Hudson River Blue spoke with New York City FC head coach Nick Cushing at the club’s training facility ahead of Saturday’s game with Atlanta United at Citi Field.
Note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Feeling pressure?
Hudson River Blue: The results this year haven’t been, I’m sure, what you want. Are you feeling any pressure?
Nick Cushing: It depends on what you define as pressure.
Pressure from leadership here? No. Pressure from fans? Yes, and I accept that because they want results. Pressure from myself? Yes, because I’m desperate to win.
I’ve won before, and I understand the formula of what it takes to win. When it hasn’t worked out in the past I’ve worked incredibly hard to go and find out.
The group is an incredible group, and I enjoy every day working with them. The one thing: Everybody wants to win, and everybody thinks they deserve to win. And when you feel like the group we work with, the cohesion and togetherness that we have, off the back of last year, the pressure to deliver that is incredible because we really want it.
So yeah, the answer is yes.
But when people ask you, “Do you feel pressure?” What they’re basically asking you is, “Do you feel like the leadership is going to fire you?”
The game is the game, right? If you don’t get results, irrelevant of how you play, you lose your job. And that’s the way it is. That’s the same here, that’s the same at every state in America, that’s the same in the Premier League, that’s the same in the Championship. I’m a realist. We have to deliver results.
A young squad that’s still developing
HRB: Let’s talk about age. Looking at this year’s squad vs last year’s squad: Last year you had a lot of extremely young players. This year they’re a little bit older but it’s still a very young group. You have an 18-year-old, 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds. How much of your coaching is player development?
NC: To quantify it is difficult. The most important part is to be a winning team, but we can’t hide the fact that we have a lot of young guys we’re developing.
I think as you can see here today that the staff take on a lot of development of the group. Of course I’m involved in it, and of course it’s a huge part of my job, but they drive the day-to-day development. The individual development of players, and video meetings, and reviewing and reflecting. For the likes of Agustín Ojeda and Malachi Jones after the Open Cup game, that’s all a part of it. They’re doing individual sessions on recovery days when the senior guys or the guys who play a lot of minutes are inside.
But I’m focused on Atlanta, focused on the opponents, focused on the game. I dip in and out of the development of individuals because it’s a huge part of our job as a club, right? It’s not like we’re a team that’s just developing a Julián Fernández. We have a lot of players who we’re developing because of the age profile and experience of the group.
So it’s sort of a sliding scale. If you think when we have a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — that’s probably a lot of development of the team but also a lot of development of individuals, and as you start to slide towards the end of the week you focus on the team that’s going to play, the result that we want to get, the opponent and threat that they’re going to have. So we’re forever sliding that scale between development and winning.
HRB: How much of that is on the field, and how much of that is off the field? You have an 18-year-old from Serbia, 19-year-olds from Argentina, a 19-year-old from Slovenia, and they’re now living in New York City. How much of it is being a Papa Bear to these young kids?
NC: I think you can see today in the type of training we do — today was very much an educational walk-through of the principles and concepts of our game, and how we’re going to attack the game in every phase. It was very tactical and very question-and-answer.
I had a tactics board, I was in the video room beforehand. There were a lot of individual videos, unit videos, and group videos. But that’s the job of football coaches, that’s the job of the support staff.
We have a support team that’s educating these guys. When you’re young, and you don’t have the experience of knowing what your body needs, and what you should eat, and how you should train, and how you should sleep. So we have a performance team that’s educating the guys on that.
If I were to go right now and speak to Thiago Martins, he knows exactly what he needs to do between now and Saturday to perform well. If I were to go ask Augustín Ojeda, or Mitja Ilenič, or Jovan Mijatović, there’s not so much experience in there. They’re building that knowledge, and the performance team are helping them with that.
And we have excellent staff who help them off the pitch with just life in general. How to cope with the pressure and the expectations, and the step up from where they came from into a team that has high demands and high expectations, and that’s a part of a really big organization.
There’s a hell of a lot of development and support that goes on to make sure that these guys who have huge potential can reach that potential, and become the players we know that they can be.
Play fast-attacking football for the full 90′
HRB: The first half of the game against Portland Timbers was probably the best that this team looked all year — we saw the speed, we saw the energy of a team that was unlucky not to score two, three goals. We didn’t see that in Miami. How do you take that Portland performance and make it the benchmark for this team?
NC: You are right — that is exactly how I want the team to play.
