New York City FC face an Eastern Conference Semifinal against Philadelphia Union that will be played while missing some extremely important players.
Aiden O’Neill (suspended) and Andrés Perea (injured) are missing from the midfield, but most significant of all, Alonso Martínez and his 21 goals scored in 2025 (in all competitions) will also be out for the trip to Philadelphia and for many months that follow it.
“Next man up” is a go-to phrase in situations like this, but as Pascal Jansen pieces a lineup together to face the Union, his options lean more toward Play the Kids. The depth New York City have left to fill in for its newly-absent trio skews young — like teenagers-only young. Agustín Ojeda and Julián Fernández are the relative elder statesmen on the bench at age-21, and neither represents a like-for-like striker replacement for Martínez.
The recent choices the club made at striker leave Seymour Reid, the 17-year-old Jamaica international, as the only other out-and-out No 9 left on the New York City first-team roster. Striker could have been a position of depth for New York City, but recently the club jettisoned all would-be Martínez backups or replacements.
John Baney
No Mounsef, no Jovan
That covers Mounsef Bakrar, who left most recently during this past summer’s transfer window when interest materialized from Dinamo Zagreb in Croatia. Before him, there was also the failed Jovan Mijatović signing, with the then-18-year-old spending one fruitless season in New York City in 2024 before joining OH Leuven in Belgium on loan, where he remains.
Bakrar looks rejuvenated playing back in Croatia, with the Algerian scoring eight goals in 15 appearances in all competitions for Dinamo Zagreb, who have primarily used New York City’s former No 9 out on the right-wing since signing him in August. Mijatović hasn’t produced much with Leuven, one assist in 12 league appearances this season, and just one goal scored across 20 combined appearances for OH Leuven spread across both his loan spells with the club.
This is not to say that these were bad moves by now-departed NYCFC Sporting Director, David Lee. But both Bakrar and Mijatović were once in a position to fill the role of NYCFC striker at a moment of need like this one.
NYCFC II’s best goal-scorers now in USL Championship
The second team isn’t going to provide much obvious help, either, thanks to two other recent departures. New York City picked promising collegiate forwards in back-to-back installments of the MLS SuperDraft in 2023 and 2024 in MD Myers and Taylor Calheira.
The two followed essentially the same path. Both broke out with NYCFC II, not only leading the team in goals but rising to the top of the MLS NEXT Pro scoresheet. Both were immediately sold to USL Championship teams after just one season with NYCFC II. And both continue to excel while playing one division below MLS, with Calheira set to play for the USL Championship title with FC Tulsa to cap off a 2025 season in which he has 21 goals and four assists in 38 appearances across all competitions for the Oklahoma club.
Myers has 29 goals scored across 60 USL Championship appearances spanning two seasons spent with Charleston Battery, the team he joined in an undisclosed transfer from NYCFC II following a 2023 season in which he won a share of MLS Next Pro’s Golden Boot with 19 goals.
Both players seem to have been judged by David Lee and the internal sporting staff as being too good for MLS Next Pro, but not good enough for NYCFC at the MLS level, and also not worth keeping on the books while possibly only loaned out to a team in the USL Championship or in another league elsewhere.
Their sales likely opened Myers and Calheira up to more playing time in more competitive leagues than what NYCFC could offer, but selling both players is quite a double-whammy of missed opportunity when it comes to the possibility of having an in-house forward with a knack for scoring goals waiting in the wings and ready to step up and play in place of Martínez.
Corey Clayton
Seymour Reid: Next striker up?
Depth at any position is hard to come by for teams in MLS, and NYCFC’s lack of center-forward depth now stands out a bit more because the team’s star striker is facing an extended stretch on the sidelines.
The decisions New York City made to move out all those other forwards who could have plausibly contributed at striker in 2025 mean the team heads into the Eastern Conference Semifinal likely relying on a creative midfielder, Nico Fernández Mercau, filling in as a center-forward as he’s done a few other times already when Martínez was unavailable through injury. It might work, but it also throws into imbalance the rest of NYCFC’s attack, as Fernández Mercau lining up at striker will mean introducing a new wide attacker or attacking midfielder in his place.
Otherwise, it’s turning to Seymour Reid for minutes as a true No 9 with size and a penchant for getting in behind opposing back lines. It would be a fitting end to the season for Reid to play a part in NYCFC’s latest playoff clash with Philadelphia, given 2025 saw Reid first sign a contract with NYCFC II, then make a largely unexpected MLS debut in March after impressing Jansen and his coaching staff during preseason out in California.
Reid kept popping up as a short-term call-up and managed to perform well enough to get signed to a full-on Homegrown contract with the NYCFC First Team in late May, earned his first-career start with NYCFC during Leagues Cup, and scored his first MLS goal to cap off the 3-1 away win over Chicago Fire FC on September 13 at Soldier Field. He also scored 13 goals in 15 games played in MLS Next Pro, and earned a first-ever call-up to the senior Jamaica national team in October, so 2025 has officially been a huge year in almost all possible ways for Reid.
Maybe it gets bigger as he plays a role in the Semifinal against the Union, or maybe he just prepares for an even bigger role with NYCFC early in 2026 while Martínez is still injured and recovering.
Reid is the Next Striker Up for New York City FC right now, here while expensive imports like Mijatović and Bakrar are gone, and the only one of the team’s multiple standout center-forwards from the MLS Next Pro level to actually get a chance to play with the MLS squad.
The excellence of Martínez made it less consequential to see other strikers leave the NYCFC setup, but now that Martínez is out, the decisions made from 2023 on while in search of a No 9 ready to help at MLS level stand out a little more than they did before.
If I’m Pascal, I take my chances with Seymour. What we lose in clinicality, he can make up for with physicality. He might open things up for Nico, Hannes, maybe Agu just by being a presence.