New York City vs Montréal player ratings

New York City FC player ratings are determined by Hudson River Blue readers: Here are your NYCFC player ratings after the 1-0 home loss to CF Montréal in The Bronx. It was only the fourth time that Montréal beat NYCFC, and the first time they did it in New York City since 2015.

It was a classic trap game: After New York City had dispatched a conference-best Cincinnati FC in Queens, surely they could handle a league-worst CF Montréal in The Bronx. But New York City looked less like the team that outplayed Cincy last Sunday than the one that lost to the second-tier Pittsburgh Riverhounds on Wednesday, and struggled from the opening whistle as they went on to lose 1-0.

Your player ratings reflect the poor outing, with most of the squad earning 4s and 5s. The team average is a dismal 4.9, which is the second-worst for a Major League Soccer game this season after the 4.6 average earned after the loss to Minnesota United last month. (Although both of those are behind the 4.2 average from Wednesday, when New York City looked flat in their first non-league competitive match of the year.) You handed season-worst ratings to Nico Cavallo (4.1), Tayvon Gray (4.9), Agustín Ojeda (4.0), and Hannes Wolf (4.4).

Just like on Wednesday, the only bright spot was found in the goalkeeper’s performance — Matt Freese made six saves in Saturday’s loss. How did a Montréal that struggled to score this season test Freese so often? You’ll have to ask a porous midfield that ceded the run of play to the visitors, and a defense so disorganized that it allowed the league’s worst attack to create chance after chance.

Notably, Strahinja Tanasijević came on as a sub in the second half. After the defender earned a straight red card in the loss to Pittsburgh on Wednesday, we thought Tanasijević would be marginalized by head coach Pascal Jansen. Instead, the gaffer brought him on in the 62nd minute, and Tanasijević went on to make four clearances and win 3 duels in his time on the field. That was good for a 6.6 from FotMob — and a 4.4 from our readers.

Note: FotMob ratings are in parentheses.

New York City FC falls short against CF Montréal in the Bronx

NYCFC registered just two shots on target as they were shut out at home by the worst team in the Eastern Conference.

Hudson River BlueAbe Shire

Player Spotlight 

Maxi Moralez

The most thankless job in MLS might belong to Maxi Moralez. Arguably the greatest player in the history of New York City and one of the most creative and intelligent No 10s ever to play in this league returned to the club at the end of the 2023 season to help right a sinking ship, and to mentor a young squad that had more talent than experience.

Twenty-one months later, the 38-year-old with the surgically repaired knee is now the everyday No 10 thanks to the departure of Santiago Rodríguez to Botafogo in Brazil — and to the decision not to replace him by sporting director David Lee. Maxi should be the team’s elder statesman. Instead, he’s an everyday player.

That is literally true: Maxi is one of just three on the NYCFC squad to start all 12 league games. The other two? Freese, the goalkeeper, and Justin Haak, age 23. And yet Maxi is the ninth-oldest active player in MLS – or the fourth-oldest, if you just look at outfield players and don’t include goalkeepers.

This can’t continue. The old adage about working smarter, not harder, is being turned on its head: Maxi is being asked to work harder, not smarter. The midfielder has played 1010 minutes out of a possible 1080 this season — that’s already more than the 903 minutes he posted in 2024, when he missed the start of the year while recovering from surgery to repair ligament and meniscus damage sustained in 2023. But the returns are diminishing. Last year, he scored one goal and added five assists while making nine starts and eight appearances off the bench. This year, the midfielder has zero goals and just one assist in his 12 starts.

You can’t turn back the years, but you can get more out of a player this skilled and this experienced. Maybe let him take the day off, or allow him to impact a game off the bench with a key 35-minute appearance. Playing him for 93.5% of the possible game minutes this year might fill a gap in the lineup, but it doesn’t address bigger needs.

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Hudson River BlueJohn Baney

Player of the Match

Matt Freese

Right now, Matt Freese is Beyoncé and the rest of the squad is Destiny’s Child: There’s talent on this team, but there’s only one superstar.

Freese’s six saves in this game brings his league total to 45 this season, which puts him in Third Place behind Charlotte FC’s Kristijan Kahlina and San Jose’s Daniel. You can see one of those saves in the clip below, when he parried a Giacomo Vrioni header that was hit with accuracy and power. It’s because of moments like this one that our readers gave Freese almost 85% of the vote for Player of the Match.

There’s a bittersweet triumph to Freese’s save total. The Iceman made so many saves because he had so many saves to make: How did New York City allow a team that scored just five times in the previous 11 games find a way to take seven shots on goal? No doubt he would gladly take a two-save game and a clean sheet over an inflationary six-save game and a loss.