Soccer <\/p>\n
Down to the Queen City rolls the Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire bus, where we have ourselves a true six-pointer between two Eastern Conference hopefuls as red-hot Charlotte FC<\/a> host the just-starting-to-heat-up (maybe) New York Red Bulls<\/a> (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The Crown have shaken off a long, dreary springtime of discontent to fairly cruise through their summer schedule and are now winners of six straight, the longest streak anybody\u2019s put together in MLS this season.<\/p>\n RBNY need some of that, and may be crawling towards it with two wins on the trot, which comes after a stretch in which they won only once in eight outings.<\/p>\n Yet somehow, these teams are separated by just five points in the standings, with an Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs berth guaranteed for neither. This one matters a ton.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Charlotte FC<\/strong><\/p>\n New York Red Bulls<\/strong><\/p>\n They are on 44 points, in seventh place in the East. Lose this game and currently eighth-place New York City FC<\/a> can tie them on 44, while ninth-place Chicago<\/a> and 10th-place RBNY could end up being just two points back.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m saying is things are tight, and this is what I mean by \u201ca true six-pointer,\u201d because you\u2019re not just collecting three points yourself if you win this game \u2013 you\u2019re denying three valuable points to one of the teams chasing you.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll go ahead and say it: If Charlotte win this game, they make the playoffs. It won\u2019t be over mathematically, but they\u2019ll be eight points above 10th place with six games left. They\u2019re not blowing that lead.<\/p>\n Lose it, though, and the door\u2019s wide open.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n All of the above, inverted. The Red Bulls are, at worst, two points out of seventh place if they win this game. Much more likely, they jump one or both of ninth-place Chicago (at Philly<\/a>) or NYCFC (at Cincinnati<\/a>) and breathe some life into what had been badly fading playoff hopes.<\/p>\n That matters not just for this year but historically, as this club is riding a 15-year postseason streak, an almost unfathomable run of consistency in a league of such parity.<\/p>\n This group doesn\u2019t want to be the ones to let that slip away.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Charlotte: Delaying Adilson Malanda’s departure keeps the window open<\/strong><\/p>\n One player has played all 2,430 regular-season minutes for Charlotte FC this season. Can you guess who?<\/p>\n If you couldn\u2019t come up with Adilson Malanda<\/a> immediately, we\u2019ve got to talk about your ability to suss out context clues. Anyway\u2026<\/p>\n Sometimes the biggest win in the transfer window is not about who you sign, but who you don\u2019t lose (not yet, anyway). Charlotte just sold Malanda<\/a> to Middlesbrough for reportedly $8 million, something like an 8x profit after spotting him playing for Rodez in Ligue 2, but won\u2019t bid adieu to the 23-year-old rock in the middle of their backline until the end of the season.<\/p>\n Getting Malanda back on loan for the remainder of the season was a real coup by general manager Zoran Krneta. Now, can Malanda help Charlotte not just make the playoffs but compete for the first trophy in club history? We\u2019ve got five months to find out.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n An anchor of The Crown’s defense that ????????????’???? ???????????????? ???????????? ????<\/p>\n We have transferred defender Adilson Malanda to Middlesbrough F.C. but he will remain in Charlotte through the 2025 MLS season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2014 Charlotte FC (@CharlotteFC) August 20, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n New York: Timo Werner, where art thou?<\/strong><\/p>\n I am writing this at 11:53 am ET on Thursday, August 21. The transfer deadline is in approximately 12-ish hours.<\/p>\n Will the Red Bulls make a move that substantially improves their team? Tick tock. Tick tock. No point belaboring the point, but it\u2019s going to be a big bummer for Red Bulls supporters if the Werner tease remains exactly that.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The first part of the year was defined by Zaha\u2019s relative lack of production, which was downstream of his relative lack of chemistry with Agyemang. Those two guys couldn\u2019t get on the same page, and so playmaker Pep Biel<\/a> was executing something of a carry job through mid-spring.<\/p>\n But the bottom eventually gave out, and come the end of April, the Crown embarked upon one of the worst stretches in their young history: just two wins in 12 games over about two-and-a-half months. Nothing was really working.