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New York Red Bulls vs. Santos: Match Night Commentary

New York Red Bulls - JPEG

The New York Red Bulls are set to unveil their new 25,000 stadium today as they play host to Santos at Red Bull Arena.

After 15 years of waiting, the soccer fans in the New York/New Jersey area are being treated to a stadium to call their own. A sell-out crowd is expected for tonight as the fabled club Santos FC pays a visit.

I will be providing commentary from tonight's historic event so please feel free to follow along tonight. As always, you are welcome to share your own thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.

Enjoy the action.

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FINAL– That's all for me tonight. Be sure to check out SBI on Sunday and Monday for more coverage of the opening of Red Bull Arena, as well as more coverage of the Red Bulls and the rest of MLS. The 2010 season is on its way and it should be a memorable one.

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FINAL- The lights have gone out as there will be a fireworks display after the match. Nice touch to a great night. 

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FINAL– The Red Bulls post a 3-1 victory over Santos in the opening of Red Bull Arena.

The first of what should be many memorable nights in a stadium that is easily the best soccer stadium in America.

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90th minute– GOAL SANTOS!! and it's a header from Germano to make it 3-1. Good goal. Credit to Santos for playing hard all 90.

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89th minute– A beautiful night for soccer has given home fans a great result and an evening to remember.

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87th minute– Santos is offside on a would-be goal. You almost hope they score one so the Santos fans who came out will leave with something to be happy about.

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84th minute– Tony Tchani is set to come in for Joel Lindpere.

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82nd minute– Jefferson comes in for Alan Santos for Santos.

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77th minute– Crystian is in for Santos, out comes Zezinho. Andrew Boyens comes in for Mike Petke.

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75th minute– Another apparent foul against Santos is ignored by the ref. These Santos fans aren't going to come back to Red Bull Arena if this ref keeps ignoring fouls like this.

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73rd minute– John Wolyniec gets a yellow card for fouling the same Santos defender who elbowed him in the face just a minute earlier.

Austin Da Luz comes on for Mac Kandji.

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72nd minute– Some home cooking from MLS referee Jorge Gonzalez (at least I think that's the ref).

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70th minute– Austin Da Luz is coming into the match.

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67th minute– Wolyniec comes in for Salou. Has to be a great moment for Wolyniec, who has spent so many years with the Red Bulls.

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66th minute– Neymar and Hall just had a nasty collision. John Wolyniec is about to come in.

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65th minute– Santos is livid after a penalty is ignored. Bad no call for the visitors.

It was Dane Richards who came out, not Jeremy Hall.

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61st minute– Coundoul is leaving the match to a nice applause. Great game for him. Greg Sutton is coming into the match now. Luke Sassano is in for Dane Richards.

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60th minute– The MLS season opener next week vs. the Chicago Fire is going to be a good one. Chicago has bolstered its squad with some good additions and is considered the top contender to East favorite Columbus.

Dane Richards looks to have pulled his hamstring.

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56th minute– Every soccer game should have a group of people playing samba music. Just makes it feel like a soccer game.

Salou has his dancing shoes on. He looks very sharp on the ball. Where's the contract and pen?

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54th minute– Kandji is playing on the left wing now, with Agudelo up top with Salou.

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53rd minute– SAVE COUNDOUL, stops a Neymar drive. So much for questions about who the starting goalkeeper is.

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51st minute– SAVE COUNDOUL, nice diving stop. Santos corner.

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50th minute– Some of the Red Bulls newcomers have looked very good tonight. Lindpere, Ream and Miller have looked good during the pre-season and it has shown tonight.

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46th minute– Agudelo came on for Robinson at halftime. Santos had two subs. Breitner and Aguiar are out, Diego Monar and Marcel are in for Santos.

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46th minute– And we're back.

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HALFTIME- Red Bulls 3, Santos 0. Jeremy Hall with nice work to swap jerseys with Neymar. Only jersey swap of the first half. 

