Role: Head Coach
Age: 52
Key Stat: 1.94 points per match across all competitions in his 192 matches as manager of AZ Alkmaar and Ferencvárosi TC.
Pascal Jansen is in as Head Coach in 2025 and so far he remains the only new signing of note made by New York City FC this offseason.
Jansen arrives with the expectation he’ll get more out of the team’s remaining young talent, but he’s not starting his NYCFC tenure with the easiest hand ever dealt.
New York City is selling Designated Player attacker Santiago Rodríguez not long after the team loaned out stalwart defensive midfielder James Sands, and with Talles Magno shipped out on loan and Thiago Martins picking up an injury during preseason training, Jansen appears set to begin his first MLS regular season with zero (0) Designated Players at his disposal.
Can the former AZ Alkmaar and Ferencváros manager with an impressive track record and a stated desire to toughen this NYCFC team up while he helps them reach their collective next level pull it off while his squad looks short on high-end talent?
Andrew Leigh
Who will be in, who will be out
Questions around transfers and player recruitment hang over the early days of Jansen’s time leading New York City FC. With Sands and Rodríguez plus Jovan Mijatović leaving, there are sizable holes in the roster.
The wait is on for alignment to be reached between Jansen and the New York City FC front office regarding players to target on the transfer market, a place where NYCFC so far has registered $0 spent on new transfer fees during the two most recent transfer windows, including this current one that’s open until April 23.
Transfers aside, it’s more important to see who Jansen rates that maybe wasn’t a favorite under the leadership of Nick Cushing, or maybe wasn’t deployed in a certain way last season. Already this preseason we’ve seen Mounsef Bakrar play alongside Alonso Martínez, with Bakrar shifting into a wide attacking role, a possible new wrinkle to Bakrar’s game.
Jansen will have to decide on his preferred center-back pairing, though that’s complicated by the uncertain health of Thiago Martins and the potential for Justin Haak – who finished 2024 looking great as a center-back – to be needed elsewhere in the midfield as the James Sands replacement.
MLS learning curve?
Byzantine roster rules, three-match weeks involving sometimes absurd amounts of travel, and a variety of concurrent competitions that you have to sometimes almost impossibly juggle: These are just a few of our favorite MLS things that Pascal Jansen will deal with for the first time in 2025.
The league may not be tougher or more competitive than the Eredivisie where he spent most of his coaching career, but MLS has its quirks and Jansen will need to show that he can strike the right balances in terms of roster rotation and player management. It’s already been a slight concern to see the injury bug do a bit of a sweep through New York City’s preseason, with questions around the health and season-opening availability of some key players as the season begins.
Andrew Leigh
Jansen has been described by the players who have spoken to the press this preseason, Keaton Parks and Matt Freese in particular, as being intense and demanding a lot from the players in training and with their physical conditioning. The MLS season is long and forces teams to deal with climate and travel extremes not seen in many other leagues.
The first-year MLS coach will have a major test on his hands when his NYCFC, for example, close the pre-Leagues Cup portion of the regular season with four consecutive away matches in the heat of late July in Charlotte, North Carolina, Orlando, Florida, Frisco, Texas, and Kansas City, Kansas.
How much upside?
Jansen has the background to make you believe he can get more out of pricey but disappointing-to-date young players like Agustín Ojeda and Julián Fernández, and he’s also got the kind of youth development reputation that makes you think teenaged Homegrown signings like Máximo Carrizo, Jonathan Shore, and Drew Baiera might stand a better chance of getting real opportunities with the First Team than they did under previous NYCFC management.
While the player departures of this winter combined with the lack of reinforcements might lessen expectations for Jansen’s first season, he has not sounded like someone who expects to suffer through a rebuilding year. It will be a task for Jansen to squeeze points out of an in-transition roster early in the season, but that’s part of why New York City FC and its owners paid the hefty release clause to get him out of his contract with Ferencváros.
Pascal Jansen is the marquee signing of the moment, expected to shape the talent assembled in New York City into another trophy-winning side. If the new NYCFC Head Coach can find the right combination of youth and experience and get on the same page with Sporting Director David Lee to add a key external contributor or two, it’s not farfetched to imagine New York City improving on its 2024 performance.
How far this year’s team goes will depend on how much difference a new coach like Jansen – experienced, intense, demanding, but familiar in his preferred play style – makes on what’s lately been a continuity-focused New York City FC. Jansen is expected to be the major change agent in 2025, and how much positive change he’s able to coax out of this group of players could set the tone for the season.
That last paragraph is the key. The 2023-2024 was a period of transition, but it’s done now and it’s time to compete. And I mean really compete. If Lee has done his job and the core he’s assembled is as good as he believes, we should challenge for the top of the Eastern Conference and finish somewhere in the top four spots. And I say that knowing we have some gaps to fill, especially as Santi sidles out the door. But if you’re operating under the develop and sell model, which we clearly are, at least now, then you should be ready for that kind of thing.Let’s GO.