FC Cincinnati 0-3 Real Salt Lake: A Night When Plan A Failed

No, FC Cincy, the voices are not friendly. Do not listen.

Well, that didn’t go well, obviously. Anyone who doubted the game was over after Real Salt Lake’s Albert Rusnak buried his 59th minute penalty (deserved; also, Jefferson Savarino is one of their guys), and his second goal of the game, should have disabused of any notions of a comeback by FC Cincinnati at the 65th minute when Alvas Powell picked up the ball and a head of steam and he carried it up the field…with somewhere between seven and eight Cincinnati players on the wrong side of the ball, i.e., behind him. Powell had to turn back inside Cincinnati’s defensive third to wait for everyone else to show up and, no, that’s not a good sign.

The rest of the game stretched out in a slow, frog-in-a-boiling-pot experience that ended the same way it started: Real Salt Lake three (3), FC Cincinnati zero (0). Then again, the whole thing projected as a depressing illusion because, even in their moments of dominance – at the start of each half, generally - Cincinnati created more corners than chances…which is factually untrue, but just barely, and also barely relevant. The one decent shot I remember FC Cincy getting – e.g., Allan Cruz’s header off Roland Lamah’s cross during the early, salad days – couldn’t have been their one (recorded, and seriously?) shot on goal, not least because it wasn’t on goal. Ah, hold on. Just remembered where the shot probably happened.

The match had a couple of turning points, but none as decisive as RSL’s second goal. Whether by accident or conscious decision (only The Shadow knows what goes on in the hearts of men), Cincinnati seemed over-eager to push for an equalizing goal after letting Salt Lake catch them off guard and against the run of play to score the game’s opening, game-winning goal. There was nothing irrational about giving it a shot, not with Cincy generally deciding what happened and where for most of the first half. It did, on the other hand, result in the home team getting caught too far upfield, with pants around ankles. The goal was all but scored when Savarino found Damir Kreilach just on RSL’s side of the midfield stripe, who would go on to complete the dissection from there. Kreilach played the ball to Baird on Cincinnati’s right and, in all the backward scrambling, Cincinnati’s three, final defenders pinched too hard to one side, leaving Rusnak free to set up the ensuing, fatal shooting gallery. It took RSL putting half their seven shots on target in a two-second span to score that second goal – a depressing spectacle, really – but that probably put three points beyond reach.

To pick up on what came back to me at the end of the penultimate paragraph, Cincinnati came as close to scoring as they managed all game (again. one. shot.) at the beginning of the second half, when one of their corners got highly interesting. That cracks open the door to what might have been, but only wide enough to where all you can see on the other side is darkness. Overall, though, Cincinnati could hold the ball and move it around, but they couldn’t take it anywhere worthwhile. RSL, meanwhile, took over the second half of each half (my work with legal descriptions comes through…), and found more ways to be lethal when they had the ball.

New England Revolution 0-2 FC Cincinnati: 1st Violin, 2nd Violin

I'll cut you. Bitch.

For all the unorthodoxies you’ll see down below, my primary take-away from FC Cincinnati’s 2-0 road win over the New England Revolution is fairly direct: I trust the roster construction.

Related, the heresy lingers around those roots.

To start at the beginning (feels natural), the only thing that surprised me about today’s result was how early and easily Cincinnati got up in New England’s shit. I expected a little deference, even though I didn’t see it as justified, i.e., see the Revs’ performance today, that’s not a good team at the mo, and may never be a good team so long as Brad Friedel holds the reins on their collective future, but that’s another topic for another post. All the same, anyone who looked at Cincinnati’s rebuild and saw a team that would spend its inaugural Major League Season punching out of the confines of a turtle’s shell would do themselves a favor by reassessing that theory. And, as pointed out by plenty of people (or just the ones I follow) on twitter, FC Cincinnati beat New England soundly with “starters” missing (this is a case where it’s OK to say, fuck the box score, seriously, ask a New England fan how much they value the edge in shots, corners, crosses and fouls).

It’s here that I admit that, until literally just now, I didn’t actually know who FC Cincy’s designated players are – but, for the record, Fanendo Adi and Allan Cruz. Both players missed todays’ game, and that’s where the $64,000 question kicks in: did you FC Cincinnati miss either player? Did you miss them (OK, yes, Cruz a bit; still studying)? What does the designated player really mean beyond the guy who gets paid more to play on the same team? For now, I’m treating that as both an open question and a gadfly for the Orange and Blue’s two DPs – i.e., if the team can win without you, how much does that “designation” really matter? But that, and the general concept of earning one’s place on a roster, rightly belongs as something to file away.

