• Leagues Cup Phase One: New York City FC vs Club Santos Laguna
• Date and Kickoff Time: Thursday, August 6, 7:30 pm ET
• Venue: Sports Illustrated Stadium, Harrison, NJ
• Forecast: Hot, "feels like" temps in the low 90s at kickoff, 86F/30C
• Watch: Apple TV
• New York City FC Radio: Glenn Crooks and Matty Lawrence (English), Roberto Abramowitz and Ariel Judas (Spanish)
• Officiating Crew: Andrew Samuel (referee), Caleb Wales and Stefan Tanaka-Freundt (assistant referees), Luis Enrique Santander Aguirre (fourth official), Allen Chapman (VAR), Daneon Parchment (assistant VAR)
• Kits: New York City will wear the light blue Excelsior Kit; Santos Laguna will wear its green-and-white hooped home kit
Leagues Cup is here again for New York City FC, and with it comes a mini-residency in Harrison, New Jersey.
New York City will cross the Hudson River to play all three of its Phase One matches at Sports Illustrated Stadium, this time opening the tournament against Club Santos Laguna, a struggler in Liga MX that's opened the Apertura season with three straight losses after the club finished 16th out of 18 teams in the 2025/26 season.
Santos Laguna is off to a rough start to the new Liga MX season, while New York City is unbeaten coming out of MLS's World Cup pause, though with a somewhat disappointing draw with struggling Toronto FC in their last match pre-Leagues Cup.
In 2025, New York City also opened its Leagues Cup campaign at Sports Illustrated Stadium against one of Liga MX's bottom teams, Club Puebla, but New York City got thumped in that match, losing 3-0 and essentially killing their chances of advancing to the Leagues Cup knockout rounds.
First objective for this year's NYCFC squad: Avoiding that kind of result in their Leagues Cup opener. Avoiding defeat is especially important, because any loss makes it extremely difficult to finish among the top four teams in the MLS table.
Those are the only teams that advance to the knockout stages and get a chance to play for the trophy, and also for one of the three available slots (two finalists, plus the winner of the Third-Place Game) in next season's Concacaf Champions Cup.
Last year, MLS teams needed a minimum of seven points from the three Phase One matches to have a chance to advance, so there's little to no margin for error as the fourth edition of this expanded tournament gets started.
New York City FC Record vs Liga MX, All Competitions
| G | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 8 | 13 | -5 |