How fitting is it that Petke scored tonight? He's the epitome of the club, having played the most matches in club history.

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45th minute– Juan Agudelo is coming in for Robinson, nice job by Hans Backe with an attacking sub up 3-0. He's not playing around.

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45th minute– Carl Robinson has hurt his knee. He's coming out of the match. Look for Seth Stammler to come in here in stoppage time.

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45th minute- GOAL RED BULLS!!! and it's Dane Richards with an absolute blast from 23 yards out off a great pass from Kandji. Best shot I've ever seen Richards hit.

Red Bulls 3, Santos 0.

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44th minute- GOAL RED BULLS!!!! And it's Mike Petke with a side-volley off a Ream header. Red Bulls 2, Santos 0.

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43rd minute– Kandji draws a dangerous free kick. Lindpere sends it in, but it's headed clear for a Red Bulls corner.

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41st minute– Neymar is back on the field and is now getting booed every time he touches the ball. The locals must think he's diving.

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39th minute– Neymar banged knees with a Carl Robinson and is down on the turf. His right knee took the brunt of it.

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38th minute– Okay folks, feel free to shoot some questions my way in the comments and I'll see about answering some of them.

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36th minute– As-yet unsigned academy product Juan Agudelo is warming up. This will be a good stage for him to show what he can do, and perhaps convince MLS officials to stop dragging their feet and sign him.

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35th minute– Both players look to be okay, they've limped off but are set to return.

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33rd minute– Bruno Aguiar is down and it doesn't look good for him. His knee looked like it gave because of the turf. Ibrahim Salou is also down injured.

This turf is awful, at least it is
for a brand new stadium. I know the weather lately hasn't helped, but it's just not a good field.

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32nd minute– Petke with the slide tackle to get the ball away from Neymar. I'm sure five years from now that sentence will sound crazy.

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30th minute– I know it's early in a friendly, but Tim Ream looks so good on the ball. You can tell why there have been so many raves about the rookie from St. Louis.

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28th minute– Santos sends a dangerous set piece opportunity deep into the stands. Red Bulls dodged a bullet there.

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26th minute– Neymar does his dancing tricks, gives Santos a corner (his coaches doesn't look to be a fan of the dancing in that instant).

Red Bulls deal with the corner.

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24th minute– It needs to be pointed out how much easier it is to get to Red Bull Arena than Giants Stadium for so many fans via public transportation. New York-based fans are loving the PATH train access, and New Jersey fans can get here via trains and buses with Newark Penn Station nearby.

Of course that means a problem for fans coming in cars, but that should be eased once more parking is finished in the area.

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21st minute– The game has slowed down a bit as the initial surge of energy for both sides subsides.

And here comes Santos with its first quality build-up in some time.

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17th minute– For those who missed it, Robinho stayed in Brazil because of a thigh injury.

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15th minute– Opening night at Red Bull Arena hasn't been without its problems. Traffic and parking were a nightmare and the grass field isn't looking so great.

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13th minute– Apologies for the delays in posting. Still getting the technical side sorted out here.

This Santos squad is a bit of a make-shift bunch so don't read too much into the early going, but the Red Bulls are dominating play right now.

Ibrahim Salou has looked very good early on, and so has Joel Lindpere.

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11th minute- GOAL RED BULLS!!! And it's Joel Lindpere with the first goal in Red Bull Arena history, hits his own rebound from 18 yards out. Red Bulls 1, Santos 0.

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4th minute– Tim Ream shows some good confidence on the ball. He's been the rookie most talked about this pre-season.

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2nd minute– Germano with a nice rough tackle on Lindpere early.

Lots of fans here for Santos, has evidenced by the cheers for Neymar when he got the ball.

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1st Minute– And we're underway. The stadium is still filling in, but the crowd is lively enough already.

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PRE-GAME– Ibrahim Salou is a trialist for those of you wondering.

We're close to kickoff. Anthems are being sung now.

