New York City FC drop crucial points at home

New York City FC were riding high coming into their home match up against DC United. The team was unbeaten in their last five matches and had just defeated one of the best teams in the East on the road last week. The future looked bright until they lost to the only team already mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The loss not only showed how ineffective NYCFC can be in attack, but it once again showcased the consistent inconsistency that has plagued the team all season.

Pascal Jansen has talked over that past few weeks about the push for the playoffs, calling each of the remaining games a playoff game. NYCFC lost 2-1 on Saturday and it may prove a loss that pushes the team out of playoff position. On paper DC was by far the easiest team NYCFC will face in the remaining weeks of the regular season, but after getting off to a good start with a goal by Justin Haak then team could not finish off DC and two good goals scored against the run of play put DC in the lead.

Just before half DC scored of the chaos created on a long throw into the box and then again the 77th minute off a break away created by a expert pass by Christian Benteke. Gabriel Pirani walked away with a brace and man of the match honors while NYFC held their heads and wondered what went wrong.

Jasen summed it up after the match. “My final comment just now in the locker room was we played [CF] Montréal twice when they were at the bottom of the table. Today, D.C. [United] is bottom of the table, finished for the playoffs already, so they’re just playing to finish the league. It’s a competition, and we only got one point out of three games. In all three games, there is something that’s alike: we have a lot of possession, but we get punished for small errors. That was the case today.”

NYCFC dominated possession by nearly two to one, but could not create the big chances needed to score. The game had echos of the match the two teams had played earlier in the season in Washington only this time it was not Luis Barazza making excellent saves to keep DC in the match. It was NYCFC not being dangerous enough in the final third and DC getting two lucky chances that they took full advantage of.

Justin Haak Celebrates his goal as NYCFC would start the scoring early.

NYCFC would like to think this is a one off ,but it is not. The team has consistently played either up or down to the level of their opponents this year. The defeated Nashville and Cincinnati in the past tow weeks but have also been swept by Montreal and now beaten at home by DC.Justin Haak offered a similar take to his coach.“To be honest, I don’t really have the answer. We’ve already seen it twice this year versus [CF] Montréal. They were in last place when we played them, and we lost both of those games. So even when we played D.C. [United] away, it was a similar game a little bit—dominated the ball but couldn’t really score and in the end didn’t get what we needed to take from these games to finish higher up in the standings.”

Alonso Martinez tried to shake off the result and move on.“Well, I think we knew it was going to be a difficult game, but we wanted the three points. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Now it’s about thinking of the next games after the break we have and thinking about what we did wrong and what we did right today in this match. I think it’s about trying to change the mindset for the next game.”

New York have seven games remaining against far better teams, on paper. The Loss to DC makes it even more important to get results against Columbus and Miami. Perhaps they can leave Chicago with a win, or New Jersey, or Philadelphia? It does not get easier but losing to DC only made the pathway even harder.