Wednesday, April 24, 2019

NYCFC Puts Out Fire For Second Straight Win

Ebenezer Ofori battles for the ball. @NYCFC.


New York City Football Club won their second straight game with a 1-0 victory over the Chicago Fire on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.


The one change NYCFC made to their starting 11 was that Valentin Castellanos made his return from concussion protocol after a head to head collision against Minnesota United. Alexandru Mitriță was out with ankle injury he suffered against D.C. United. In Mitriță’s place,
The return of Castellanos, known as Taty, paid off early for the City boys, as Héber broke through the right side of the Chicago Fire defense, crossing the ball for Castellanos to find the back of the net on the slide for his second goal of the season in the 9th minute.
The game stayed that way into the second half when it appeared Chicago tied it when CJ Sapong buried one from close range, but the goal was disallowed by the officials for offside.
Soon after that, NYCFC had a great chance to double their lead with Héber coming away with the ball in the middle third, pushing it through the midfield to Taty, who set Maxi Moralez up for a strike. which rebounded back off the underside of the crossbar.
NYCFC has now moved up to seventh place in the Eastern Conference with the win, as they improved to 2-5-1, with 11 points.
NYCFC Head Coach Domemec Torrent said of their current winning streak, “I think the players are feeling more comfortable and I also feel comfortable as coach. I think the prior matches before the winning streak went well. I think we have a system that the players enjoy. We have good quality players. It does not always mean that we will always use the system of play. It all depends on the opponents we are facing. However, the matches where we have used this system have been successful.”
NYCFC Goalkeeper Sean Johnson earned his second straight clean sheet, and he said afterwards, “Yea I think it’s obviously important to get a little bit of momentum. Two wins in a row after a bit of a rough start to the season, we haven’t lost many games, but we haven’t won many, so it’s good for the confidence of the group to be able to get wins together back to back and now having another game at home I think that stretch is important.” 
On Saturday at 1:00 p.m., NYCFC will host Orlando City SC (3-2-3, 11 points) at Yankee Stadium.
Torrent said of facing Orlando City SC on short rest, “We have a chance today to recover. I think we are ready to play against Orlando. They usually play with the same system. It is not easy to recover when you have another game in two days, but we feel ready. My opinion is that it will be a tough game. Orlando plays with intensity, but right now our team is playing with intensity as well.”

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