Now, for the specific heresy – honestly, I didn’t want to bury this, because controversy sellz – I’m not as geeked up on Kenny Saief as everyone else seems to be. And I’m talking about a reasonably healthy cross-section of FC Cincy fans and neutrals (e.g., MLS stringer Sam Stejskal). I’ll give him every manner of credit for his grass-cutting feed that Kekuta Manneh stabbed home for Cincinnati’s game-winning goal and, yes, he scored the insurance goal to boot…but it’s what he did between there and there that left me underwhelmed. First, Manneh owns Cincy’s first goal, and all the way down to his genuflection to (presumably) Mecca: he was the player who wrestled the ball up New England’s gut, found Saief wide open on the Revs’ right, and then continued his run under the decidedly unconcerned watch of New England’s Wilfried Zahibo (aka, proof that not all French players are either elegant or good). After that, in between a creditable right-time-right-place moment for Cincy’s second goal, I didn’t see much that set Saief apart from a clumsier version of an MLS-standard box-to-box midfielder. He under-hit obvious passes in momentum-killing ways throughout the game, lingered too long on the ball several times and, despite a period of 20-25 minutes when it appeared New England utterly failed to account for his presence on the field, he basically threw away at least two totally free runs up New England’s gut.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Charleston Battery: A First Step to Where...Exactly?

Honestly, the only real cyborg we know.

“Lamah Over Ledesma Should Not Be Automatic,” came very close to being the name for this post. It didn’t work when the line between them blurred.

Earlier tonight, FC Cincinnati topped the Charleston Battery2-1 down in Charleston. It was a good win, not a great one, and, as a game, definitely not one for the ages. I’m glad Cincinnati won, if only because MLS being better than USL is the structural order of things, but it felt more like a battle of capacities – by which I mean, Cincinnati had a means to win this game in the form of higher end players at their top-end - while Charleston did not. FC Cincy fans should feel cheered by how quickly their team reversed Charleston’s equalizer (and how much sustained pressure they piled on), but there’s nothing particularly interesting about a team with MLS resources and reputation beating a team with USL resources and reputation. In other words, Cincinnati did win….but am I alone in wishing the win looked either better or more explicable?

I’m going to set this up in the spirit of a geometry equation – i.e., start with a set of “givens” and see where I can go from there. (Also, I never made better than a “C” in Geometry, probably because my teachers failed me, not the other way around. Monsters, but I digress.) Here are the givens:

1) The line-up Alan Koch trotted out was a plausible starting eleven for FC Cincinnati;

2) There are players on FC Cincinnati’s roster outside those 11 players who can help build a different starting eleven for FC Cincinnati;

3) That win did not send the right kind of chills down your spine; and

4) That’s OK. We’re all OK.

MLS Tourist Journal, Calender Week 6: Preseason and Varieties of Excitement

This far and no further till the regular season. You know the drill...

The fresh signings keep rolling into Major League Soccer – some flashier, some smarter – and preseason has started for just about every team in the league. Shit’s gettin’ real, but I still wouldn’t mistake anything that happens today for future lived reality, yea, these are the Ponzi schemes of fandom (what?).

Only the preseason portions of the above applies to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati – and I’m directing the late jab at the end toward FC Cincinnati – but, before getting to them, I wanted to start with a wide-lens snapshot of MLS.

Varieties of New Signings

“They're coming off a championship, so those are the things that motivated me to come. ... [The chance to move on to Europe] was a factor, too. You see players leaving [MLS] for Europe, so that played into my decision.”

So said Atlanta United FC’s Pity Martinez, but the broad idea of showing up/off in MLS as a stepping stone to fat European pay-days has gained real currency over the past couple seasons. And not all players are doing this the same way, so do read the fine print in any new arrival’s contract. For instance, it looks like Martinez signed “a long-term contract” with Atlanta, so, even if he (and even Atlanta’s FO) think he’ll be gone in a year or two, they’ll have some control when he leaves and will almost certainly get a kick-back out of it. The San Jose Earthquakes took a different approach in landing Argentine forward(? – thought he was a midfielder) Cristian Espinoza, and used new head coach Matias Almeyda as a sweetener. Espinoza’s signing is almost explicitly rehab, i.e., “[talented] young player that needs minutes moves to a team with playing time available.” The other club involved – Spain’s Villareal – tapped Almeyda to mentor Espinoza and, if things pan out, Villareal reaps the long-term benefits. That business of acting as a finishing school for bigger clubs around the world doesn’t sound like the best deal, but, on the grounds that weirder things have panned out, may as well see where it goes…

