Scotland international Lewis Morgan has revealed his team will embrace their underdog status to help make history at the weekend.
The ex Celtic and St Mirren winger has played a pivotal role in helping New York Red Bulls in their remarkable run to the MLS Cup final. The 28-year-old Greenock native reasserted himself as one of the best forwards in the US top flight this year, with 13 goals and seven assists in his first year back from a hip injury. The team had to overcome a seventh-place finish in the Eastern Conference and pull off three consecutive upsets to reach this point as the lowest seed ever to reach the Major League Soccer showpiece.
He admits lifting the trophy on Sunday would cap off his outstanding last 12 months perfectly as he and his teammates get set to hop three time zones to California to face LA Galaxy, featuring former Borussia Dortmund star Marco Reus, in this Saturday’s championship final (kick-off 9pm UK time). Morgan said: “There’s a lot left to go. It’s all well and good being a finalist, but it really counts for nothing if you don’t win it. In terms of accomplishments, probably this would be the one that I will look back on really, really fondly.
“Of course, in terms of all the things I dealt with with the injuries and the comeback, everything that’s come this year, it’s something I think even myself, who has set lofty ambitions all the time, would have thought was a little bit of a stretch… I’m loving it, but a win this weekend would be the deciding factor as to where I’d rank it in my career.”
The Red Bulls are underdogs heading into Saturday against an LA Galaxy team that lost just once at home this season and finished No. 2 overall in the Western Conference. Morgan added: “The guys have just been really switched on and focused the whole time. I think we’ve known what the task is at hand. We’ve known we’ve been underdogs going into the games. We’ve embraced that. We’ll embrace that again this weekend, knowing that we’re not expected to go there and run all over LA Galaxy.
“We’re expected to go there, make things difficult, and try to impose our style of football on them. We’ve never really gotten too far ahead of ourselves or thought we’d achieved anything. We’ve remained pretty grounded in terms of knowing that if we do want to win or achieve anything, it’s going to take a collective group effort.”