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PRE-GAME– Here are the lineups for tonight's match:

RED BULLS

————–Ibrahim Salou——–Kandji———————-

—————————Lindpere—————————-

Ubiparipovic ——————————————-Richards

—————————Robinson——————————

Miller————Ream————-Petke——————Hall

————————–Coundoul—————————-

SANTOS

————-Neymar——Giovanni——–Zezinho————–

———–Germano——Breitner———-Alan Santos———

Alex Sandro—–Luciano Castan ———–Aguiar———-Lucas

—————————Fabio Costa——————————-

(Please forgive the positions, they're definitely not accurate, but at least you know who's playing)

Comments

  1. Ives… How many drinks did u have pregame or at the game? Lol.. Salou was Terrible, no good passing from his part, big n tall but gets beat in the air everytime, doesn’t shoot n takes to long with the ball…. About the fouls, got to say u were a but off to, Santos dove almost everytime n it was funny watching them dive n getting upset.. The shoulder to shoulder in the box that Santos thought was
    a foul was a dive as well… It was ridicoulus watching neymar dive everytime, n the only person he really crapped on was Richards but Tim ream straight man handled him everytime…. If Santos don’t come back it’s because they know our home is their hell.. VAMOS METRO!

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  2. I was not at the game and was not even able to see it…. darn my sisters baby shower….. But I like the idea of having Brazilian women at everygame….. Red Bull should do everything in there power to get a promising young Brazilian on the team…. it would be great for quality of play as well marketing to the ironbound community…. though I pretty sure that they will continue to come to games considering how well the Red Bulls played….

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  3. Sorry to clear up #4. There were no walkways from section 215 to 216. It appeared to me there was no complete walkway area in the 200 section where you can walk from one end of the stadium to the other. The views are great and the rest can be corrected but not sure what they plan to do with ROW 9 in the 200 section but to me they should be removed so a walkway could be created. Definetly not full price tickets with people bothering you to get up every 2 mins.

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  4. It was very easy from downtown Manhattan. 20 minutes on the Path. For me, 50 minutes door to door – a massive improvement over getting to the Meadowlands.

    And one other point, can the Brazilian women show up for every match?

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  5. You must be joking. Ream was great the whole night. Completely poised and smart with the ball. He made one bad pass all night and he defended well.

    I sat near one of the corner flags and saw him close up for the second half. The whole back line was actually surprisingly good.

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  6. Haha, OK, now that I’ve reviewed my photos, maybe the pitch wasn’t quite so perfect. Still, it’ll get there. The weather this winter hasn’t helped.

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  7. great to hear a perspective from a non MLS fan’s observation. Thanks for sharing. Hopefully you can show up to many more MLS games in the future.

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  8. Another positive vote on the transportation here. I took the Path from WTC to Harrison on the way in, and took the free shuttle to Newark Penn on the way out, and both were perfectly smooth. Getting to the stadium from the city is so easy. Really looking forward to next week’s game against the Fire.

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  9. I was there at the stadium/arena. It is a great place for soccer. The red bulls arena did have it’s glitches though. Here are my take on a few things they can do:

    1. Parking/Traffic – they need to improve the parking situation. It took me and my dad about 1 1/2 hour to find parking because the staff seem to not be able to handle the line of cars very well. Hopefully this can be ironed out for the next upcoming games.

    2. No garbage cans from my walk from the parking to the Arena. Therefore guess what everyone who walked with food and bottles ended up dropping their stuff right at the door of the stadium. Please add Red Bulls/City add a few garbage bins/recycle bins around the stadium so people don’t just end up littering all over the place.

    3. Lack of food/drinks. The staff working the food and drink lines were slow and food and drinks were nowhere to be found near my section 215. The only thing available was Diet Coke and Red Bulls which I didn’t care for.

