Late last season before going on the postseason run that eventually made them MLS champions, New York City Football Club endured a 509-minute scoreless streak.
Now NYCFC is on an impressive defensive run of holding opponents scoreless for a team-record six straight games and will attempt to prevent another foe from scoring Sunday when the defending champions host the Colorado Rapids at Yankee Stadium.
NYCFC (8-3-2, 26 points) enters this weekend three points behind LAFC in the Supporters’ Shield race and its 10 goals allowed are tied for the fewest in the league with the Philadelphia Union, who beat them March 19 in the Bronx.
NYCFC is playing its first game under new coach Nick Cushing, who took over when Ronny Deila joined Standard Liege in Belgium. Cushing is hoping to see his team continue a scoreless streak that dates back to the 90th minute of a 5-4 win over Toronto at Citi Field while also upping their unbeaten streak (7-0-1) to nine games.
“I understand the questions will come around wanting the job and the way that I approach the job.,” Cushing said. “I’ve worked within the group for a long time and I understand that it is a huge privilege to lead the team and for me that starts this week with Colorado.”
Due to sharing Yankee Stadium with the MLB-best New York Yankees, NYCFC has played three games at the home of the Mets. Overall, the team is 6-1-1 at home and 5-0-1 in its past six home matches since losing to Philadelphia.
The shutout streak remained in place on May 28 when goalkeeper Sean Johnson made five saves in a 1-0 win at Minnesota for his league-leading eighth clean sheet. During New York’s shutout streak, Johnson has made 13 saves.
The defending champions are the fourth team in MLS history to record six straight clean sheets and the first since the LA Galaxy did it from Oct. 2, 2009 to April 10, 2010.
Colorado (5-6-3, 18 points) is 0-5-1 away from home so far where it has been outscored 13-4. The Rapids are in search of their first road win after mixed results in its past two home games when they followed up a 1-0 win over Seattle on May 22 with a 3-1 loss to Nashville on May 28 that ended a 23-game home unbeaten streak.
“It was just disappointing because we feel like we’ve seen some tremendous performances over the last couple of weeks,” Colorado coach Robin Fraser said. “And as I said to the team, you can’t have a good game, bad game, good game because you just don’t go anywhere in the table. So consistency is really the word and the thought for us going forward.”
Colorado’s offense will be without Diego Rubio, whose seven goals lead the team, due to yellow card accumulation.
–Field Level Media
