Getting Reacquainted with New York City FC, MLS's Proof of Foundation

Even the artist's rendering is embarrassing.

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 – in the U.S. Think Chivas USA 2.0 (and see tomorrow's post). New York’s second team had the advantage of joining a different league, one where the rules actively invited the signing of ringers. As befitted a team playing in the country’s premier city (I'll brook no dissent on this), the organization went big, signing England/Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, classy Italian regista (think I’m using that correctly), Andrea Pirlo (fucking legend), and Spanish golden-generation great, striker David Villa. They also opted to insult that talent by making them play homes games in a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look that hasn’t graced the league since the earliest days of MLS, when teams regularly played over football lines every fall. (Ed. – I understand there’s a soccer-specific stadium in the works, at a place called Willets Point, and I can’t spit 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 for the rebuilt 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” – but Maximiliano Moralez was the modest mouse that got the attack singing from the same page (and gods bless the genius who found the image for his Wikipedia page). 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 that arrived in the persons of a head coach (Norwegian Ronny Delia, now with Atlanta, btw) and in a star-turn season from Castellanos. The blue side of New York raised its first MLS Cup in 2021 (over the fallen bodies of the Portland Timbers) and, with Ring as a notable exception, one doesn’t see many changes between the 2019 roster and the one that started and won MLS Cup 2021. Apart from Castellanos leaving in the middle 2022 wasn’t so bad, but, as always happens some players aged out (not Moralez; dude just re-signed), and 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. Before they knew it, the 2023 season was over and NYCFC neither played nor figured in the MLS playoffs.

Total Joy Points: 12

MLS Snapshot, 09 06 2016: Small Week, Larger Conclusions

It was a shrunken weekend in Major League Soccer (THANK GOD!), which leaves me with fewer variables to wrestle into some kind of coherent shape. One thing, though, before getting into everything.

First, I'm only realizing now just how idiosyncratically soccer allows people to view it. While this applies to every sport (eh, who'm I kidding? We're special!!), soccer's wide open enough that it can be played just about any way one can imagine. I'm not envisioning a team winning the league playing a 9-1-1 or anything, so much as I'm pointing to almost infinite variables even within practical constraints of the modern game...and, ugh, nothing’s more tedious than someone saying, "you need X in the modern game." That’s nonsense, and ridiculous. We know this because someone always comes up with the next thing. Or they play something throw-back, like New York City FC did early in the season when they (allegedly) brought back the "W-M." (Did they really? Maybe. It was just something I read somewhere, but not there, but same point.)

Anyway, just tinkering with the layout this week. Starting with...

Week 26: Results That Mattered (In Brief)
No, it wasn't close - it was almost embarrassing by the end (poor, poor Ken Tribbett; see below) – but the bigger take-away from the Chicago Fire's 3-0 win over the Philadelphia Union is that Chicago's rounding into one of those end-of-season nightmares for any team pushing for the playoffs; New York City FC continued its swashbuckling rip through the Eastern Conference with DC United slashing scimitars at their butts in a last-gasp(-ish) 3-2 win; it was the details (see #8 below) of the Los Angeles Galaxy's 2-1 "goal-too-far" win that made the day so utterly depressing for Columbus Crew SC's fans; finally, the Colorado Rapids' flailingly impotent attack tells the tale of their 2-0 loss at the New England Revolution, but could it also tell the tale of a late-season collapse/early duck out of the playoffs?

The Results That, Honestly, No One But Their Fans Give One Wet Shit About
Vancouver Whitecaps 0-1 Red Bull New York (because Vancouver is cursed/hapless/awful)

There might have been another result in there...oh, never mind. It must not have been important (!!!). Anyway, moving on...

NYCFC Pummels Colorado: A Time to Adjust Expectations?

Counts just the same...just not a good look...

[Each week I (try to) watch three full, 90-minute games. And I write ‘em up. Part 1 of 3, for Major League Soccer’s Week 21.]

Why This Game? I wanted New York City FC’s attack measured against the Colorado Rapids’ league-best defense because, per reports and rumors, NYCFC has a bad enough defense that they need the offense to matter. And, going the other way, could the Rapids rack up the goals against NYCFC’s allegedly “shaky D”?

