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| The past-time of America's past-time. |
[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]
Thumbnail History
When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the premise of planting a junior club for a major international team – (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City in this case – into the U.S. market. Think Chivas USA 2.0, only this time they’d take it seriously. Or something. As MLS fans know, they play their games in a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look of the sort that hasn’t graced the league since teams regularly played over football lines every fall. The Organization finally ponied up to build a soccer-specific stadium in New York City, at a place called Willets Point, congrats and all that, but it looks like they’ve got two more seasons of slipping on tobacco spit before that space opens. While a good product has typically graced that janky field, NYCFC had to learn some old lessons – chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (if aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams is not enough. The team missed the playoffs that first season (and by quite a bit), but defensive reinforcements arrived for the second season and righted the ship. That brought consistency, but success wouldn’t arrive until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers (Sit tight. I’ll flesh out the point below). That combination didn’t just make them regulars in the MLS playoffs; NYCFC finished in the top ten overall in every season from 2016 to 2022, and in the top five more often than not. That solid set-up just needed a nudge at that point, and those arrived in the persons of a head coach (Norwegian Ronny Deila) and a star forward (Valentin “Taty” Castellanos). The blue side of New York raised its first MLS Cup in 2021 (over the fallen bodies of the Portland Timbers, dammit) and the future looked very bright…until it very abruptly didn’t. More below…
Best Season(s)
Easy call. 2021. And by just about every measure.
Long-Term Tendencies
Talking “tendencies” doesn’t make a lot of sense for a team that hasn’t yet celebrated its 10th birthday, but kicking around the secret of NYCFC’s success isn’t too complicated. They became a good defensive team in 2017 and solidified into a great one from 2018 to the present. A potent attack came together one season after that and, with the exception of a slight falling off in The Year of COVID, stuck around through 2022 (the latter, i.e., the season after they won MLS Cup, was their most lethal). As it happens, you don’t need to look at anything but the top-line numbers to answer the question, what the hell happened to New York City FC in 2023? The attack took a giant shit is what happened.
Identity: MLS’s trust fund babies
Joy Points: 7, aka, pretty damn happy for such a young team.
A Half Dozen Names to Know
David Villa (2015-2018)
Partial as I am to Andrea Pirlo (who somehow played both well and like he’d rather be anywhere else; love that dude), Villa was indisputably the best of NYCFC’s Year One signings. He scored immediately and often, even in the expansion season, and only stopped doing so when he left. 77 goals in just four seasons. Nuts.
Maxime Chanot/Alexander Callens
I almost put these two first because they tell the tale of how NYCFC got steady so fast. Chanot arrived the season before Callens (2016 v 2017), but both stayed through 2022 (Chanot left after 2023) and played over 160 games. Not coincidentally, they had Sean Johnson in goal behind them for virtually every one of those games. Against the popular cliche, defense does not not win titles, so much as make the possible.
Maximiliano Moralez (2017-2023)
The Argentine midfield wizard that made actually winning that title a reality. Moralez may be the shortest player on 90% of the fields he steps onto, but he could find the game and the right pass like few attacking mids in MLS history. His best season (2021) saw him join the pantheon of all-time (single-season) assist leaders (and who knew Sacha Kljestan supped at the same club?), so it feels good and right that he played a key role in NYCFC’s Cup-winning season.
Alexander Ring (2017-2020)
He’ll pop up in a future chapter, but I’m using Ring as a stand-in for all the quality, often young, American players that NYCFC finds and fields when its front-office has its shit together. Keaton Parks would do just as well, really. A cruel twist of fate saw Ring move on before their Cup-winning season, but he gave the team a league-elite (in my mind), two-way presence in midfield.
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| Sunset or a demon priming to eat your soul? |
Valentin “Taty” Castellanos (2018-2022)
Already introduced as the “star forward” that nudged NYCFC to its ultimate success, Castellano really was one hell of player. Slippery, athletic, smart, he provided a fantastic foil for Moralez . It hardly feels like a coincidence that his best season in MLS was NYCFC’s best as well.
Talles Magno (2021- )
Unfair as it seems to pile the woes of a team on the shoulders of a 21-year-old who the coaching staff hasn’t figured out – a phrase I mean globally – Magno feels like a good stand-in for the haze that has clouded NYCFC’s near-term future. Again, Santiago Rodriguez works here just as well…
Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything
NYCFC ended its worst-ever season 22nd overall and with the third-worst attack in the league…and yet they something remained in the playoff chase to the end (hang your head, MLS! shame!!). A collective failure to step up characterized their 2023; some might point to the failure among the coaching staff to put players into positions where they could succeed, but, however you organize the numbers, the math ends up in the same dismal place. And that has to be a blow to an MLS sub-franchise that has mainly known steady improvement.
Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition
As someone who looks to MLS’s Armchair Analyst, Matt Doyle, to fill in the gaps in what I can’t watch, I’ve read more than one fairly cogent argument that current head coach, Nick Cushing, doesn’t have the chops for the job. And, on the reasonable argument that young players benefit most from smart coaching that sure feels like a good place to start a rebuild…but a quick search tells me Cushing will remain at the helm for at least the beginning of 2024. Fortunately for him, NYCFC still has a good defense to build on, if one that looks damned thinned on the day this went up (January 21, 2024). Also, their academy has delivered some useful, young two-way midfielders too – e.g., James Sands and, a little behind him (on all levels) Justin Haak – but that attack needs a David Villa’s worth of help. Maybe that comes from getting more out of last season’s honorable mentions – e.g., Rodriguez’s six goals and eight assists, or feel free to stretch for Richie Ledezma’s five assists – but I’m inclined to think they’d be better off finding a “right now” signing to help those younger players along. This team should have the connections and resources to pull it off – I mean, what’s the point of the connection to Manchester City otherwise – but they seem more invested in throwing young players into the deep end than the results they deliver at this point. Still, I expect this team to turn it around soon. If not this season, then the next one – and certainly by the time they christen that new stadium.
* Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
MLS Is Back Cup: 2 points (yeah, yeah, I’m a Timbers fan; still, that was a tough one)
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points
Wooden Spoon: -3 points
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