New York City FC just finished a stretch in which it played six matches between August 6 and August 23, a period that saw the club not get more than three days' rest for the final five matches.
The record in that six-game stretch was a rough one, 1W-1D-4L, with the only win coming in the very first match of Leagues Cup against Santos Laguna on August 6, the only one of the six matches not played on short rest, since NYCFC had five days to recover following a 1-1 draw on July 31 against Toronto FC at Yankee Stadium.
NYCFC did close out the match-packed stretch with a positive result, if you can call the 1-1 draw with New England Revolution an outright positive. A draw represented a step up from the four straight losses that preceded it, but the second half of that stalemate with the Revs was a much more laborious 45 minutes, one with signs of fatigue visible to NYCFC's head coach.
After the match, Pascal Jansen said of the slower pace and ultimate petering out of the proceedings at Gillette Stadium, "The second half was clearly a factor of both teams getting more fatigued as the game went on. Then you come to a point where you have to settle for a draw, and that is what we needed in order to get away from the performances that we've made so far."
It did get NYCFC away from its streak of four losses on the bounce, but it also still means that the club remains winless across its last five played in all competitions, and it continued a trend that's persisted all season long: NYCFC doesn't tend to get good results when asked to play on three or fewer days' rest.
So far this season, the club has played 16 times in all competitions on short rest, and the record stands at 4W-3D-9L with a -2 goal differential. Only six other MLS teams have played more times on short rest than NYCFC: LAFC (25), Nashville (24), Columbus (18), Cincinnati (18), Orlando (17), and LA Galaxy (17). Four of those sides started their season off with an extra load of Concacaf Champions Cup fixtures, while NYCFC, Orlando, and Columbus all had runs of varying lengths in US Open Cup and Leagues Cup.
NYCFC has had a busier and more congested schedule than the average MLS team, with league average being set at 13 matches played on short rest when accounting for the games played by all 30 teams. Yet NYCFC is also near the bottom of the league when it comes to the points per match collected from its 16 games played on short rest.
When comparing their results across the league on a points-per-match basis, across all competitions, NYCFC ranks 26th out of 30 teams with 0.94 points per match gained while on short rest. Only Austin FC, Philadelphia Union, Red Bull New York, and Toronto FC have had worse results when playing on two- or three-days' rest. No team has more losses while playing on short rest than the nine suffered by NYCFC.
MLS teams on short rest, all competitions, sorted by PPG
| Team | Played | Record | GF | GA | GD | Pts | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houston | 13 | 8W-2D-3L | 18 | 12 | 6 | 26 | 2 |
| New England | 11 | 6W-3D-2L | 20 | 14 | 6 | 21 | 1.91 |
| St. Louis | 11 | 6W-3D-2L | 19 | 13 | 6 | 21 | 1.91 |
| Nashville | 24 | 13W-6D-5L | 42 | 17 | 25 | 45 | 1.88 |
| Atlanta | 10 | 6W-0D-4L | 17 | 17 | 0 | 18 | 1.8 |
| Chicago | 13 | 7W-2D-4L | 25 | 20 | 5 | 23 | 1.77 |
| Orlando | 17 | 9W-3D-5L | 36 | 31 | 5 | 30 | 1.76 |
| San Diego | 14 | 7W-3D-4L | 27 | 22 | 5 | 24 | 1.71 |
| Charlotte | 15 | 8W-1D-6L | 30 | 20 | 10 | 25 | 1.66 |
| Montreal | 9 | 4W-3D-2L | 15 | 9 | 6 | 15 | 1.66 |
| Columbus | 18 | 9W-2D-7L | 32 | 25 | 7 | 29 | 1.61 |
| Cincinnati | 18 | 8W-4D-6L | 43 | 35 | 8 | 28 | 1.55 |
| San Jose | 13 | 6W-2D-5L | 28 | 23 | 5 | 20 | 1.54 |
| Miami | 15 | 6W-5D-4L | 26 | 22 | 4 | 23 | 1.53 |
| LAFC | 25 | 10W-8D-7L | 33 | 26 | 7 | 38 | 1.52 |
| Vancouver | 14 | 6W-2D-6L | 23 | 12 | 11 | 20 | 1.42 |
| LA Galaxy | 17 | 6W-6D-5L | 25 | 23 | 2 | 24 | 1.41 |
| Portland | 8 | 3W-2D-3L | 13 | 13 | 0 | 11 | 1.37 |
| Dallas | 11 | 5W-0D-6L | 16 | 21 | -5 | 15 | 1.36 |
| Minnesota | 15 | 5W-4D-6L | 20 | 17 | 3 | 19 | 1.26 |
| Seattle | 14 | 5W-2D-7L | 16 | 19 | -3 | 17 | 1.21 |
| RSL | 12 | 4W-2D-6L | 20 | 18 | 2 | 14 | 1.16 |
| DC United | 9 | 2W-4D-3L | 15 | 20 | -5 | 10 | 1.11 |
| Colorado | 13 | 4W-2D-7L | 12 | 17 | -5 | 14 | 1.08 |
| Kansas City | 7 | 2W-1D-4L | 7 | 15 | -8 | 7 | 1 |
| NYCFC | 16 | 4W-3D-9L | 25 | 27 | -2 | 15 | 0.94 |
| Austin | 13 | 3W-3D-7L | 16 | 27 | -11 | 12 | 0.92 |
| Philadelphia | 16 | 3W-5D-8L | 21 | 28 | -7 | 14 | 0.87 |
| Red Bulls | 11 | 2W-3D-6L | 14 | 23 | -9 | 9 | 0.82 |
| Toronto | 7 | 1W-2D-4L | 13 | 18 | -5 | 5 | 0.71 |
Note that this table's numbers group all competitions together, and ignores penalty-kick shootouts. So if a game ended in a draw but went to PKs, be it in US Open Cup, Concacaf Champions Cup, the Canadian Championship, or Leagues Cup, it's still treated as a draw for this table's purposes. If you want to get granular and look through each team's match-by-match results, or if you want to sort the table by number of short-rest matches played or otherwise, you can view the spreadsheet I used to build this, here.
