New York City FC 1-0 FC Cincinnati: The Many, Grace-Given Misses of Alonso Martinez

Alonso Martinez's afternoon, a visual.

FC Cincinnati has managed to stay one goal ahead of the opposition for the past month or so. That was always going to come to an end, of course – people change, hairstyles change, dog people wake up one day and realize they’re cat people, etc. – but Cincy was damned lucky to not lose in a blow out yesterday. New York City FC gave them a taste of their own medicine with a 1-0 win in the shitbox disgrace of a stadium they call home and I’m sure it tasted just as bitter.

About the Game, Briefly
It’s not often I find the lineup presented at the top of the broadcast – half of ‘em feel like misdirection from the head coach, honestly – but NYCFC’s attacking shape looked closer to the 3-2-4-1 than it did to the 4-3-3 shown in the official match report. Keeping all those players high served the familiar purpose of stifling Cincy’s build-out – which was huge – and having players closer to their goal to exploit any turnovers. One direct effect, aka, the huge one, was pinning both DeAndre Yedlin and Lukas Engel against their respective sidelines and cut off their outlets into the middle (hold this thought*). It took Cincy 20-25 minutes to sort out playing through it – they had their first coordinated break-out around the 30th minute (Luca Orellano missed) – or the loosening of NYC’s noose simply coincided with Keaton Parks limping off, but it proved too little, too late. The hosts had already found two quality looks within the first six minutes and it didn’t even take them 10 minutes to open the scoring. The pervasive role luck plays in goal-scoring is one of the more under-appreciated aspects of the game – e.g., it took (think it was) Miles Robinson’s feeble toe-picked “clearance” to steer the ball into the path of Julian Fernandez, who tucked the ball into the lower right corner of Roman Celetano’s – but the first half of the game saw New York make enough of its own luck to export it to abroad. The final stats erase that a bit, but it took (at least) 20 minutes for Cincy’s defense to get a handle on Andres Perea’s back-post runs and Alonso Martinez’ missed penalty kick at the 12th minute was the first of, gods, three(? four?) clear-cut-to-the-point-of-gilded opportunities he got. (To see the overstuffed catalog, kindly reference the full highlights.) If I had to guess at how NYCFC got that many trips to the same well, I’d put money on Pascal Jansen keeping Martinez close to Matt Miazga and putting them in as many foot races as he could; that led to the penalty call, if nothing else.

To their credit, Cincinnati ended the first half strong, mainly through a barrage of corner kicks and a couple offside finishes, and they got a boost when Gerardo Valenzuela came on for Yuya Kubo (who endured a dismal day). The latter made NYCFC’s ‘keeper Matt Freese sweat more than any Cincy player yesterday, certainly more than Evander’s oh-so-Evander choice to attempt a free kick from 30-35 yards out, i.e., he knows he can, but maybe spend a little longer on whether he should, etc. Against that, Martinez missed a wide-open header from around/inside the six around the 62nd minute; again, NYC had several opportunities to insure this win, but stubbornly passed. Bottom line, New York City FC had a game-plan and executed 95% of it, while Cincy spent most of the game trying to solve for it. Losing away to a decent team is always more the due order of the universe than cause for panic, but who doesn’t want their local team to win it all and/or every week? (The author shyly raises his hand on the grounds that watching endless wins gets weirdly dull.)

A Little More on Cincy
FC Cincinnati
7-3-1, 22 pts., 15 gf, 13 ga (+2); home 4-0-1, away 3-3-0
Last 9 Results: WLDWWWWWL
Strength/Location of Schedule
v TFC (2-0 W); @ CLT (0-2 L); v ATL (2-2 D); @ NSH (2-1 W); v NE (1-0 W); @ DC (1-0 W); @ CHI (3-2 W); v SKC (2-1 W); @ NYC (0-1 L)

It depends on the kind of shit you're managing.

Cincinnati has played a Charmin-soft schedule since the end of March – starting with that win at Nashville that looked bigger at the time and catching New England at a good time – so the question of how they’d handle taller opposition in trickier venues has lurked in the wings at least as long. While I wouldn’t call this the answer, both the fact and manner of this loss provides an answer. Cincy has the blessed good fortune of another run of easy games between now and, Leagues Cup aside, late June: Columbus away is the only tough game in what, on present form for all involved, looks like a soft path (v ATX, @ TFC, @ ATL, v FCD, v DC, @ NE, @ MTL, @ ORL). Plenty of time and opportunity to pad the ol’ account, which is fine and swell for compiling points in the regular season, but still leaves open that same nagging question of how Cincinnati will ultimately match up against the league’s better teams.

Back to the game at hand, Tah Anunga has as good a shout as any player for Cincy’s Man of the Match. He covered the ground, battled for every ball that came near him, and probably had a better look at goal than either Evander or Kevin Denkey, or even Orellano, but that just circles back to all the things that didn’t click. As someone over on Bluesky pointed out (goes by Laszler), with both Obinna Nwobodo and Pavel Bucha absent, Cincinnati didn’t have a strong midfield presence in either direction – e.g., no one to command that area (Nwobodo) and no one to connect to Evander or Denkey centrally; that’s not Anunga’s game and Kubo played like what he is, a guy coming back from injury. That situation improved after Valenzuela came on (particularly with Denkey, though the highlights revealed that Denkey and Evander are aware of one another), but I’m still left with questions – e.g., did NYC fall back to defend their lead? Did Parks coming out force that or complicate it? All in all, Cincy’s scoring remains…not quite anemic, but certainly south of expectations given the investment. Evander and Denkey seem doomed to fully arrive in the office on separate days, while Orellano often looks like he’s doing his own thing out there. The “sleeping giant” argument holds up less well until the giant wakes up, y’know?

A Little More on NYCFC
New York City FC
5-4-2, 14 pts., 132 gf, 13 ga (0); home 4-1-0, away 1-3-2
Last 9 Results: WWDLLWLWW
Strength/Location of Schedule
ORL (2-1 W); v NE (2-1 W); @ CLB (0-0 D); @ ATL (3-4 L); v MIN (1-2 L); v PHI (1-0 W); @ NE (0-2 L); @ TFC (1-0 W); v CIN (1-0 W)

A metaphor for my confidence.

Because I haven’t watched them much this season, and because a lot of what they did flew in the face of expectations of what I put into my Scouting Report (maybe I watched the wrong games?), I won’t pretend to have any great insights into this team or their long-term chances for 2025. To flag some things I did see/learn:

1) Why don’t they play every game the way they played against Cincy? Aggression seems to suit them, but maybe that’s a home phenomenon?

2) NYC did a great job of getting their angles right both defensively (noted above) and offensively. As a team, their players moved to create passing lines when they were on the ball and suffocated the short passes when they were off it. Cincy assisted their defense by playing in transition; had they been better able to punish NYC for defending high as they did, Cincy might have got something out of this.

3) Teams will need to solve for Martinez running against their back line. He was a lot more effective than I expected.

4) NYCFC has six of their next nine games at home (Form Guide is still good for something, if barely and only until the ad swallows the content, as it currently is), so they should add a little padding to their points total in the weeks ahead as well. Which goes back to the question of what is really real in this damn league.  

That’s it for this one. The next expected post for this channel (or the Cincinnati sub-channel, specifically) should be a scouting report on Austin FC, but I am struggling with wanting to say anything about such a dull team. Every time I blow any aspect of a scouting report, I get (more) self-conscious about getting over my skis on this stuff. Between that and being sick at the sight of Sporting Kansas City (Portland’s opposition for next weekend), I’m probably going to post a random league-wide update. Till then…