New York City FC player ratings are back for another season. As a reminder, these ratings are entirely determined by you, the readers of Hudson River Blue.
After the conclusion of every New York City FC match this season, you can visit this page and rate every player who stepped on the field for NYCFC on a scale of 1 to 10, based on their performance in that match. You also get to give Pascal Jansen and the referee a rating for their efforts.
In 2026, these ratings begin with a 1-1 draw that felt like a slight disappointment, given LA Galaxy faded from the match after scoring an opening goal within the blink of an eye inside two minutes. New York City controlled the flow of the match and even played the final 30 minutes with an 11v10 advantage after a Galaxy red card, but all they had to show for it in the end was Nico Fernández Mercau's conversion from the penalty spot.
A 1-1 draw in Southern California to start a season is a point that should be respected, but the performance from NYCFC was not one to write home about. That's the basic upshot of this first set of player ratings: Not the worst set of scores HRB's readers have handed out, but also a decidedly middling set of scores for a decidedly middling performance.
Mark Radigan
The Starting XI averaged a 6.4 rating, which feels just about right. As you'll see below, we include the ratings given to each NYCFC player by the FotMob algorithm in parentheses, which serve as a comparison point to our reader-generated ratings numbers. The reader ratings and the FotMob ratings didn't have a ton to separate them coming out of this Galaxy game, though our readers remain harsher grade-givers than FotMob.
The highest-rated NYCFC player was also the winner of the year's first Player of the Match award. Nico Fernández Mercau (7.3 with HRB readers) scored the club's first 2026 goal and was the only real consistent attacking danger-man on opening night for New York City, so it's not too surprising to see the Argentine Designated Player earn 66% of your PotM votes.
Below, find all the rest of the NYCFC Player Ratings from the 1-1 draw at Dignity Health Sports Park.
