New York City FC Head Coach Pascal Jansen is calling for a strong response from his side ahead of Saturday’s matchup against Toronto FC.
The Boys in Blue head north looking to bounce back after a 2-0 defeat to the New England Revolution last weekend, with Jansen reflecting on the details that made the difference.
Jansen explained, “If you go back to that game in New England, there's a moment just before the break where we were so disciplined without the ball, but we lose our discipline in just one moment, and we concede an unnecessary corner.
"We can see then we reset ourselves at half-time, and when you get out of the dressing room with your new ideas in order to get back into that game, that moment that we concede the second goal again from a set piece, it is a tough one to take.
"But if you want to become a bulletproof team, you need to be able to deal and handle these matters better than we did in this game.”
City’s head coach is not obsessing over the result, however, and confirmed his side have turned their attention to Saturday afternoon at BMO Field.
“Since I've been working with my boys from day one, the attitude in training has been fantastic,” Jansen said.
“The mentality also coming back from a loss or the loss of points or winning a game, that is, is quite consistent. So all the guys came in again. Of course, we had our 24 hours after a good result or a bad result to reflect, and that's what we did.
“We put the game to bed on Monday, when we had the review, made some new focus points going into the rest of the week, and they've been doing that up until today. So hopefully we can reset and do better on Saturday in Toronto.”
Toronto enter the contest on a steady run of form, including several draws and a win in their last outing. The return of Lorenzo Insigne has provided a further boost, with the Italian’s return a factor that Jansen has prepared his team for.
“If you look at the recent results from Toronto, they've been quite steady,” he said.
“Lorenzo Insigne came back into the team. The team has been doing well, a few clean sheets, and one goal difference win. So they're in a good place at the moment.
“Coming back to [discuss] the first goal of the match, that's going to be an interesting one, because we have shown several faces throughout this season that we can cope with going a goal down and respond really well.
“We've also shown that we are had matches where we not where we were not able to get back from a goal down.
“That's going to be an interesting one for both teams I guess. They have a squad that hasn't scored a lot of goals. We are able to score goals, but we've had trouble finding the best moments to score goals.
"It will be a tight game, is my assumption. So who knows if the first goal can make the difference.”
With nine games played, Jansen acknowledges that inconsistency has been part of the early-season narrative—something he and his staff are actively working to address.
“The nine games that we played so far in consideration, it's been inconsistent,” he said.
“That is one of the topics that we addressed from day one. We’re trying to focus on becoming more consistent throughout the season.
“You know, as well as I do, that we have a young squad. Inconsistency is also something that is part of that process, but we're trying to manage that as well as we can.
“We lost a few players coming from from last season, and we had to reassess and make sure that we get the right players in for this season, or the windows that give us the opportunity to strengthen the squad.
“So that is something that has been ongoing. I’m very happy with the squad and we’re working well with them in order to get better performances.”
