The numbers this offseason are pretty staggering. MLS teams have imported nearly 60 players, and only a handful are over the age of 30. Of the 20-ish imported from South America, the average age is 21. Of the 10 total Designated Players inked over the past five weeks. there have been as many Young DPs (age 21-23) and Super Young DPs (20 or under) signed as there have been regular old DPs (24 and up).
Even when an MLS team goes out and signs an older player – Zlatan's coming, folks – they do it without burning a DP slot. He'll be brought in on TAM, and is just a piece for the Galaxy, not the piece.
MLS teams have signed more players out of their own academies than ever before, and there are more coaches who look willing to get those kids minutes. And the SuperDraft was regarded, leaguewide, as a particularly good one. Teams that had questions in attack may have gotten 20-year-old-ish answers out of college.
Which is all to say that the league is trending younger. But can you name a single soul who plays with the youthful exuberance of NYCFC star David Villa? El Guaje (yes, that means "The Kid") is positively ancient by current standards at 36, but he has not slowed down. In his third year he produced his finest year in MLS, putting up 22 goals and 9 assists in 2556 regular season minutes, and then two more goals in 180 playoff minutes. Along the way he etched his name into the record books:
Villa was remarkable for most of 2017, even playing his way back into Spain's squad for a moment before an unfortunate injury that robbed him of a good chunk of September. The game has not passed him by.
But his team stopped providing him with help putting the ball into the net over the final quarter of the season and into the playoffs, and that's a problem they never quite solved. Villa's injury caused him to miss two games and parts of three others, and across those 450 minutes NYCFC scored just four goals. Once he got healthy again at the end of September, he once again started logging his typical 90 minutes and once again started scoring: three goals in the team's final three regular season games, and then those two goals in two games against Columbus.
Five goals in five games is a great haul for any striker of any age. The problem is the rest of the Cityzens could manage only two goals of their own during that stretch, and the curtain descended on 2017 earlier than the blue half of New York would've liked.
Which brings us back to the top: NYCFC have reinforced the attacking corps by signing a Young DP of their own, Paraguayan international winger/playmaker Jesús Medina. He's Andrea Pirlo's replacement with regard to roster designation, but he's Jack Harrison's replacement on the field.
What they'll ask of Medina is what Harrison provided in the first half of last year: boxscore stats. Harrison had 8 goals and 5 assists through the end of June, but only 2 goals and 1 assist in his last 18 games across all competitions from July onward. NYCFC were still an above average team even when he (and the other starting winger, Rodney Wallace) was sputtering, but even Villa's clock is not infinite. The goal in the Bronx is not to be "above average," and the window for contention – Supporters' Shield, MLS Cup, US Open Cup – is now.
The need for a full, quality season from the wings is immediate. Villa's MLS career has, thus far, proved that the old model of signing DPs is not obsolete. What NYCFC need is for the new model to prove that they can be not just productive and eventually profitable, but a foundational piece of a championship team.
