Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cameron Harper is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and David Ruiz trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at New York Red Bulls. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
John McCarthy has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether New York Red Bulls can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Nobody at New York Red Bulls will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and New York Red Bulls will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. New York Red Bulls know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at New York Red Bulls, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” New York Red Bulls have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cameron Harper is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at New York Red Bulls this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Andy Rojas and New York Red Bulls agree another 5 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting is on it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cameron Harper is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at New York Red Bulls. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. New York Red Bulls know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Ethan Horvath has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
In brief
SquadEthan Horvath is the talk of the training ground
At 18 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cameron Harper was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
David Ruiz was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what New York Red Bulls can pretend not to have heard.
David Ruiz and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 0‑1, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
Somebody else is better right now than John McCarthy
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and John McCarthy trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.