Red Bulls destroy NYCFC, 7-0, cementing the Hudson River Derby's contrived status

The Hudson River Derby was presented as a top rivalry game. MLS and NYCFC got what they deserved on Saturday.

Coming into Saturday's match between New York City FC and the New York Red Bulls, their Hudson River Derby was hyped by MLS and broadcast partner Fox as among the biggest in North America, on par with the Cascadia derbies of the Pacific Northwest. Then Red Bulls won 7-0 on a mangled baseball diamond, in front of 12,000 empty seats.

Red Bulls and NYCFC have good reason to be rivals. They're only separated by a river. NYCFC fans didn't want to support a team in New Jersey. Red Bulls fans don't get why people who are just as far from the Bronx as they are from Harrison are so weird about this. Lots of Red Bulls fans have been all-in on American soccer since 1996 and think NYCFC fans are noobs. Lots of NYCFC fans have been around for a while, but couldn't get behind a team named after a sugar water company.

Despite all that, an actual competition is usually required for a rivalry to exist, and there's no actual competition between these two teams. The Red Bulls have defeated NYCFC every time they've met, and they laid their biggest beating yet on their cross-Hudson rivals this Saturday, defeating them 7-0. They did it in NYCFC's home, Yankee Stadium. It's tied for the biggest margin of victory in MLS history.

Red Bulls scored four of their goals on set pieces. Their captain, Dax McCarty, is very generously listed at 5'9" and won headers to score two of those goals. NYCFC goalkeeper Josh Saunders didn't bother to make an attempt to play the ball on the final goal. There was no competition.

There wasn't much in the way of a big match feel either, unless you count some idiots starting fights on 161st Street as passionate fan support fit for a great derby match. Despite being run by the marketing powerhouses behind Manchester City and the New York Yankees, and the people behind those organizations paying exorbitant amounts of money to global superstars David Villa, Andrea Pirlo and Frank Lampard, NYCFC couldn't sell out Yankee Stadium. The fans that did show up booed Lampard as he made his season debut. The game was played on the narrowest field in MLS, one that wouldn't meet the field regulations in most leagues around the world.

And all of this is just fine, really, because we're only on year two of NYCFC and this game's existence. There should be kinks to work out. NYCFC shouldn't be as good as the Red Bulls yet. They should still be trying to build a fanbase, a winning team, a stadium, and a general identity.

Just don't call it a rivalry on par with Cascadia. Don't force it into being bigger than Toronto vs. Montreal -- or even RSL vs. Colorado -- in just its second year. It was pushed into existence because Don Garber is obsessed with New York, as are his fellow executives, broadcast partners and MLS sponsors. It is still very much a made-up thing. It might be as good as MLS's established rivalries in a few years, but it's not there yet. Let's stop forcing it.