Midway through last week, Bradley Wright-Phillips thought he saw Alex Muyl hanging his head a little bit. The striker watched as Muyl kept to himself and stayed mostly quiet. He said it was similar to his own response in those situations when things weren’t going well as a younger player.



Over the past three years, Muyl had become a regular for the Red Bulls with 95 appearances and 58 starts, winning the Supporters’ Shield in the process. So it was a bit unusual that he didn’t even make the bench in Tuesday’s 4-2 loss to Santos Laguna in the quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Champions League. Then on Saturday afternoon, Muyl was again out of the starting XI. He entered the game in the 36th minute when Florian Valot went down with a knee injury.



From there, Muyl’s relentless style of play led to two goals — an equalizer in the 51st minute and the winning goal 20 minutes later. Two pair of strikes put the Red Bulls on their way to a win...