The year was 2010. Major League Soccer was three years into its big-money David Beckham boom. Just 15 teams made up the league, with the Philadelphia Union just arriving, but commissioner Don Garber believed that there was plenty of room for more.
He was right. Fifteen more teams would debut in the 15 intervening years, with San Diego FC eventually rounding out the league as its 30th franchise. Plenty changed for MLS during that time period, but one thing stayed the same: In 15 years, while 15 new clubs joined the league, the New York Red Bulls qualified for the postseason 15 times in a row.
It’s an astonishing fact, the kind that makes you sit up and arch an eyebrow. 15 times? Consecutively? With no break? Yes. MLS kept changing the goalposts for its ever-growing postseason, but somehow, the Red Bulls always managed to find their way in.
It wasn’t always easy. It took a stoppage-time penalty from local prospect John Tolkin on the final day of the season to seal the Red Bulls’ postseason spot back in 2023. But that doesn’t matter. Easy or not, the Red Bulls have achieved something truly remarkable: the longest active playoff streak in professional American sports.
Red Bulls’ streak is in danger
They might not have it for long. With just three games left in the 2025 MLS regular season, the Red Bulls sit two points outside the playoff zone. It’s win or die, kill or be killed, with every single match a must-win scenario for the Red Bulls if they hope to keep their playoff streak alive.
And who, pray tell, do they have to take down first? Only their hated cross-city rival New York City FC.
The Red Bulls will host NYCFC at their Harrison, New Jersey, stadium on Saturday in the 32nd edition of the Hudson River Derby. The Red Bulls have the historical edge, with a 16-4-11 record, but NYCFC enters with more momentum. A 4-0 hammering at the hands of Inter Miami couldn’t dishearten the club. It already sealed its spot in the 2025 playoffs and is fighting for a top-four conference finish. The Red Bulls are just fighting to stay in the game.
“I expect a very intense game against them, from the mental side,” said Red Bulls coach Sandro Schwarz, per the team’s website. “We have to be ready.”
MLS rivalries are dismissed in the global soccer community for their perceived lack of ferocity, but the forces separating the Red Bulls and NYCFC are serious and acute. Forget the players, the coaches, the nature of the cross-city rivalry: These are two clubs that represent the terrifying twin financial forces shaping modern soccer as we know it. In one corner, the Red Bulls, a corporate-owned franchise operating as a sister team to Red Bull enterprises around the globe. In the other, NYCFC, a venture funded by Emirati oil. Are you team corporate ownership or team sovereign wealth? It’s an impossible decision, but the Hudson River Derby will force you to choose.
Whichever side you’re on, you likely find the other to be actively destructive toward the sport you love. That’s where the fire comes from in the Hudson River Derby, and that’s what makes it so emotional for fans and players alike.
“It’ll be a super intense game, tactics might get thrown out the window in the first five minutes,” said Red Bulls defender Dylan Nealis. “It becomes an absolute war out there.”
It’s a war Nealis and the Red Bulls have to win. With the Chicago Fire two points ahead of them in ninth place with a game in hand, they can’t afford to slip up if they hope to keep their playoff streak alive.
The Red Bulls will host NYCFC in Harrison, New Jersey, on Saturday, Sep. 27 at 7:30 p.m. ET.
