Red Bulls miss playoffs in consecutive years for first time after disastrous loss
There will be no playoffs for Red Bull New York yet again.
For the first time in the club’s history, the Red Bulls will miss the playoffs in consecutive seasons after their 3-2 loss to Nashville SC on Sunday night, capping off a disappointing weekend for the local MLS teams.
The Red Bulls watched as a 2-0 first-half lead disappeared and Nashville scored three unanswered goals, including the go-ahead tally in stoppage time, to end RBNY’s playoff hopes with one match remaining in the 2026 season.
The loss, coupled with the Columbus Crew’s win over D.C. United on Saturday, cost the Red Bulls their slim postseason hopes.
“We’re disappointed. We’re really disappointed,” head coach Michael Bradley said of the turn of events.
Red Bull still has one game remaining on their schedule before the offseason begins, but the disappointing 2026 comes after the organization made massive changes during last offseason, when they ended their streak of 15 straight seasons of making the playoffs.
Head of sport Jochen Schneider and head coach Sandro Schwarz both left the organization and Julian de Guzman was promoted to head of sport and Bradley to head coach of the first team after spending half a season as the Red Bulls II coach.
Under the new administration, the club went through a massive roster overhaul, which included the additions of Jorge Ruvalcaba and Cade Cowell.
However, the club never found consistency during the course of the season, and Sunday’s loss was an example of that after Red Bull played well in the first 45 minutes before Nashville flipped the game on its head in the second half.
“The work to become a really good team, the work to become a team that can hold up on the toughest days and that can play in the biggest games, compete in the hardest moments, that work is hard,” Bradley said. “That’s not always a journey that just goes step by step exactly the way that you want it. There are setbacks, and there’s adversity, and there are hard moments that you have to respond to and be ready to learn and go again.
“Obviously, that’s where we are. Obviously, it’s really disappointing and heartbreaking that we couldn’t, at the end of this season, find a way to get ourselves into the playoffs and and see if we could make a real run at all. Because in a lot of ways we were doing a lot of things in a good way, but now we have to understand how we can grow, improve, harden ourselves, and mature and become ready to take the next step. And we will.”
The Red Bulls’ disappointment comes less than 24 hours after New York City FC was knocked out of playoff contention after they blew a lead at Citi Field to Montreal and were done in by the Columbus win.
This season marks the first time since NYCFC entered MLS in 2015 that neither New York team will be in the postseason.
