we got away with it so much since 2019. How does everyone on this board not know this? We have consistently swarmed opposing players as soon as we lose the ball and get the ball back and sometimes when we do that they fall down and sometimes that's called a foul and sometimes it is not and everyone else in the league has whined about it. I cannot be the only one who noticed we play this way and saw the complaints. Did people really not notice how we have played and not realize how were at the top of the league in committing fouls for 3 years? And now we've just flipped the script to the Red Bulls and it's a major injustice?
The main difference between our style of play and the Red Bulls is in other aspects, including how we play when we have the ball and even how and when we press. I agree we have a
much more attractive style of play. But both teams press and make contact and commit fouls all the time. And FWIW, from 2019-2021, NYCFC was given 1 Yellow for every 6.56 fouls committed. This year, the Red Bulls are getting 1 Yellow for every 5.70 fouls committed. They're not really getting away with it compared to us from 2019-21. And just so nobody thinks I'm hiding anything, this year we're getting a Yellow for every 5.61 fouls committed so if you want to make an issue of that go ahead I guess. Maybe PRO made a point of increasing persistent yellows in 2022 despite what everyone assumes.
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