Atlanta United and New York City FC meet at Citi Field on Wednesday night in the third-to-last match of the regular season for both teams.
It could officially spell an end to either team’s playoff hopes. Atlanta United, nine points out, are eliminated with a loss or draw, but one of a Red Bull New York win or draw at the New England Revolution and a Columbus Crew win at FC Dallas will do the deed as well. NYC, four points back of ninth, are out with a loss or draw and a Red Bull win, or a loss and a Crew win.
Not match of the week material, but the schedule’s the schedule at this point. For more on NYCFC, I reached out to Andrew Leigh from New York Soccer Journal.
In their last 14 matches, NYCFC have won just once. Much of that has been due to the absence of Alonso Martinez (Talles Magno, and a few others, were out for a stretch as well), but what else can you attribute this run of form over the past three months to?
A truly terrible cocktail of self-inflicted individual errors that caused them to drop points, a wasteful lack of finishing in front of goal in games they otherwise dominated, and a season-long tendency to concede late in the second half. Sometimes all three things have happened in the same match. Defensively, NYCFC has generally been pretty solid, only conceding 43 goals to put them among the top-10 defenses in the league. Their attacking players, outside of Nico Fernández Mercau and Agustín Ojeda, have not done enough, especially post-World Cup break, to get them over the proverbial hump. Alonso Martínez is early into his comeback from his ACL tear and had his best performance of 2026 his last time out in the 2-2 draw with Orlando, but that was another game that summed up much of what has gone wrong with NYCFC. They had 4.20 expected goals in that game but only scored twice and had an inexplicable penalty kick situation unfold late in the second half, where Talles Magno stepped up to the spot and missed what would have been an equalizer, despite Martínez wanting to take it, and despite Pascal Jansen saying after the match that Fernández Mercau remains the team’s designated PK taker. They make too many in-game mistakes and throw away too many winnable games, and that’s why they’re not making the playoffs (barring a late miracle).
Last time we spoke, I asked you about Bénie Traoré, who had scored once in 14 matches headed into the Atlanta/NYC match last month. He’s still sitting on a goal going into Wednesday’s match. Has the fanbase’s outlook on him changed at all over the past number of weeks?
Traoré has been a massive disappointment and now has fallen out of the Starting XI entirely, on the bench for five of NYCFC’s last seven matches. Fans were willing to give him some time early into his NYCFC tenure because he was doing his own version of preseason in real time when the league picked up again after the World Cup, but that patience has run out. He’s lost his spot as a starter on the left of the attack to Hannes Wolf, he didn’t prove to be a better option at striker than fellow summer signing Luighi (who has quadrupled Traoré’s goal total while getting less playing time), and the word “bust” is starting to get used with more regularity when Traoré’s name comes up. Maybe he will have more of an impact in 2027 if he gets a full preseason to prepare, but confidence in Traoré is very low as this season comes to an end.
-You asked me who Atlanta United’s X-factor could be in this one for your post over at New York Soccer Journal. I’ll turn the question around on you: who could be New York City’s X-factor on Wednesday?
Alonso Martínez. The first 30 minutes against Orlando were the best NYCFC has looked in quite a while, and it’s no coincidence that happened with Martínez back in the starting lineup and back scoring a goal, his first since his injury. NYCFC has zero margin for error and needs to win out and hope to get help from other teams if they want to have a chance of climbing up from 12th place, and they need Martínez to catch fire and be the goalscorer he was in 2024 and 2025 if they’re going to have any hope of pulling that off.