Several other eye-catching signings have come together over the past week…just real quick: rumor turned to reality when New York City FC landed their Romanian stud/Replacement David Villa, Alexandru Mitrita (they also added young American defender Keaton Parks, who called rich-people start-up NYCFC “a great club”…based on…?); sticking with defenders, the rich got richer when Atlanta added the well-pedigreed Florentin Pogba at centerback and the Los Angeles Galaxy correctly identified and filled a hole with the signing of Uruguayan centerback, Diego Polenta. Moving to the other side of the pitch, it’s good to see Real Salt Lake sign a forward, and here’s to wishing Liberian international Sam Johnson comes through for them, while further north and east, and promises to “eat people” notwithstanding, I think Toronto FC might have taken a flyer by signing injury-tinged American forward Terence Boyd.

The Space In-Between: Catching up on MLS, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati

Perfection is perfection, Mike Brady.

Major League Soccer’s offseason has lasted long enough for me. With an eye to keeping limber and toned, I’ll be tracking the league the same way I always do: once a week and from somewhere between a bird’s eye view and an airplane flight path. I will drill down on Thing 1 (Portland Timbers) and Thing 2 (FC Cincinnati) when there’s something to talk about with either – more on that below – but I’ll never see enough about any of the other teams to go granular on them. Fair warning.

Whether this starts a tradition or steps off from the wrong foot, I’m going to talk about MLS as a whole first – not least because the main point there applies to every team in MLS, including Thing 1 and Thing 2. (No, I’ll stop that right now…and has anyone ever done a version of that using penises for the “things”?)

When I read through (most of) Matt Doyle’s (aka, The Armchair Analyst’s) 2018 Global Review (which takes some time), two loose concepts kept surfacing: first, and most important, it gets a little easier every season for teams to lose touch with the pack in MLS, never mind the leaders; think your pudgier cyclists during the Tour de France. For those who journey through Doyle’s Labyrinth, you won’t read a naked and proud positive about any team until you get to the Number 18 spot (of 23 MLS teams), where he notes that Mauro Manotas balled out for the Houston Dynamo in 2018, scoring 25 goals across all competitions. The teams below Houston’s playoff-dodging squad are 2018’s pudgy cyclists – e.g., your San Jose Earthquakes, Orlando City SCs, the Colorado Rapids, the Chicago Fire, Toronto FC – the squads who put one foot in front of the other here and there last season, but never enough to really be part of the playoff conversation. Doyle used a really clean call-response to sum up Orlando’s season, but the same applied to them all (and Houston, honestly, and probably Minnesota United FC too):

“DISAPPOINTMENT: The whole season, really.”

Still, one team underlines the point about falling behind better than the rest: San Jose. They ended 2018 the worst team in MLS, none of their signings returned on investment, the head coach, Mikael Stahre, never really settled in and got yanked before the end of the season (having built no confidence), and Chris Wondolowski aged another year. Shit was bleak, basically, even if admirably scrappy. San Jose also won the Supporters’ Shield in 2012 with a sound defense and a set of brawlers for forwards. The league moved on, the ‘Quakes fell behind, and, despite some effort (but….the world’s longest outdoor bar?!), they haven’t yet figured out how to catch up. Every team in MLS: This could be you. You don’t want this to be you, so don’t let it be you.

FC Cincinnati 3-0 Indy Eleven: Fat and Happy in the Lap of Luxury

Loving cradling our collective asses...is it good for you?

FC Cincinnati rotated its squad - more than a little, too - and they still comfortably outplayed visiting Indy Eleven, 3-1. Hey…I lead with the score. (And here’s The Match Center for all the numbers and videos you’re going to get on this game.)

