In this edition of the Hudson River Blue Roundtable, John Baney, Andrew Leigh, Matthew Mangam, and Oliver Strand look back on Justin Haak's time at New York City FC after the Homegrown announced earlier today that he will leave his boyhood club to join LA Galaxy next season.
A Homegrown, a true New Yorker
Obviously, losing Justin Haak is an on-field blow - there just can’t be too many guys in the league who can play that role for Pascal Jansen at such a high level. But off the field, this one stings even more.
All Homegrown players are precious in their own right, but Haak, being just the third Homegrown signing in the club’s history, saw him carry even more value, serving as connective tissue between NYCFC’s past and present. He trained with the three Designated Players of NYCFC’s Galactico Era, found first-team footing alongside the 2021 MLS Cup-winning side, and grew into an increasingly vital contributor in the club’s post-cup rebuild. He had, at the very least, a front row seat to any piece of NYCFC lore you can imagine since 2016, if he wasn’t contributing to it directly.
Haak is also a New Yorker by birth. Raised in the city, Haak exudes that New York energy that’s hard to define, but also hard to miss. Even as a transplant myself, I’ve always found it extra special when a Homegrown player grew up in the city. There’s an authenticity to it that can’t be imitated. You can drop millions on Lionel Messi or Son Heung-Min, but no price tag in the world can find you a player who shares such a genuine, natural connection to the fans in the stands as a player like Haak could.
Dropped into the core of the Big Apple by a multi-national foreign ownership group over a decade ago, NYCFC is something of a transplant itself, and one that’s been desperate for acceptance and connection from its new neighbors ever since its arrival. For the same reasons, NYCFC was desperate to build its permanent home within the five boroughs; it should’ve been desperate to keep someone like Justin Haak on its roster.
– John Baney
Matthew Mangam
"Cavani! Cavani!"
Justin Haak's leaving marks the final departure from New York City FC’s original class of talent to emerge from their youth academy. He grew up and into a professional at NYCFC. It’s a development success that he was this good, inspiring a (reported) bidding war for his services and a move to LA Galaxy, but this is also a sad way to see the final one of the “NYCFC Originals” to emerge from the youth academy leave the team.
Haak played for NYCFC’s first-ever Academy team in 2015, the U-14s, and he later won the US Soccer Development Academy’s Under-18/19 championship in 2018 while starting alongside James Sands, Joe Scally, Andres Jasson, Nico Benalcazar, Kwaku Owusu — all players eventually signed to Homegrown contracts with the NYCFC First Team.
Maybe it’s a natural side effect of professional soccer that all these Homegrowns are gone now in late-2025, given that it’s been seven or eight years since some of them signed their first contracts with New York City. Sands and Scally left for Europe, but the Homegrown that followed them in the chronological signing order, Haak, leaves NYCFC to stay in MLS, which adds to the complicated feelings that surround his departure.
I’ll always remember Haak for being one of the team’s first players to achieve cult-hero status during an overseas preseason friendly. Drawing chants of “Cavani! Cavani” at age-16 while making a 13-minute cameo as a substitute against Atlético de San Luis of Liga MX at their stadium in Mexico, a cameo in which he more than held his own, was the first sign to many of what would be to come for Haak during his NYCFC career.
It took him a while to break through as an outright starter, but by 2025, he’d risen to and solidified his status as the latest in the club’s string of Homegrown stars. His leaving and the circumstances around it, with NYCFC not matching his contract demands while he’s rightly considered the best MLS free agent on the market, make the end of this Homegrown’s time with the team sting a bit more.
– Andrew Leigh
Oliver Strand
Why didn’t NYCFC do more to keep him?
After being looked at as a valuable substitute and reliable player when called upon, Justin Haak became a staple in NYCFC’s 2025 lineup. The Homegrown proved that he’s a talented player worthy of starting day in and day out, having a career year that attracted interest from not just other MLS teams, but also European clubs in the Bundesliga and EFL Championship.
It’s unfortunate that the Brooklyn native won’t continue his career with his boyhood team and is instead traveling across the country to join a rebuilding LA Galaxy side. The departure of Haak will ultimately be looked at as a failure by the NYCFC front office: How were they not more ambitious to keep him and stop him from leaving for free?
– Matthew Mangam
Matthew Mangam
From a boy to a man
I watched Justin Haak make his first start for the First Team on June 12, 2019, when NYCFC defeated North Carolina FC 4-0 in the US Open Cup. It was a different era — Domé Torrent was in charge back then, and a team that had one eye on the Supporters’ Shield seemed to view the Cup as a distraction.
It was also the first time that the team played on the plastic grass at Belson Stadium on the campus of St. John’s University. It was still novel to watch the First Team play a game in that collegiate setting, and be so close to the action. The 17-year-old Haak had made his MLS debut earlier that month when he came on as a late substitute in a 5-2 win over a dysfunctional FC Cincinnati (as I said, a different era), but this was his first start, and I watched the slight teenager put in a solid shift at the No 6 vs North Carolina. He was Jonny Shore 1.0: Haak completed 56 out of 66 passes (85%) and made seven recoveries as he played the full 90 minutes of a clean-sheet win against a far larger, older, more physical, and more experienced squad.
I chatted with Haak after the game. Mind you, this was well before I joined Hudson River Blue and covered the team in any capacity. Haak was loitering on the sideline farthest away from the player’s entrance, but the home supporters moved over to that section of the stands to make noise behind the North Carolina goal — and to watch Keaton Parks score twice in his First Team debut. Haak was quiet but present, a shy teenager who made himself available to the fans while Designated Players like Alexandru Mitriță and Jesús Medina went to the locker room. I was with a friend who made a dad joke. Haak laughed politely. We were probably keeping him up past his bedtime.
Fast-forward to the end of the 2024 season, when a bulked-up Haak became Nick Cushing’s best choice for a squad riding a nine-game winless streak as they struggled to finish out the season. Cushing was looking to patch up a leaky defense by finding a center-back partner for Thiago Martins: Birk Risa was sidelined with an injury, and after Strahinja Tanasijević starred in the disasterclass of a 5-1 loss to Philadelphia Union at Yankee Stadium, the head coach was desperate enough to start Haak out of position on the left for a road game against Red Bull New York on September 28. It was a big decision. New York City had beaten the Red Bulls just twice in the previous 16 matchups in Harrison, NJ, and were expected to stumble once again.
But the gamble worked. Haak was exceptional in the 5-1 thumping of the Red Bulls — and in the 3-2 win over FC Cincinnati the following Wednesday, and in the 3-1 win over Nashville SC four days later. The team never looked back, and when Jansen took over the following year, Haak became his Iron Horse, starting all 43 competitive matches.
Justin Haak scores against Inter Miami in the 2025 MLS Cup Eastern Conference Playoffs | Courtesy MLS and Apple TV
It’s fitting that one of Haak’s final moments for New York City was the powerful header he scored in the Eastern Conference loss to Inter Miami. The skinny boy I saw take the field in 2019 was now cut, a muscular and physical player who rose majestically above a fully stacked Miami squad to score a magnificent header to bring NYCFC to within one goal of Miami. It temporarily silenced the home crowd, and gave momentary hope to New York City that they could once again beat the odds.
But it wasn't to be. "This loss in Miami might have been one final reminder of all the qualities Haak brought to the table in his breakout season," Leigh wrote in his Instant Reaction to the game." Haak started his time at New York City fighting to prove that he could be a First Team starter, and ended it by providing the squad's one moment of big-game quality in the most important match of 2025.
– Oliver Strand
Hudson River Blue Staff
