FC Cincinnati 2022 Season Review/Preview: Competence's Unexpected Dilemmas

The view from 2019-2021. Fucker looks massive.

I decided to park on a review of FC Cincinnati’s 2022 season for a variety of reasons – the choice to check out in mid-July among them (it’s possible my middle name, “Anders,” is Norwegian for “erratic”) – but not really knowing how to read their season-ending 0-1 loss to the now-MLS-Cup-bound Philadelphia Union played its part as well. In so many words, I understood Cincy had defied virtually every observer’s expectations, but couldn’t really place them in a league-wide context.

Seeing both Philadelphia and Los Angeles FC kick great lumps out of the opposition in their respective semifinals – though, just to note it, LAFC played a more one-way game – went some distance to filling in that blank. FC Cincinnati didn’t just have their best-ever season, they had a very good one. To lift a line out of Matt Doyle’s year-end review:

“’Everything from June 18 to Decision Day is the highlight’ also has an argument, as over that 20-game stretch, Cincy lost just twice. That’s the best of anybody in MLS.”

The bitter little boy who lives inside my head compels me to point out that 10 of those games ended as draws, a point Doyle concedes sotto voce when he notes that “Cincy dropped more points from leading positions this year than anyone but the Revs” (and is it just me or did five teams drop the most points from leading positions? I’ve read that stat somewhere for at least three teams). That bitter little boy missed a deeper truth that I thought I’d written at some point this season, but, because I can’t find it, here it is again: those ten draws meant that Cincinnati went toe-to-toe against all kinds of teams, six of them future playoff teams (including New York City FC), and gave away very little. Call that a long of saying that all those dropped points didn’t matter after Decision Day: what mattered was that Cincy showed they stood just as high as (literally) half the teams in Major League Soccer. And, when you’ve got that, getting into the playoffs amounts to having a chance in every game going forward. As Red Bull New York learned in the hardest of ways.

All that’s better than laudable. It’s beautiful, especially given the dark slapstick that came before. From there, the question becomes how to get better in 2023.

FC Cincinnati 3-4 Club du Foot Montreal: Look, Maybe Take a Week Off and Come Back After...

I couldn’t put FC Cincinnati’s 4-3 loss to Club du Foot Montreal at the Big Tickle to into words, but I think the image gets to the self-defeating spirit of what some of you poor bastards paid to see live.

Looking at the numbers seems like a waste of time, even though I know I’m gonna do it - also, don’t do it, it just makes it worse - but I think the better exercise comes with marching through the parade of “what the fuck” the led to each of Montreal’s goals.

Goale the Firste: With Luciano Acosta facing upfield, Yuya Kubo peels off Djordje Mihailovic to double-team(?) Kamal Miller on (Cincy’s right touch-line), which leaves Mihailovic isolated against Nick Hagglund, never the best idea. Geoff Cameron then peels off to defend…with Tyler Blackett picking up Kei Kamara, though there are two more Montreal defenders lurking in the area. Mihailovic cuts inside Hagglund and loops the ball around Cameron, who steps forward and opens up Alec Kann’s back-post. Bad.

Goale the Seconde: Acosta drops the ball to Kubo, who has (about) 10 feet of space all around him, and Kubo chooses to dribble forward (instead of, y’know, passing the ball; related, I have a still of Alvas Powell tossing up his hands in frustration right as the turnover happens (about 0:05 in on the clip). He’s gotten away with that all season, but this time his touch carries too close to Montreal’s Victor Wanyama, who steps past Cameron’s challenge and finds Kei Kamara to his left. At this point, at least four Cincy defenders collapse toward Kamara and Wanyama on the (/Cincy’s) right, including Kubo, who was aware of Mihailovic, but lost him in that moment, and Mihailovic passes home from about 13-14 yards out. Bad, but also the beginning of a theme.

Goale the Thirde: Montreal breaks Cincy’s press by spreading the field and, after the home team thwarts Montreal right back, Alistair Johnson’s run, the ball bounces back to Wanyama who has all the freedom in the world to dream of possibilities. He lofts a ball between Blackett and Cameron, both of whom have lost track of Kamara, which sends the grey eminence of Montreal alone on goal with all three center backs chasing. They do not win. Kamara slots in Montreal’s third to Kann’s right/the far post.

FC Cincinnati 0-1 DC United: That Unfamiliar Familiar Sting

This, but maybe with the left hand.