On the Result
Did not see that coming. I knew NYCFC’s offense had the mirror-image rep to contrast with their defense, but to drag the Rapids’ defensive record back into the pack with a 5-1 win? The first two goals deserve more focus, and not just because they came before Michael Azira got absolutely, totally justifiably sent off (we’re talking a text-book-stupid second yellow), but because their manner. NYCFC pushed players into the attack in a way that meant getting the ball past the first guy only meant you had to deal with the second guy, like, right away. Think World War I, only with success. They kept piling on after Azira came off and, before long, the bottom of the field dropped off on the Rapids’ side...sorta like watching Inversion. (Is that the title of that Leonardo DiCaprio joint, the one that choked on its own exposition? Crap, no, it's title Inception. Still didn't like it; goddamn gimmicks).  The thing that really struck me is that I’ve seen Colorado work an outlet ball pretty reliably in the past – when they don’t play out of the back (where they usually do all right), they’ll bomb long balls to Kevin Doyle, or maybe Marlon Hairston. They couldn’t find either player Saturday, and they struggled mightily as a result. Also, I think I saw a lot of New York’s attack go through gap between Mikeil Williams and Jared Jeffrey…often enough to wonder what the hell happened to Bobby Burling (he was on the bench, so OK, answered that one….partially). I think the real point of curiosity came with what happens if Colorado falls behind – by more than two goals, especially.

Best Damn Game of the Weekend (BDGotW): New Jersey Smacks Around New York

Fun! Just keep your hands where I can see 'em.

Major League Soccer's Week 20 featured a trio of routs (briefly, what Montreal did to Philly, and TFC’s, or rather Sebastian Giovinco's, destruction-by-free-kick of DC), but, for sheer entertainment value, for emotions heightened to high, permanent "eeeeee!", for just sheer fun, none of them topped the New York Derby. I didn't have the pleasure of watching the whole thing (on which, sad), but it turns out that New York City FC bloodying the New York Red Bulls earlier this month was just what this match-up needed!

The Red Bulls opened playing loose, just running head-long all over as if the goal of soccer was just getting tired. I know this feeling well thanks to all those times I responded to the own-goals I scored by trying VERY, VERY HARD TO MAKE IT BETTER. Their eagerness to repair the damage from that early July loss showed in every over-hit pass and the way players chased those not so much like they wanted the ball to play it, but to jump on it again and again and again, until it was flat. Until it knew their shame and embarrassment for letting even a sliver of blue into New York.

It looked desperate stuff and felt the same, basically, and one got the feeling that they wouldn't settle into the game until they scored – and that's when all the freneticism paid off. The Red Bulls picked off a pass coming out of NYCFC's defensive third and, between NYCFC's distorted defensive line and a flat diagonal from Sacha Kljestan to Bradley Wright-Phillips, they stuffed the mistake straight down their throats. That theme carried through the game until the Red Bulls came out 4-1 winners.

MLS Week 26 Review/Week 27 Preview, Plus: Best & Worst DPs And...9 Quick, Hot Takes

Official Conifers & Citrus icon...in spite of what some memories I note below.

(Posting late again. I know, Judy. I know. Next week. Or maybe the week after. I know you can't stop it, Judy, but can you make it slow down?)

Time to slip out of the small, scenic pond where the Portland Timbers reside (Lake Oswego?) and into the big, rollicking ocean that is Major League Soccer as a whole. While I'm still refining the format – and believe that this feature will be more fluid than fixed until 2016 – I do feel like I'm getting closer. At any rate, lots to get to below, which include:

1) The Review/Preview, the lede that looks both backward and forward at trends in MLS;
2) This week's feature on the best and worst in designated players for 2015; and
3) Takes, Quick and Hot, e.g. quick, (ideally) worthwhile thoughts about MLS teams, players and...or just me sharing my pulling out my next wild hair.

OK, that's it. Time to dig in.

Week 26 Review/Week 27 Preview
MLS stuffed a heavy work-week into Week 26, featuring 12 intra-league games in all. The general schedule piled on a few more games for MLS clubs, courtesy of the Canadian Championship (which ended in a comfortingly sensible manner) and the CONCACAF Champions' League (CCL). The overall set up asked more of some clubs than others and, to be fair, some held up better than others. The trickier issue comes with figuring out why.

Fatigue, or some version of it, offers up an obvious villain in all this. For instance, DC United could argue that all those midweek airplane miles combined with the New York Red Bulls to kick their ass last Sunday night. Sporting Kansas City could finger the same guy in the police line-up (still talking about fatigue) as the reason for their now-100% apparent slump, and so could the Montreal Impact, who also played two games in Week 26 and lost both - and Laurent Ciman, for a bit (and, it bears noting, they will play catch up the rest of the season). It's not a perfect excuse, though, as demonstrated by several examples, including the Colorado Rapids (played two, won two), or, to compare apples to apples, why not ask why the Seattle Sounders, a club that logged more miles than DC, came out with results that ran the opposite direction.

