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| The wind was a factor, but not an excuse. |
Few things kick a guy’s ego harder than seeing a confident prediction (from here; scroll way down) blow up in his face in just four days’ time. The Philadelphia Union shoved FC Cincinnati into a fucking locker last Saturday, posting a 4-1 home win that left their fans merrily dooping into the night. By the time the ref blew the final whistle, Philly had made off with their lunch money, best friend and first two girlfriends.
About the Game
Both teams came to battle and both looked game for it – even after the Union forced their first goal around Cincy’s right flank a mere six minutes into the game. Related, if mostly in a vibez/spiritual sense, Kai Wagner’s decision to continue his overlapping run contained the seed narrative for the way the entire game played out. Philadelphia’s players read a bounce before Cincy’s time and time again and saw a play develop two beats ahead: whether it was a sixth sense or the sixth day into some shared Groundhog Day, everything a Union player touched turned into something a little better; they played with their wind at their backs, literally, and somehow in both directions. Another thing I noticed: Philly didn’t press, at least not in a greyhound-after-a-mechanical rabbit way; it was more pushing a 4-2-4 to the top of Cincinnati’s defensive third, daring them to play, then getting after anything that moved like a greyhound getting after a mechanical rabbit. The approach proved beyond effective. Cincy struggled to get the ball to the center-stripe and saw it roll back into their defense more times than the Union’s 14 shots (7 on goal!) suggest. Philadelphia would score two more – one at the 30th minute, which included one of those moments when you appreciated VAR for teaching refs some humility (this was an easy call in real time), the second at the 52nd when Tai Baribo wrapped up his hat trick – without Cincy showing any meaningful signs of life. Cincinnati continued to play as if running knee-deep through mud even after Evander scored A Very Evander Goal (i.e., he did it all, start to finish). I’m told Cincinnati fired seven shots somewhere from inside that void and I’m guessing three of those shots and both of the shots on goal came at the end of Alvas Powell’s run from right back to (near) glory just after the 70th minute (this made the full highlights). If this game has a “what might have been,” it was Kevin Denkey tagging his rebound off Andre Blake’s right post instead of into the goal. If that shot goes in, maybe Philly sweats a little instead of making a feast out of another turnover by way of (the impressively effective) Quinn Sullivan feeding Uruguayan striker Bruno Damiani for their fourth. The game was over before it started and Baribo is, however implausibly, the current 2025 Golden Boot leader.
Some Notes on FC Cincinnati
Per the quote up top, I didn’t see this one coming, not one week after singing the praises of FC Cincinnati’s spine – the axis of Nwobodo, Miles Robinson and Roman Celentano. Then again, this game presented more as Cincy’s spine breaking under the weight of the team’s incapacity to get the ball either into the midfield or further up the field with some kind of control; Denkey probably forgot what the ball looked somewhere around the 40th minute. 85% of the balls bouncing Philly’s way took care of the rest. Cincy tried a couple switches to find an outlet – the main one I noticed was Obinna Nwobodo flaring into the gap in the right (Cincy’s left) of Philly’s 4-2-4 – but I don’t think they actually scrambled Philly’s lines of defense more than five times, maybe six over the entire game. If Bradley Carnell laid the trap that choked off Cincy’s favorite outlets – i.e., if all this came more from careful planning than inspired play (and divine wind) - mission accomplished. And maybe the entire episode points to the limits of (and, therefore, ways to limit) Cincinnati’s capacity to play out of the back when they can’t get either DeAndre Yedlin or Lukas Engel on the ball facing forward. When I bopped over to the FC Cincinnati subreddit at the half, I saw several commenters comparing Yuya Kubo to a headless chicken and, while nothing in his play argued against that, I’m not clear on the point of singling him out when presented with a problem that looked pretty damn global.
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| A dude who farts on people in Walmarts, apparently. |
1) Can Anunga Spell Bucha (and Can Anyone Spell Bucha)?
Something else I saw on the Cincy subreddit: people flaming Brian Anunga and lauding Pavel Bucha as the key that unlocks their better selves. Because my unpublished notes from the previous week’s game was whether Cincinnati could improve on Bucha, I find this funny, but I can also say that my faith in Anunga has faded over each stop in his career. The heart’s there, the head ain’t bad, but the body has other ideas; his secondary assist in Philly’s second goal was just the most egregious example from an afternoon of him looking more overwhelmed. I’m putting a pin in both Anunga and Bucha for now, but have flagged this as an area to watch.
2) The Art of Escape of Velocity
Against everything above, maybe Cincinnati simply had a bad, disconnected game - they happen! – and maybe they go back to looking as comfortable playing out of pressure and get back to bossing the midfield in the weeks ahead (i.e., next week doesn’t count, see below)…but what happens if they don’t? Or, if we want to keep our feet on the ground as we discuss, maybe there will be matchdays and teams that stuff Cincinnati back into that locker and, try as they might, they can’t push their way out. One thought that comes to me: having Evander drop back to receive the ball, carry the ball through some pressure, whether by pass or dribble. That could just be me applying lessons learned from watching a Portland Timbers team that couldn’t play their way through a wet paper bag half the damn time; it could also pull him too far away from the opposition’s goal. I’m just saying I’ve seen him do it before, at least a score of times, so know he can do it.