90 minutes with a hard kick to the balls at the end. That’s my dozen-word description of FC Cincinnati’s slow-death 0-1 loss to DC United at TQL Stadium.

After absorbing an early onslaught - and high-five to Tyler Blackett for nodding out a sure goal - Cincy got hold of the game in a way I either haven’t seen or can’t recall since gods know when. And that’s the real hairy bitch about the whole situation: today’s (comparatively) glorious effort came just one week after a season opener where it looked like just about everything surprised them one way or the other. Today, though, Cincy didn’t just connect the odd pass or three; they built sequences that knocked DC from the front-foot to the back in the blink of an eye. Sweet transition, baby. I’d direct any FC Cincy fan casting about for something to hold onto after a game that felt like a betrayal to the fact that they created actual, full chances in open play. That beats the hell out of trying to squeeze a ball through that familiar, rapidly-closing window Cincinnati fans knows so well. That’s not even the best thing that happened today.

Miracle of miracles, Cincinnati fielded a fully-functional midfield today, one that, as I saw it, actually controlled the midfield space. Credit newcomer Junior Moreno and Yuya “Mr. Plug-‘n’-Play” Kubo for putting in a pair of damn good shifts (and hold that thought), and (probably) Pat Noonan (or his shadow-master, Dominic Kinnear) for sorting out a better set-up, I only know it was refreshing to see an adjustment - any adjustment - pan out into anything besides fresh disaster. Kubo, in particular, looked like an entirely new player; he kept his work-rate dizzyingly high, but he looked totally different going forward, as if he understood where to find space and where to find, whether by turning into it on the dribble (the man got away with a scandalous number of spins today) or passing usefully out of it. All in all, Kubo did a helluva job getting the ball out of defense and into the attack - and I think that was the reason why Cincy’s transition game worked today…not that it mattered.

The passing improved all over and, better, just about every man dressed in orange looked like a full, dues-paying professional soccer player out there today. And yet, it wasn't enough. Cincy's best stuff came during the game’s first 50 minutes or so (dammit), all the way down to the butter-slick goal they scored just after the 20th minute, even if it got (rightly) called back for offside…ah, Brandon Vazquez, he does it wrong even when he does it right. My best guess is that DC worked out where or how to stall Cincy’s transition game at half-time, a shift that allowed them to shift the action toward the middle of the field and away from their own goal. Prior to…whatever happened around the 50th minute, other new arrival, Dominique Badji, either got or found some real quality looks at goal - just by smart runs, too, and he should have scored one of the two truly good ones he had - while fellow-frontrunner Vazquez chipped in with a handful of half-/quarter-chances. Now, brace yourself, because things get darker from here on out…

FC Cincinnati, in the Ass Crack Between '21 and '22

FC Cincinnati, the stuff of mythology.

In preparing this post, I tried to sort out the rules around the 2021 Re-Entry Draft, but lost interest in just a couple minutes. One third of that impulse came from boredom with over-technical bullshit, but the list of FC Cincinnati players who are either out of contract, or who did not have their contract options picked up another third:

Options Declined (for now, I think?)
Edgar Castillo
Chris Duvall
Jonas Fjeldberg
Avionne Flanagan
Joseph-Claude Gyau
Nick Hagglund
Ben Lundt
Caleb Stanko
Przemyslaw Tyton

Out of Contract
Haris Medunjanin
Florian Valot
Maikel van der Werff

The other third of me checking out follows from essential fatalism - i.e., accepting things over which I have no control, e.g., rosters of the teams I love and follow - but, to the point at hand, the word “irreplaceable” does not cross my mind when I review that list. Moreover, I don’t even know who Fjeldberg or Flanagan are, the latter sounds made up to the point I’m not even sure he really exists, and, turning to more existential questions, can one miss something that one has never seen? Bottom line - and I say this with zero malice toward anyone on that list, and affection for a couple - all those players file under too old, too injured, or somewhere south of what’s needed for the heavy, seemingly-eternal lift of getting FC Cincy out of its three-year wallow in the gutter.

