New York City have received a triple boost ahead of the penultimate game of the MLS regular season.
Interim Head Coach Nick Cushing has confirmed Anton Tinnerholm, Alfredo Morales and Héber have all returned to training over the course of the international break with the Boys in Blue now nearing full strength.
Speaking ahead of Sunday’s visit of Orlando, Cushing shared an update on the squad, adding that the players have felt the benefit of the two-week break, feeling refreshed and energized on the back of September's historic success and solid time on the training pitch.
“It was a really crucial period for us, a really enjoyable period as well,” he said.
“I've said this consistently throughout being a coach: we continuously fight between freshness and form – and for me, form always wins – but at the same time, we're in a position now after a two-week break where we've got a lot of really important guys back healthy so that will reset the squad.
“I will pick the team that I feel will give us the best chance of winning the game against Orlando and it's a great place to be to have the likes of Alfredo Morales, Anton Tinnerholm, Keaton Parks, Héber back training – all our guys are on the training field. It's a good place to be for New York City.
“Having won the last two games and gone through a really busy period of a lot of injuries, having those guys back, it was good to get some rest into some players and get work into some players at the start of the break.
“Having the full team back gives us an opportunity to get back on track with where we were. It’s the first time we’ve had the opportunity to work the way I’ve wanted to work.
“I think [the game against] Red Bulls really early on in the season in the Open Cup was probably a good marker for where I see this team with Keaton Parks in it – I’m a 4-3-3 guy so having him back, and having the opportunity to play our wingers wide, and get him in… It’s been a really enjoyable period to get on the training pitch and really work hard at that.
“Having a full squad means that everybody can't play so there will be naturally rested players, and we have to continue to rotate the team and continue to rotate positions.
“Of course, we have to look further ahead with regards to periodizing the training in the last weeks of the of the season so that we're fresh going into the following game but the nature of our league is: if we don't secure a good position, then those weeks are irrelevant so for us, we have to make sure that we concentrate fully on Orlando.”
Heading into this weekend's game on the back of two pivotal wins in the Campeones Cup and Hudson River Derby, Cushing declared the squad are in excellent shape mentally as well as physically.
Having had some time to reflect over the past few weeks, he asserts the team have learned valuable lessons during their difficult spell, which he believes will serve them well in a potential Playoff push.
He declared: “I think that the period has highlighted and has shown everybody within our organization, everybody within this building and our training facility that when you are hit with the hardest times, and when you are consistently smashed with really difficult challenges and the potential for the worst to happen – whether it be people lose faith, people check out, the group falls apart, we lose togetherness, we lose belief, we lose our ability to apply our game model – I think we've learned that when there were big challenges, that they didn't affect us.
“We were disappointed but the crucial part of our game which is our togetherness, our belief, our team spirit, our cohesion our chemistry – however we want to describe it – when it could have broken, it didn't and our group was greater than the biggest challenges that were put in our way.
“We know we're a good team, we know that we've won enough games to know that we're a good team but we also were a bit bruised and a little bit frustrated with the with the run that we had, the luck that we had with injuries, the challenges that we had, the chances we missed, the goals we gave up...
“There were a lot of different denominations but I was fully confident that it would turn at some point because of the application and the mentality of the players. We've just got to make sure now that there's no complacency and I'm fully confident that there is none. We have to go into these games with exactly the same application, mentality and determination that we had in the Atlas and the Red Bulls games.
“The previous two games that we've had have simply been two really competitive games and the way that the team has applied themselves in those games is a marker for where we are with the mentality of the group.
“We managed to go into two huge games against two huge opponents in Atlas (Champions of Mexico last season) and Red Bulls (our arguably biggest rivals) and win in a really good way.
“That's a real positive going into a period of challenge. Orlando want to secure fourth place over us, Atlanta want to get into the Playoffs and then the Playoff games are one-off games.
“Having the opportunity to be together as a group in good times – because we've spent a lot of time together in times where the players have had to dig deep, and the players have had to really rely on experience – the togetherness in the group through those difficult periods was incredible. After two big wins, having an opportunity to enjoy it was really important.
“We will get those challenges again. That period that we went through was an incredible experience for what can be thrown at us and how we cope with that.”
Don't miss your chance to cheer New York City on in our final home game of the regular MLS season! Tickets for Sunday's game against Orlando City are available to purchase here.
