It was a decision Patrick Vieira knew would draw attention, but that wasn’t stopping the New York City FC coach from making it.
Vieira gave Yangel Herrera his first MLS start Saturday night, which meant Andrea Pirlo moving to the substitute’s bench.
“It’s just looking for different characteristics of the players regarding today’s game,” Vieira said in the post-match press conference. “I know what I can get from Yangel, I know what I can get from Andrea regarding the game and this is the reason why I make the change. The next game we have to look at it again and make a decision. This time it’s Andrea, maybe the other game would be somebody else.”
Herrera brought a different quality to the midfield trio that included Alex Ring and Maxi Moralez. He also scored his first career MLS goal and assisted on Jack Harrison’s winner.
“I think the characteristics of the players are different - when you want to be a bit more solid defensively, this is why I choose Yangel,” Vieira said. “There will be a time when we have more possession that I will want players to create and to help to build up from the back and then I will go with Andrea.
"I will want maybe to go with Maxi, Yangel and Tommy [McNamara]. I have different players in the midfield and that allowed me to rotate the players.”
Vieira also gave Sean Okoli and Ben Sweat their first starts of the season, which highlights the depth of this year’s squad.
“Since the first day I believe we have a better squad than last year because I see them every day working in training and because of the quality of the players we have last year and the new ones we bring, we are much better as a team, as a squad,” Vieira said. “This is really good for me.”
Vieira said it’s too early to make a decision on the midfield trio for next Sunday’s showdown with Atlanta United FC. But he knows it won’t be easy, and that’s exactly what he wants.
“I don’t want to make any decision now. We just finished the game, but when you analyzed all the games that we played so far, Andrea playing with Maxi and Ring has been really good, fantastic and Yangel did really well,” Vieira said.
“This is what I want, what I want from the players, to make it really difficult for me to choose the starting XI. This is why we came here and performed because every player worked really hard in training.”
