HANOVER, N.J. – A day after head coach Mike Petke said that they will be the key factors and potential MVPs in the outcome of this weekend’s game, Dax McCarty and Eric Alexander sounded plenty prepared for the challenge that lies ahead.
The New York Red Bulls will travel to take on D.C. United in the second leg of their Eastern Conference Semifinals series on Saturday (2:30 pm ET; NBC, stream on NBCSports.com, UDN), and all that McCarty and Alexander are being tasked with doing is ensuring that their club’s current two-goal advantage in the MLS Cup Playoffs, presented by AT&T holds up.
Doing so will require the type of stout performance that the central midfielders have regularly put forth en route to helping New York go 8-2-1 since the start of September. The caveat, however, is that they will need to be even more alert, sharp and organized than they have been, seeing as how rival D.C. United will be looking to erase the deficit created from this past Sunday’s 2-0 defeat at Red Bull Arena.
There will need to be a balance between attacking and defense, of course. Being smart when they are without the ball seems to have a bit more importance than in previous weeks, and with good reason.
“I think we’ll probably be a little more disciplined defensively than many of the last couple of games,” Alexander told MLSsoccer.com of the approach. “Other than that, I think pretty normal. I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job keeping other teams from scoring so I don’t think we’ll need to change too much.
“Obviously, they’re going to eventually have to throw a couple more guys forward and that’ll be something we work on in training how to deal with. But other than that I think we’ll just go about our normal routine and just work together.”
Working in tandem is a task McCarty and Alexander have executed to a tee these last couple of months. The two veterans have been used as holding midfielders in a 4-2-3-1 formation that has helped spur New York to their best stretch of games in 2014, and the manner in which they protect the back four while serving as the link from the defense to the attack has been invaluable.
That said, there are still admitted improvements that the duo can make, especially when in possession of the ball, to fortify their partnership.
“I think attacking wise, still we have spacing issues in terms of making sure that we’re not too close or too far from each other and we’re always complementing each other and always an option for one another,” McCarty told MLSsoccer.com. “We can certainly be better. We’ve done alright up to this point.”
Alexander echoed those sentiments.
“Our spacing and I think our communication a little bit,” he said. “A lot of times, we get caught on the same side and that’s just something that we need to be vocal to each other about.”
D.C. seem to be well aware of just how vital McCarty and Alexander are to New York's fortunes, as they came out pressing in the first leg and were very aggressive with them in the opening 20 minutes. That was especially the case for McCarty, who was harassed quite a bit when on the ball by the more physically imposing and athletic Eddie Johnson.
It might be more of the same in the second leg with United trying to claw their way back into the series, but McCarty and Alexander are ready to step up to what might possibly be their biggest challenge of the season.
“We realize it’s going to be a lot tougher game down in D.C.,” said McCarty. “They’re very, very good at home. They didn’t have their best game [in the first leg], so we expect them to play a lot better and we expect them to come out firing.
“If we can weather the storm, if we can take a little bit of the sting out of the game, quiet the crowd down, if we can keep possession, I think that’s really important for us.”
Franco Panizo covers the New York Red Bulls for MLSsoccer.com. He can be reached by email at Franco8813@gmail.com.
