City of needs
Before his 50th game as coach of New York City FC, Patrick Vieira is returning to The Bronx with a bitter taste in his mouth after an underwhelming four-game road trip.
“It’s difficult to be satisfied when you only get four points,” Vieira said Tuesday of his team’s poor road trip. “Of course, we want to do better than we did, but at the end, you have to give credit to the teams we played against. They were well prepared, and on the day, they were better.”
This season’s four-game road trip struggles — one win in four games (four points) — was actually worse than last year (six points). Before NYCFC embarked on their voyage, Vieira said he was going to do things differently, and he did by rotating more players in and out of the lineup. But some players were rusty due to a lack of playing time and the re- sults told the real story. NYCFC (20 points) capped the disappointing trip by being trounced 3-1 by Atlanta United on Sunday, when a seven-minute stretch full of defensive miscues allowed Atlanta to score three goals, effectively burying NYCFC by the 23rd minute. That stretch — and more specifically, the up-and-down style NYCFC is prone to play — has Vieira wanting more.
“I think we need to be more consistent and concentrate from the start to the end,” said Vieira, whose team allowed a season-high three goals against Atlanta. “We have to bounce back straight away.”
With NYCFC returning home to take on the New England Revolution on Wednesday night, their homecoming won’t come with much joy. NYCFC will be without a slew of players — including midfielder Alex Ring, arguably the team’s backbone this season, who will serve a onegame suspension for yellow card accumulation.
Since joining NYCFC from Kaiserslautern in Germany in the offseason, Ring has become one of the best under-the-radar signings in the league.