About two years ago, Kevin O’Toole was simultaneously a rookie trying out with NYCFC and completing his senior thesis for Princeton.
His topic is the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan and he is graduating in 2022 with a degree in commercial real estate.
A professional football career, he admitted in an interview with The Daily Princetonian, was a “pipe dream”.
But O’Toole, a product of Montclair, NJ, is resilient, not to mention talented in football.
They can beat the Red Bulls youth program. He juggled his Ivy League thesis with MLS training camps in Latin America.
He won a starting spot in NYCFC’s back line.
He picked up his first professional assist Wednesday.
And on Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium – assuming coach Nick Cushing does not set the start – he lined up against Lionel Messi.
It will be NYCFC’s left back from Princeton against Inter Miami’s right winger from Argentina.
“He’s a player I’ve looked up to all my life,” O’Toole told The Post, “so to share the same position as him will be a great privilege.”
Messi’s performance in The Bronx is a microcosmic of the entire Messi/MLS experience.
He has been in the league for 14 months, but this will be Messi’s first match against NYCFC outside of the exhibition.
He was DNP-hamstring in the previous two head-to-heads.
Messi will pack Yankee Stadium.
Fans will come in Argentina number 10 and Barcelona uniform.
He will be monitored by O’Toole, whose salary this season is $196,000, according to the MLS Players Association.
Messi may dominate, as he has done regularly while navigating MLS pitches.
Then the revenue stream of one person leagues to the next stop, or maybe not, depending on the plan to rest Messi and maintain his health.
Is it bad for the long-term image of the league if Messi, who is in the top 10 in MLS goals, scored despite playing in only 14 of Miami’s 29 games, easily beating the opposition?
The answer is “no,” according to Cushing, who says it just makes MLS the same as every other league Messi has blessed with.
“He dominates everywhere, doesn’t he?” said Cushing. “He dominated every league and tournament he played in.”
In the short term — that means Saturday at Yankee Stadium — Cushing must find a way to stop Messi and his Juggernaut Inter Miami team, which is clear atop the MLS standings with a 19-4-6 record.
NYCFC (11-11-7), riding an eight-game winless streak, has lost its grip on the guaranteed playoff spot, which moves to the top seven teams of each conference (NYCFC is sixth in the East).
“I don’t think you can highlight in any way to stop (Messi),” said Cushing. “I think there are many in the world of football in his time who have tried different tactics to stop him individually and I think it is impossible.
“I think about your team keeping the game compact, your team making sure you control where they’re going because that’s going to make the game difficult for them.”
The good news for O’Toole is his experience defending Messi, when he faced the 2022 World Cup hero in an exhibition about a year ago. As O’Toole explained, Messi often runs from the right to the center in the game and there aren’t many opportunities for one-on-ones.
But O’Toole saved the shot and NYCFC beat Miami, 2-1, with Messi scoreless. O’Toole hopes to be out on Saturday.
“It’s definitely a real feeling. I definitely felt it in the first game,” O’Toole said. “Having experience now, hopefully we can be more normal (Saturday).”
The bigger picture for NYCFC is whether it will be home to superstars like Messi when they open their $780 million stadium in Queens in 2027.
NYCFC sporting director David Lee’s strategy is to build a roster devoid of marquee signings, recognizing that success in MLS’s cap system requires development through flash. NYCFC tried to recruit aging superstars when the franchise launched in 2015, and it largely backfired with disappointing results from Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo.
Lee’s pragmatic approach resulted in consistent playoff appearances and a 2021 championship.
But there is reason to believe that the strategy will change for Queens.
Miami, the poster team for aging international stars (it also has Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets), is the best team in MLS. And NYCFC not only opened a 25,000-seat stadium in a few years, but announced a new minority owner this week – Marcelo Claure, a billionaire from Bolivia who joined David Beckham to start Inter Miami in 2018.
Claure, who sold his stake in Inter Miami, was excellent. And the flash filled the seats.
When emailing Messi’s “impact statistics” in the form of ticket sales, an MLS spokesperson called the striker “the Taylor Swift of professional sports.”
O’Toole understood the task.
“The environment we’re going to be in is going to be very different,” he said. “There will be more than we usually do there. It will all be fun and I will try to channel it.
