Jansen’s second-string challenge
Achieving consistency with NYCFC in 2026 is no small feat. Jansen’s tight, streamlined squad has been ravaged by injuries over the season and shuffled beyond oblivion. Alonso Martinez and Maxi Morales fell to long-term setbacks; Aidan O’Neill and Hannes Wolf fell to curious medium-term knocks. Since returning from the World Cup break Jansen has been forced to massage his survivors into something resembling a playoff-caliber MLS team. It hasn’t been easy.
“Sometimes the difference between the guy stepping up and the guy who’s not available is a little too big in order to expect the same kind of quality on the pitch,” Jansen said.
He’s got a point. Younger, less-experienced substitutes doomed NYCFC in its recent fixtures against Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Toronto and dropped it out of the Eastern Conference conversation. Jansen never demonizes his second string for their errors, but he isn’t shy about pointing them out.
“We can’t afford to have moments like we had against Toronto leading into the equalizer,” he said. “You can definitely not afford to have a second half like we did against Philadelphia. You can’t afford to have a moment like we did in Cincinnati in the final part of the game.
“So even when you come on as a sub, you have to stay engaged with what is necessary in order to get the result. Those are games where we were not able to keep our standards and we got punished for those moments.”
The Nashville difference
When taking on Nashville, Jansen didn’t focus on making up the difference between his stop-gap solutions and his injured full-timers. He didn’t focus on achieving the highest possible highs to send a message to the rest of the league. He focused on moments—discrete, individual moments—and tasked his men with seeing them all through without making catastrophic mistakes. If it put all those moments together, NYCFC would have 90 minutes of consistency; if it put a few 90 minutes together, it would have a season of it.
NYCFC managed just fine. There was one dicey moment in the first half, a silly miscommunication between defender Raul Gustavo and goalkeeper Matt Freese that nearly led to a Nashville opener, but beyond that, the team held firm. It didn’t raise its ceiling, but it didn’t sink its floor, either—and for Jansen, trapped in a messy season of injuries and stop-start play, that’s an important step forward.
“We were in very good positions in previous games and still gave it away,” Jansen said after the match. “You have two, three moments in this game to get yourself on the scoreboard, so you think there’s more in it, and you forget what it is in the final stage of the game to make sure you don’t concede as well.”
That, surely, is the path forward for Jansen and NYCFC in 2026: keeping the team’s competitive floor high. With MLS wilder and closer than it’s been in years, that could be enough to get the team into the playoff picture. Jansen is right to be focusing on consistency over momentary highs: it’s the key to unlocking his team’s season.
NYCFC will return to MLS action on Wednesday, Sep. 9 against the New England Revolution.
