FC Cincinnati Preview: On Beards & Handling a Sharp Object

Yep. Scary.

So, you’ve got the current Supporters’ Shield leaders coming to your place for a visit. How do you prepare? What steps can your team take to make this visit as frustrating and generally unpleasant as possible?

The work of preparing an answer to those questions falls on FC Cincinnati. For what it’s worth, I’d call getting past the idea of Los Angeles FC as somehow invincible a first necessary step. It gets harder from there, unfortunately…

When LAFC beat Sporting Kansas City 3-1 last weekend, they played a certain way, one that looked familiar, but still different in their win over Sporting Kansas City in Week 7, something familiar, but still different, from what they played like when they first joined MLS (think of a man you've known for a long time showing up with (or without) a beard the next time you see him; just work with me). Back then, LAFC deployed what I recall as a “second-wave press” - i.e., they’d keep the forward players high-ish, but without chasing much, but would go after the first ball into midfield like fucking piranhas and then “Red Bull” teams to death - i.e., the two-to-four-pass-then-goal/miss/corner attack - after the turnover. It was a spin on Red Bull New York’s gegen-press and relentless described it well.

The “relentless” essence hasn’t changed, but where and how it happens has. For one, new coach Steve Cherundolo has dialed back the defensive posture from “hunt” to “step” - i.e., they pressure the ball, only more with emphasis on creating conditions for turnovers than actively forcing them (for what it’s worth, I’d argue this shift started under Bob Bradley). While this has changed where the attack starts (e.g., deeper), it hasn’t rewired its fundamental impulses. LAFC under Cherundolo still gets the ball forward quickly and keep pushing forward once they get it up there; these forays either succeed or fail in short order, but they also have the cumulative effect of steady, targeted probing. I even saw this in their loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy. To lift a phrase out of the MLS Weakly for Week 7:

“[LAFC] hardly played SKC off the pitch - and the numbers back that up - but they played with…I guess I’d call it persistence. LAFC gets hold of the ball and just keeps probing, Kwadwo Opoku from one side, Latif Blessing from another, like a series of small fires. Ismael Tajouri-Shradi’s wunder-goal drew most of the attention, but I see Jose Cifuentes’ insurance goal as the real payoff for all that work.”

FC Cincy Preview: at Atlanta United FC, Unlikely Does Not = Impossible

But, if Atlanta keeps handing out giant checks...

It pains me to lead with this, but I don’t think I’ve spent a full, uninterrupted 90 minutes looking at Atlanta United FC this season. I have, however, kept an eye on their doings, heard some stuff about Josef Martinez not looking like himself before he checked out for six weeks to get some free-floating bone out of his body and recovery from the surgery. I’ve floated the idea that they got “their mojo” back in a Week 3 recap I regret and/or still think I’m paying for in lost interest and, despite arguing they mostly survived their home draw to Club du Foot Montreal in my Week 4 recap, and, against the general tenor of what little commentary I read, I still suspect that Atlanta will be playoff competitive in 2022…

…yes, even after losing to Charlotte just last week. And yet I still end at the same thought: if Atlanta isn’t the most inscrutable team in MLS’s young 2022 season, they aren’t far off. Games that look like accomplishments - e.g., their confident win over Sporting Kansas City in Week 1, or even Week 5’s road win at DC United - look different in context (e.g., SKC’s slow start and just…DC in 2022). They’re better at home - seven points from nine on offer - but they still don’t present as a GOOD team, not according to their early record. Had they won at Charlotte - and, yeah, losing on an olimpico is the soccer equivalent of getting real money off a scratch-it, but they also failed to score themselves - sticking with the whole “mojo” theory wouldn’t feel like such a stretch. But they did lose…

As such, FC Cincinnati will walk into a minor mystery Saturday afternoon (evening, Eastern Standard, right around dinner time). By one of the broadest measures available - goals scored and allowed - Atlanta comes in on the right side of middling in the attack (nine goals scored) and the wrong side of the same in defense (again, nine goals), but the word “middling” does the most work in that thought. Moreover, and as much as the condensed game of the Montreal game made me question the defense, that’s a respectable home record. More to the point, I wouldn’t expect any neutral observer to look to FC Cincy to put a dent in that adjective…

…but it wouldn’t surprise me to see them steal this one. And let me make one thing perfectly clear before continuing: I’ll feel all right about anything better than Cincy losing in a blow-out, aka, the psychological benefits of playing as the underdog. Every win is a tablespoon of gravy, in my mind, and a road draw isn’t much different - especially when punching up nails a (for now) proximate rival.

Charlotte FC 2-0 FC Cincinnati: Subject/Object

When they come, will you be ready?

This could be me ranting into a vacuum in response to nothing, but I’ve got something to get off my chest, so, here it is.

I see people talking and talking expectations for their team and evaluating results they’ve earned or burned with almost no reference to the quality and, more importantly, the form of the opposing team. It takes its most persistent form in assuming that what works in one game will somehow work in every game; the specific thing could be a tactic or a player, but the basic argument amounts to having a conversation about game as if half the people involved neither participated, nor played a hand in the result. I’m sure some percentage of this gripe follows from me reading a novel in between the lines (often of 280 or fewer characters), and it mostly comes up when I see people bitching about a result that should have surprised them half as much as it did, but this drives me all kinds of fucking crazy - i.e., this has become my king pet peeve in all sports.

Some of soapbox soliloquy pertains to FC Cincinnati’s 0-2 loss at Charlotte FC, though personal application may vary. Related, that hyperlink will be the last time FC Cincy serves as the subject to any thought in this post. Figuratively.

Because I had to wait for the replay on this game, I had an opportunity to absorb the post-game chatter before sitting down to actually watch (most of) the game. [Disclosure: I watched the first 28 minutes, then all the second half, so whatever good shit happened from the 28th to the 46th minute doesn’t exist for me.] As such, I went in knowing things didn’t go well, but without really knowing how or why.

If I had to tell an alien about this game, I’d start by telling Bleep-Borp (for that is its name) that most of the notes I wrote while watching pointed to things Charlotte was doing. To give a couple examples, I couldn’t help but note the energy and overall effectiveness of SuperDraftee, Benjamin Bender, or how Derrick Jones stomped around the middle of Charlotte’s half of the field like an colossus who stood 50% taller than everyone around him (this definitely applied to Luciano Acosta). I’d flag how Christian Fuchs and Joseph Mora’s names came up often enough on defensive actions/stops that I still haven’t been properly introduced to Guzman Corujo and Jaylin Lindsay, even if I’m willing to take it on faith that they actually played yesterday. And, yeah, Kristijan Kahlina made some impressive saves, but the only one that felt like robbery was his save on Acosta’s bright, shining moment at the end of the first half (okeh, yeah, I dipped back in for the last four, five minutes of the first half as well).