New York City FC are back in the MLS Cup Playoffs after missing the 2023 edition and have head to FC Cincinnati to start the first round on Monday night. The road back wasn’t an easy one as head coach Nick Cushing had to mold one of the youngest teams in the league into a consistent unit that feels like one of the dark horse candidate to make a run over the next two months.
“It was the minimum target that we set,” said Cushing when asked about being back in the playoffs. “We’ve hit the sort of expectation of where we believe we are as a football club and where we should be.”
City lifted the 2021 MLS Cup and even went back to the Eastern Conference final in 2022. Their fall from grace one year later left a minimum expectation for a club that has been lauded as one of the pillars of the next stage of the league’s evolution. They’ve gone from marquee names to notable rising talent scouts with the likes of Valentin Castellanos and now with Alonso Martinez and Santiago Rodriguez.
What remains is learning through experience. For this young club that will come against an FC Cincinnati team that has even higher expectations. The third place team in the East has had years of MLS Cup dreams shattered with no finals while producing one of the more potent lineups. 2024 has been increasingly difficult, especially late in the campaign with City getting a decisive win against them late in the season.
“It is a difficult opponent,” said Cushing. “A team that we’ve played three times already. We know it’s going to be difficult but this is the exciting part of the season and we’re going to embrace that.”
City are also entering the playoffs with key players who have little to no experience with the type of format MLS presents. Players like Hannes Wolf are in unfamiliar territory as his time in the German Bundesliga prepared him for the league table, and the DFB Pokal for knockout football. However, a best-of-three is a different beast and one that presents its own unique issues.
“This is new for me, because in Europe you don’t have playoffs,” said Wolf. “We have a lot of players who have already played in previous playoffs and some of the players who won the MLS Cup. Head coach has been speaking of it since we realized we had a good chance to reach the playoffs. We know what the playoffs will look like.”
City’s journey will begin on Monday night at TQL Stadium. The best-of-three series does not have aggregate scoring which will give both clubs the ability to treat each game uniquely. However, gaining the momentum and getting a win for a return to Citi Field on Saturday will be the ultimate goal for a team that has very high expectations for such a young team.
photo by Jordan Bank