Aiden O’Neill’s first full-90-minute appearance in NYCFC’s blue and white came under the brightest lights of New York soccer. In the heat of a mid-May rivalry weekend, he got a full taste of the Hudson River Derby, a decade in the making.
It was a sweltering Saturday afternoon, the city still hungover from the New York Knicks’ Game 6 win that ended the Boston Celtics’ season the night before. The match coincided with the Subway Series across town in The Bronx, and yet, 30,000 strong turned out at Citi Field for the derby.
Soccer isn’t the trademark of a heavily saturated New York sports market. But on rivalry weekend, the Hudson River Derby is always a hit, not only for the fans but for the players. These were the matches they looked forward to the most.
The first derby of 2025 carried extra meaning: it was the clubs’ first meeting since the Red Bulls’ ousting of City in the Eastern Conference semifinals last November.
And O’Neill, the club’s new midfield signing, felt right at home. He’d played in derbies before. He knew how much these games meant to the fans. As players, he explained, everything from emotions to energy was heightened in derbies. His experience helped him prepare for this one. The best part? City defeated the Red Bulls 2-0. New York was blue once again.
“That one’s right up there,” O’Neill said afterward. “The atmosphere was unbelievable, and I enjoyed every moment of it.”
He may be only 26, but O’Neill’s resume includes minutes in the Premier League, the Australian national team — commonly referred to as the “Socceroos” — and leadership experience as the captain of Belgian Pro League side Standard Liège. Along the way, he’s played in his share of derbies, including the East Lancashire derby between his former Premier League club, Burnley FC, and Blackburn Rovers. When O’Neill returned to his native Australia to play for Melbourne City FC, he played in the Melbourne Derby.
O’Neill was the beneficiary of a notorious Melbourne Derby in the 2022-23 season that was interrupted by a pitch invasion and ended, for him, with two goals and a world record. O’Neill holds the title of the longest time between both goals in a brace — a player scoring two goals in a match — at 156,956 minutes apart.
On Dec. 17, 2022, O’Neill scored in the 11th minute of the Melbourne Derby. After a pitch invasion, the match was abandoned in the 22nd minute. It resumed on April 5, 2023, and O’Neill scored what would hold up as the winning goal in a 2–1 win for Melbourne City.
“It’s a cool thing, isn’t it? To have a world record,” O’Neill told amNewYork.
In Australia, like the United States, soccer is not the most popular sport, but it is growing. O’Neill recalled that he fell in love with the sport when he was around seven or eight years old. His dad was the coach and kept his son in line.
“If I was mucking around, I had to go in goal,” O’Neill said. “So that was the punishment, being the goalkeeper at a young age.”
On the weekends, they’d watch the early kickoff Premier League matches. O’Neill remembered watching Chelsea and Frank Lampard playing at Stamford Bridge. He knew he wanted to play there one day.
O’Neill moved to England as a teenager. He eventually earned a contract with Burnley. Early in the 2016-17 season, and at 18 years old, O’Neill would get his chance to live out his childhood dream.
In the second half of a 3-0 Burnley loss at Chelsea on Aug. 27, 2016, he was subbed in for Steven Defour and played 32 minutes. Although his stint in the Premier League lasted only three appearances, he accomplished every aspiring footballer’s dream. He had made it to England’s top league. He played at Stamford Bridge, the football cathedral he and so many others had idolized growing up.
“That for me was a ‘pinch myself’ moment when I came on,” he said. “I remember getting back on the bus, and my phone was just going crazy.”
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O’Neill is now in his third month with NYCFC, but feels that he’s adjusted well to the club’s playing style and his teammates’ tendencies. Adjusting to a new club is always difficult — he’d moved from England to Australia to Belgium and to the United States over his career to date. In Belgium, he found the language barrier tricky. He credited City’s staff and his teammates for helping him get settled in New York. It helped that he’d spent time with another club under City Football Group’s ownership — Melbourne City — and that he had played with one of Birk Risa’s friends, Valon Berisha, while there.
With New York, O’Neill said his strength was in the build-up phase of the club’s attack, getting the ball out of high-pressure situations and creating opportunities for the forwards. He wants to become more of an attacking threat, while maintaining the link between the back line and the front line.
Midfielders require a versatile skillset. O’Neill said he’s comfortable in all midfield positions, from a higher-up role to a holding position. Here, he wants to develop into a more attacking role.
“I want to be playing that last pass,” he said. “Getting more assists and pre-assists, like they say here, as well. That’s something that I want to improve on. I’m here to improve myself and get the best out of the team as well.”
Though he’s only been with the club for a few weeks, O’Neill has made a quick but positive impression on his new teammates.
“Nothing but quality,” Tayvon Gray said. “From the first day, I played with him a lot, because he plays on my side, right side particularly, so I interacted with him a lot. I passed the ball to him a lot. So I got a good feel for him, pretty much on the first day.”
“Very amazing,” Maxi Moralez said about O’Neill’s performance in the derby. Moralez added that O’Neill’s club and national team experience is important for the club.
“We try to help him adapt in our system, our team,” Moralez said.
There is another side to O’Neill that’s equally important to his role on the field: leadership. From a young age, he’s always been a player who’s led by example. He wasn’t always the loudest on his team.
When Standard Liège handed O’Neill the captain’s armband, he became more vocal on the pitch. He’d talk before games. He’d offer his club some final words of wisdom before they walked out for matches. This was something new to him, but he said that this experience made him grow as a leader.
O’Neill also brings leadership to New York. He wants to help the club’s younger players develop and make their mark.
Head coach Pascal Jansen, however, said that developing a leading voice in the dressing room takes time. O’Neill’s priority is to help the team on the pitch.
“We know he has these qualities,” Jansen said. “On the other hand, these things go by nature. What you perform on the pitch will help you in the dressing room. So he’s busy trying to make sure that the rest of the team understands him and he understands the rest of the team, and the rest will come in a natural way, and so will his leadership qualities.”
O’Neill has some runway to establish his voice with City. He’s signed through 2028 and figures to be a part of a pivotal time in the club’s history. NYCFC’s new soccer-specific home, Etihad Park, is scheduled to open in 2027. O’Neill was impressed with the crowd at the derby. The new stadium gives the club a chance to make it their own.
No doubt, he’s got the mindset and experience — from the Premier League to his national team to a captain’s band, playing up and down the midfield — necessary to become a centerfold of the club’s leadership core in the years to come.
“I’ve experienced ups, I’ve experienced downs,” O’Neill said. “I want to create a culture here that’s successful and a winning culture, which I’ve been a part of, and I’ve been a part of the other side as well, where it’s not.
“It takes a lot of hard work, and then there’s a lot of sacrifice, but that feeling that you get in the changing room when you have that is something that I want to get. I think that’s probably my biggest thing.”
