Major League Soccer fans have gotten used to the current reality of the New York Red Bulls, but there was a time in the recent past when the club’s identity was closer to one you’d expect from the branding “New York.”
It was six years ago, when Thierry Henry was the second-biggest star on the MLS landscape and Rafa Márquez looked like a shrewd attempt to penetrate the Mexican-American market. It was back before the specter of NYCFC began to emerge on the horizon, back when the dreams of Red Bulls using its new arena to become Galaxy East seemed faintly possible.