MLS Week 23 Review: GOTW, SOTW, ROTW, Plus A Lot of Comparisons

A moment most MLS fans have had to contemplate.

Well, the good news is, I finally wrestled one these weekly reviews to under three pages. Huzzah! And...that's the preamble: let's get to Major League Soccer's Week 23.

Week 23 could be called the Week of the Inflated Result, with several teams (see: Columbus Crew SC v. Colorado Rapids; or, Sporting Kansas City v. Toronto FC; or Los Angeles Galaxy v. Seattle Sounders FC). posting scorelines that looked bigger on paper than they did on the field. It could also be called the Week of the Outside of the Boot Goal (examples  #1 and #2). More than anything else, though, Week 23 brought with it some sign of separation among clubs, with the clearest example coming with what the Vancouver Whitecaps did to a Real Salt Lake side that tried to sneak a B-team onto the pitch (see: methodical pounding), which worked about as well as trying to put out a fire with a paper towel.

My personal highlights of the week included a mom in Colorado doing the “earmuffs” with her kid in the hope of saving him from what I assume was the "you suck, asshole" chant. It's that or Felipe's trouser blowout against New York City FC. Video for both moments was, by definition, hard to find. Actually, the video department is totally slouching this past weekend. Maybe they’re losing interest…so, watch those mini-games, yeah?

All in all, I believe that very little happens week to week in MLS. I wish I could frame all this better than, “so, a bunch of stuff happened, and here’s some of it.” I don’t, though, so what comes below are just a collection of notes that came to me as I watched all the mini-games during MLS Week 23... and the following three games in full (and, yes, the Conifers & Citrus Interest Rankings have been updated!):

Portland Timbers v. Chicago Fire (full, grumpy write-up here)
Colorado Rapids v. Columbus Crew SC (brief, barely worth reading write-up)
Los Angeles Galaxy v. Seattle Sounders FC (write-up)

Uh, last thing: I'm replacing the ol’ beer-'n’-shots motif with a straight-up Top 10 thoughts for the week. Actually, I’m just moving “the shot” (e.g. the big, heavy-hitting idea) to a separate post…look, it’s a work in progress, all of it. At any rate, join me on a tour of MLS Week 23, starting with The Honors!

MLS Week 21: On DPs, Foreign Players, MLS's Backbone...and Jurgen Klinsmann

Speaking of fucking legends.

Thanks to the Gold Cup, the domestic soccer week – Week 21, for those keeping track – overflows with talking points. Add all the transfers (which, full disclosure, I am barely tracking) and the most polite thing you can call me is desperately, graspingly behind. Which argues for an image of a behind being grasped desperately.

There is, however, one addition of which I'm proud: e.g. the new sidebar that transfers this site's disclosure as to how many times I've watched each and every Major League Soccer (MLS) club in action over a full 90 during the 2015 season. I'll update that every week rather than embedding it in these weekly posts.

As for the contents of the post itself, it's what it was last week: a shot (one big idea) backed by a six pack - e.g. six talking points – that came to me while watching the following games over Week 21:

FC Dallas v. Portland Timbers (already written up; sorta)
Chicago Fire v. New England Revolution
New York City FC v. Orlando City SC

Oh yeah, went East Coast-heavy this weekend. Also, given how late this is going up (my never-met goal is always Monday night), here's to hoping that the thoughts that came to me are random enough to be novel against the larger soccer backdrop...because what's the same shit worth if it's just later?

The Shot: My Kingdom, My Kingdom for Fine-Ass American Forwards!
Somewhere in the middle of Simon Borg's vast, broad tantrum about the Gold Cup semifinals, he did what a healthy number of American pundits do – e.g. more or less absolve Jurgen Klinsmann for his complete, utter, and wage-defying adequacy. In Borg's defense, though, he smuggled a pretty sharp observation into the conversation - specifically, he argued that anyone coaching the Yanquis (aka, the U.S. Men's National Team) will struggle due to the thin collection of quality forwards at his (and maybe, some day, her) disposal. His argument rounds out decently enough when one considers how many goals the aging Clint Dempsey scored for the U.S. during the just-past, little-mourned Gold Cup tournament – and, no, we're not counting the Cuba game, which was a goddamn free-for-all in which it's possible that I could have scored. OK, no, not me.

MLS Week 20 Review + The Bargain-Bin Starting XI

I know! Kennedy Igboananike at $800K? Madness!