The machinery didn’t run without friction, some portions of it more manifest than others - e.g., Indy made Cincy ‘keeper Evan Newton stretch for a couple shots, and, when Pa Konate came off the field at 53’, nothing about that substitution made me scratch my head - but it never felt like Indy’s game to win. And that makes the numbers from the match curious reading - especially the figures for attack and distribution. A couple testaments to the gap between the game I thought I saw and those numbers lurk on my twitter feed (@JeffBull5), but, who is to say what is real in paranoid times? Who’s to say that some miscreant statistician within the secret sanctums of the USL FO didn’t replace the actual numbers from this game in an attempt to hide FC Cincinnati’s true greatness? No, I can’t prove it, but you can’t not prove it either. (CITIZENS: Keep your eye on the Orange and Blue’s record, watch for skullduggery! Eternal vigilance!!)

(Speaking of conspiracies, did that Cincinnati’s Matt Bahner get away with a goal-line handball early in the second half? And what to make of the Zapruder-esque quality on those replays? Wait...can someone make a basement disappear with the push of a button?)

Whatever the numbers say, Cincy created better openings, some of them boulevard-wide - e.g., when the wonderful work down Indy’s right by Michael Lahoud and Jimmy McLaughlin so mesmerized the defense that they gave Fanendo Adi a public-park’s worth of free acreage. McLaughlin would strike again later, and with a ball over the top to a surging Danni Konig that I didn’t credit enough when I watched it live. Then again, for all the good work by McLaughlin and Konig, the latter couldn’t have finished that chance without a blundering assist by Indy’s ‘keeper, Owain Fon Williams, and two of his defenders. Indy’s defense would cough up yet another mistake when Carlyle Mitchell pinged a (good) Russell Cicerone cross into his own team’s side netting…hell, maybe there is no need for a conspiracy to explain this result.

Penn FC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Consider Yourself...Boned!

My feelings are complex...

When you’ve watched soccer a damned long time, it’s nice to see something you haven’t before. It’s even better when that something plays footsie with absurdity, a la Tiago Calvano’s attempt to get into Danni Konig’s head and/or fuck with the ref’s request that the two players “kiss-and-make-up” early in the game. They need a different color card for this one…when Calvano actually went for Konig’s lips…in another setting, mandatory training would have followed therefrom. Damn.

It’s nice, in a sense, that Penn FC got at least a little of theirs back in this game, because they got…boned in this game. Not to get hung up on sexualized metaphors, but I didn’t come up with Corben Bone’s surname, and there aren’t a lot of verbs that better capture a player who had been theretofore invisible (Bone) stealing the ball from a dallying Aaron Dennis and curling in the game winner. That goal, when added to Emanuel Ledesma’s equalizer, lifted FC Cincinnati to a 2-1 road win over Penn FC, a result I’d call more unfortunate than unfair for Penn; or, FC Cincy’s side, fortunate…and still a little unfair. Not undeserved, mind, just unfair to Penn FC.

On the other hand, screw Penn FC because I wasn’t pulling for them. Still, my condolences. Man, it’s like there’s a devil in one ear and an angel in the other…moving on…

My notes from last night (at least the ones I can read; this was a late, second feature for me yesterday), the teams played fairly even game - and the numbers, read in the clearer light of morning, back up the impression (the link above takes you to The Match Center, aka, The World of Your Imagination). If they decided games by decision like they do in boxing, I could even be persuaded to call the game for Penn. (As my notes in the first half have it, and this is verbatim, “PEN has been better, but not much…meh; good on crosses, not great.”) That doesn’t matter, of course, as demonstrated/symbolized by the way (I think) Richard Menjivar had Cincy ‘keeper Spencer beat for a late Penn FC equalizer, only to have Forrest Lasso perfectly position to head away the shot.

If the game turned on anything in particular, I offer the old cliché, “that little bit of quality.” Cincy’s attackers fired more accurately at Penn’s Sean Lewis, and they forced great saves out of him - with Ledesman leading the list. There are also the kinds of players Cincinnati can call from its bench: it was Emery Welshman’s shot, after all, that Lewis spilled to Ledesma for the Orange and Blue’s first goal. If either Nazmi Albadawi or Kenney Walker changed the game, I missed it, but I do think that Welshman’s running, in terms of both speed and distance, might have given Penn the new look they finally couldn’t handle. And, again, Cincinnati has held that advantage all season - i.e., having real quality on the bench, as well as different varieties of it. Moreover, even if Albabawi and Walker don’t come on and change the game (for the record, still shrugging at that one), Cincinnati can rest almost all of their players without giving up much in quality - at least at the USL level. And that is a luxury…trust me on that one.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Pittsburgh Riverhounds: On Primal Noises and Rumors of Hierarchies

Y'all...

