It was during the season when reporters were speaking to Red Bulls Coach Mike Petke at the team’s training center in Hanover, N.J.
During the usual back and forth, one of the team’s defenders, Richard Eckersley, ambled past the group. He had not been playing. He had not even been one of the available substitutes sitting on the bench.
A reporter said to Petke, “Is Eckersley in the witness protection program?” The coach smiled and started to fashion a snarky response before catching himself and reverting to coachspeak.
Such evasiveness is no longer necessary. Eckersley, 25, a native of Worsley, England, has solidified his spot on the right side of the Red Bulls’ defense. He may not have been in witness protection, but he has certainly come in from the cold.
For a player who began his professional career on the books at Manchester United, bounced around lower divisions in England and then landed in Toronto in Major League Soccer only to be traded last winter to the Red Bulls, the plunge was fast and frustrating.
“It was really, really difficult,” Eckersley said in a telephone interview. “Moving countries and houses, just being unsettled. Then there were two or three horrid games, a few injuries and I had to start from scratch.”
Now Eckersley is poised to start in his seventh consecutive league match when the Red Bulls play at D.C. United in the second game of their home-and-home Eastern Conference semifinal series.
The Red Bulls won last Sunday’s first leg, 2-0, and are on the cusp of advancing to the conference finals (which will not begin until the weekend before Thanksgiving because Major League Soccer is taking a break during a series of international matches involving the United States men’s team).
A victory at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium on Saturday would seal the series, but the Red Bulls would also advance with a draw, a loss by no more than one goal or even on the away-goals rule (new to the M.L.S. postseason this year). An early goal by New York would put D.C., which finished first over all in the conference, under enormous pressure.
After starting 18 different defensive combinations through the M.L.S. season, Petke has settled on a steady back four of Eckersley on the right, Roy Miller on the left, and Jamison Olave and Ibrahim Sekagya in the middle for the past three games. Over that span, the Red Bulls have scored six goals and allowed only one in winning three critical games.
For Petke, quality, not continuity, is the issue in defense.
“Continuity is a beautiful word and it’s intriguing to write about in the papers, but to me it means nothing,” Petke said. “I’ve said it all along, cohesiveness, I guess you could say perhaps to a lot of people is important and it’s important to me if the four people being cohesive are doing their job, but I will not sacrifice the team or us possibly getting a result because I’m saying I have to stick with continuity, I have to stick with the same players.”
For Eckersley, whose contract expires at the end of the year, the fall from grace was taken as a personal challenge.
“I think it starts on the training field,” he said. “You have to work. I didn’t go home and sulk all day, but mentally it was really draining. I started getting a few minutes during the Concacaf games.”
While the Red Bulls seem to have settled on the same four guys on the back line, Petke was quick to credit, in a recent conference call, the solid play of Dax McCarty and Eric Alexander, the team’s two holding midfielders. Still, he came back to the quality of the back four.
“If you look at all four of them as individuals, you look at Roy Miller, who is one of the best left backs in the league, so he is solid out there.” Petke said. “You go next to him with Sekagya, the last month and a half I think has been one of our most important players. He just reads the game so well and he brings a wealth of experience and he’s got a phenomenal attitude and he’s a big leader back there. Olave next to him is one-on-one defensively to me the best defender in the league, so we need that type of fighting back there and that type of workmanlike attitude out of him. And then the right back was interesting you know, we went through a number of right backs this year.”
That list included Kosuke Kimura, the rookie Chris Duvall (who seemed to hit the wall about three-quarters of the way through the season) and now Eckersley.
“Richard Eckersley now, who has really surprised us in a certain way because he had his struggles early on in the year, but he came to a new team and he just stayed with it and stayed positive,” Petke said. “I’ve had a handful of conversations and arguments, I guess you could say, early on in the year with him, but true to his form and true to his personality, he kept a great attitude and he worked every day, and when we put him in, however long ago, a month maybe, he has really stepped up and he’s really shown what he’s capable of.”
Asked about those “arguments,” Petke said only: “That’s between Richard and I. The one thing I will say is, obviously, which is a good thing, he wasn’t very happy that he wasn’t playing a lot, and I like that. I’d rather have that than a player just smile and say, ‘O.K., I’m out of the lineup,’ and just go about his business. No, he wanted to play and I’m glad for that because I think that was a driving force behind where he is right now. He never gave up, he looked to improve and he looked to worked hard and it’s paying dividends now for him.”
Eckersley, still only in his mid-20s and with a desire to perhaps return to England and play in the Premier League, is happy with his return to the field. But he also points to a sparse, if nonexistent, presence on social media.
“The team is more important,” he said. “When I was at United I used to watch Paul Scholes. He did his thing in training and went home. I like to float under the radar. Do my job well and don’t be distracted.”