Most tortured club in MLS suffers another painful postseason loss

HARRISON, N.J. – For minutes after the final whistle, the New York Red Bulls just stood there, like human statues to disappointment. Slumped over, or with their hands on their hips, gazing into the scarred grass upon which they had battled the Columbus Crew and literally fallen an inch or so short of keeping their campaign to reach the MLS Cup final alive.

There isn't much more you could give. And you certainly can't come any closer than the slow 95th-minute bouncer that would have sent the game to extra time, and overturned the 2-0 loss in the first leg in Columbus, but softly kissed off the post instead.

While the stage was built for the Crew to celebrate their Eastern Conference title before a quickly emptying arena, the Red Bulls stood there. Aghast. Disbelieving. Shell-shocked.

[ MLS Cup 2015: Columbus Crew vs. Portland Timbers – Sunday at 4 p.m. ET ]

It had happened again. Like last year, a lone goal stood between them and potentially reaching the MLS Cup. The Red Bulls had fallen just short of taking Columbus to extra time in the conference finals after teenager Anatole Abang nabbed a goal in the 93rd minute. Two minutes later, Bradley Wright-Phillips nodded a ball off the frame. Had it gone in, the Red Bulls might have completed their comeback and reached just their second title game and gotten a chance to lift their first championship.

Instead, manager Jesse Marsch wound through his players and gave them all a heavy-hearted hug. Eventually, they gathered themselves and applauded the lingering hardcore fans in the South Ward. They had hung around and braved the cold and heavy security around the stadium to create an electric atmosphere.

They stayed to cheer their players, to celebrate the season. They very nearly had more to cheer, like an MLS Cup in their own stadium. Had the ball bounced to the left and into the goal, rather than to the right and away from it, things would have been different. But it didn't, and so they weren't.

"Centimeters," said Red Bulls goalkeeper Luis Robles, sitting in a desolate locker room after the game, surrounded mostly by the remnants of a season cut short – tape, empty water and energy drink bottles, uniforms still warm from the game. The motivational slogans on the wall – ALL IN – won't be read again for some time.

"For a second it looked like it was going in," Wright-Phillips said. "It's irrelevant. It didn't and we're out."

That the Red Bulls came close at all was fairly remarkable, given that the Crew had showed up with a savvy game plan, neutralizing the attackers and circumventing the Red Bulls' signature high press by playing the ball long out of their unshakable defense. If New York had most of the ball, Columbus had the control, slowing the game down with its physicality. It had the better chances, too. If it weren't for three strong Robles saves in the first half, the whole affair would have been over quickly.

It wasn't until late in the game that the Red Bulls finally began forging chances. But tellingly for the home team's frustrations, plenty of its fans left as the clock ticked down, missing the heart-pounding finale.

But the deserters knew, it seemed, that their team would fall short again, that, emotionally anyway, they would remain the most tortured club in MLS. As often in their recent playoff history, the Red Bulls seemed to have run out of time, staging a late attempt to dig themselves out of a hole that proved just a few inches too deep.

This wouldn't be the Red Bulls' year, either. Just like all 19 years before it.

"Too little, too late," captain Dax McCarty said. "For as bad as we played throughout the whole series, that's how thin the margins are. We just didn't have any good fortune or any good bounces and that's how the game goes."

"It's painfully unbelievable how that game ends," Marsch said. "After the game, I just told them I was proud to be their coach and that they have so much to be proud of, and that this is no question a successful season."

It was that. Back in January, the Red Bulls had not only said goodbye to their best player ever in the retiring Thierry Henry but star forward Tim Cahill and popular manager Mike Petke as well – the latter getting dumped for Marsch, to the consternation of fans. Yet 2015 was, by most objective measures, the best season in the Red Bulls' history – in the MetroStars history, too, but that sort of goes without saying.

In spite of a payroll that was chopped from one of the highest in the league to the lowest – due entirely to Henry and Cahill coming off the books – the Red Bulls won a second Supporters' Shield for the best regular-season record. They made a fourth conference finals appearance. And they did it in the same season, for the first time ever.

"The first year, in that sense, has been an overwhelming success," Marsch said. "If we can make this kind of progress, year in and year out, we'll create something that I think can be really special."

"If at the beginning of the season," midfielder Sacha Kljestan said, "somebody would have told us, 'OK, you guys are gonna be the highest-scoring team in the league, win the Supporters' Shield, get to the conference finals and get yourselves close to the MLS Cup,' I think everybody at Red Bull probably would have said, 'Okay, that's a good season, we'll take that.' "

"If you look at the season and some of the expectations at the beginning of the season, we did a pretty good job of defying them," Robles said.

And as the goalkeeper pointed out, the progression is unmistakable. The Red Bulls won their first-ever major trophy in the Supporters' Shield in 2013. In 2014, they were a goal away from MLS Cup. This year, they combined those feats into a single season.

"I feel like we're headed in the right direction," Robles said. "The organization altogether is in a good spot. We continued to grow as a group. We've got a strong nucleus, a strong foundation here."

Like 18 other teams, the Red Bulls will be left looking ahead. They won't get to enjoy the offseason. Only the Portland Timbers or the Crew will, depending on who prevails in MLS Cup next Sunday. Everybody else will ponder the what-ifs of last season and the next one.

"It's a very daunting task at this time," said Marsch of the offseason. "In every way this has been a magical season and you know, it was an inch, two inches – I don't know, you tell me how far it was away – from having a real chance to be something even more special."

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.