Ideally, though, some or all those players going will make room for new players to come in. A review of what’s left of Cincinnati’s roster as of today’s speaks to the need, but, call me lazy (ignore the post/thoughts, etc.), I’m not inclined to sort out options beyond bare, non-financial numbers, and here are those: at time of writing, Cincinnati has six senior roster spots open, one spot for Supplemental Slots 21-14, two for 25-28, and one more for 29-30. So, if I’m understanding the rules right, that’s grand total of 11 potential new players. Only, it’s not: the return of Alvas Powell makes it ten and it could be as few as nine if the twitter rumors around Dominique Badji translate into him signing. Based on the numbers from the MLS Players’ Association 2021 MLS Player Salaries data-dump, it looks like Powell can come in as a Supplemental Slot 21-24 player, while Badji, assuming he does come in, will occupy a senior spot. Alec Kann already shows up on Cincy’s roster as a senior player, so, assuming I have all of that right (or will be shortly), that leaves Cincinnati with:

Club de Foot Montreal 5-4 FC Cincinnati: ................You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me

Another weakness: terrible box office numbers...

When I saw who Club de Foot Montreal had avaiable in defense, I had a sense they’d struggle at the back. When I saw who FC Cincinnati started in defense, the stench of trouble wafted into my nostrils.

Even with all those tells, I don’t believe a single human being who thinks and exists could have called the final 5-4(!) win for Montreal. “Hows” gave way to “whys” gave way to “what the fucks”: there’s almost no point in asking what went wrong when it’s that close to everything. Montreal gave up goals through sleepwalking nonchalance - if with an assist from Cincy’s press - but Cincinnati gave out both shots and goals like candy. For as many times as one could argue Cincinnati got robbed on this or that play - and I count three - Montreal found a shot and missed it by inches as many times. About those three times:

1) yes, play should have been stopped on Montreal’s first goal because the ref impeded Joe Gyau;

2) Montreal’s dude (think it was Victor Wanyama) fell into Yuya Kubo and that could have easily been called; and

3) it probably would have helped Kenneth Vermeer’s case that Mason Toye took a dive had he not got a cut on his forehead that clearly signaled some form of contact…and he came out too hot.

I’ll get to five thoughts on FC Cincinnati - and I’m gonna squeeze all the happiness I can out of them - but to start with Montreal.

They play soccer the same way one wears an ill-fitting sweater in general, but Montreal surprised me yesterday. The midfield spine (Wanyama and Emanuel Maciel) labored more than I thought it would against Cincy’s, but the defense…I mean, sure, Cincinnati pressed but their play was casual to the point of outright nudity back there - e.g, this should never happen anywhere outside pee-wee soccer. Going the other way, Montreal clearly have some decent pieces - new kid Joaquin Torres looks like one to watch (or Cincy’s bumbles made him so) - but, after watching them for a second full 90 minutes in 2021, my main question is....that [gestures toward Montreal] fourth in the Eastern Conference again? I get that I’m seeing them at their worst - maybe orange and blue hits them the same way the color yellow hits the Green Lantern? - but they’ve looked just as ragged every time I’ve taken 15 minutes to watch them. I’m not expecting them to stay fourth, basically.

Houston Dynamo FC 1-1 FC Cincinnati: ...Better...

The road to success means figuring this out.

Overall
A game that started rife with opportunity (via fuck-ups), gave way to about 20 minutes’ worth of Houston Dynamo command and (less) control (more later), which then devolved into what I’m going to call a fan’s second half - which, here, means a fair amount of nothing with rare and late bursts of hopeful interest.

Or, shorter, FC Cincinnati choked out the Dynamo for a 1-1 road draw. They also never really looked the lesser team, which brings me to:

A Brief Note on the Dynamo
The one dominant thought: they’re sloppy. Even during their period of dominance, Houston stopped their own attacks as often as Cincinnati defenders did (…Geoff Cameron excepted; great game) by way of a combination of forced and/or mis-hit passes; if you're wondering how Cincy edged the home team in xG, that's my answer. They play to force mistakes for a reason, basically, and that means maintaining a certain pitch and ferocity of upfield tackling. Because Cincy was able to play out of that pressure fairly reliably, Houston’s game-plan fell apart. They’re spinning their wheels generally at this point, Cincinnati was just the latest obstacle they couldn’t get over. And am I alone in thinking Tyler Pasher looks like a young Bill Burr?

5 Thoughts on FC Cincy
1) They Did Their One Job
A personal or collective lack of composure was the one thing Cincinnati’s defenders couldn’t afford and, until Nick Hagglund’s weird late fuck-up, the worst mistakes made by the back four + ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer came with the odd errant pass and Gustavo Vallecilla waltzing out of pressure only to shank his clearance out of bounds. The defenders found the midfielders fairly easily, then the midfielders found the seams to break the pressure. This allowed them to absorb Houston’s pressure until the home team all but gave up. Related thereto…

Toronto FC 0-2 FC Cincinnati: Big Win! (& 280 Characters Is Too Limiting)

Who squares off against who matters.

