There shouldn't be any international break hangover for the three New York City FC players who got call ups from their senior national teams for the just-completed FIFA window.
Matt Freese played the first 45 minutes of the first of four United States men's national team friendlies, then didn't play again, not even in the squad for the USMNT's final victory (vs Canada) of the four straight the team earned across this September/October FIFA window.
Back in late September in the earliest portion of the international break, Aiden O'Neill flew from New York to Australia for a pair of home Socceroos friendlies against Brazil. The midfielder, freshly recovered from surgery to correct an ankle injury he played on all throughout this summer's World Cup, only came on as a late substitute in each game and totaled 17 minutes on the pitch across the two Australia matches.
Tayvon Gray was back in a Jamaica squad for the first time since November 2024, but the Bronx native didn't see any minutes across Jamaica's first two Concacaf Nations League games this window, then left the national team early to rejoin New York City FC before the Reggae Boyz played their final two matches of the window. Gray got replaced on the Jamaica roster as part of a big wave of mid-window changes to the team under interim head coach Rudolph Spied.
Three very different situations, but one consistent outcome for these players: They saw precious few minutes with their national teams at a time when they were also desperately needed at club level.
This limited usage might be the new reality for Freese with the USMNT, as while the World Cup starter still got a call-up to begin this new 2030 World Cup cycle, he looks more like an afterthought and like a reliable veteran backup as Mauricio Pochettino and his coaching staff begin to test the waters with younger alternatives at keeper like 20-year-old Diego Kochen and 25-year-old Brian Schwake.
O'Neill's arrangement might have been just that, an arrangement between club and country to keep him from overdoing it early in his return to play following an injury layoff. Gray's situation, meanwhile, is the hardest one to parse, since he didn't see the field at all and left Jamaica camp early, despite being invited back to the senior national team for the first time since Concacaf Nations League games in November 2024.
No matter the exact circumstances, that trio was still missing from the lineup for NYCFC's last MLS match played before play truly stopped for the international break, the 2-2 draw in Atlanta a few weeks back, and the trio didn't get asked to do much at national-team level while they were away.
National team opportunities are always super valuable and cherished by players when they come along, but it's slightly maddening that Freese, O'Neill, and Gray only played a combined 62 minutes across three total appearances made during the international break, when each would have started and been counted on as a valuable contributor as NYCFC chased a win in Atlanta to help turn its off-the-rails season around.
Instead, all three were out and New York City played to a frustrating come-from-ahead draw, only marginally helping the team's chances in the late-season push for a playoff spot.
This remains a reality for all MLS teams. Every team had to deal with forced personnel challenges that came with playing league games through the first FIFA international window held after the World Cup, and plenty faced bigger absences in number and maybe, arguably, in importance than those faced by NYCFC.
Another team in the mix for one of the final playoff places in the Eastern Conference, local rivals Red Bull New York, played without nine regular squad members and lost 3-0 at home to St. Louis City SC in this same round of games.
Since MLS picks and chooses which international windows it stops for and which it plays through, teams too often find themselves shorthanded at inopportune times because of national-team duty.
New York City FC is no stranger, lately, to getting screwed by a poorly-timed international break. Look no further than the team's leading scorer in 2024 and 2025, Alonso Martínez, tearing his ACL in between rounds of the 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs because the league decided to holds its postseason with an official international window right in the middle of the schedule.
The injury risk is always a talking point when players head off to join their national teams. That's usually the complaint lodged when engaging in some club vs country discourse, that the risk of an injury in a meaningless international friendly isn't worth it when it comes in the middle of a higher-stakes club season.
It's a slightly different kind of frustration when a club's players get called up, miss an important club game, then don't even really get chances to play for their countries.
That was true for Freese, O'Neill, and Gray, but the same couldn't be said for other NYCFC players away with youth national teams during the FIFA window, as each of Mitja Ilenič (Slovenia U21s), Máximo Carrizo (US U19s), Jonny Shore (US U20s), and Peter Molinari (US U17s) saw a healthier portion of the playing time while away on international duty.
This whole international window was a far cry from what you got used to during the World Cup, and even during the lead-up to the World Cup. Those periods saw players like Freese and O'Neill (and the still-injured Kai Trewin) playing match after match for the United States and Australia, respectively, with no reason to ask questions of anyone's call-ups or usage.
Not the case this fall, though it matters less now that the international break is over, with all the players who traveled back in the fold
