FC Cincinnati 2-2 Bethlehem Steel FC: A Brand New Them (Dammit!)

Incredibly, I'm not first to that analogy.

This has to be quick. It’s late, I got all kinds o’ shit ahead in the next two days, etc. etc. etc. [Ed. – Disregard; I passed out in the pasta salad before I could post last night. Still I preserved most of the mess.]

Where to begin, usual caveat applies - e.g., this counts as my second, 90-minute game with FC Cincinnati - only with a twist - e.g., motherfuckers changed the whole damn line-up on me. I come from Portland, Oregon, people. Portland. It takes injury (and inexcusable) jogging to get knocked out of the Portland Timbers starting eleven. I’m used to almost pointless predictability in my line-ups, that’s all I’m getting at. Anyway, moving on…

FC Cincinnati cannot be happy with that game - i.e., the one where they broadly outplayed Bethlehem Steel FC from about the 15th minute, if with major ups and downs between that point and the end. (See here for all the stats and highlights on offer here; I'll try to find other sources going forward.) That game absolutely became Cincy’s for the taking after the 55th minute with the rather stupid sending off of Olivier Mbaizo, a Bethlehem defender(?) who tackled too hard and then couldn’t manage the slew of mini-provocations that followed.

Now, hold that thought, because a whole bunch of crazy crap happened roughly ten minutes after that sending off.

How to keep this short? OK, it took both teams a while to get rolling in the game, but FC Cincinnati generally took over when noted above, but Bethlehem still scored first, the cheeky bastards. That took a piece of raw persistence from Derrick Jones, someone Philadelphia Union fans should recognize (I think) and also definitely in the Top 3 players on the field tonight, but that also kicked the game into “give-a-shit” gear for both teams. Cagey switched to combative, to some extent. And that’s when things turned.

After Mbaizo lost too much of his shit to be ignored (he practically begged to be sent off), Cincinnati took advantage, even if it took 10 minutes to take advantage. Cincinnati’s two goals came within (roughly) one minute of the other, and they also followed from a sort of poetic justice. The guys who scored them - Russell Cicerone and Nazmi Albadawi - had been Cincy’s best players on the night, so seeing that rewarded felt good. Cicerone scored the prettier goal and he scored second, but the after-glow on that fucker got snuffed out under one minute later when Bethlehem’s theretofore invisible Fabian Herbers turned a short feed/burst of speed (relative to Cincinnati’s Jem De Wit) into Bethlehem back in the game. He leveled the score, and that’s where the game ended, 2-2, and with Cincinnati with the bigger disappointment.

Outside the game itself, what context I have comes from what I saw and stray comments from the booth. It sounds like Bethlehem played a bunch of kids, something that, for all I know (and alarmingly), didn’t help Cincinnati expand the margin in this game; the home team owned the night on shots (25, 10 on goal), but still walked away even on points. At the same time, because Cincinnati started seven (7!) different players from the only other game I’ve ever seen Cincy play - this one - that makes what I’m attempting here like comparing penguins and ostriches - i.e., two animals who excel in the environment they know, but throw a penguin in the savannah and an ostrich in the Arctic, and you’ve got nothing but dead birds, and where was I?

Basically, I watched two versions of the same team play against two different opponents, and that’s most of what I know about the team. That’s not much to work with, so I’d like to close with observations that I feel safe making.

1) Cincinnati Has Looked the Better Team

Cincinnati was definitely the better team in the two games I’ve watched, but they “showed a little too much belly” to the opposition (said no one ever; what I mean is Cincy has left some big, soft openings in both the games I watched). They piled on the shots, last night in particular, and that makes this feel like lost points.

2) Leveling Up, Or Not

Among the things I’m watching for with Cincy are players who look likely to step up with the team when it moves into Major League Soccer. This will both take time and involve the some amount of creative extrapolation, but I’ve started my short-list of candidates. Cicerone and Albadawi, to name two, and they’ve got decent fullbacks in Blake Smith and Matt Bahner. Danni Konig could level up with any team looking for a bruising big man, but, for now, I want to ground this question on two players: Cicerone and, one not yet named, Kenney Walker. On what I’ve seen so far, Cicerone could have a shot – perhaps not where he’s playing now. He gets through often enough at the USL level (time and again, based on what I’ve seen), so I’d totally give him a shot as a winger in MLS, but he might also convert into a serious fullback. Walker is a different story: his passing is…all right, and good enough to give him set-piece duty, but he looked a little sloppy with distribution and a couple steps too slow at the USL level. Bottom line, I don’t think he’d keep up in MLS, at least not so far.

For his part, Smith looks like a decent left back - something any team can use - and Jimmy McLaughlin plays like an actual winger, another rare commodity, and with respectable speed. And that’s a good transition to my last point…

3) Change, Wherever It Came From

Cincy spent the first half attacking Bethlehem’s left through (mostly) Cicerone and Albadawi riffing off one another, and with semi-regular assistance from Bahnner. After the half, a lot of the traffic switched to Cincy's left (could have phrased this better), through Smith and McLaughlin. I’m not sure that side “works better” (emphasis on the verb in there, “works,” as in I have too small a sample for hard judgment), but Cincy found their openings from the left - perhaps not uncoincidentally (contested word, btw) by playing to Albadawi and Cicerone from the other side. Then again, how much of that followed from having the man advantage?

I think that’s it. In closing, no, seeing two vastly different teams start doesn’t help me with getting a handle on this team. I can’t fault Cincinnati for rotating the squad, not with a game against the Richmond Kickers on Saturday – i.e., any team will drop games, but fatigued teams drop more, etc.  – and I’m a fan of squad rotation as an approach, at least where practicable, which could be less often than the balance between long-term team preparedness and results allows. Still, that makes it harder to gauge the meaning of this game and the general state of trends for FC Cincinnati.

I guess the biggest takeaway is that Cincinnati played well in spite of the changes. Their bigger guns (Konig, all-time leading scorer, too) showed up pretty well in his shortened time on the field, and that’s a positive. Just as good, their regular guys (Cicerone and Albadawi) stayed regular over two games. They didn’t break down Bethlehem completely, but that had as much to do with Bethlehem’s ‘keeper, John McCarthy, cleaning up most of what his defense let through - and that wasn’t a lot.

All in all, FC Cincinnati still looks like a good team, but they still don’t read as anything better than a high-end and ambitious USL team. Oh, and the commentating team simply could not get enough of the atmosphere at the game. If Cincinnati can keep that up when they step up, they’ll have a decent cushion of good faith in the event it takes them a while to find their feet.