The first quarter of the 2025 New York City FC season is complete.
Ten Major League Soccer matches played out of the 34 scheduled during the regular season, but there's also at least one US Open Cup match and at least three Leagues Cup matches, bringing us to a 38-game minimum. Advancing in any of Open Cup, Leagues Cup, or into the MLS Cup Playoffs would bring New York City's games played total to and beyond 40, making 10 a neat quarterly cutoff point.
All that is to say: This felt like the right time to cherry-pick some numbers and statistics and use them to discuss various things that have gone right and wrong for New York City so far this season.
Some cynical anti-stat types would say this post could end simply by sharing the team's record, 4W-2D-4L, as all that matters are New York City's results. That W-D-L record through 10 games is identical to what the 2024 team had after 10 games, though Pascal Jansen's 2025 version has scored one more goal than Nick Cushing's 2024 team.
No season is the same, though, so the following 10 numbers are highlighted as a way to discuss some of the performance trends emerging from the first quarter of this season.
These are not necessarily the absolute most important statistics or numbers that tell you every single nuanced thing possible about New York City FC's play so far in 2025, but they stood out as interesting to at least one person, me. Let's journey together through some notable numbers from the early portion of NYCFC's season.
1. 25th-best in attack
If it feels like New York City's attack has been worse in 2025 than it was in 2024, that's because it has been worse. To attempt to prove it, we can look at the quality of the team's scoring chances as measured by expected goals. In this instance, we're going to focus on New York City's non-penalty expected goals plus their expected assisted goals per 90 minutes played (npxG + xAG/90). This stat tries to account for both the likelihood of a chance resulting in a goal and how much a pass leading to the chance contributes to the likelihood of a goal.
In 2024, New York City FC had 2.76 npxG+xAG per 90 minutes, the sixth-best number among MLS teams, per FBref.com. The 2025 squad is rolling with a 1.81 npxG+xAG per 90 minutes through 10 games, which puts NYCFC in a tie for 25th place in MLS with LA Galaxy. The teams below them are among the worst performers in the league so far this season — Toronto, Montréal, Houston, Kansas City, and New England. Two of those teams, Montréal and KC, fired their head coaches because of their brutal starts to 2025.
It's only one stat and it's only a fraction of the season, but it's another strong indicator that New York City is suffering the negative side effects of selling Santi Rodríguez and not replacing him while asking 38-year-old Maxi Moralez to do all the creative heavy lifting. It’s thus far resulted in a limp attack that, outside of a few golden opportunities to score from the penalty spot, has looked consistently bad in front of goal this season.
2. 50% of all goals
One player not looking bad in front of goal early in 2025: Alonso Martínez, who has six goals and sits inside the Top 10 in the MLS Golden Boot race. The Costa Rican forward has done his part, but New York City should be concerned about the fact that Martínez has scored exactly half – 50% – of New York City's 12 goals this season.
The team's over-reliance on Martínez to make a difference game after game seems unsustainable, especially as New York City lacks a clear second goalscoring option. Hannes Wolf has three goals but he's never scored more than eight in any of his nine professional seasons and plays more like an assist-maker than a true scorer. Martínez scored 50% of the goals this season while scoring 16 of the team's 54 MLS goals a season ago, 29.6% of a total that also included 12 goals from Santi Rodríguez. Santi and Alonso combined for 50% of the scoring total in 2024 and now it's all on Alonso in 2025 – he could use some help.
3. 91.9% of available minutes
38-year-old Maxi Moralez has been out there for 827 of a possible 900 minutes this season, far more usage than you might expect for a player who recently turned 38. In MLS history, only three other outfield players – Preki (2003), Robin Fraser (2004, 2005), and Carlos Valderrama (2000, 2002) – played 90% or more of their team's available minutes while over the age of 37, what Moralez has done so far this year. Valderrama did have 21 assists for Tampa Bay Mutiny while playing at age 38 in that 2000 season, so Maxi has a lot of catching up to do with just one assist to his name through 10 games in 2025.
MLS turned into a young man's league in recent years and New York City is asking Moralez to still play like his most influential younger self, but this feels hugely unsustainable. Moralez last played this high a percentage of his team's available minutes in 2018, when he finished the year also having featured in 91.9% of NYCFC's available minutes – yet that number also hasn't ended up over 80% for Maxi in any season since 2018.
4. $2.8 million
That's the total transfer dollars spent by New York City during the MLS Primary Transfer Window, all put toward acquiring Aiden O'Neill from Standard de Liége in Belgium. Up until O'Neill's signing, Sporting Director David Lee had only added to the New York City squad by way of the MLS SuperDraft, Homegrown contracts, or in Greg Ranjitsingh's case, by signing him while out of contract.
Can't say there wasn't money available to spend, as selling Rodríguez brought back a reportedly huge $15 million fee. New York City also has the most flexible roster – in terms of open roster spots and available allocation dollars – in all of Major League Soccer. Signing O'Neill might be the start of what David Lee said would be a "pretty active" transfer period for the team, but there seems to be some definite work to do in deepening this current New York City FC roster.
