After having zero players selected for the 2023 MLS All-Star Game, a first in the team's nine-season history, New York City FC is back to having an All-Star in its midst with defender Thiago Martins making the squad that will play a group of Liga MX All-Stars tonight in Columbus.
He's not a player whose contributions jump off the stat sheets, like New York City's other most deserving All-Star candidates, leading scorer and assist-maker Santiago Rodríguez, or breakout Goalkeeper of the Year candidate Matt Freese.
Yet Thiago Martins deserves to be recognized for what he's added to this New York City side since making the intra-City Football Group move to NYCFC from Japan's Yokohama F. Marinos in 2022. He has grown into the team's clear leader and defensive anchor at the back, now the unquestioned Captain of the squad.
He has also helped New York City forge an identity as a tough-to-break-down defensive side, which has helped them climb back into the playoff positions in 2024 after a tough 2023 spent on the outside looking in when it came time for the MLS Cup Playoffs.
As he gets set to don this year's psychedelic All-Star kit and represent New York City alongside the league's best players, let's run through all that makes Thiago Martins deserving of this MLS All-Star recognition.
Tone-setting
Play flows through Thiago Martins when his NYCFC builds out from the back. The central defender leads all New York City players in touches of the ball, ball carries, and progressive carrying distance. He has completed and attempted the most passes of any New York City player, leading the team with a 89.7% pass completion rate on his 1,423 pass attempts.
Thiago Martins also rates well in these kinds of metrics when compared to the rest of the field of MLS center-backs. For the 2024 season, his pass completion percentage puts him in the 86th percentile of MLS central defenders, while his progressive carrying distance per 90 minutes is in the 94th percentile.
The style of play embraced by Nick Cushing's team calls for a center-back like Thiago Martins, who is comfortable and effective at moving the ball forward when it's at his feet. He's been sure-footed and error-free so far in 2024 and has been a metronomic presence at the back who has helped his team build their attacking movements from the very base of its formation.
Line-breaking
While Birk Risa arrived with a penchant for playing long diagonal passes and an ability to spring his attackers with a deadly over-the-top ball, this season has seen Thiago Martins put up some elite long passing numbers.
Thiago Martins has completed 73.5% of his 196 attempted long passes (ones that were longer than 30 yards) this season. Risa has attempted a similar number of lengthy balls, but his completion rate on them is 52.2% this season, a stark difference from his fellow center-back. The 73.5% completion rate on 30-yard-plus passes puts Thiago Martins in the 96th percentile of MLS center-backs, so the distribution work from his defensive half has been somewhat unprecedented this season.
Long passes from the back have increased as New York City embraces a more direct style of play since the summer of 2023, and Thiago Martins has been great in that realm, even picking up a "hockey assist" (the pass before the assisting pass) during the wild 4-2 win over Orlando City SC on Matchday 20.
GOALS GALORE IN THE BX 🤩 pic.twitter.com/vYE7dPSKbF
— New York City FC (@newyorkcityfc) June 29, 2024
Collective excellence
His comfort on the ball, and when spraying the ball around from the back, have been individual hallmarks of Thiago Martins's 2024 success, but he also is a central figure in what has turned into a strong collective New York City defense.
That Thiago Martins-led defense has allowed the sixth-fewest goals in MLS so far this season, 30 through 25 games, and has been the stingiest MLS team when playing on the road, conceding just 16 goals in 13 away games played, tops in MLS.
Oliver Strand
New York City has thrived since pairing Thiago Martins up with Risa and playing those two CBs in front of Matt Freese in goal. That trio has started together 27 times since August 2023, games in which New York City has a record of 14 W-5 D-8 L with a +11 goal differential, earning 1.74 points per match.
Comparatively, in the eight games that have not featured Thiago Martins, Risa, and Freese in the Starting XI since August 2023 when all three were with the team, New York City's record is 1 W-3 D-4 L with a -3 goal differential, taking only 1.33 points per match.
Matt Freese has been one of the best goalkeepers in MLS this season but he has also gotten better results when he's had Thiago Martins (and Birk Risa) leading the line in front of him, which underscores just how important Thiago has been to this team.
Intangible leadership strength
This is harder to quantify, but Thiago Martins has become the unquestioned leader of New York City FC this season. You likely remember that 2023 was a captain-less season: Nick Cushing never outright named an owner of the captain's armband, despite being asked about it repeatedly throughout the season.
The team instead relied on a "leadership council" and rotated the captaincy duties among Maxime Chanot, James Sands, and Thiago Martins, but it was described as a collective effort, with no one player designated as the outright on-field leader.
That changed this season: Thiago Martins has worn the captain's armband in nearly every match this season and has emerged as the vocal leader in pre-match huddles and team talks, as well as the team's spokesperson for whenever a "big topic" around NYCFC needs to be addressed.
Thiago Martins was the player to stand up and answer questions about his countryman Talles Magno, who has been a figure of intrigue all season long, buried on the bench and rumored to be on his way out. He's the one who speaks after the team's tougher losses, like last season when NYCFC's playoff hopes all but died when they lost on the road to DC United in the season's penultimate game.
Maxime Chanot had been the go-to "bleeding heart of NYCFC," a player who was passionate and motivated enough to get you to run through a brick wall on command. That role has now been taken up by Thiago Martins, and he seems well-equipped to handle it.
Statement made. pic.twitter.com/hwZ1npUVom
— New York City FC (@newyorkcityfc) June 29, 2024
Sports analysis has often tried to lessen the perceived importance of things like "veteran presence" in locker rooms by focusing on statistics and quantifiable data. You can't easily measure whether or not it matters if a soccer team has a clear-cut Captain, a reality that likely frustrates the know-it-all portion of the pundit class. Maybe it didn't matter that NYCFC had no captain in 2023, but it seems to be helping them in 2024 to have Thiago Martins entrenched as O Capitão.
Worth every penny
He's the second-highest-paid defender in MLS and has been since arriving in 2022, but Thiago Martins's high salary has been worth it to a New York City team that needed a steady presence like his to get through its toughest transition period in history.
When he joined in 2022 he was complementing MLS Cup-winning center-backs, Maxime Chanot and Alexander Callens. By late-summer of 2023, both those guys were on other teams, and their void had to be filled, which Thiago Martins has more than done.
Errors and mishaps at the back were slightly more common in his first season with New York City—he scored one of the worst-ever own goals late in that 2022 season, a match in which he also was shown a straight red card. That kind of error-fest has now become an extreme rarity. Instead, Thiago Martins has turned into a constant, a reliable presence at the back that has made a huge difference on NYCFC's fortunes.
It's still rare to see MLS teams pay millions in salary for defensive help, but New York City needed someone like Thiago Martins, and would be in a much worse situation defensively without him this season.
Other central defenders might put up bigger numbers in terms of blocking shots, intercepting dangerous passes, or winning aerial duels, but Thiago Martins has proved to be well worth his high salary, and well deserving of a place in this year's MLS All-Star squad.
