New York City FC Gets Things Done In Spite of Themselves

Another home match in Yankee Stadium and another win for New York City Football Club. This time, New England Revolution came to town with homes of correcting their season but left healing their wounds. New York City FC won on Saturday 2-1, but ended up scoring all of the goals in the match.

Played in the damp mist on a chilly night in the Bronx, the game was a sloppy affair to start for both sides and just twenty six minutes in City’s lone designated player, Thiago Martins, connected poorly trying to defend a cross into the box. He sent the ball the wrong way and surprised Matt Freese by sending the ball into the back of the net.

City rebounded well though just twelve minutes later with a counter attack from Hannes Wolf who got the ball and midfield, made a nice run and passed to Julian Fernandez who rightfooted it home.

Alonso Martinez doubled the score in the second half off a rebound from a shot by Keaton Parks with an athletic scissor kick goal that is sure to be on the highlight reel.

New England tested City for the rest of the match even slightly controlling more possession. City bent but did not break and held firm largely nullifying Carlos Gil in the middle of the pitch and leaving New England without a viable attack for the final third of the match.

Pascal Jansen was happy with the result but not glowing about the overall performance of the team post match. “Last week, the first hour [of our match against Orlando City]was quite okay, going towards good.

“The last 30 minutes weren’t that good. Today was a whole different ball game. We had to come back from a goal down, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the performance in general because I thought we were too sloppy, losing possession too fast, too quickly. Then it becomes a game that goes up and down, and they try to get us in wide areas with crosses and stuff like that. Controlling the ball is what we’re looking for, and that was a little off today. I’m happy with the win because I told my guys there will be phases like these in games where we have to fight, stay together, and grind to get the job done – and that’s what they did today. So that’s an aspect I’m very happy with, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

It was indeed a sloppy performance but the team seems to be getting better and more cohesive each game. This is a game the team very well may have lost last year under Nick Cushing. Post game the players were all in good spirits about the result but realistic about the work to be done.

Matt Freese spoke about the team’s next challenge. “We’ve got to keep it going. It’s something Pascal [Jansen] has talked about, and I think he’s spot on. We’re a team that’s hard to beat. We have to keep that up, whether it’s at home—turning that into wins—or away, turning that concept into wins and, at worst, some draws. Hopefully, wins. We just have to continue being hard to beat.”

Pascal Jansen keeps using the term “Bulletproof” to describe how he wants his team to think of themselves. In the past two games they have proven up to the task now the team goes back on the road to Columbus and hopes to carry the bulletproof momentum with them. Nick Cushing’s team had an abysmal road record and a reputation for caving away from home, Jansen is hoping to change that and from the attitude of the players right now it seems like they believe they can. Time will tell in the next two weeks.