It's the dawn of a new Major League Soccer season and the Hudson River Blue Podcast has one more big preview-centric episode to get you ready for a new year of New York City FC soccer.

We start by discussing two players who won't be on the 2025 NYCFC roster, Santiago Rodríguez who is about to join Botafogo in Brazil, and James Sands, who just suffered a rough injury while away on loan in Germany.

Then we preview the first match of the 2025 season, a trip to face reigning Supporters' Shield winners Inter Miami. Will their midweek Concacaf Champions Cup game in the extreme freezing cold in Kansas City give New York City FC a slight edge over Lionel Messi and company? More importantly and more uncertainly, how will NYCFC even line up for their first match of the season? There are Starting XI predictions and eventually score predictions shared for the big season opener in Fort Lauderdale.

There's also some time spent reflecting on what the expert MLS pundits out there think will come of this New York City FC season. Expert sentiment is that Pascal Jansen has a fringe playoff team on his hands, and we get into whether that's a fair assessment or not while dropping a few of our own predictions for how the 2025 season shakes out.

Episode 26 wraps up with our final preview of a specific group of NYCFC players, this time the team's forwards. Our big questions for the attacking players involve who starts on the wings, how much better Hannes Wolf can be in his second season, and if Alonso Martínez and Mounsef Bakrar will really see the field at the same time.

Listen to the full episode and then make sure you’re following Hudson River Blue on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads, and reading all our coverage at HudsonRiverBlue.com.

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