I'm a late getting to this review of Major League Soccer's Week 20. I didn't even get links into the review of the Portland Timbers draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps last weekend, fer crissakes (links in there now; embarrassed by the delay). A combination of reasons led to that, all of which I will cover in the semi-traditional, semi-confessional prologue that always seems to top my posts. Said prologue will last exactly one paragraph, after which paragraph, the conversation shall return to MLS and the Timbers.

I caught only two whole games over Week 20, Portland v. Vancouver and the New England Revolution's home win over New York City FC. Worse, where I usually power through a full diet of 20-minute mini-games easily as a family of four goes through that first bowl of chips and salsa at your finer Mexican restaurants, I left chips and salsa on the table this weekend (or, more directly, I have yet to sit through Real Salt Lake's win over the Houston Dynamo). Worse, I experienced every game – whole, mini-, or live – at a remove, as if I watching television about someone else watching the games on television. I blame all of this on The Great Bon-Bon of Indifference, a chocolate confection possessed of the power to rob a person of his/her agency. Just...keep that in mind, at least for what it's worth, when you read the stuff on Week 20. The rest is gold. Or at least gold-flaked.

For Week 20's review, I'm going with a six-pack of observations and a big-ass shot; we're talking a three-finger at minimum, on the latter. As with any good night out, may as well start with the shot. You know the saying: "Liquor, beer, everclear." Or something to that effect. At any rate, the six thoughts that came to me as I watched the Week 20's game comprise the six-pack. As for the shot, well, that's courtesy of a gift I unwrapped six days late.

Jozy Returns: Good, Yet Not Triumphant

Welcome home, Jozy. Brewski?

The big news of the day – that is, Jozy Altidore’s return to Major League Soccer (MLS) – doesn’t feel so big as it once might have. That’s less a knock on Mr. Altidore* than a subtle acknowledgement that signings of “big” American players don’t ripple across the league as a whole the way they used to. And that’s a positive step, even as I’m certain that news likes this hits heavier closer to home (i.e. Toronto FC fans must be tickled; Red Bull New York fans less so).

It’s also worth noting that some number of MLS clubs passed on Altidore due to the high asking price. I heard a big number for Jozy’s salary (can’t recall where) – something like $6 million – but that’s unconfirmed thanks to league policies that bar the fourth estate from talking pesos. Whatever the dollar figure, I hardly begrudge Altidore for asking or taking it. Get paid, son. I do, however, feel a certain quiet respect for my Portland Timbers for passing on what seems to be a bloated salary. Goals are great and all, but who likes paying too much for anything?

Toronto, ever reliable when it comes to spending, bolted past such quibbles. They’ve mastered the trappings of ambition, at least; and yet they’ve taken strides to creating a roster-as-metaphor for U.S. wealth inequality. Fascinating...

* To pick up that asterisk above, Jozy’s probably a good bet to make the over proposed by Taylor Twellman: 12.5 goals in 2015 (thanks, Soccer by Ives’ podcas!). Altidore will be a good player in MLS, maybe even a little better than his service. So, welcome back and all that.

The other side of the transaction, i.e. the piece that sent the long-disgruntled Jermaine Defoe back to (the shittiest little-big club in) England, is no less interesting, in that it brings in a couple current themes. Defoe’s arrival last season, coming as it did in his earlier 30s, offered an encouraging counter to the typical “retirement league” trend/perception that still attaches to MLS. A little echo of the notorious Frank Lampard Situation can be heard in there, too: if one can still play in the top flight, why the flipping hell would one stop doing so? Lampard answered that question – or Manchester City did on his behalf – just as Defoe arguably did with this move. That says a couple things about MLS’s global rep, the implications of which...aren’t so good.

The mini-glut of returning Americans says something as well. It could be roughly the same thing that Mexicans players’ long-standing tradition has said for years and years and that’s...not terrible (e.g. our guys value comforts of home). There’s also the Cheers Effect (going where everyone knows your name).

Like just about anything between now and when the thing is signed, the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) comes into the picture. No, MLS can’t compete with Europe’s glamor leagues, neither in quality or the grandness of the stage. No matter, what MLS Commish Don Garber says, it won’t likely be able to for a decade. If we’re lucky. But what the league chooses to pay players – and this is total compensation (some details mentioned in this very good article) whether for designated players or the regular guys – will definitely influence the extent to which MLS start picking higher quality players from Europe, or even Mexico. I don’t see how more can’t be better for everyone except MLS owners, but even they could ultimately reap greater rewards. Investments, man...

It should be clear now that American players have some in-built motivation to return to the States to play. They’re people here, if nothing else, and able to command cash and respect. Drawing good, younger players from Europe (or Mexico) constitutes the next big step. And what happens with the CBA definitely matters there.