I know. I know. Look, 280 characters is really confining. I tried. Once.

Overall
FC Cincinnati won its second straight (road?) game against Toronto FC (I asked the question because I’m not sure what mattered more, venue or opposition). The game ended 2-0 and Cincy never looked like losing. I reviewed the condensed game to confirm I wasn’t missing anything and, some half-chances on a couple set-pieces and a full chance Patrick Mullins absolutely should have buried aside, I did not. The box score backs it up as well.

Toronto was a mess yesterday and is a mess in general in the season’s early weeks. Moreover, I can’t see them turning it around. Players they rely on - e.g., Jonathan Osorio and Marky Delgado (in particular) - had horrible games and, to name and credit the one guy who looked good for them, I’d be pissed off if I was Chris Mavinga.

Oh, and I need to retract a tweet: Kenneth Vermeer was not pretty good; he flailed a lot, especially on crosses. That’s it for a summary, on to…

Five Thoughts
1) Who’s Next?
As MLS’s Matt Doyle noted yesterday, the first step to becoming a good team comes with beating bad/struggling teams. FC Cincinnati has done that twice now. As such, I’m excited to see them play different and slightly better teams - Houston on the road will do nicely - which will give Cincinnati fans a clearer benchmark for what’s starting to look like progress in 2021. Too many fans make the mistake of treating every game like the one before it, but there’s a world of difference between losing to New York City FC or Orlando on the road (because, good teams) and losing to, say, Inter Miami CF at home. The latter should surprise/anger you; the former, less so.

FC Cincinnati 0-1 New England Revolution: Inching Toward Competitive?

There was ample room for improvement, and yet...

If a game can feel busy and uneventful at the same time, I think I just watched it. All kinds of things happened - not least FC Cincinnati and the New England Revolution combined for nearly 40 shots, some of them quite good - but both ‘keepers spent most of the game looking unbeatable and both teams a step or two away from that defining moment when it all comes together and the crowd goes wild. Maybe it’s apt that the only goal came off a sleeper of a set-piece that didn’t feel any more dangerous than the rest of them.

That came in the 70th minute, when Cincy’s Ken Vermeer could only paw Adam Buksa’s header into the side netting (more later). With that, the Revs won a deceptively close game 1-0, leaving the universe feeling right and better at the same time.

My biggest takeaway is pretty straightforward: FC Cincinnati played a team that most people can see winning a trophy this season without squinting too hard and looked more or less competitive throughout. They got on the wrong side of dominated more often than any Cincy fan would like to see - an impression the xG numbers back up - but they also made more and better shots than they have all season, they had a shift of dominance of their own (about the 20th to the 25th minute), and after the Revs ended the first half strong, the defense adjusted and improved: if memory serves, New England ended the first half with 21 shots or thereabouts; they ended the game with just 26. (Related: if you watch the MLS in 15 highlights, the first half takes up at least 10 minutes of the run time.)

Now, to pick through the details…

Cincinnati seems to like the 5-3-2/3-5-2 they’ve used for the last couple games, even if they still struggle with getting the former to flip to the latter (that’s to say, neither Joe Gyau nor Ronald Matarrita impacted the game that much). They set a tone of “ain’t backin’ down” - see Caleb Stanko’s heavy lunge at Arnor Traustason and the fairly visible shove Jurgen Locadia used to throw off Henry Kessler to set up his first (pretty damn solid) shot - and I think that set a bar that referee David Gantar struggled to interpret consistently toward the end (and with no small part of that hovering in Kessler’s general vicinity). I can excuse all that on the grounds that it was the right tone to set - especially when playing in a new home Cincinnati both wants and needs to make into a fortress.

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Inter Miami CF: The One Pressing Question

Everything else I wrote...but also this.

What do you make of FC Cincinnati losing its most complete game of 2021 at a great, big all they threw for themselves (and it considerable expense)? Sub-question: how does the argument that they lost to what sure as hell looks like a bad team to me make you feel?

Now the real question: can FC Cincy get better with the roster they have?

