Matt Miazga and the very limited history of players crossing the Hudson River Derby divide

Matt Miazga is now officially a part of the New York City FC squad for the rest of the 2026 season, with the club confirming his acquisition from FC Cincinnati, via waivers, after he got waived and bought out of his previous contract.

As soon as Miazga gets his first competitive minutes with his new team, he'll become the fourth player to ever appear in a Major League Soccer match for each of New York City FC and the Red Bull New York franchise, and the first player to join the list since the 2015 season, when the previous three ex-Red Bull players each made their debuts with New York City. The wait goes on for a first former New York City FC player to go the other direction and debut for the Red Bulls.

Miazga is only signed through the end of 2026, and New York City has no remaining matches scheduled against the Red Bulls, so it would require either a meeting in the MLS Cup Playoffs, or a 2027 return to NYCFC, in order for Miazga to have a chance to become the first player to experience both sides of an actual on-field Hudson River Derby. He played against NYCFC three times and won all three of his head-to-head meetings with NYCFC back in 2015, his last season in MLS before years of European club-hopping.

He's already has made Hudson River Derby history once, the first player ever sent off in the derby when he saw two yellows within the first 36 minutes of the first meeting between the teams, which Red Bull still won 2-1 on May 10, 2025 at Red Bull Arena.

Ironically, Miazga will now be (assistant) coached at NYCFC by one of the three other players to feature for both local MLS teams: Mehdi Ballouchy. Ballouchy's 59 appearances for the Red Bulls and 25 for NYCFC mean he's been the most heavily-featured player for each side among this group of four RBNY+NYCFC guys, with the most combined matches played for both teams, and with his appearances for each side coming extremely close together chronologically from 2010 through to 2016, with brief periods in San Jose and Vancouver in between.

It's not just Ballouchy and Miazga with a mix of the red-and-blue experience inside the current New York City FC soccer setup. The sporting director claiming Miazga on waivers, Todd Dunivant, played the 2006 and 2007 seasons with Red Bull New York as part of his 13-season MLS playing career.

While that makes it two people in New York City's sporting leadership who have been in something like Miazga's position, this is still largely uncharted territory for current MLS players. New York City FC and Red Bull fans alike have had an extremely long stretch of years to consider how they'd handle players crossing derby sides in this manner. While only existing as a rivalry match for 12 seasons, movement of players between the two local MLS squads has been almost nonexistent in that time, and only really happened around the 2015 season.

The changing of sides of the rivalry happens much more often and with more recent frequency at youth and pre-MLS levels. You can build a much longer list of guys who featured for both NYCFC and RBNY in the years before they got to MLS, academy years mostly. That list would include current active derby participants like Julian Hall and Kevin O'Toole, though neither of them did what Miazga is about to do, playing in MLS for both squads.

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What explains the dearth of players dipping their toes in both red and blue waters at MLS level? The rivalry between New York City and the Red Bulls is definitely real, but it's young and it isn't so extreme that there's much sense of player hesitance to move between teams due to opposing local fan vitriol, or any external perception beyond that. This isn't akin to Luis Figo going from FC Barcelona to Real Madrid in 2000 or Sol Campbell's shock move from Tottenham Hotspur FC to Arsenal FC in 2001.

Simpler explanations for this not happening more could involve both sides of this rivalry being part of multi-club-model international conglomerates — Red Bull GmbH and City Football Group, respectively — and having put more recent focus on their international scouting networks and ways of building their teams, in NYCFC's case, that rarely included shopping in the "well-established, veteran MLS player" marketplace. Movement among MLS teams for MLS players hasn't always been the easiest process, either, with intra-league cash trades and outright player free agency still somewhat newer concepts inside MLS.

Did it take having an on-field Red Bull veteran in Dunivant running NYCFC soccer operations, but also one who played for four total MLS teams in his career, to break NYCFC's particular recruitment habits and make a move like this Miazga pickup, bringing him to what will be his third MLS team?

Dunivant is definitely not the first NYCFC sporting director to make a late-season MLS waiver wire addition, as in recent memory, you can go back to David Lee (three years spent as a Red Bull employee pre-NYCFC, by the way) in 2022 picking up Matías Pellegrini from waivers, though Pellegrini had minimal MLS experience and was still in his early 20s. His circumstance was down to Miami breaking MLS roster rules, not being a high-priced veteran no longer rated as the right fit for Cincinnati, a team that's conceded the second-most goals in MLS this season.

Miazga is very much a MLS veteran at age-31 and one who just played 108 matches across all competitions between 2022 and 2026 while with Cincinnati, though with a major knee injury that cost him much of the 2024 season mixed in there. Adding players with Red Bull ties is rare, but the simple act of adding an experienced, older, immediately-recognizable player is rare in its own way as far as NYCFC player moves go.

Still, even now over a decade since he last played for them and many teams separated from them, Miazga remains someone many around the NYCFC space will find it very easy to associate with the Red Bulls. No matter how long it's been, he remains a local New Jersey product who broke out with RBNY as a teenager, and who has a lot of history as a direct New York City FC opponent.

The club's team of social media post-makers didn't see any reason to shy away from Miazga's somewhat antagonistic history with NYCFC. His most infamous piece of NYCFC trolling, a baseball swing goal celebration at Yankee Stadium after scoring for the Red Bulls in the first Hudson River Derby played in the Bronx, got alluded to in no-big-deal fashion in two different posts announcing the defender's arrival. They're presumably going for an "If we don't mind, why should you?" thing, which might not be so easy to accept for all those who watched it happen.

Like it or not, his signing feels like another shift in approach to fill what the club believes is a pressing need. According to Dunivant in the announcement of his arrival, NYCFC wanted Miazga for his "experience, mentality, and competitive edge."

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Here in 2026, after his knee issues, Miazga's performance has slipped — badly, if you put stock in his net goals added (net g+) numbers put together by American Soccer Analysis and visualized all together in percentile form here by SoccerDataVizer. Yet he did win Defender of the Year in 2023 and was a well-regarded veteran of solid European club leagues before that, and he comes at little monetary cost after being waived/bought out, and on a short-term commitment only through the end of the year.

His time with the club could end up just a footnote added to the lore of the Hudson River Derby, and it might not indicate some opening of the floodgates for NYCFC to pick up more players near or over 30 years old, or more players who are Red Bull alumni. It's still been a long time coming for this type of signing, and it might not just end at some handful of NYCFC appearances.

The standings in the MLS Eastern Conference are such that there could easily be another derby chapter to write before this season ends, too, with that No 8 vs No 9 Wild Card round in place and with each of RBNY and NYCFC right around that area in the current table. It's also clear the NYCFC defense is in flux, so if Miazga reverses his recent Cincinnati form and impresses while in New York, he could, potentially, get another contract that keeps him around in 2027 or beyond.

Whether any of that that happens or not, Miazga will soon join a short list in playing for both of the local MLS sides. He's got some high-profile experience directly involved in the rivalry, even if it was only in three Hudson River Derbies played 11 years ago.

Now, he gets a chance to play a late part in a playoff race that directly involves his two former MLS teams (Cincinnati is directly above NYCFC in ninth place, Red Bull in eighth, as of this writing), all while suiting up for an unlikely third MLS team, one that is putting any notion of holding a derby grudge aside in the hope that he's got something left in the tank.