<\/p>\n Then Agyemang \u2013 a very good player who I\u2019m high on, to be clear \u2013 left for the Gold Cup<\/a> with the USMNT<\/a>, and Toklomati took his place in the starting XI. And suddenly the attack found some chemistry, which came from a clearer tactical vision: they\u2019ve dropped their line of confrontation deeper and mostly dispensed with any pretense towards being a ball-dominant team.<\/p>\n Their overall possession has dropped since the end of May, as has their field tilt and number of passes per individual possession. At the same time, the share of their passes that are long balls has increased, as have their total number of long balls, and number of diagonals per possession.<\/p>\n That last one is the biggest one, because those diagonals allow Zaha and Vargas, as mentioned above, to get into good spots against stretched-out defenses. Between that and the lower line of confrontation, that means more time playing on the break into space.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not all<\/em> that, of course. But even when they build goals via possession, a long-ball is usually involved:<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2014 Sports Radio WFNZ (@wfnz) July 13, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n Bear in mind, though, that those kinds of goals are less likely to occur when Biel \u2013 who is injured (hamstring) and not expected to play again until September \u2013 is off the field.<\/p>\n Long story short: quicker transitions and a star DP less isolated than he had been have catapulted Charlotte up the standings this summer. It\u2019s simple, but it\u2019s effective.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n We saw RBNY head coach Sandro Schwarz make a similar calculation last year, down the stretch and into the playoffs, as he abandoned the more ball-dominant style his team had been playing for a more pragmatic approach, one that sacrificed both possession and field position for space to counter into. It wasn\u2019t classic Energy Drink Soccer \u2013 they were pressing high only selectively \u2013 but more of a classic, lower-division English approach to the game.<\/p>\n It obviously worked pretty well, as they made it to MLS Cup for just the second time in the club\u2019s history.<\/p>\n Schwarz, though, is stubborn and determined to evolve his team into one that uses the ball well in all facets of the game. It doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s trying to turn them into the Columbus Crew<\/a>; he hasn\u2019t moved the sliders that far. But this year\u2019s Red Bull side plays at a slower tempo with more passes per possession than any RBNY side in more than a decade.<\/p>\n Is it working? Well, they\u2019re in 10th place and fighting for their playoff lives. So\u2026 no. At the same time, they\u2019re actually ahead of last year\u2019s PPG pace. So\u2026 yes. The problem, you see, is this year\u2019s Eastern Conference is a freaking wood-chipper.<\/p>\n An even bigger change than how much they have the ball is where they draw their line of confrontation under Schwarz. It\u2019s usually a mid-block, both in and out of possession, which is designed so the RBNY midfielders (usually Forsberg, but here the underrated Daniel Edelman<\/a>) can play the attackers into the final third at pace:<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n 17-year-old Julian Hall buries the opener for New York past Monterrey! ???? pic.twitter.com\/wfxymLvFHc<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Major League Soccer (@MLS) August 4, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n Think of it this way: they play short (more small passes in their own defensive third, and in the middle third) so they can then play long (into the space they\u2019ve created in behind by holding onto the ball so well, and sucking the opponents upfield while doing it).<\/p>\n In theory, it\u2019s very good. In practice, it\u2019s been hit-and-miss \u2013 there\u2019s a reason they\u2019re fighting for their playoff lives and it\u2019s not even September.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n It\u2019ll be the usual 4-2-3-1, with (I\u2019m assuming) Brandt Bronico<\/a> once again playing as a pressing 10 in place of the injured Biel. I\u2019m also assuming newly acquired left back Harry Toffolo<\/a> will spend another week coming off the bench, since Dean Smith probably doesn\u2019t want to mess with a lineup that\u2019s on a winning streak.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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Charlotte FC<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
New York Red Bulls<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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