I’m not going to spend much time on what happened when - here goes (or just watch): Inter Miami CF scored early on (no way!) a succession of defensive errors by Cincinnati’s defense (Joe Gyau) and midfield (Calvin Harris); a little momentum followed in the other direction…and then Miami scored again, and on a worse breakdown; a great big mix of running and nothing happened from there, very specific complaints came down from the broadcast booth, etc., then Ronald Mataritta found Alvaro Barreal behind Miami’s defense (their turn!), putting Cincinnati one goal closer to a comeback; some smartly-channeled aggression followed that didn’t look like it’d go anywhere then Nick Hagglund powered home an equalizer from a corner kick, the crowd went wild, the Fox network got some excitement for the TV, and so on…then, one minute later, Hagglund misplays a pass out of the back and Gonzalo Higuain finishes a counter he started, game over at 3-2 to Miami - because the specifics don’t really matter here. Or, more accurately, some long-term realities swallow up those specifics and return the conversation to one immovable question: can FC Cincy get better with the roster they have?

If your answer is no, my best advice is to step watching Cincinnati for another year, but probably two. Nah, make it three years. Probably safer.

Personally, I think they have the pieces for a decent functioning team in the current roster. There’s no question Cincinnati has some dead wood on the payroll, but I think I see some pieces that I’d stick with for a while and build around to best of your ability.

That said, pardon me while I address the dead body on the floor and the relevant co-morbidities. Miami looked like crap in their mid-week loss to Montreal (Full disclosure: I only watched the condensed game) and they looked…well, a lot like crap against Cincy today. Three or four sharp movements in the first half aside - which lead to the first goal, but not the second - they didn’t look much better moving the ball than the home team, their tackling kinda sucked (related, I am powerfully underwhelmed by Gregore), and nothing I saw today, very much including Cincinnati’s comeback, would lead me to echo talk of “a strong response” to Montreal loss that came from the broadcast booth. Nothing makes me doubt my….let’s call it contingently assured belief that Cincinnati finally has a functioning roster than my fairly clear sense that Miami can best be described as Cincinnati, but with more coherent talent.

Jurgen Klinsmann: Reassessment of a Reassessment

"the 10% that are unimpressed need to go be Germany fans because they will never be happy otherwise."
- Ryan Larkin (@Larkin8), a tweet.

If Jurgen Klinsmann cured cancer, I don't think I would congratulate him. It's likelier, probable, actually, that I would just list all the ways that he could have done it better. I lead with Mr. Larkin's tweet, then, to acknowledge...let's call it "Klinsmann Derangement Syndrome," as well as the possibility that I suffer from an acute case.

By end of day Saturday, the U.S. topped Group A in the Copa America Centenario. I did not see this coming. Getting out of the group seemed reasonable, but, for a fan-base conditioned to it by the 2015 Gold Cup, the 2015 CONCACAF Cup, and a rocky start to 2018 World Cup Qualifying, failure presented as a plausible option. The team has Ecuador next and, in a happy change, thoughts of a win and a trip to the Copa semifinals doesn't feel like fans smiling affirmations to themselves in a mirror from inside a burning house.

Mood swings of that magnitude make sense. Whether this it's accurate or just an effect of living it in the here and now, the Klinsmann era seems like the most contentious in U.S. Soccer history. The question of if and whether the U.S. Men's National Team programs are progressing at all, never mind as advertised, hasn't cooled off since the 2014 World Cup. Bad results in games that mattered kept discontent at a boil, but identifying the origins of the problems divided U.S. fans into two broad* camps (* yes, I think I'm squeezing out some nuance): one group of fans blamed those terrible results on the U.S. talent pool, while the other dropped the blame and a shit-ton of grief on Klinsmann.

A Brief, Polite Comment on Last Night's Game (and U.S. Soccer's Hostage Situation)

What I'm watching for when I watch U.S. Soccer these days.

OK, I just read a whole bunch o' crap on the United States' Men's National Team loss to Mexico last night. Had to, really, because I can’t claim to know the U.S. team like I used to: while I watch all the games that count, I haven't caught a friendly in a couple years (virtually always scheduled during, or immediately after, work; I'm not taking time off for a friendly, people), and, on top of that, I only read closely about the games I watch.

It also bears noting that I wasn't all that invested in whether or not the U.S. won – e.g. see the argument here that the Confederations Cup is more a silly cash-cow than a worthwhile tournament – and, yes, I am 100% a card-carrying member of the angry mob that hunts Jurgen Klinsmann on Twitter and in other outlets, and have leaned that way since before 2014 (when I called a truce in support of shared rooting interest – e.g. the World Cup).

