NYCFC's Santiago Rodriguez battling Chicago's Mauricio Pineda. @ChicagoFire. |
The New York City Football Club and Chicago Fire FC played to a scoreless draw on Saturday night at Soldier Field.
NYCFC is in the midst of a four-game road trip, which started last Saturday night, when they lost, 2-1, to Austin FC.
With just two wins in their last seven games (2-1-4), NYCFC has slipped to fifth place in the MLS Eastern Conference standings, as they are now 11-3-9, with 36 points. They are just one point back of the Red Bulls, who have 37 points and are 9-10-4.
The biggest change in the standings, partly because this team has been without some guy named Messi, is that Inter Miami (14-5-4, 47 points), has slipped to second place, one point behind FC Cincinnati, which has 48 points and is 15-3-5.
This was about as even a match as it could get, as Chicago had possession for 50.9 percent of the time, to NYCFC's 49.1%. Chicago took 11 shots to NYC's eight, while each had just one shot on goal.
NYCFC goalkeeper Matt Freese notched his fifth clean sheet of the season. He has played all 2,070 minutes of action this season, and Santiago Rodriguez has now moved into second-highest, with 1,996 minutes recorded this season.
NYCFC Defender Christian McFarlane, who made his debut nearly a month ago at Yankee Stadium against the Columbus Crew, got his first MLS start in this match. "I'm grateful for this opportunity," McFarlane said afterwards. "I think I played pretty well for my first start, just touching the ball, making the right decisions, making the right passes. [Overall], I think it was good."
COACH'S COMMENTS: NYCFC Head Coach Nick Cushing spoke to the media after the game, and here's what he had to say:
On Christian McFarlane's first start: "He was excellent. He showed his quality, [both] physical quality and his technical quality. He showed that potential [that] he has to be a top left back anywhere in the world, who knows? For New York City at the moment, he is a guy that can play week in, and week out, and he showed that today. I think he showed maturity for a guy that's only come into a game, home in the Columbus game to go on the road and play 90 minutes in a game on the road and play 90 minutes in a game where we didn't play so well. I think [overall], he should be proud of himself."
On what the team needs to work on ahead of their next games on the road in Atlanta and Orlando City: "When we look at winning performances, it's about creating goal chances. It's about having a goal threat on the road...If we don't have a goal threat, if we don't open teams up on their own home field, then it makes the game difficult to win...We also have to look at the huge positives. We showed the maturity tonight in a difficult place, a difficult atmosphere, a team that is fighting and scrapping for their life to make sure that we didn't lose the game. I thought they didn't have many chances themselves."
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