FC Cincinnati 1-2 DC United, Disappointment, Malaise and a Dash of FC Dallas

A guerrilla warfare situation.

After watching FC Cincinnati stall out to a 1-2 loss versus DC United – i.e., the team currently 12th in the East and who started yesterday with half as many points as Cincinnati – I looped back to their midweek 3-3 home draw versus FC Dallas – i.e., the team currently 11th in the West, who have as many points (18) as DC on the first day of June. That was last night.

Before sitting down to type this, I looped back to my notes on last weekend’s 2-4 loss at Atlanta United FC. At that time, that performance/result presented as a bad day at the office meets an ambush – think the foxhole scene in Red Dawn, the original, not the remake – because who thought an Atlanta team eight games into tripping over their own dicks, particularly on the attacking end, would run over a defense, 1) operating with all hands present, and 2) that had allowed (about) just one goal per game to that point in the season?

So…how many bad days at the office does it take to add up to a slump?

About the Game(s)
When Kevin Denkey crowned a full-field attacking move at the 15th minute that went down easy as an oyster, signs pointed to the machinery being back in place and turning smoothly. Sure, DC had already gone up a goal by then – see Gabriel Pirani’s finish at the second minute from the top of the 18 off a (too) simple set piece – and, after some light preventive bunkering, they returned to a press that forced Cincinnati to play through traffic all over the field. Still, Cincy had managed it well enough, up to and including getting close to goal with avenues and options. Denkey’s goal got the Bailey bopping and DC United didn’t have Christian Benteke to manage, so more of the same seemed possible, maybe even likely…

…and then Conner “Excuse Me, Who?” Antley popped up at the back post on a corner to head DC back into the lead. Two set pieces, two goals; you literally hate to see it.

What? A trombone?!

Cincinnati chased the equalizer for the rest of the game, with the machinery grinding louder and rougher at 10-minute intervals. DC threw in a lot of sand (e.g., 25 fouls), maybe even some broken glass (e.g., 5 yellow cards), and the ref helped by “letting them play” with a nod to what passes for officiating in pro wrestling. Boris Enow, Lucas Bartlett and Kye Rowles pushed things to quivering edge of grabbing the steel chair from outside the ring and, rightly or wrongly, that kept the cards in Alexis da Silva’s pocket. I lean toward wrongly on that pop quiz – e.g., how many times do you see a ref count persistent infringement to three and still dish a warning? – but Cincinnati amplified the abuse with frequent acts of self-harm. Give-aways did their share of damage, but the fact I can’t remember a 50/50 ball won by a Cincy player not wearing No. 5 (Obi!) still strikes me as the bigger issue as I type. One needs to look no further than the “foul differential” to know that DC stuck in harder on most challenges; all it took from there was beating the home team to most of the loose balls. “Playing scared” doesn’t quite fit what I’m seeing, though maybe Cincy had cause to feel some jitters after watching DC, again, go to the edge of kicking Matt Miazga off the field.

Circling back to the draw versus Dallas has all the above looking more feature than bug. Dip back into the Atlanta loss and another theory starts dancing around the edges. Cincinnati has played patient to a fault, particularly after going down a goal (which they didn’t do versus Dallas, but stay with me), perhaps too confident in what has worked before and too caught up in the slick attacking patterns and all the chances they’re delivering – e.g., the combined 47 shots with 17 on goal against Atlanta and Dallas. And yet there’s subtext even there: Atlanta arguably punished Cincy for getting on the front foot and they struggled with getting so much as a big toe up on both Dallas and DC. And, to really drive home the sense of things slipping down a drain, the attacking stats finally dried up against DC, with just nine shots fired and a (comparatively) mere four shots on goal.

At least the cratered attacking stats versus DC can be waved away as a one-off; the real nightmare fuel lurks on the other end of the field in the specter of 3.0 goals/game allowed – and against some of the weakest attacking teams in the whole damn league. (Atlanta looks better post-Cincy than they do today.) All three goals allowed versus Dallas meet some definition of soft – e.g., Luca Orellano getting torched around the outside by Shak Moore (Petar Musa scored it) and imbalance in the shape that opened a vast mountain meadow for Anderson Julio up the right – and that just piles on top of giving up the early goals in the first place.

"I have no appetite and can't get it up."

Something ain’t right right now, clearly, and the sum of it adds up to something like a bout of complacency. That applies on the defensive side, in particular, unless you believe it was Nick Hagglund holding the whole thing together. The attacking side has been a combination work-in-progress/dueling solo projects between Evander and Denkey all season, so that’s less unsettling, if for now. The alternative turns on questions of personnel and I just don’t think that’s the rub.

An Aside on DC
Credit where it’s due, even if it’s grudging: Troy Lesesne’s game plan came all the way off. the pressure (and fouls) shook Cincinnati right off their game and all DC needed to convert that to a win were strong games from Pirani, Enow, Joao Peglow and a battling back line. It takes a single question – i.e., where was this all season? – to render all that irrelevant, but I don’t see an argument against DC as the better team, no matter how distasteful I find the methods. The only other thought I have was one raised in the broadcast – i.e., whether playing without Benteke has liberated DC to take a more team-oriented approach. While that’s not a crazy theory, the results before yesterday’s win point less to that than to DC catching a Cincinnati team a little lost up its own ass.

A Shorter Aside on Dallas
I only watched about an hour of this game and haven’t seen enough FC Dallas to make big observational swings, so I’ll keep these notes broad. They’re often capable, but rarely competitive, but having Musa nudges them closer to the latter. That matters because, apart from that one time (at band camp) when they got their teeth handed to them through their own ass by San Diego, (0-5 spells “oof”) Dallas generally keeps games close. They do that despite a roster that widely presents as average, but nothing is hurting them in the here and now than how hard they suck at home.

Because I think the “complacency/malaise” contains them all, I’m going to skip talking points for this one. I don’t have points of interest besides getting some satisfaction out of seeing Orellano on the left instead of the right, even if just now and then. Overall, the DC loss feels like a genuine low point for the recent staggering stretch. Pat Noonan and the rest of the brain trust have 11 days to shake them out of it. The New England Revolution waits on the other side of the break. I’ll have more on this site between here and there, including a couple conference-wide clustercusses, but this particular channel will go dark till then.