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| The importance of the casting call can't be stressed enough. Look at these schlubs. |
The only positive you can take out of the….sincerely fucking awful penalty call Bartolomeo Toledo called on behalf of FC Cincinnati is the fact that Emmanuel Ledesma had the poise to put it away. With a stutter-step, which I thought wasn’t legal. And, again, on a total bullshit call.
That that it mattered. Lucas Rodriguez scored the last go-ahead goal of the night just five minutes later. The game ended 1-4 against FC Cincinnati, but the game started getting away from them as early as 10 minutes in. Sure, Kendall Waston pinged a free header off the crossbar – think that was somewhere in or around the 20s – but, for the first time in a while, the game looked very much like a USL team (that’d be Cincy) playing against an MLS team. The same DC United handing out points at home and conjuring malaise in soccer form over its past 10 games (and they’re still 2-2-6 over their past 10 with last night’s win) looked like the better team on both sides of the ball: they played out of trouble more effectively, won their defensive battles (box score be damned), moved the ball more effectively and to better places.
I caught the final 10 minutes of the game in real-time - aka, after hope got lost and fell into a car-compactor then in use – and it seemed to play out under a gentleman’s truce. It was worth circling back to see how they arrived at that moment, because it gave an answer to the question of how much stock Cincinnati fans should place in their last two wins. The short answer is, not a lot. Last night made those look still more like bad days for the Houston Dynamo and the Chicago Fire than good days for Cincinnati.
What really stood out last night – particularly in the second half, especially – was how thoroughly the wheels came off. Right before DC scored its second and final go-ahead goal, I wrote the word “GAPPY” in my notes, and just like that – as in, all caps. Cincinnati wasn’t getting any pressure on the ball, and for a while at that point, while leaving space all over the field. Nearly every player on the field, but especially in midfield, Cincinnati players assumed the proverbial position (not a proverb) and appeared, for lack of a better word, confused as to what would happen next. Call it a fresh twist on ball-watching; it wasn’t the usual case of losing marks, but…I don’t know, sincere curiosity as to what would happen next? Once DC got hold of the game, they only let go of it when sporting decency called them off.