That was ballsy last night, some Cool Hand Luke shit, the kind of win that FC Cincinnati fans will remember for the rest of 2018, if not beyond. I mumbled a slurry “holy shit” (and nearly fell off the household typing stool) when Dekel Keinan powered home his headed equalizer, but Fanendo Adi’s freight-train of a game-winning goal got a noise out of me that I usually save for the bedroom (sweet, sweet release…aahhhhhhh!!!).

Thus came the 2-1 win over the visiting, visibly-engaged Pittsburgh Riverhounds (for numbers and highlights, do visit the Match Center), so continues an ever-lengthening unbeaten streak, and, forgive me I missed it earlier, but did the “(x)” next to FC Cincinnati’s name in the standings appear only last night? They’ve booked their place in the United Soccer League’s post-season regardless, and taking down a rival this immediate in every sense of the word can’t help but bode well for the post-season.

Due to the timing of my getting into FC Cincinnati, I have never seen them in defeat; as such, I have no sense of what that looks like. Due to some perversity in my nature, some part of me wants to see it - maybe on the theory that you can’t really know anyone or anything till you’ve seen them/it fuck up - and last night sure looked like a strong candidate to make that happen. To give just one example, I saw Cincy defender/giant Forrest Lasso struggle like never before: I would have sent him off for his tackle in the 38th minute (he got a yellow, but…hmm, maybe I want this team to lose more than I thought (hey there, my subconscious mind!)), and I still don’t know the meaning of his hand gestures after he committed a clear, clumsy foul in the penalty area…

…there’s a fun thought: could FC Cincy even come back from two goals down? And, holy crap, was that a terrible penalty kick by Kay Banjo (but, lo, his name is unstoppable).

To state the broad contours of the game, Cincinnati looked comfortable enough, but Pittsburgh looked the sharper team (and the numbers bear that out). That held, at least, until Cincy started bringing on subs, starting with Michael Lahoud coming on for Pa Konate - a player, by the way, whose upside I still have yet to see. Jimmy McLaughlin (that name…sounds like an angelic child waiting for a lung transplant) replaced Fatai Alashe, and Adi came on for Danni Konig (who’d been…all right), and that’s probably the biggest difference between my fan experience watching the Portland Timbers and my fan experience watching FC Cincinnati: the idea/presence of game-changers on the bench. Just…count yourselves lucky, FC Cincy fans, and savor it for as long as it lasts, because it won't.

Tampa Bay Rowdies 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Stolen Goods, aka, We Interrupt This Coronation

It's still a gift.

It takes a game where the gap between good things for FC Cincinnati extended for over 90 minutes to return one’s focus to present concerns. Those two things were, 1) the penalty kick that FC Cincy drew in the first minute and scored in the second, and 2) the team’s first coherent approach to goal around the 94th minute. And maybe the “one” in the first sentence refers only to me, but Cincinnati bumbling, terrible outing didn’t deserved one point, never mind all three. And yet through the good graces and terrible eyesight of referee Kevin Broadley*, they left Florida with a 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rowdies…

…maybe those heavy rains were the Soccer Gods’ tears at the injustice of it all?

Careful readers might have noticed the two-stop time-line above skipped over Cincinnati’s second goal. I excluded it on the grounds that it was some bullshit. Ref Broadley had been unusually solicitous about the health and welfare of FC Cincy players throughout the game - he fell easily for flops by Fanendo Adi, Patrick Barrett and Emanuel Ledesma - but I can’t begin to imagine how the word “foul” came to him when replacement left back Pa Konate went down late in Tampa Bay’s penalty area. Konate lost track of the ball, ran into Pape Diakate’s feet and fell down. When Ref Broadley blew the whistle for the foul, at least two Rowdies hit the turf in unbelieving despair, as if struck low in the Biblical sense?

Can you blame them? The Rowdies had Cincinnati pinned against its (fortunately) sturdy back four for nearly the entire game. You can see all the bad calls for Cincy and all Tampa Bay’s boned shots through the Match Center (looking so at Georgi Hristov, in the event they don't show him missing two he shouldn’t have), as well as (the notably itinerant) Kwadwo Poku’s lone goal for Tampa. Short as they are, the highlights can’t possibly show each of Tampa’s steady succession of forays toward Cincinnati’s goal, and how hard players like Poku and Junior Flemmings pushed to break that steady line; Flemmings, in particular, gave Cincy’s left back, Blake Smith, more trouble than any other player I’ve seen this season. When I saw Cincinnati’s midfielders, it was Michael Lahoud and Fatai Alashe shuttling a ball to nowhere terribly useful more often than not, and from inside their defensive third. Stats don’t always work in soccer (though I am coming around on this), but sometimes they translate a game fairly well - e.g., by the time Smith got sent off for Cincinnati (62nd minute), Tampa Bay had 25 shots, with 5 on goal, to Cincy’s 4 shots, with 1 on goal.

