There will be no “mid-season makeover” like last season, promises Red Bulls coach Juan Carlos Osorio, referring to South American additions Gabriel Cichero, Juan Pietravallo and Jorge Rojas, among others, that arrived in time to help the N.Y. upstarts make a run all the way to the MLS Cup final.
This time around, Osorio went about picking up potential impact players in the off-season, nabbing a duo of Spanish midfielder Alberto Celades, Costa Rican defender Carlos Johnson and hoping to sign El Salvadorian defender Alfredo Pacheco in advance of their season opener on Thursday against the Seattle Sounders.
But surely Osorio’s eye for talent isn’t closed off to other components to help the Red Bulls earn a repeat championship spot. “No, that’s it,” he swears, adding that it was a “tedious and long process, but at the end I personally feel very comfortably with the squad we have built.”