New York City FC enter this upcoming matchday with 10 games left in the season. The team are preparing to face Nashville SC at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, and with the three-game detour that was the 2025 Leagues Cup comfortably in the rearview mirror, this is the perfect time to look at where NYCFC are now — and what lies ahead in the final nine weeks of league play.
Here are five things to keep in mind as New York City’s endgame begins.
1. July went well…
Heading into the summer, one of the biggest concerns for the club was the four-game roadtrip in July that sent NYCFC zig-zagging across the country to play in semitropical conditions on short rest. It was the sixth four-game roadtrip in club history, and one of the most brutal according to Hudson River Blue’s Roadtrip Misery Index, a five-point scale of 🥵 to 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵 that looks at conditions, logistics, and caliber of opposition. According to our totally scientific assessment, the 2025 roadtrip was rated 🥵🥵🥵🥵, equalling the team-high set in 2017.
Despite that, 2025 was New York City’s second-most productive four-game roadtrip ever, with seven points taken and a zero goal differential. This year trails only 2019, when a fully stacked team took eight points in a roadtrip scheduled in May and June against relatively weak opponents, and that didn’t feature any games on short rest. Nicely done.
New York City FC | Four-Game Roadtrips by Year
| Year | W | D | L | PTS | GF | GA | GD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 0 |
| 2024 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 | -1 |
| 2023 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 6 | -3 |
| 2019 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 7 | 3 | +4 |
| 2017 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| 2016 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 8 | -2 |
It could have been disastrous — if the team had taken just three points like they did last year, NYCFC would be sitting in 10th Place right now, looking up at New York Red Bulls and just out of a playoff spot. Instead, New York City are in a decent position on the table, and on track to make the playoffs.
2. … but the Eastern Conference is unusually tough this year
Unfortunately for New York City, the Eastern Conference is exceptionally competitive in 2025, with 49 points as the projected cutoff to make the postseason. This is easily the toughest table since the playoffs were expanded to nine teams in 2023, when the cutoff was 43 points (and NYCFC’s 41 points weren’t good enough). Last year, the cutoff was just 40 points.
New York City FC | Total Points vs Playoff Cutoff by Year
* 2020: 23-game season
* 2025: Projected over a 34-game season
As it stands, NYCFC are projected to finish with 54 points, which is good enough to make the postseason. But the other three teams contending for the bottom three spots are concerning. NYCFC are going up against the surprisingly competitive Charlotte FC (41 points) and Chicago Fire (36 points), and the underperforming Red Bulls (36 points) — and will face each of them in the upcoming weeks. How NYCFC navigates those so-called six-point games could determine if the team makes the postseason, and if they climb above 8th Place and avoid the play-in game.
Hudson River Blue Staff
3. There is improvement overall…
NYCFC started to find a rhythm around Matchday 10, when the team defeated Toronto FC 1-0 on the road. Since then, the club have averaged 1.85 points per game, bringing the season average up to a good-not-great 1.58 points per game.
New York City FC | 2025 Season by Match
Look at the graph above, and you’ll see that NYCFC fans will want the points per game line (light blue) and goals for per game line (orange) to be as high as possible, and for the goals against per game line (black) to drop low. The wider the gap between the blue and orange lines and the black line, the better.
* 2020: 23-game season
* 2025: Projected over a 34-game season
While 2025’s general trajectory through 24 games is solid, it doesn’t compare to the potent seasons from 2017 to 2023. There is room for improvement. But 2025 is stronger than the disastrous 2023, when goal-scoring dropped to a historic low, or even the relatively successful 2024, when the team bled 20 goals in the final 10 games of the regular season.
Hudson River Blue Staff
4. …but defense is now a concern
For the first time since 2017, it’s unclear who NYCFC’s starting center backs will be.
The uncertainty began at the end of the 2024 season, when Birk Risa lost his starting spot to Justin Haak on the left side of the center-back pairing. A midfielder by training, the right-footed Haak was playing out of position, but his movement and physical intensity made him the better option.
Fast-forward one year, and Risa has returned to Molde FK in Norway, leaving Haak as the primary (only?) choice on the left. Then came the news in late July that center-back Thiago Martins underwent surgery and is expected to be out another one to three weeks. Within 10 days, NYCFC lost two of the First Team’s three true central defenders.
Since then, NYCFC have given up eight goals in four games in all competitions. During Leagues Cup, coach Pascal Jansen tried to piece together a defensive line with the players available to him, but no combination of Tayvon Gray, Strahinja Tanasijević, and Haak looked particularly strong — never mind that Gray left the loss to Deportivo Toluca early with a leg injury.
But could good news be on the way?
In the training photos the club released on Wednesday, you can see Thiago Martins dressed and practicing with the rest of the team. NYCFC have yet to make an official announcement regarding the return of the defender, but it looks like he’s recovering.
Then there’s the rumored arrival of Raul Gustavo from Ferencváros, Jansen’s former club. The 26-year-old left-footed center back from Brazil stands at 6’3″, has already said goodbye to Ferencváros, and has been posting Instagram stories from Manchester City’s Etihad Campus. It seems to be just a matter of time until the signing is announced.
But until that happens, and until Thiago Martins is ready to play a full match, Jansen will need to figure out how to get Haak and Tanasijević to anchor a defense that can hold the line against Hany Mukhtar, Sam Surridge, and the rest of the Nashville attack on Sunday, and FC Cincinnati’s Evander and Kévin Denkey the following Saturday.
Michael Battista
5. Can the new midfield cook?
Last year, you could set your watch by the NYCFC midfield. Maxi Moralez, Keaton Parks, Santiago Rodríguez, and James Sands were consistently good, sometimes excellent, and were among the most competitive midfielders in the league. That’s what you get when you have a core that plays together day in and day out.
Sadly, that’s history. Sands left at the end of last season, Rodríguez just before the start of this one, and now Parks is sidelined indefinitely after undergoing his third surgery in five years to treat a blood clot issue. Moraelz is the only one left, and the 38-year-old No 10 who is one of two NYCFC players to start every one of the team’s 24 league games — the other being Haak.
From the looks of it, Jansen will approach the final ten games with a new-look midfield consisting of Maxi, Nico Fernández, Aiden O’Neill, and Andrés Perea, with Jonny Shore providing cover for O’Neill or even Perea either off the bench or as the occasional starter. It’s a solid lineup, with Maxi pulling the strings, Fernández and Perea creating danger, and O’Neill anchoring the defense. If Fernández proves to be worth his Designated Player contract, it could equal or even surpass the midfield that carried the team to the Eastern Conference Semifinal last year.
John Baney
There’s no doubt that the midfield is talented. But the question remains: How quickly will they gel?
Fernández, O’Neill, Perea, and Shore have just 35 MLS starts between them — and 14 of those belong to Shore. Or, to look at it another way, Maxi, Fernández, O’Neill, and Perea have been in the same Starting XI exactly twice: First in the 2-0 win over Club León, then in the 2-1 loss to Deportivo Toluca. We saw glimpses of what they might be capable of accomplishing in both games, but these are early days, and Fernández is still essentially in preseason after joining from Elche CF last month.
If the midfield starts to cook, New York City could finish the year strong and create momentum just in time for the start of the postseason. But if the chemistry is off? Well, there will be plenty of time to work it out before the opening of the 2026 season, when it looks like New York City will begin the year with a complete squad for the first time since 2022.
Oliver Strand