We are a possession team, and we do want to play fast-attacking football. I understand that we maybe haven’t done that enough this season and last year. But I think I said in preseason, I want to attack teams without the ball, I want to be a strong counter-pressing team, I want to be a strong pressing team.
We have the ability at home to excite our fans throughout the game. You know, we did it for 45 minutes but that’s not long enough. That’s why we didn’t win the game. We were too passive – we weren’t aggressive enough – and we allowed Portland back into the game.
We then don’t do it in periods in the Cincinnati game, though I thought we competed. We didn’t do it enough in the Miami game. It’s going to take time to develop time this.
But we have to support and challenge the team. The amount of challenge we give them will improve them, and the amount of support we give them will help them in the tough times.
We have an opportunity now with five home games and we can really embrace that. We know we can be stronger at home. We know that we have a small sample size from Portland, and many parts of the Toronto game — you think of the Santi Rodríguez chance, the Kevin O’Toole chance at the start, Hannes Wolf has a chance, they all come from counter-pressing moments, from when a possession ball turns over and they react really quickly, go get the ball really quickly, hunt it out, go straight to goal.
It’s going take time to educate these boys and show that we can attack the game at every phase of the game.
That’s what I was showing today. It’s the how and when you can do it. And if you can sustain it over time then you can become a team that is aggressive in every phase of the game. I think it’s about really pushing the team hard — challenging them and supporting them. We had some really good honest conversations again this week.
I say to the team all the time: Those that know need to help the others, and those that don’t have to build their understanding and learn quickly.
The one thing I’ve said every week in my press conferences is when I come into the dressing room I see a team that cares and really hates losing. That feeling you have to bottle and bring in on a Monday morning, and a Tuesday morning, and a Wednesday morning to drive you to work so hard whether that be in learning the game, or pushing yourself physically. I can’t fault the team for the amount of work that they’re putting in.
Perspective and understanding
HRB: The members of the press track the team, watch the games, and research the players, and we have our perspectives of the team. But what are we missing? What questions would you have us ask you?
NC: I don’t need to be asked questions that I already have answers to. I think your job, and fan’s job, is to ask the questions that you feel need to be answered.
But the thing I would like is understanding. I don’t think we can put the demands and expectations on this team that we had on the team in 2021. I will continue to say that because this is not the same team.
That’s not my excuse — that is the reality.
I said at the start that I want this team to be a good attacking team in every phase. We lead the league in counter-pressing and pressures in the offensive half of the pitch. So the work that we’re putting in is translating onto the field. The difference is we’re nowhere near where we should be from shots from those moments.
Obviously that’s the bit that counts, right? You don’t want to be busy fools, you want to gain the moment to score. But this team is also in an early stage of its development. It’s 18 months into a period – I could argue that it’s 12 months into a period if not less – and it takes time to develop that.
I like the demand, I like the expectations. I always answer the questions. I always give my perspective on it. I’m an honest guy — I’m an honest and a fair guy. But while I know we are further on in the process, and we are on the journey to getting there, I will continue to work hard and continue to answer the questions. I think perspective and understanding are really, really important.
About that blue jacket
HRB: Last question — you usually wear team gear or a t-shirt, but in Miami, you were in a blue jacket with some detailing and stitchwork. It’s probably the most splashed-out we’ve seen you. It’s said that the women who work at Vogue don’t dress to impress men, they dress for Ana Wintour. Did you dress for David Beckham?
NC: No, I definitely wasn’t. I didn’t actually know he was going to be there, and I don’t think I could ever adopt David Beckham’s style.
For me, I think I’ve got good style — no, that sounds a bit…
I don’t think I have good style, I think I like nice clothes. When I got to the Conference Final in 2022 as the interim coach there was an article that ranked the fashion level of the coaches and I came bottom. I was wearing a polo shirt. I get it.
I see Jim Curtin now wears a suit with a tie and the Nike Jordans. I don’t think I’m going to go that far.
The one thing, I changed the trainers for shoes. I have a mentor who helps me, and the one thing he said is to take the white trainers off because he said I should wear shoes on the sidelines.
I can you let you into a secret. The reason why I wore what I wore was for Alex Rando. He’s a big Stone Island guy, and he said to me “You should wear Stone Island on the sidelines.” I said to him, “Listen, I have a few pieces in the wardrobe.”
So I put it on for Alex Rando.
