New York City vs Columbus player ratings

Things started perfectly for New York City FC in Columbus but ended in disappointment, a shootout loss following a 1-1 draw ending the Leagues Cup run at the Quarterfinals.

Early Goal, Late Misses: NYCFC fall to Columbus in penalties

NYCFC didn’t hold the lead, allowing an always-dangerous Columbus Crew to draw the match and win the shootout after. What are the lessons learned from New York City’s Leagues Cup Quarterfinals loss?

Hudson River BlueOliver Strand

For a moment, when Alonso Martínez pressed the Crew into a mistake and scored inside 15 seconds for the fastest goal in both NYCFC and Leagues Cup history (albeit a “history” of one tournament for Leagues Cup), it looked as though New York City might be turning into upset specialists ready to play a Semifinal for a chance to, at minimum, guarantee a spot in the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup.

Instead, Columbus took control and the New York City attack disappeared, with a Cucho Hernández equalizer preceding a Crew win in the shootout.

Elimination is never fun, though your ratings from the loss at Lower.com Field don’t reflect the extreme level of disappointment that was evident after, say, the meltdown in Cincinnati to close out the group stage.

Your latest ratings reflect an acknowledgment of the valuable defensive work done by a few members of the spine of New York City’s lineup to get this match to penalties, while they also ding the ineffective non-Alonso Martínez members of the team’s attacking front, who didn’t threaten Columbus much outside of that opening goal.

Read on for the ratings in full, some discussion of the goal-scoring Player of the Match, and a rundown of how the whole New York City FC squad was rated by you over the course of this five-match march to the Leagues Cup Quarterfinals.

Note: FotMob ratings are in parentheses.

Final Leagues Cup Ratings

Usually in our regular Player Ratings write-ups, this section spotlights someone who stood out from the match we’re reviewing.

Given that this concluded a standalone tournament that featured two group games and three knockouts, let’s instead go over the average ratings handed out to each and every New York City player who saw the pitch across the five Leagues Cup games.

Just like with our individual match ratings, you’ll find each player’s average tournament rating from FotMob in parentheses.

Some consensus emerges from this list, mainly that New York City’s tournament standouts were Maxi Moralez and Santiago Rodríguez—though neither earned the title of highest-rated NYCFC player in Leagues Cup.

That was Matt Freese at 7.4, a testament to how good the keeper was in a losing effort in Columbus and during the win over Tigres.

The majority of New York City’s attacking talent was held quiet, and you subsequently rated them on the low end. None of Hannes Wolf, Julián Fernández, Agustín Ojeda, or Mounsef Bakrar earned average ratings above the mid-5s, though FotMob rated each player more generously than our readers.

Jovan Mijatović was a similar case, averaging a 6.9 FotMob rating in his three appearances—which included scoring his first goal with New York City—but came in at a 5.5 in our ratings, perhaps suffering because his goal came right before the mess that was the end of the match in Cincinnati.

Player of the Match

Alonso Martínez

Martínez and Freese were in a dead heat for this vote, but the goalscorer gets the nod after also receiving the match’s highest rating at 7.7, all of 0.1 ahead of Freese’s 7.6.

Those two players were the main reasons it got to penalties in Columbus, with Martínez’s goal an especially big one for player and team alike. New York City hasn’t won in Columbus since the 2017 season, so jumping out to a lead in the blink of an eye in a win-or-go-home game in Ohio should, or could, have provided a boost.

For Martínez, the goal was stunning in its quickness and efficiency. His ability to press and force Columbus into an error that he coolly capitalized on, all within the first 15 seconds of the match, was a sight to behold. Wilfried Nancy could only laugh, or laugh to keep from crying, or whatever he was doing there.

1️⃣2️⃣ Seconds!

That's all it took for @newyorkcityfc to get on the board! pic.twitter.com/IWgFzQ0oTL

— Leagues Cup (@LeaguesCup) August 17, 2024

It broke a seven-match scoring drought for the 25-year-old Costa Rican, a streak that went back to his brace in the win over CF Montréal at Citi Field. He’d still picked up two assists in the weeks since his last goals, including in the win over Tigres, but what has distinguished Martínez this season was his clinical finishing ability.

That came back in the first minute in Columbus, though NYCFC will now be hoping it continues over the remaining nine MLS regular season games. The striker spot remains an open question, but if Martínez gets back to scoring goals like this, he might move closer to cementing a spot in the Starting XI.