Summer Series Quick Thoughts: Spurs vs. Red Bulls

Spurs took on the New York Red Bulls in the first game of the Barclays New York Challenge.

Here are my quick thoughts:
• Henry looks like he still has it and will be great in MLS. Nice way to start for him scoring against an old North London rival.
• With Croatia not making the World Cup that should give the Spurs Croatian group a nice rest and allow them to be fresh for the season.
• Nice to see Modric and Henry exchange shirts after the first half.
• The Red Bulls defense is not the best.
• Seen Spurs twice already during the preseason and something is lack. I know its preseason but this might be a concern.
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Red Bulls Mystery

The New York Red Bulls have started to tease the soccer world about their newest signing. Today in the New York Times, the MLS team printed a special section that showed off what the Red Bull company is doing and on the back of the magazine it had an ad for their newest player, which is expected to be TH14.

The add states "100 Rumors. 50 Names. 1 Star." The ad shows a player dressed in a Red Bulls kit with his face blurred out. Oh the suspense. Its a good marketing job by the club and an interesting ad.
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Making Red Bull Arena work

So Red Bull Arena has opened and its an amazing building, which I got the honor to see on Wednesday night, but their is a question that I keep asking my self. How are they going to make this work. When I say work I mean from a business point of view.

In this economy a building can not survive on one sport alone. I'm not saying turn it into an all purpose facility but I do think that the building needs to hold a couple of different type of events. So far events that are scheduled including the Churchill Cup (Rugby) on June 19 and the Big East Soccer Championships in mid-November.

This is a great start, while not the most sexiest events, these events will bring people in. Another way the building can be used more is to have state finals for soccer there. It would give the players a great feeling of what its like to play in an venue like that. The state already has a similar set up with both the old Giant Stadium and Rutgers Stadium hosting different state football finals. The hosting should not be limited to soccer, maybe even have the lacrosse and football finals there, only if the field is big enough.

How great would a Bergen Catholic vs. Don Bosco sectional football final be in that building. In the past 20,000 people have shown up at Giant Stadium for the game. Sure that is a good number but in a building like Giant Stadium the people get lost, in Red Bull Arena that would be awesome and the atmosphere would be amazing. The Home Depot Center, where the Galaxy play, has a similar set up with hosting the state high school football finals.

These are just a couple of suggestions to make Red Bull Arena a profitable place, hey it did cost them almost $200 million to build the thing.