Firing Petke: Red Bull New York's Poison-Pill Gamble

What the man did for coaching fashion was enough...

Forget the English Invasion (Now, With Walkers!). The unceremonious and outrageous firing of New York Red Bulls’ head coach Mike Petke stands tall and all on its lonesome as the biggest story of the 2014-15 Major League Soccer (MLS) off-season.

Yeah, yeah, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard are living (and playing) legends for two of England’s biggest clubs (Chelsea and Liverpool, respectively), but they’ll spend the second half of 2015 getting to know teammates who simply aren’t as good as what they’re used to. On top of that, they’ll have to acclimate to the air travel, getting kicked by over-eager American youths (and bitter veterans), and having burning red cleat marks ignored by American referees: these are all part of the MLS experience. Presumably, that leaves only the 2016 season for both players to prove that soccer’s equivalent of The Expendables can survive MLS. Lampard’s going to be 30-freakin’-8 come June of 2016...just sayin’.

The Petke...shit, what to call this thing? Betrayal? Shivving? Assassination? Anyway, the thing that happened to Petke is big. The story has legs, for one, what with the angry buzzing from reasonably - no, rightly-aggrieved - Red Bulls fans. Tributes in both graphic and liquid forms, and the hasty, sloppy, yet entirely necessary damage control from the Red Bull brass give the whole affair the regular accessories of scandal.

More than that, an air of symbolism attaches to the whole affair. This thing has a very MLS 3.0 vibe. Ambition's the word. And Petke doesn't match that vibe. His persona and legacy tap deeply into MLS's other incarnations (as in, MLS 1.0 and 2.0): he's a meat-and-potatoes, get-the-job-done type. As such, he fits better in a scrappy league that can't fly high enough to show up on radar. Who knows? Maybe the view from the boardroom looks down and sees a relic of the small-time past?

No one seems to blame the Red Bull’s new coach, Jesse Marsch, for any of this and that’s appropriate. The man only took the job on offer, after all (and after several others passed, reportedly) and Marsch has the smarts to say the right things. All frustration and anger flows toward the Red Bulls front office – samples of the flood air on this now-famous podcast (which features a touching cameo by Mr. Petke) – and most of rage pours toward Ali Curtis, RBNY’s new Sporting Director. Curtis won the scorn when he "owned" the decision to let go of Petke. Fair's fair.

Red Bulls fans can't wrap their heads around some perceived need to replace Petke because it stinks of a solution in search of a problem. Even if it's arguably not true that he presided over the Red Bulls’ best era – for instance, what about the Red Bulls team that actually reached MLS Cup? – Petke did one thing no other Red Bull coach every had: he brought hardware to the club's barren trophy case. Further, not a few people credit his capacity for learning on the job. And well: this goes beyond some callers into the Seeing Red podcast linked to above and directly to a frequent talking point from 2014 - e.g., where people credited Petke for the effective pairing of Dax McCarty and Eric Alexander in midfield. The "relic of the small-time past" description doesn't match the evidence...even if I just made up the phrase. Or applied to Petke.

What happened in New York seems likely to be a noticeable component of MLS 3.0, maybe even a new normal. Not every club will be able to keep up as MLS grows. That will encourage, for lack of a better word,"spazzing." Clubs will make dramatic, unpopular, even manifestly stupid moves, and sometimes with an eye to nothing better than the appearance of action. After all,l doing something dumb is still doing something. This is why Congress forms committees. To be less cynical about it, they might even believe in those moves. They might also need to coat them in thick, cherry-flavored delusion in wrestle them down the gullet, but I'm pretty sure they'll be happy to do that if there's even the slimmest hope of taking credit later.

I file the Gerrard and Lampard signings under appearance of action, but that's just me. I don’t see either doing much for the respective clubs with only a rickety year (2016) in which to do it. Because, holy old. But both moves generated lots of copy and, with Lampard, especially, enthusiasm. That’s half the goal, at least, but whole-goal signings seem the wiser course.

The thing with Marsch is something else. It could work out just fine, of course. He seems smart enough and he's got real-world coaching experience. Sadly, the smartness of his hiring doesn't really matter, not against the ham-handed P.R. stupidity of firing a club icon like Petke without clear cause. Even assuming Marsch succeeds the question of whether Petke could have done just as well, if not better, won't go away for years. With the way he left the club, it might not ever go away. Worse, every one year that Marsch, or any future successor, fails to maintain some unspoken standard will translate to two more years of questions about what might have been, not to mention bad blood.

It’s a no-win, in the end, not unless Marsch brings home an MLS Cup in, oh, two year’s time...