2a) One Argument Against That
Between Kubo and Evander, which player do you want dropping deeper to find the game versus which player do you want to keep closer to the opposition goal? Real question, because I'm not sure I have an answer yet.
3) An Appeal to Keep Your Collective Pants On
Evander is a hard player to figure out, or perhaps more accurately, to optimize. In my experience, he’s a No. 10 that plays like a No. 8, but that doesn’t mean, 1) that is what he prefers, and 2) what Pat Noonan, et al, sees as his best fit in the larger system. Just something else to watch going forward.
Bottom line: FC Cincinnati presents as a team in the process of finding its very best self, a process that necessarily involves figuring out where to stick a couple key pieces (Denkey and Evander) into the final portrait. I have faith that the Spine will buy them time to get there without too much bleeding.
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| An actual Philly player. |
If you told me they’d be a nose above the San Jose Earthquakes at the top of Major League Soccer Standings at the end of MLS Week 2, I would have called you a liar twice over. And yet, here, and they, are. Philly’s wins, both against direct Eastern Conference rivals and/or their considerable betters from 2024, only adds to the impression that Carnell has them either stoned on belief or bought into a better system. Even more remarkable: the several players, both new and young, sometimes both, that are holding their early run together – e.g., Sullivan on the young side, and Danley Jean Jacques, Francis Westfield and Olwethu Makhanya on both. With an assist from some old hands who are straight-up killing it in the season’s early days – e.g., Daniel Gazdag and Wagner – this ragtag gaggle of youngsters has raised a banner announcing themselves as the league’s best. If anything makes the whole enterprise look shaky, it’s the fact they’re doing it on the back of five goals from Tai-freakin’-Baribo. No, I can’t believe it’ll continue either, but I also didn’t see any Philadelphia team dropping four goals on Orlando City SC and Cincinnati.
We’ll learn more of that when Philly plays the New England Revolution on the ro…or maybe we’ll learning something when they host Nashville…huh. Judged from a second row seat look at the start they’ve had, I’d be stunned to gobsmackery to see a Union team this hot fail to collect all six points against the Revs and Nashville. Then again, isn’t that how reputations get undone. Speaking of who’s coming up next, only for FC Cincinnati…
A Toronto FC Scouting Report: Hack the Bone, Hack the Bone
I sat through stretches of Orlando’s 4-2 win over Toronto yesterday, most of it around the goals, but could (again) never shake the feeling that Cincy won't take the same approach to the game as Orlando. That’s not to say they should borrow some ideas, not least because Orlando did to Toronto what Philly did to Cincinnati, if in a different (possibly replicable way), but moving on to a…more analogous game felt wise. After about 15 minutes of watching midfield defending that would’ve looked soft in an All-Star-Game, it occurred to me that DC’s Week 1 draw against Toronto wouldn’t be all that enlightening either; DC doesn't look so good yet either. With that, let’s pick through some wreckage.
TFC was insanely easy to play through in both games. On the evidence, new head coach Robin Fraser (hopefully) hasn’t had the time to get defensive roles sorted – see, Exhibit A and Exhibit B from the Orlando loss (and I left another exhibit on the table). On a more fundamental level, they allowed the Lions to play direct, vertical passes into midfield, several of them breaking two defensive lines, with zero pressure to the player receiving the ball and it was the persistence of the phenomenon that moves me to treat it as a fundamental phenomenon. The defense looked sharper and more present in the game against DC, but the acres of vertical space also persisted. I can’t see Fraser letting that continue with that shape forever, but here’s to hoping he gives it at least another week.
They have some good pieces on the player side – e.g., Richie Laryea gives reliable service up the wide areas and Federico Bernardeschi has the technical ability to make the most out of a seam – but, between injuries and an absence of signings, they also have Jonathan Osorio playing as a forward (even his goal against DC looks like a midfielder’s goal) and they have a rookie (Markus Cimermancic), if a capable one, holding down the left side of the field (not alone, but...). The current midfield pairing of Alonso Coello and Deybi Flores played like spectators for disturbing stretches of both games and I didn’t see a lot more from their (presumed) primary forward, Theo Corbeanu, than something that looked like Slenderman chasing a ball he pushed too far ahead of himself.
The omens are good, in other words. Even with tomorrow’s game against Tigres UANL (rightfully) consuming their attention, the general state of Toronto should give Cincy license to rotate players as heavily as they did versus Motagua. If that’s not getting results, they can always send out the regulars to either continue the job, finish it, or, worst case, rescue it. I don’t see a reason to play anything but directly on both sides of the ball against Toronto and, by all means, go nuts on feeding those gambling runs up the gut and against the back line. Watching Philadelphia bully Orlando, then seeing Orlando bully Toronto feels like a green light to make the most of what looks like a fantastic opportunity for a rebound.
Till the next one…
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