It seems there’s nothing Bradley Wright-Phillips can’t do to help out the New York Red Bulls.
The entire league knows about his goal scoring prowess. He scored his 100th MLS goal just last week, a feat he was honored for after Sunday night’s win over Los Angeles FC. However, in that match, he made headlines for his abilities to feed his teammates rather than finishing the goals himself.
Wright-Phillips easily could have brought his career total to 101 by slotting home the winning goal in the 80th minute. He collected a long ball from Marc Rzatkowski and was basically one on one with LAFC keeper Tyler Miller. However, he declined the chance to score himself in order to play a pass to Daniel Royer, who easily tapped the ball in for his second of the night.
“That play says everything,” Royer said about Wright-Phillips feeding him the winner. “He had a decent angle to shoot and to score a goal. But after the game he told me he heard me yelling and he saw me and he thought I had a better position, so he passed the ball and that’s just great.”
That was his sixth assist of the season. That, combined with his 14 goals has him involved in a total of 20 Red Bulls goals this year. Only Josef Martinez and Zlatan Ibrahimovic have found themselves on the scoresheet more often.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not he’s the guy finishing attacking moves, he’s excellent, and happy, anyway.
That selflessness is but one more quality that makes him a valuable asset to the Red Bulls. Even when he isn’t scoring goals, he’s out there helping his teammates both on and off the field. It’s something that everyone has noticed, especially his new head coach, Chris Armas.
“Look, every so often, a guy like this comes around and you can only be so fortunate to spend some time with a player and a person like this,” Armas said.
“So for every young player, either in our academy and comes through, and first-team player, how for fortunate that they can watch a guy and remind guys — and I tell players, watch this guy: Watch how he shows up every day and watch what real work looks like. Watch how he interacts people. Watch how he takes to Nancy, the woman who prepares our food. Watch how he deals with the bus drivers, and it goes on and on and on.”
So, while his goal scoring speaks for itself, there doesn’t seem to be much BWP can’t accomplish, both on and off the field.
FLASHBACK: APRIL 11, 2018
Following goalless series, Marsch defends decision to play Wright-Phillips deeper
https://sbisoccer.com/2018/04/following-goalless-series-marsch-defends-decision-to-play-wright-phillips-deeper
“Part of it may be down to the decisions Marsch himself made. The team’s record goalscorer, Bradley Wright-Phillips was not playing in his usual position at the head of the formation, but in a deeper number ten role,”
“Wright-Phillips is fine with that decision. “I don’t mind,” the forward said. “Anywhere I can help the team win, I will.””
so what we saw here was a pure striker saying “yes, sir” to his coach (jesse marsch) when asked to play deeper and defend more. i was really impressed by that. to me, that moment spoke volumes about wright-philip’s character as a person/player.
(“then my comment afterward was, “freddy adu, are you listening? bwp says “yes coach” and he gets mad minutes. that’s what you should do, too.”) to be so talented at finishing and at the same time to be so selfless that you don’t care whether you pad your own stats or not is really quite a beautiful gem. indeed, how lucky the red bulls (and mls) are to have wright philips to learn from week after week by his fine example.
my two cents on RETIRING JERSEYS: i think retiring jerseys is stupid. there aren’t that many numbers between 1 and 100. if you keep retiring jerseys, soon you’ll run out of numbers. this idea that a player “owns” a number is stupid. pele doesn’t/didn’t “own” number 10 and michael jordan doesn’t/didn’t “own” number 23. hang pele’s jersey (with the number 10 on it) proudly in the hall of fame. and hang michael jordan’s jersey (with the number 23 on it) proudly in the hall of fame, too. but don’t retire their numbers. let the next generation of players wear 10 or 23 or any other number they want. the old addage in sports is to say that “records were meant to be broken.” while it’s hard to imagine a better player than pele or michael jordan, we optimistically INSIST on the POSSIBILITY that a better player may come along one day. to retire the person’s jersey, effectively, is to make the pessimistic assertion that “this record will never be broken”. or to say it another way, “man’s limit has been reached.” or “the human race can advance no further.” a big red stop sign for human achievement. does that sound good? no, of course not. we all like to believe that the future can be better. that the next superdraft has the next superstar, AND HE’S BETTER THAN PELE. BETTER THAN MICHAEL JORDAN. so don’t retire the jerseys. let the glass be half FULL, FOREVER.