5. 2.68 Goals Added (g+)
If you're looking for a non-Martínez standout in the early part of the season, the advanced stats love what Keaton Parks has done in 2025. Goals added (g+) is a metric created by American Soccer Analysis meant to measure a player's complete on-ball value. Keaton's raw 2.68 g+ in 2025 puts him atop the list of New York City outfield players, even above the team's two attacking players with the most goal contributions so far this season, Martínez and Hannes Wolf.
The American midfielder currently ranks 25th among all MLS outfield players in raw g+ (minimum 400 minutes played), so while his standard stats might not immediately stand out, he rates well in all the categories g+ measures – dribbling, fouling. interrupting, passing, receiving, shooting. If you wanted an under-the-radar vote for Team MVP (So Far), it should go to Parks.
6. 34 saves
Matt Freese won the official New York City FC Team MVP award for his great 2024 season, and he is once again near the top of a goalkeeper leaderboard through 10 games this season. Freese is one of five MLS goalkeepers tied for third-most saves made in the league, stopping 34 shots through 10 matches, according to FBRef's data. He's been solid in goal again this season but he's, so far, not made the same volume of goal-preventing interventions as he had one season ago.
In 2024, post-shot expected goals data rated Freese as one of the league's best shot-stoppers. Freese was a +0.18 in terms of expected goals prevented per 90 minutes (PSxG-GA/90) last season, but in 2025, that number has dipped slightly into the red, with Freese so far holding a -0.02 PSxG-GA/90. He's still made a large number of saves and hasn't cost NYCFC at all, but Freese has done less heroic shot-stopping through 10 games in 2025. Maybe that's just still to come?
7. 15 dribblers tackled
Jonathan Shore is the unexpected breakout player of the early portion of the New York City FC season, with the 18-year-old debuting on Matchday 1 in Miami and going on to appear in nine of 10 matches. The New York City native made a big, instant impression across those first nine MLS games, ranking seventh (tied with three other players, including Keaton Parks) among all MLS players with 15 dribblers tackled. His 3.61 tackles per 90 minutes put him in the 95th percentile of midfielders analyzed among FBRef's Men's Next 14 Competitions across the last calendar year.
Shore has been an eager disruptor in the midfield, though his tackle success rate could use a bit of work – while the 15 dribblers tackled ranks in the top 10, so too does Shore rank in the "bottom 10" for most challenges lost so far this season, 12.
The team needed to find a way to replace some of that defensive work done in midfield by the departed James Sands, and before Aiden O'Neill got signed, that work mostly has been done by Parks and the Homegrown teenager Shore.
8. Leads at halftime: Zero
It's been so far impossible to say New York City controlled or dominated a match from start to finish this season. The fact that they've yet to enter halftime leading any of their 10 opponents shows just how much of a second-half squad they've been, doing the majority of their scoring and result-deciding after halftime. This is unlikely to still be true by the end of the long season, but it's an odd example of how slow New York City has tended to start its 2025 games.
9. 24 minutes played per sub
That represents the second-highest number of average minutes played per substitute in MLS so far this season, with only Inter Miami CF and Seattle Sounders having their substitutes average more minutes played, while Chicago Fire FC's subs have also averaged 24 minutes per appearance.
It's an indication of Pascal Jansen making some early and prolonged changes to his Starting XIs. This number sits near the top of the league due to a combination of injuries and tactical necessity. Tayvon Gray had to be removed due to an injury inside the opening five minutes on the road against LAFC, giving Mitja Ilenič the league's longest substitute appearance to date at 83 minutes. Jansen has also made changes at halftime multiple times and removed Birk Risa and Julián Fernández in the 40th minute of the home loss to Minnesota United FC, so it's not a stat totally thrown off by early-match injury substitutions.
The bench has been asked to play a big part so far this season for NYCFC, and it's not always provided much of a boost.
10. 18 substitutions, zero goal contributions
That 18 represents the combined number of times Mounsef Bakrar, Agustín Ojeda, and Julián Fernández have been sent on as substitutes by Pascal Jansen. They are the three players most often seeing their numbers called in-game by the new manager, yet none have added a goal or an assist while playing as a substitute this season.
All three of Julián Fernández's goal contributions this season came while he was in the Starting XI. He's been sent on as a sub the third-most times of any player on the roster so far this season, five times, and has yet to contribute a goal or assist off the bench. The same goes for the two players with the most substitute appearances under Pascal Jansen, Mounsef Bakrar (seven) and Agustín Ojeda (six). Neither player has a goal or an assist, be it as a sub or when making their rare appearances in the Starting XI.
This trio of recent attacking signings has so far not made much noticeable progress while playing under Jansen. He's given all three players looks as starters and lots of chances to make an impact off the bench, but only Fernández has had a direct hand in goals so far this season. Improvement will be needed, or new signings to replace the missing production might be needed.
