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The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the concept hatched with Chivas USA – i.e., planting a junior club for a major international team in the U.S., in this case, (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City. New York’s second team joined a very different league, of course, one where the rules actively invited the signing of ringers. As befitted a team playing in America’s premier city (sorry, LA), the organization went big (if mostly in name), signing England/Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, classy Italian regista (think I’m using that correctly), Andrea Pirlo (loved this guy), and Spanish golden-generation great, striker David Villa. They also insulted that talent by making them play homes games at Yankee Stadium, aka, a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look that hasn’t been a regular feature in MLS since the league’s earliest days when teams played most games over American football fields. Happily, NYCFC has constructed a soccer-specific at a place called Willets Point. (Yay!) Unhappily, and somewhat incredibly, that facility won’t open until the 2027 season (boo! Honestly, I can’t out “good job,” with “about fucking time” getting in its way.) NYCFC’s debut season reinforced a familiar lesson, chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (and aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams ain’t enough. The team missed the playoffs in their first season (by quite a bit), and defensive failures would plague the team until they got more holistic about roster building. Defensive reinforcements arrived over their second and third seasons, led by Maxime Chanot and Alexander Callens in central defense and Sean Johnson in goal, and that laid the foundation that rebuilt the team. Success wouldn’t come until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers at fullback, up the midfield spine and at the sharper end of the attack. A lot of the relevant players were on the roster as early as the 2019 – guys like crunching No. 8s, Alexander Ring and a young James Sands, fullback Anton “Tin-Tin” Tinnerholm and Ronald Matarrita, and a young forward named Valentin Castellanos, who went by “Tata.” The seemingly eternal Maximiliano Moralez was the key piece, though, the modest mouse that got the attack singing from the same sheet. The seasons since have been berry, berry good: NYCFC finished in the top ten every season from 2016 to 2022 - and in the top five more often than not – and reached the quarterfinals of the playoffs in 2024 and 2025. Blue New York reached its peak in 2021 with the arrival of Norwegian Ronny Deila as head coach, a star-turn season from Castellanos, and its first MLS Cup at the end (over the fallen, last-gasping bodies of the Portland Timbers). With Ring as a notable exception, that roster didn’t look so different from 2019’s and that speaks to the consistency of NYCFC’s roster-builds. Their worst season came in 2023, after Castellanos left (factually happened in the middle 2022), a couple players aged out, others moved on - Johnson and Callens stand out – and the hot, new, often young fixes like Santiago Rodriguez, Talles Magno and…Richie Ledezma(?) struggled to maintain the same standard. NYCFC have come back since, but the lofty peak they climbed in 2021 towers a little higher lately.
2025, Briefly
Quite well, all things considered. They reached the semifinals of the playoffs – which counts as making the “real” playoffs for purposes of this series* - and I wasn’t alone in giving them at shot at riding a dark hose to a title. A sturdy home record and a couple impressive road wins after the Leagues Cup (in which NYCFC pretty much died; and road wins came at Chicago and RBNY) got that dark horse to at least a trot. Seeing them win their first-round series at Charlotte, with two games on the road, then seeing them slip (literally) one past Shield-winning Philadelphia team in the Eastern Conference semifinals, also on the road, got that horse to a full gallop. Eventual champions Miami (the bastards) turned the black horse to glue by way of a 1-5 loss in the Conference final, but I’d call that a great season for team with average numbers. A handful of players lifted them to the odd great game that turned into a playoff run – e.g., high-line-shattering forward Alonso Martinez (17 goals, two assists), the eternal Maxi Moralez (two goals, 11 assists), and breakout youngster, Hannes Wolf (11 goals, seven assists – all backed by a defense good enough to buy them time. Justin Haak, who, along with Moralez, started all 34 games in 2025, led that defense. Hold that thought…
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| The horse I saw. Don't trust me. |
NYCFC hasn’t fielded a defense that ended over the MLS average for goals allowed since 2016; moreover, they held well below the average in every season between 2018 and 2023. So, what happened in that playoff-free season? 2023 happened to be the one and only season in the team’s history that saw them fall under the average for goals scored – and, golly, did they miss it that season! (They scored 12 under the league average.) The attack rebounded in 2024 and 2025, but only as high as the actual average for goals scored. Decent defenses over those same two seasons did enough to keep NYCFC competitive, but both the numbers speak to a merely good team over-achieving in a timely fashion.
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
Haak went free agent and packed his bags for LA (the Galaxy) after his contract expired, so the question of how well/directly Australian Kai Trewin replaces him looms over NYCFC 2026 season. They also lost winger/midfielder, Julian Hernandez, who posted real minutes/okay numbers, and mid-season acquisition, Mitja Ilenic, and I don’t see replacements for them the transfer tracker that MLS maintains for old people (still rock the desktop, baby), so I assume they’ll do something there, but I still see a lot to like in the foundation. They’ll still have Matt Freese in goal, Thiago Martins to anchor the defense, and Wolf and Martinez to lead the line. Central midfield concerns me (as always), especially with how much of the season Keaton Parks missed (i.e., most). Still, I have to accept whomever they started in there worked well enough in 2025, even if I couldn’t pick them out of a police lineup…but I’d still like to think they’re looking there as well. Tying all the above together, when I see a historically good, smart team with a good core of players, I generally assume they’ll work it out, even when I can’t see it in the now.
Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 15
How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2021
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2022, 2025
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2024
CCL Semifinals: 2022
CCL Quarterfinals: 2021
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