NYCFC coach accused of punching teenage Toronto player ‘in the face’

There was some lingering tension between NYCFC and Toronto FC, allegedly dating back to their previous meeting in March at Yankee Stadium, and that all boiled over after the final whistle Saturday.

First, a brawl started, with players from both teams — including Toronto goalkeeper Sean Johnson and NYCFC defender Strahinja Tanasijević at the center — shoving and forming a cluster near one of the sidelines.

But then, in Toronto’s postgame press conference following NYCFC’s 3-2 win, head coach John Herdman and midfielder Jonathan Osorio alleged that NYCFC head coach Nick Cushing “cornered and punched” a 19-year-old player “in the face” at halftime during that March match.

Cushing, according to multiple reports, denied the accusation, telling reporters that, “I can honestly say as a head coach, I’ve done 348 games, I’ve never ever laid a finger on a player.”

Osorio, though, said that “we were just letting them know we didn’t forget about that.”

“I understand maybe we were, our emotions got the best of us a little bit and we were talking,” Osorio added, “but we weren’t being physical or nothing. But this is the second that they’ve gotten physical now with our players, and that’s how it started.”

While the 19-year-old Toronto player wasn’t specifically named, Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty is the only 19-year-old on its MLS roster, according to The Athletic, and he scored in the early minutes of their match in March.

“That was the off-record report that came into the dressing room at halftime from the young 19-year-old, that said he got cornered and punched in the face,” Herdman said.

There weren’t any working cameras in that part of Yankee Stadium, Herdman said, and therefore the team possessed no evidence of the incident involving Cushing and the Toronto FC player.

And on Saturday, the tempers flared after Johnson — a former NYCFC keeper for six seasons and a member of their MLS Cup-winning team in 2021 — was allegedly headbutted by an opposing player, according to Osorio.

Johnson and Tanasijević were at the center of the scrum to start, and after the pair were separated and Tanasijević moved away, Johnson again tore toward the defender and the scuffle resumed.

NYCFC, which sits in fifth place in the Eastern Conference following the 3-2 win, took 2-0 and 3-1 leads Saturday behind goals from Santiago Rodríguez, Malachi Jones and Andrés Perea, though a goal from Raoul Petretta trimmed Toronto’s deficit in the 89th minute.

The pair of teams won’t meet again in the regular season.