Jansen Said Thursday NYCFC's Recruitment Questions Went Back to 'the Start of the Season' — By Sunday Morning He Was Fired, With Etihad Park Eight Months Away

New York City FC did not wait for the playoffs to start before making its first big decision of the offseason. On Sunday morning, less than 24 hours after a 1-0 Decision Day win over D.C. United, the club told Pascal Jansen he was out as head coach, ending a two-season run that began with an Eastern Conference final and finished with NYCFC 11th in the East on 42 points.

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It is only the third time in the club's 12-year history that NYCFC has missed the MLS Cup Playoffs. They finished four points behind the East's final wild-card place, and they were already eliminated before the last weekend of the season.

The most revealing comments of the week came from Jansen himself. Asked on Thursday, according to the New York Post, whether injuries or the club's failure to replace injured players explained the season, he called it a "combination of both."

"These are topics that are ongoing conversations from the start of the season," Jansen said. "So the one thing I want to point out is that we always learn, and making sure that we do better going into 27 is one of the things that we have to realize based on the lessons learned in going into the 26 season."

That is a coach pointing, carefully, at roster building. NYCFC spent much of the year without Alonso Martinez, one of its top scorers, while he came back from the torn ACL he suffered last fall, and the Post reported that late goals conceded cost the team points again and again. Jansen also said last month that he had not talked with the front office about his future if the team missed the postseason. After the finale on Saturday he did not appear to think his job was in danger.

The numbers that sealed it came in the second half of the season. NYCFC went 5 wins, 8 draws and 6 losses after the World Cup break and fell from eighth place to 11th, the Post reported. Their final MLS record was 10 wins, 12 losses and 12 draws.

That is a steep drop from 2025, when Jansen, hired on Jan. 6 that year to replace Nick Cushing, guided the team to fifth in the East and a surprise run to the conference final. Across all competitions he finished 34-32-17 in 83 matches.

Read the club's statement closely and the 2026 table is only part of the reason. Sporting director Todd Dunivant said the decision "follows a thorough review of the season and reflects our ambition as an organization," and added that the search "begins immediately as we prepare for the 2027 Sprint Season and build toward the opening of Etihad Park."

Both of those things are close. MLS is moving to a calendar that follows the European season, with a short Sprint Season from February to May before it. NYCFC will open Etihad Park, its 25,000-seat stadium in Queens, on July 17, 2027, after years of playing mostly at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. A source told the Post that the club sees the next year as a "crucial point in franchise history."

In that context, firing a coach the day after the season ends is less a reaction than a scheduling choice. A new coach hired in November has the winter to shape a roster before a sprint where there is little time to recover from a slow start.

There is also a front-office angle. Jansen was hired during the final year of David Lee's tenure, before Dunivant arrived as sporting director in December 2025. NY Soccer Journal reported that Jansen's contract ran through 2028, so NYCFC is choosing to move on from a coach who was still under contract.

This will be Dunivant's first head-coaching hire at the club. Whether he goes to a coach who already knows MLS or follows the City Football Group's habit of looking abroad will say a lot about how NYCFC plans to fill a new stadium in its first season there.

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Jansen's own words on Thursday were about doing better "going into 27." NYCFC agreed that 2027 is the year that matters. It just decided he would not be the one in charge of it, and the questions he raised about recruitment now become the first test for the people who chose his replacement.

Photo credit: Pascal Jansen, New York City FC vs. Chicago Fire FC, July 25, 2026. Photo: Bryan Berlin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; cropped and resized.