Gerhard Struber is no longer head coach of the New York Red Bulls, with the club saying the two sides “have mutually agreed to part ways.”
Struber joined the Red Bulls in 2020 and led the club to the playoffs in 2021 and 2022. This season, however, the Red Bulls sit at the bottom of the Eastern Conference with a 1W-6D-4L record through 11 games.
Assistant Troy Lesesne has been named head coach through the end of the 2023 season.
A difficult 2023 for Struber
Though the decision was framed as mutual, it’s clear that the pressure has been ramping up on Struber in recent months.
The Red Bulls’ on-field performances have been subpar, including a 1-0 defeat to Philadelphia on Saturday that took the club’s winless run to seven games.
But Struber’s position had been even more compromised by his handling of last month’s incident in which Red Bulls forward Dante Vanzeir used a racial slur in a game against the San Jose Earthquakes.
San Jose head coach Luchi Gonzalez urged Struber to take Vanzeir off the pitch after the incident, but the Red Bulls coach left the striker on.
Struber’s refusal to take Vanzeir off led many Red Bulls fans to call for him to be sacked, with large sections of the home crowd walking out of last month’s game against Houston in protest.
The coach would later admit that he had made a mistake in not removing the Belgian from the match.
[lawrence-related id=17566,17482,19052]