{"id":39172,"date":"2021-11-22T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/?p=39172"},"modified":"2021-11-22T01:13:24","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T06:13:24","slug":"second-half-nycfc-semifinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2021\/11\/22\/second-half-nycfc-semifinals\/","title":{"rendered":"Second half push sends NYCFC to Semifinals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>NEW YORK<\/strong> &#8211; On Sunday afternoon, New York City FC hosted fifth place Atlanta United at Yankee Stadium for the second matchup of the<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2021\/11\/18\/lwsc-radio-mls-cup-playoffs-preview\/\" target=\"_self\"> Eastern Conference MLS Cup playoffs<\/a>. After a back-and-forth first half, second half goals from 2021 Golden Boot winner Valent\u00edn \u201cTaty\u201d Castellanos and Alexander Callens would secure a 2-0 victory, sending NYCFC to the Eastern Conference Semifinals.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Second Half Push sends NYCFC to Conference Semifinals<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A first half which saw chances created on both sides would have NYCFC produce the only real opportunity of the half as James Sands received the ball outside the box in the 44-minute and lofted a pinpoint ball over the defense to Santiago Rodr\u00edguez for an easy finish, quickly judged just offside by the assistant to cancel out the goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the start of the second half it was the Bronx Blues who came out firing with several opportunities in the opening minutes. The constant attack led to a Maxi Moralez cross which found Castellanos at the back post for a tough shot. An awkward bounce saw the ball flying over Brad Guzan\u2019s head and into the far corner with little the keeper could do, 1-0 NYCFC in the 49-minute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">It&#8217;s that Golden touch \u26bd\ufe0f\u2728 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tatycaste11anos?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@tatycaste11anos<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RoXc0pEuDH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/RoXc0pEuDH<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 New York City FC (@NYCFC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NYCFC\/status\/1462533832738066442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 21, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It didn\u2019t stop there from NYCFC as they continued berating Atlanta\u2019s backline with chances, finding the net just four minutes later to put them up 2-0 in the 53-minute. A shot from Moralez, tipped onto the bar by a diving Guzan left Atlanta&#8217;s defense frozen for Callens to sneak behind the backline and find himself with a tap-in header.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Atlanta wouldn&#8217;t go down without a fight however, forcing NYCFC keeper Sean Johnson to make a few saves in the closing minutes including a shot from distance in the 83-minute by Matheus Rossetto and an 87-minute save on an Atlanta corner kick which earned the clean sheet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A second yellow card and subsequent sending off in the 93-minute for Atlanta\u2019s Alan Franco capped the 2-0 win for New York City and sent Yankee Stadium into a frenzy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Three Key Takeaways:<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><b>Keaton Parks will be missed<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: The season ending injury to Keaton Parks will hurt NYCFC in the playoffs and while it wasn\u2019t as noticable today on a smaller pitch at Yankee Stadium, it will be against a team like New England. Ideally, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nicol\u00e1s Acevedo would make his return after being listed as out with a lower body injury for this match but expect Alfredo Morales to continue in the XI for the time being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Taty Castellanos continues his form: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ending the season by winning the Golden Boot award, Castellanos carried his form into the playoffs getting off four shots today and scoring the opening goal for NYCFC. If Castellanos continues to play this way, NYCFC can keep themselves in any game so long as their backline can hold up to the test of MLS Cup Playoffs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Yankee Stadium advantage<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: As mentioned above, New York City\u2019s home pitch is much smaller than your average MLS field which provides a major advantage to NYCFC who\u2019ve surrendered just four goals at Yankee Stadium all season, and it showed today against Atlanta. But with the team set to travel on the road for the second round of playoffs it will be crucial for NYCFC to manage a win away from home and against an incredibly talented New England side.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"usOYkp66T5Vm1L1G_Of_eg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1236721090\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'usOYkp66T5Vm1L1G_Of_eg',sig:'u5tjwkAjPSEqTevCzN7EfeF6uEwU5_u8Sl1Y-MyR1C8=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1236721090',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK &#8211; On Sunday afternoon, New York City FC hosted fifth place Atlanta United at Yankee Stadium for the second matchup of the Eastern Conference MLS Cup playoffs. After a back-and-forth first half, second half goals from 2021 Golden Boot winner Valent\u00edn \u201cTaty\u201d Castellanos and Alexander Callens would secure a 2-0 victory, sending NYCFC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3973,"featured_media":39179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[263,119,4,3],"tags":[4205,936,934,4281],"class_list":["post-39172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atlanta-united","category-mls","category-nycfc","category-news","tag-2021-mls-cup-playoffs","tag-alexander-callens","tag-sean-johnson","tag-taty-castellanos"],"modified_by":"Matt Pollard","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3973"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}