FC Cincinnati 3-0 Charleston Battery: Wire to Wire, and Beyond

It's greased lightning!

It’s rare to see a 2-0 win as dominant as the one FC Cincinnati dropped on the visiting Charleston Battery (and, yes, I realize the game actually ended 3-0 - and FC Cincy deserved all of that third goal - but it goes against a premise, so…ssshhhh, bear with me). The orange and blue (that’s FC Cincy, who needs a snappier nickname) controlled every aspect of the game, but without looking likely to run up the score. They thoroughly contained the Battery, sometimes in their own half for soccer’s equivalent of eternity, and, with one exception (Ataulla Guerra pinging a bomb off Spencer Richey’s crossbar), Cincinnati’s defenders never gave the visitors more than a glimpse of daylight (e.g., Forrest Lasso rotating/sliding to snuff Patrick Okonwko’s and/or Charleston's best second-half chance).

Both teams came in boasting unbeaten streaks that I can’t stop visualizing as cars rumbling up for an evening of street racing (see The Fast & the Furious, Grease, and maybe Rebel Without a Cause; haven’t seen that one): 15 for Cincinnati and 11 for Charleston. The home team ended the visitor’s streak with confidence-eating finality. The Battery kept their shape by and large, and I think I’d find that distressing - i.e., falling 3-0 when you didn’t shit the proverbial bed (that’s probably not a proverb). Think failing a test when you actually prepared for the thing.

Box scores don’t always put the details in proper relief, but I’d hold up two, maybe two and a half stats (in the match center, where you’ll find highlights too) that capture what decided this game: FC Cincy’s 2-of-3 advantage in duels and their huge advantage in shooting accuracy (75% to 16.7%) - and the latter goes back to another number, e.g., the slim margin in the total number of shots. Those numbers underline two things: 1) how well the Battery held its shape for nearly the full 90*, and 2) how little that mattered, thanks to how well Cincinnati threw around its weight.

* The few honest breakdowns Charleston did suffer produced the result - more specifically, the final score. The third goal - of which, yes, it did happen - concluded the only period of pressure that saw the Battery tremble on the verge of cracking. That came late - around the 85th, and lasted till the final whistle - when Fanendo Adi and Justin Hoyte put at least three clean shots on goal, and Nazmi Albadawi played the dangerous ball that led to Skylar Thomas’ soul-bruising stoppage time own-goal. The other goal came in first-half stoppage time when Albadawi chased down a loose trap by a Charleston player (who, incidentally, had just intercepted a Cincinnati pass), and then combined with Emory Welshman, and Corben Bone, who would finish off Albadawi’s assist, to score.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Penn FC: Fanendo Adi's Rosetta Stone Qualities

It can also be a soft, cushioned lie.

I want to start with a question: if you’d never seen people play soccer before, how would you know that, say, Bayern Munich, or glory-days Barcelona FC were good-to-great teams? On one hand, sure, if you watched 90 minutes of a game and just followed the reaction of the crowd (even on the simplest level of hearing the elation that follows a goal), you’d understand those teams to be better than their opposition…

…but if you don’t know the quality of the opposition, all you could really say is, “that team in the blue and red vertical stripes sure looked better yesterday! Do you like your blorpduckle with a splooge of kepetzal? (That’s me doing alien cuisine, the point is I’m an alien observing a soccer…never mind.)

For as long as I’ve followed FC Cincinnati this season - and period that started with the June 9th road win against North Carolina FC, and includes everything up to tonight’s surprisingly (probably?) tight 1-0 home win over Penn FC, but not last week’s draw against Nashville FC (busy) and the friendly, because fuck friendlies, if you can prevent a player from skiing, they shouldn’t play exhibitions by the same logic, but I digress. (Also, for the curious, here’s my origin story as relates to FC Cincinnati, aka, I come by this semi-honestly.)