    4. And the worst part of my whole experience…although I admit the arena is great, were my seats. The view of the field was great but my seats were located in Row 9 of the 215 section and once you walk up to the 200 section between 215 and section 216. My seats were located next to the stairs coming out of section 215. Guess what all of row 9 pretty much became a walkway. Every 2 mins a group of people would come by and ask to walk to section 216 instead of going back down and going up to their sections. To me these tickets should not be sold and the seats should be removed to make space for a walkway of sorts. My dad who is retired had to constantly get up to let people pass and it put a bit of a downer on my experience. There was nothing on the tickets that said this could have happen. That to me was a poor design, to an otherwise beautiful arena. If you get ROW 9 in the 200 level ask the arena to change your tickets cause they should not be sold, period end of story!

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  10. Got home 2 hours ago from the game and must say the experience was wonderful! After 16 agonizing years at Giants Stadium, I finally felt at home in Red Bull Arena! The big grass field without football lines was heaven. Yes I know it showed the signs of a rough winter at times but it still was infinitely better than the turf at GS. Public transportation is the way to get to RBA. Don’t drive there unless you can get there early!!
    I met many very nice Red Bull fans on the train back to New Brunswick. The stadium is lovely and the banging on the aluminum stands fits right in with the bulls stampede theme. The Bulls look good too! Hope Robinson is OK! Looking forward to dousing the Fire next week!

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  11. The pitch looked immaculate to me. The only reason people kept going down was because the game was so physical – probably because the ref seemed to decide whether or not to make calls totally arbitrarily. He let some REALLY rough stuff go from both sides – the Santos right back in the first half was straight up assaulting Red Bulls, and Wolyniec pretty much got punched in the face before his yellow, while Santos definitely should have gotten that PK. And there were some really reckless flying tackles from both sides, some of which earned yellows, some of which weren’t called fouls. I don’t understand why a ref in a game like this can’t understand that exhibition matches should be called tight.

    Neymar, sorry to say, did dive a few times. He has the typical bad Brazilian habit of doing a few stepovers (fooling nobody because he’s not throwing his weight but rather just prancing in place straight over the ball) and then darting to one side, after which he’s cut off by a defender and decides to fly into him as he’s losing control of the ball. He does it quickly, so it’s easy to get fooled into thinking he was fouled, but usually he’s just jumping into defenders and trying to create contact after losing the ball. If you hurt yourself doing that, no sympathy.

    I was really impressed with some of the youngsters for the Red Bulls. Tim Ream has the poise of a veteran, and I was impressed with his ability to take charge of balls in the air as well as how comfortable he is with the ball at his feet. Salou and Agudelo also both looked good. And, my Lord, has Dane Richards actually learned to shoot?? He was hitting some lasers pregame as well. I can’t understate what a big deal this would be – at present, all Richards can do is run fast. If he can actually learn to kick the ball, that would be huge.

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  12. this camera man on fsc is the worst ive ever scene. if they broadcast this way at this stadium all the time, im gonna have to pass. You can barely see the ball half the time. Bad coverage. clean it up.

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  13. just got home….amazing time! where were you ives i searched everywhere?

    ps did anyone see that beer selection on the concourse? like 7 different brews.

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  14. went to the game as well. AMAZING! what a dream opening. the atmosphere was off the hook. as soon as people started to figure out that stomping on the floor was loud, everyone just went crazy with it all game! the experience and RB’s style of play was like night and day compared to Giants stadium. the post game fireworks were a nice touch.
    got to see lindsey vonn before she entered the stadium. definately a hottie.
    downsides… i could barely hear the RB supporter groups. i was closer to the brazilians (sec 224) and ESC and the bunch looked flat compared to them until near the end of the game. also the employees at the concessions need to learn how to operate the registers. seriously frustrating.

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  15. Awesome running into you tonight Ives, as always. I’m going to give you a heads up on our pre-game routine at some point and hope you can swing by for a beer. Right now it’s shaping up to be Hell’s Kitchen in Ironbound. Once we get our routine down it would be an honor if you can swing by one Saturday (we know you’re busy my friend). What a game!

    Reply

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