NEW YORK – They are first place in the Eastern Conference, they’ve won their last four at home, have the best road form in the league and have beaten the Colorado Rapids and LA Galaxy in their last two games at Yankee Stadium.
So, are New York City FC MLS Cup contenders?
“Maybe,” midfielder Andrea Pirlo said in English with a wry smile following a 1-0 win over the LA Galaxy Saturday afternoon.
“We are working game after game,” Pirlo said. “We started working from the start of the season to try to get the goal of MLS Cup. Now it’s great to be here, first in the standings.”
With eight games remaining in the regular season, NYCFC (11-7-8) could even be in contention for the Supporters' Shield. They current sit third overall, four points off the pace set by FC Dallas.
In the locker room after beating the LA Galaxy, though, Pirlo’s sly “maybe” was as close as the players would get to making any definitive statement about the team’s playoff intentions.
“Our mind certainly is not already on the postseason because we are still in the fight for the playoffs,” said assistant Christian Lattanzio, who filled in for a suspended Patrick Vieira for a second consecutive home game. “Nothing has been done yet. We just won one game, a very important game, but our focus is on the next game.”
Outside of the hype surrounding each team’s star players, the significance of the win was, in part, because it came against a team that many believe to be the MLS Cup favorites this year, an LA Galaxy side that hadn’t lost since June 18.
“It was a hard game because the LA Galaxy are a contender for first place, but we played really well with no shots in the goal,” Pirlo said. “We are really excited for this game. Now we want to keep going and work hard to be ready for next game.”
After winning just one of their first nine at home, NYCFC is 4-1-1 in the cozy confines of Yankee Stadium, with consecutive wins against the Philadelphia Union, New York Red Bulls, Colorado Rapids and the LA Galaxy.
Lattanzio said learning a new system under Vieira took time, especially at home.
“To give credit to the boys, they stuck to the plan of the head coach, to keep playing and now they are really getting what they deserved,” Lattanzio said. “I don’t think it’s by chance that the boys are playing with more confidence, they are more familiar with each other and our style of play.”
And of those four home wins, two have come on clean sheets, which is especially important for a team that has conceded the second most (43) in the league and were coming off a 3-3 draw in Columbus in which they conceded the equalizer late.
“It was really important,” Pirlo said. “The team that wins is usually the team that doesn’t concede any goals. We trained the entire week for this reason, to play against a really important, strong attacking team. We’re really happy to have a clean sheet.”