Over that period of time, FC Cincinnati has generally looked the better team on the field in those games (for the record, this is now my 8th game, and I’ll work on the sidebar. someday), and today was no exception. Another general trend: FC Cincy seems to take 15-20 minutes to come into a game, and today was no exception. The chances piled up in the end, until Emanuel Ledesma - always the man most likely to - ricocheted a free-kick off the back of the Lucky Mkosana (i.e., the ironically-named dreadlocked dude who posed a moderate active threat for Penn FC tonight), and into the goal. And that wasn’t even Ledesman’s best chance, because that came in the 54th minute when he made space for himself and pounded a powerful lefty off the post. Still, Ledesma scored the winner, as he has for much of Cincy’s 2018. They’ve got players like that all over the roster too, attacking players contributing steadily, whether it’s Danni Konig, Nazmi Albadawi, or even Corben Bone.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 New York Red Bulls II: Who You Got?

It comes with dessert. No way.

Just to note it, I’m reminded that I know something less than fuck-all about the Western Conference every time I check scores for the USL. Please get to MLS soon, FC Cincinnati; because ignorance pains me…

To stick with the subject, the general…mien of FC Cincinnati’s 2-1 win over New York Red Bulls II (“RBII” hereafter) also pained me a little: elegant as an elephant on roller blades, refined as a Salisbury Steak TV dinner, this game played out as pure bumper cars until around the 40th minute (what? I feel like “Salisbury Steak” should be capitalized). It slipped in and out of looking like two teams playing soccer instead of Aussie Rules Football for the rest of the game, but, full credit to them, Cincinnati did look the better team at the sharper ends of the field (i.e., defense and offense). The numbers bear me out on that “slop-fest” theory, btw; I’ve never seen passing accuracy numbers that low, and holy shit, how did anything positive happen out there with that much fuck-uppery going on?

To note something else, RBII was the toughest team (per their record) that FC Cincy has played in a while, and maybe that accounts for all the gore on the field…am I? Yeah, I’m exaggerating that a bit. All I’m saying is the game was physical, and I think Blake Smith could easily have been sent off when he rose from a rough challenge and shoved an RBII player to the dirt. What would have transpired from there is anyone’s guess, but that didn’t happen, and that’s a counter-factual, and I don’t deal in that crap. Back to the factual, RBII came within one wispy whisker of tying the game in stoppage time (and you can see that, and “the numbers” referred to above, via The Match Center). Cincinnati came within one defender’s mid-section of growing their lead one minute later, so the galactic wheels of virtue continue to spin true.

In fewer words, this game was close, but it wasn’t. RBII attacked relentlessly, while FC Cincy attacked ruthlessly, and won the game as a result. The only place Cincinnati came out clearly ahead was the score-line, and that means why is at least one of the questions in play. Having been introduced to RBII just now, I can’t address their side of things - though I will say that Andrew Tinari, Amando Moreno and (especially) Lucas Stauffer showed up for them throughout the game. As for Cincinnati, they flipped a chunk of their line-up in the midst of a busy week and futzed with the formation (not a big fan of that 4-3-3), and part of me blames the inelegance of the close result for that. On the flipside of that, seeing the players who stuck to the roster - e.g., your Manny Ledesmas, your Blake Smiths, your Forrest Lassos - could say something about who FC Cincy views as useful, if not indispensable. (Hold up: I neither watched nor checked on FC Cincinnati’s midweek win over Charlotte Independence; that said, just did and just confirmed the noteworthy rotations.)

Toronto FC II 3-3 FC Cincinnati: It's What You Do at the Rodeo

You beat eight fucking seconds for starters...

OK, yes, it took reviewing notes from the prior two games to firm up some context (this is from the win at North Carolina, and this from the draw at home to Bethlehem Steel FC), but the handle I’ve got on FC Cincinnati’s performance feels reasonably assured…

…my grasp o the state and standards of the rest of the United Soccer Leagues, on the other hand…still working on getting the fingers where they need to go more maximum grip. For instance, I kept hearing comments on the narrow-shouldered youth of tonight’s home side, Toronto FC II - something that definitely factored into at least two of Cincy’s goals - but that same aw-shucks-ma’am gaggle of teenagers came back from two goals down to tie the gameat 3-3 (you should have highlights through that link by tomorrow morning). Moreover, TFC II kept Cincinnati wheezing under pressure for the final 20+ minutes, they generally played the United Soccer League’s Eastern Conference leaders even, and three or four of those players rather neatly stood out - that includes players who got regular shouts from the commentating booth, like Dante Campbell, Lucca Uccello, Ayo Akinola (scored one, too), and, especially, Malik Johnson - and with an assuredly desperate Greg Vanney and Tim (probably) Berbashenko (probably) in attendance. Coaches like character a little bit more than the next professional, and TFC II’s (probably) teens interviewed pretty nicely this evening.

