Schwarz on First Half: “We Killed Ourselves”

New York Red Bulls head coach Sandro Schwarz was not happy with his club’s 2-1 defeat on Saturday night against DC United. It was his team’s first home loss of 2025 but also showed a lingering trend from the team as they are unable to maintain a focused tactical strategy for 90 minutes in recent games.

“We killed ourselves in the moment when we have the ball,” said Schwarz in response to his team’s inability to move the ball in the first half. “The energy was not in the highest level in our counter press. Our rest defense was not well organized and then there are the goals we conceded. These are the big mistakes from our side, from the whole team.”

Red Bulls were generally unable to to take advantage of a DC United team that lost their key player early in the game. Christian Benteke was forced to leave the game due to an injury, but New York did little to press the opposition. In fact, Benteke’s departure motivated DC and forward Joao Peglow who scored twice after the 35th minute.

New York made changes in the second half, including the insertion of Serge Ngoma, Wiki Carmona and Julian Hall. While the Red Bulls did press the game more and find a goal early in the half, it wasn’t enough as DC’s defense sustained their first half onslaught.

“We changed a little bit of our structure,” said Schwarz about the second half. “To play with two strikers and Emil (Forsberg) as the ten, then we tried everything in the second half. To be honest we have to learn immediately from our first half today.”

Luckily for New York they will have a chance to redeem themselves in front of their home fans as CF Montreal come to town on Saturday afternoon. Schwarz and his team will need to not only address the issues from the first half, but also how they can play their high intensity soccer for 90 minutes without giving away significant chances.