Matchday 30: New York City vs Charlotte in The Bronx

It’s Matchday 30, and New York City FC host Charlotte FC in a showdown at high noon between the two most in-form teams in Major League Soccer. If NYCFC win, they punch their ticket to the MLS Cup Playoffs. But if Charlotte come out on top, they’ll set a new MLS record with 10 consecutive wins.

Charlotte shut out New York City 2-0 when these two teams met at Bank of America Stadium on July 12, the first match in CFC's run of nine straight wins. Both teams looked very different on July 12, with NYCFC yet to add Nico Fernández, or to find a way to win consistently. Charlotte were also struggling to put up results, and Idan Toklomati hadn’t established himself as a legit goal scorer.

Since losing in Charlotte, New York City reeled off a record of 6W-1D-1L in their eight MLS regular-season matches played, with the sixth and most recent win coming in edge-of-your-seat fashion after they came from behind twice to beat Columbus Crew 3-2 on a majestic Julián Fernández strike in second-half stoppage time.

Notably, this next meeting with Charlotte is the final scheduled NYCFC game of the season at Yankee Soccer Stadium. Pascal Jansen's team will host Inter Miami CF at Citi Field on Wednesday, then will face New York Red Bulls and Philadelphia Union on the road. There's the slimmest of chances that another regular season game will be played in The Bronx, as the venue for the Decision Day matchup with Seattle Sounders FC on Saturday, October 18, is still TBD, though it all depends on how far one or both of the local Major League Baseball teams make it during their postseason runs.

The referee this afternoon, Timothy Ford, has overseen just one NYCFC game this season, an uneventful 1-1 draw with Sporting Kansas City on July 19 in Matchday 23.

But he was in the VAR booth for one of the more controversial episodes of the season. It took place during the April 6 match against Minnesota United, when Ford reviewed a foul on Alonso Martínez in the box an astonishing 42 times to try to reverse the penalty awarded by Sergii Boiko on the field. The call stood – correctly, as PRO's Inside Video Review explained later that week – but Ford's review took a whopping four minutes to resolve, and when play finally resumed, Martínez failed to convert from the spot. NYCFC went on to lose that game 2-1.

Not Clear, Not Obvious: Timothy Ford’s VAR overreach

Did Timothy Ford’s 4-minute VAR review of the penalty awarded to Alonso Martínez meet the standard of a “clear and obvious” error? Watch the video released by PRO Referees and decide for yourself.

Hudson River BlueOliver Strand