New York City FC
Also written as NYCFC.
The club
New York City Football Club were announced on 21 May 2013 as the twentieth franchise of Major League Soccer, a joint venture between Manchester City, through City Football Group, and the New York Yankees, who paid a $100 million expansion fee to join the league. The club began play in the 2015 MLS season under the first head coach, Jason Kreis, with Claudio Reyna as the first Director of Football Operations. New York City FC is NOT New York Red Bulls, a separate club with separate ownership that plays across the Hudson River in Harrison, New Jersey, and it is NOT Manchester City, despite the two clubs sharing an owner in City Football Group; the two are run as distinct football operations.
The club has never had a permanent soccer-specific home. It groundshares at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, converted for football since 2015, with a capacity of 28,743 that can be expanded to 47,422. Since 2022 at least six home matches a season have been played at Citi Field in Queens, capacity 41,922, and the club has also used Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, Sports Illustrated Stadium, also in Harrison, and Pratt & Whitney Stadium in Connecticut in various seasons to work around scheduling conflicts with the Yankees and winterization at Yankee Stadium. Earlier plans to build a stadium at Flushing Meadows and in the Bronx were both abandoned after local opposition and a lack of approval. A purpose-built stadium, Etihad Park, was announced in November 2022 for Willets Point in Queens, broke ground in December 2024, and is scheduled to open for the 2027 regular season with a capacity of 25,000.
The club is owned by City Football Group, holding 80 percent, with Marcelo Claure and Yankee Global Enterprises holding 10 percent each. The head coach is the Dutchman Pascal Jansen, appointed in November 2024 after arriving from Ferencváros. He succeeded Nick Cushing, who was in charge from 2022 to 2024 and won the Campeones Cup in 2022, and before him Ronny Deila, who led the club from 2020 to 2022 and won the 2021 MLS Cup. Earlier coaches were Domènec Torrent, a former Pep Guardiola assistant, from 2018 to 2019, and Patrick Vieira from 2015 to 2018, who took the club into the playoffs for the first time in 2016.
Recent seasons
New York City FC made the playoffs in their debut season of 2015 and have reached them in most years since, including 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025. Their best regular-season points finish came in 2017, when they were Supporters' Shield runners-up with a then-franchise-record 57 points. Their 2021 campaign, under Ronny Deila, ended with the club's first and so far only MLS Cup. In 2023 the club missed the playoffs for the first time since its inaugural year, finishing eleventh in the Eastern Conference. Under Pascal Jansen the club returned to form, reaching the Eastern Conference finals in 2025 before losing to Inter Miami.
Honours and landmarks
MLS Cup winners in 2021, beating the Portland Timbers. Supporters' Shield runners-up in 2017. Campeones Cup winners in 2022, beating Atlas of Mexico, the first international trophy won by a New York-based soccer club. Beyond MLS Cup and the Campeones Cup, other continental or domestic cup honours were not established from the sources read here.
David Villa, the club's inaugural captain from 1 February 2015, is the all-time leading scorer with 77 goals in MLS play and 80 across all competitions from 117 appearances between 2014 and 2018; he won the 2016 MLS Most Valuable Player award after scoring 23 league goals that season. He scored the club's first-ever goal, in a friendly against St Mirren on 10 February 2015, and opened the scoring in the club's first competitive match at Yankee Stadium on 15 March 2015. The club's all-time appearance record belongs to Maximiliano Moralez, with 224 appearances.
Notable scorelines
New York City FC beat Orlando City SC 5-0 at home on 7 March 2026. In CONCACAF Champions League play the club has recorded results including a 2-0 win over San Carlos of Costa Rica, against defeats to Mexico's UANL. A full account of the club's biggest win and heaviest defeat across all competitions was not established from the sources read here. The largest crowd to watch the club play was 29,016, in the 2015 inaugural season.
The 2021 MLS Cup final itself, away to Portland Timbers at Providence Park on 11 December 2021 in front of a sold-out 25,218, finished 1-1 after extra time, Valentín Castellanos scoring for New York City in the 41st minute and Felipe Mora equalising for Portland in the fourth minute of stoppage time at the end of regulation, the latest goal in MLS Cup history at that point. New York City won the penalty shootout 4-2, goalkeeper Sean Johnson saving from Mora and Diego Valeri before Alexander Callens converted the decisive fifth kick; Johnson was named the match's most valuable player.
Head-to-head notes
The Hudson River Derby against New York Red Bulls began on 10 May 2015 at Red Bull Arena, a match the Red Bulls won. It was initially seen as a manufactured rivalry with little of the traditional needle between local clubs, but has since developed genuine animosity, including brawls between the two clubs' supporters before and after matches. The fixture reached the playoffs for the first time in the 2024 Eastern Conference semi-final, which the Red Bulls won 2-0. A rivalry with Philadelphia Union developed after a dramatic 2021 Eastern Conference final that New York City won while the Union were missing players to COVID-19 protocols; the Union won the rematch in the 2022 Eastern Conference final, and New York City beat Philadelphia in the 2025 Eastern Conference semi-final after New York City had lost the Supporters' Shield race to the Union by a single point.
Right now (2026)
Pascal Jansen remains head coach. Through 21 matches of the 2026 MLS regular season New York City FC sit seventh in the Eastern Conference and eighteenth overall in MLS, on 27 points from seven wins, eight draws and six defeats. Results in the campaign have included the 5-0 win over Orlando City SC on 7 March, a 3-1 win over the Colorado Rapids on 14 March, a 3-0 win over Columbus Crew on 10 May, and defeats away to D.C. United, 2-0, and Nashville SC, 2-1, along with draws including 1-1 against both LA Galaxy and Toronto FC. Nicolás Fernández Mercau, signed mid-season from Elche as a Designated Player, has been among the club's leading scorers.
In the US Open Cup the club advanced to the quarter-finals, winning two of three matches played, scoring eight goals and conceding four. The club also entered the Leagues Cup league phase. Summer transfer business has included the arrivals of Kai Trewin from Melbourne City, draft pick Kevin Pierre, and homegrown players Kamran Acito and Cooper Flax, while Justin Haak left as a free transfer to LA Galaxy and Jovan Mijatović went out on loan to Eintracht Braunschweig; the club's earlier sale of Santiago Rodríguez to Botafogo, the second-highest transfer fee in club history, funded some of that activity. Home matches continue to be split between Yankee Stadium and Citi Field while construction continues on Etihad Park at Willets Point, due to open in 2027. The full remainder of the 2026 MLS schedule and the club's final league position were not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_FC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_MLS_Cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_New_York_City_FC_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Villa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_FC_records_and_statistics
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.