Keaton Parks foot injury clouds New York City midfield picture

Keaton Parks is trying to play through the pain of a lingering foot injury and it's making the midfield situation more complicated for New York City FC.

Parks is unavailable for tomorrow's game against CF Montréal after being subbed out of New York City's 1-0 win over FC Cincinnati in the 26th minute and then was absent from the matchday squad at midweek when the team traveled to Pittsburgh to get knocked out of the US Open Cup by the Riverhounds.

The foot issue plaguing Parks is not a new one, and the Cincinnati game wasn't his first start aborted early when the pain became too much to bear. The midfielder also left New York City's 0-0 road draw with Columbus Crew in the 35th minute and appeared to have his injury protected somewhat from the plastic pitch at Gillette Stadium, only playing the second half of New York City's humbling 2-0 loss at New England.

According to the team's radio play-by-play announcer, Glenn Crooks, Parks picked up the initial injury to his foot during the team's preseason preparations in California. The problem has been lingering and the player has been trying to push through it, and while it hasn't taken away from how Parks has performed when he's available, the unresolved nature of the injury seems to throw into question just how available we can expect Parks to be over the long haul of this MLS season.

I asked New York City Head Coach Pascal Jansen about Parks's foot injury during the press conference that followed the team's 1-0 win over FC Cincinnati, and you can watch the exchange below.

Jansen said in part, "It's still a concern because Keats has a problem with his foot. He's been adjusting one of his boots in order to deal with the matter. He's had a couple of good weeks. We were surprised by what happened today because it was in a different place in his foot. He pushed himself, by request, another 10, 15 minutes or so, but then the pain was too much and he had to come off."

So to recap: The injury has been lingering since the preseason, it has required modifications to the boots Parks wears to play, and against Cincinnati, he developed unplayable pain in a different part of his foot within the match's first 15 minutes.

It's a testament to Parks that he's played at such a high level this season while not feeling 100% healthy. He's been so good that seeing his minutes reduced in three matches due to the injury should raise serious red flags for a New York City team that's through only 12 matches of a long season.

Parks is a part of the best possible New York City midfield, but can he and the team successfully navigate his injury issues? The club will have to figure out the best approach to the unresolved problem of Parks's foot if this season is going to include a spot in the MLS Cup Playoffs, because the minutes played without Keaton in the middle of the pitch have been a struggle.

What makes Keaton critical to success

Parks is playing some of his best ball in 2025 despite the issue with his foot. He's second among New York City players (behind Alonso Martínez) in goals added (g+), the advanced statistic from American Soccer Analysis that tries to measure a player's complete on-ball value. Martínez has very literally added six goals to the club's goals tally, whereas Parks brings surplus value to nearly every facet of the game outside of direct goal contributions.

Parks has played deeper and done more of the defensive midfield work this season with James Sands out of the squad on loan, and he's filled that role well. In the early going of the season, he ranks ninth among MLS players with 15 dribblers tackled (with an elite 75% tackle success rate) and is in the 97th percentile of midfielders with 3.08 clearances per 90 minutes.

He's also still been popping up in attacking positions and doing attacking things, for example in the early moments of the win over FC Cincinnati before he was substituted.

An aggressive step from Parks to disrupt and intercept a pass intended for Evander was what sprang New York City on the attacking move that resulted in Julián Fernández's goal. The value Parks brings is well-rounded, as he's always heavily involved in NYCFC's pass-heavy possession-centric approach, and his ability to see the game as it unfolds helps some of the team's better moves forward develop.

All the things Keaton brings to this New York City squad are especially noticeable when he hasn't played this season. In all three cases (so far) of Parks playing only limited minutes due to the foot, New York City struggles to maintain valuable possession and doesn't create much of anything going forward.

Parks left the draw in Columbus in the 35th minute and New York City was almost instantly pinned back by Columbus, the match from that point on entirely swinging in the Crew's favor. New York City, meanwhile, had absolutely nothing going on in attack without either Parks or Alonso Martínez (on international duty) available.

