With New York City FC a few short days away from kicking off their 2026 Major League Soccer season, this feels like a good time to revisit the state of the team's depth chart.
We first did this exercise in mid-January as the club began preseason preparations. Back then, Kai Trewin had not yet joined, Julián Fernández and Mitja Ilenič were still on the roster prior to being loaned out, and we weren't sure who Pascal Jansen would prefer to play at striker while operating without the injured Alonso Martínez.
Preseason came and went, and resulted in some notable modifications and clarifications across the squad. If you want to compare how our depth chart looked in January, you can find the original version here.
The biggest changes are the player comings and goings, plus the positions at which we chose to list a few key players, Nico Fernández Mercau and Kevin O'Toole. Nico is no longer counted as a midfielder since the Designated Player looks set to function as a center-forward, at least until a new signing arrives — or until one of Talles Magno or Seymour Reid supplants him as Jansen's preferred choice.
O'Toole, meanwhile, gets added as a depth option in the defensive midfield, a role he filled for the majority of this preseason while Aiden O'Neill and Jonny Shore were injured.
As a reminder, we color-code each player on our version of the NYCFC depth chart depending on their level of past contribution at a given position at the MLS level. We only include players signed to a contract with the club – in two cases, that includes players signed to NYCFC II of MLS Next Pro, midfielder Peter Molinari and attacker Sebastiano Musu.
Matthew Mangam
This depth chart doesn't include players still under contract with NYCFC but loaned out to other clubs, like Ilenič, Fernández, James Sands, or Jovan Mijatović. We also sort the three injured members of the squad out with long-term issues – Malachi Jones, Andrés Perea, and Alonso Martínez – into their own separate bucket, pending their returns to health.
Below, you can look over our updated 33-player depth chart, then read a brief rundown of how each position group across the roster is shaping up as the season starts.
