NYCFC drop out of the playoffs in stoppage time

New York City FC 1-1 CF Montreal

BRONX, NY–It was a beautiful day in New York City, but New York City Football Club’s game on Halloween turned out to be more trick than treat for the club and fans. NYCFC gave up a stoppage time goal and dropped two points at home again with the draw knocking them out of the playoff hunt.

In many ways, the game ended in a fitting way for a season plagued with injuries and games decided in extra time. NYCFC has given up 11 stoppage time goals this season across all competitions and 17 goals in the final fifteen minutes of matches.

The day started out well enough to give the fans hope for most of the match. Orlando was blown out by Charlotte and Andres Perea opened the scoring for The Pigeons off a bad give away from Montreal’s keeper, Samsy Keita. At halftime and through most of the second half it seemed as though NYCFC might just pull it off and squeak into the ninth spot in the East with a win next week in DC. Montreal had other ideas. Already eliminated from the playoffs, they played with nothing to lose in the second half and they grew into the match and had the hosts on their heels for the final fifteen minutes. Two minutes into added time Daniel Rios made NYCFC feel the pain of being eliminated themselves.

New York City tried to find another goal in the remaining five minutes and came dangerously close twice, including the last play of the game, but it was too little and too late for Pascal Jansen’s side.
This is the third time in NYCFC history the club has not made the playoffs and the team finishes with the worst record at home in club history.

How did a team just one game away from MLS Cup last season fall so far and so fast as to not make the playoffs the following season. For Jansen it came down to one word “Availability. Last season we had players available 92 percent of the time but this season we dropped to almost 75 percent. If players are not available then it puts the club in a tough spot.”

It has been a season riddled with injuries to major players, but that does not explain the pattern of giving up goals late in matches.

“It is a tough question.” Keaton Parks said post match. “If It was easy to answer it would have been easy to fix.”
Jansen is perhaps starting to feel a bit in the hot seat with the poor results this season. It remains to be seen what will happen, but he is looking forward to next season already. “That is something that we’re going to discuss now. Obviously, we’ve done our homework and made our analysis to learn from this season going forward. As I mentioned just now, availability is a very important aspect of how we proceed going forward. We need to make
sure that recruitment is in a decent spot, that we see enough progress from the individual players we want to keep on board, and especially that we keep the availability rate as high as possible so you can always put your best team out there.”

He was also very upfront about his frustration with this season. “We didn’t make the playoffs…That is very disappointing, because we believe that we should be in the playoffs every season. That is a target that is always there for us as a team and always there for us as a Club. There are many reasons why we didn’t qualify, but I will not shy away from excuses. I will never make excuses. I’ve never done that since I started working here, and I
won’t have any excuses now. At the end of the day, when you have to play in a highperformance culture, a high-performance environment, results are expected. This year, we didn’t meet our challenges and our goals. That is disappointing, and we have to do better next year again. That’s also how it works in sports.”