A similar dynamic played out in New England when Keaton was listed among the substitutes, with 18-year-old Jonathan Shore tasked with functioning as the lone defensive midfielder to deal with the Revs at Gillette Stadium. The first 45 minutes played without Parks were dire, and while putting him on at halftime helped, the team conceded a second goal immediately and was then ineffective while enjoying spells of valuable possession while they chased the game from two goals down.

Final example of The Parks Effect came in NYCFC's most recent MLS match, the win over Cincinnati. The three-at-the-back formation change from Pascal Jansen was a success instantly at Citi Field, and New York City looked as good as it has all season in the opening 10-15 minutes, scoring once and earning a penalty kick in that time. When Parks left the pitch at minute 26, however, possession and momentum swung in Cincinnati's favor – though they never found a goal despite their own tactical shifts to capitalize on a weakened NYCFC.

To try to sum up his value another way, with one random statistic: Parks currently has the highest expected goals plus-minus (xG On-Off) per 90 minutes of his career, sitting at a +1.24 through 11 games, which should underscore just how much better New York City has been this season when Keaton is out there.

Aiden O'Neill enters, should help

Central midfield is the one position New York City addressed on the transfer market during the MLS Primary Transfer Window, spending $2.6 million to acquire Aiden O'Neill from Standard de Liège in Belgium.

O'Neill just arrived at the team's training facility yesterday and appears to have his work visa sorted out, providing an immediate reinforcement to the midfield, whether Parks is available to play or not. Pascal Jansen explicitly mentioned O'Neill's ability to function as a box-to-box midfielder, so the assumption that the Australian will be a pure No 6 James Sands replacement might not be accurate.

At first blush, the assumption would be that Jansen sees O'Neill and Parks as two of his best midfielders and will look to play them side-by-side, much in the way Jansen has paired Parks with Jonathan Shore on numerous occasions in 2025.

The lingering foot injury for Parks, though, might complicate those plans – could O'Neill's arrival and assimilation into the team occur while they try to definitively solve Keaton's injury with some time on the sidelines? Jansen does say in the above quote from his pre-Cincinnati press conference that O'Neill will ensure NYCFC "sustain high quality whenever our other quality players aren't available," so one could interpret that as hinting at a possible Parks absence.

A way forward for Parks, the midfield

The unknown in all this is just exactly what foot injury Parks is dealing with. Is this one that will heal and return to normalcy by being rested and not subjected to the wear-and-tear of professional soccer for some number of weeks? Or is this the kind of problem only resolved by way of surgical procedure, something that might jeopardize a huge swath of the 2025 season?

O'Neill plus the return to health of Andrés Perea gives Jansen more options to work with and should lessen the need to move Justin Haak out of the left-center-back role he's seemed to thrive in during the team's solid stretch winning three of four MLS games by a 1-0 scoreline. Shore has been solid for an 18-year-old in his first, limited taste of MLS and seems certain to still be a part of the midfield picture for the remainder of the season.

Is there enough quality depth in place to sit Parks, or will more boot modifications and more pain tolerance be the chosen way forward for the American midfielder? His on-field value to NYCFC has felt irreplaceable this season but continuing to lean on him while he battles this injury might create a worse situation when the calendar hits August or September and crunch time for playoff pushes and positioning intensifies.

We should get clues as to how Parks's foot issue gets solved as soon as Matchday 12 vs. CF Montréal. With O'Neill in training with the team but only just barely before Matchday, it stands to reason he could earn at minimum a place on the bench as a substitute. Parks was missing from the rotated squad that lost in Pittsburgh but that might be less of an indication of his injury status than what happens when MLS resumes at Yankee Stadium against Montréal.

The personnel now available to Pascal Jansen is better than the options to replace Parks on March 22 in Columbus, when the team needed to sign 17-year-old midfielder Peter Molinari to one of his four Short-Term Agreements. The question now becomes how Jansen, his medical staff, and the NYCFC front office will approach the injury that threatens to hamper a standout season from the team's key central midfield presence.