It makes sense, obviously, to ask where TFC II sits in the USL East? Dead last, you say? The point FC Cincinnati gave them tonight pushes them to three big points on the season, one for every draw they rescued from being another of their 12 losses. That -20 goal differential sort of rounds out the picture of a game one has to think Cincinnati should have won. They didn’t. Jordan Hamilton saw to that, along with the rest of his (apparently) young team, only they didn’t do it with the same dizzying combo of power and finesse (if/when they get to the highlights, do stick around for Hamilton’s goal).

On Cincinnati’s end of things, how bad is this really? They’re still 3-0-2 in their last five (they kicked Richmond hard and true while I was away)), and, at 9-3-4, still atop the Eastern Conference, if with two teams in reach (Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC and Louisville City FC) per games in hand. (Is that English? Roughly? If not, check the USL standings). In that sense, most signs point to no. Also, consider that (again, per the broadcast), Cincy has four of their next five games at home (Nashville SC is their lone road game, and that’s with Ottawa (woo-hoo!), Tampa Bay Rowdies (um), Charlotte Independence (uh-oh), and New York Red Bulls II (um) on both sides of that). More to the point, because I started watching when I did, I don’t know the 9-3-4 team that lives on paper nearly as well as I know the 1-0-2 team I’ve watched over three games now. That team might have beat North Carolina FC, but they also suffered hot flashes throughout; the same team should have taken all three points against Bethlehem Steel FC just as surely as they should have stolen three points from TFC II today.

They didn’t, again, and now I’m interested. So, what went wrong?

Guys, I've Met Someone: On a New Team, Swinging, and the Solution to Everything

Just 2015? No shit?

I’ve always prayed for this day, without believing it would arrive. At long last (fucking long, guys!) the much-fabled, oft-misunderstood Soccer Gods finally smiled on one of their longer suffering Jobs. (That’s me. I am Job. Or Gob. I hear some people do that.)

At various, yet shockingly consistent, and yet also virtually never wire-to-wire…um, years, since a severely misguided internet made it possible for every asshole (again, me) to write about Major League Soccer, without editing, never mind overseers, I have written about Major League Soccer. A three-four year stretch of me writing about the Portland Timbers in the lower leagues happened…and that might have two-three years, mind you. (And I can’t prove it either. Once I sour on a blog, I delete the motherfucker like I never knew it. Seriously, I am Cronos and I eat my children.) In most of those years, I tried to cover every part of whatever league I invested in most that season. That always ended with me overwhelmed, bummed, or jaded (in all honesty, it was jaded, like, 3/4 of the time) before the first ball rolled in the playoffs. Still, I could fake keeping up until, oh, 2010. Once expansion really kicked off…forget it. I’ve been gasping by Week 15, if not before, ever since. Even for the glory years with the condensed games.

That brings me to the miracle. Its name is FC Cincinnati, aka, the answer to my prayers and the solution to my problem. Also, the team that will join Major League Soccer in 2019.

If I haven’t mentioned that I was born in, and spent the first 13 years of my life in Cincinnati, Ohio, yes, I spent the first 13 years of my life in Cincinnati, Ohio. I once heard it said that Danny DeVito collects people from New Jersey, wherever he can find them; that’s me with people from Ohio, only the shy version of it. In other words, whenever I meet people from Ohio (or, sometimes, that general area of the Midwest, if mostly north of the Ohio River…um…), I quietly, but almost automatically love them. I left Ohio, basically, but it never left me. I’ll agree that identifying with a place you almost never visit doesn’t make much sense, but I still rarely go a week without thinking about Ohio. And which one of us is crazy, because I don’t think it’s me.

Close observers might have caught the pronoun I slipped in front of “Portland Timbers” up above. Yes, that was “my.” I stand by it. I love my Portland Timbers and I moved to Portland, Oregon not once, but twice in my life. I ultimately settled here  and that was very intentional. I love Portland. And yet I still look at real estate prices in Cincinnati from time to time…shit would blow the mind of a Portlander....