So, there they are, caveats express (e.g. I see the USMNT play about half dozen times a year) and implied (I don't know much about the players coming up to press the old guys). I don't have much to say about tactics, line-up, or actual game-play because I'm not familiar enough with the team to really dig in there, or to talk in anything but a general way. That said, let's start by picking up that second parenthetical...

Against the Jermaine Jones Experiment

I have a longer, more thorough thought-piece for the fate and future of the U.S Men’s National Team (USMNT*) in mind, but I'll get that up tomorrow, or over the weekend, because, involved. (*Sorry I keep doing the legal thing with abbreviations...but what if someone doesn't know the acronym?)

For now, I want to dig into the latest proposed major shift to the USMNT set-up – i.e. the decision to play Jermaine Jones in the center of defense. Why? Because this is, without question, one of the weirder debates I’ve followed concerning the U.S. Men. It's not the idea that’s weird – as everyone points out, it has its merits...but the larger, related point is that it also has highly apparent drawbacks.

Soccer By Ives' podcast, the one posted today, I think, offered the sternest defense of his I've heard so far. The general discussion begins with the U.S. experimenting with the 3-5-2 (that's around the 33-minute mark), but it turns to Jones' switch to center back around the 35.30 mark. The key line, or one of them, was this:

“...seriously, why are people having a problem with Klinsmann wanting to build his defense and, potentially, his entire system, around Jermaine Jones in that slot? Like, why is that a problem?"

Ives Galarcep goes on to call opposition to the experiment “bizarre.” He questions whether such people exist, if only because he hasn’t actually heard anyone defend the opinion in word or writing (he’s taking said people’s existence on the word of his youthful ward, Gareth Cleverley). So, I’d just like to say, even understanding that Mr. Galarcep will never read this...um, hi. I see more downside than up in playing Jermaine Jones at center back. And I say that with a lifetime's worth of respect for Galarcep, his knowledge and his work.

Matt Doyle, along with a couple tweets he pastes to his "Three Things" article, captures a couple reasons why: 1) Jones' penchant for the "hero ball" (e.g. the pass so sublime that it may not be an viable option); 2) his tendency to "search for the game," (e.g. to wander out of position in search of the ball); 3) the limits of his aerial game. Now, take any soccer fan you know, and explain to him/her how you’ve got this simply incredible player you think will do really well at center back, possessed of heart and experience and savvy to spare, sure, he's older, but there are these further drawbacks, e.g. #1-3 listed above.

How convincing is that argument? Not enough? Does Jones more than occasional trouble with cards tip the scales? No? OK, OK, let’s throw in his age.

I list age last for a reason. Jones will be 36 (and closer to 37) when World Cup 2018 comes around. As a number, that doesn't matter enormously to me. It does matter, however, when understood as a collection of tendencies in how someone plays the game. With the exception of his problems with cards, all of Jones' handicaps as a central defender aren't problems in a midfielder; they're actually net strengths where Jones is used to playing...and that's the point. The man is a midfielder, and a very good one. But it's one thing to retrain, say, a 25-year-old midfielder versus one entering his mid-30s.

Overall, the discussion about shifting Jones to central defense underrates defending as a skill and a mind-set. Playing without a net requires an understanding of timing and circumstances that too many people dismiss too readily. (What do you mean, "who is this strawman?" I've known him all my life!) More to the point, the U.S. player pool includes several players who are solid defenders and they're better in the air and reasonably good at passing out of the back. Without looking, I'd suggest Matt Besler, Geoff Cameron and Michael Parkhurst. Now, turning to a web-page with a list of current U.S. defenders, I feel comfortable adding...well, OK, that didn't produce the list I imagined, but I’d be willing to try Tim Ream or, to pull from a little farther up the field, Kyle Beckerman or Maurice Edu. Even when talking converted midfielders, the latter two are more disciplined at holding their position than Jones. And both pass very well, if not better in the relevant circumstances (That said, I bet it’s a seriously sad push for aerial weakness if one pitted Jones against Beckerman.)

The point isn't that everything about the Jones Experiment sucks. And it's his age as a number matters less than his willingness and capacity to retrain after nearly a lifetime of playing a certain way. Word that he went wandering earlier today – something you emphatically don't want from a centerback - isn’t encouraging. The larger point is that the U.S. pool contains options who do some things better than Jones, even if they do some things worse (and I didn’t even mention Chris Hedges!). But when defending and staying home are key parts of the role, it strikes me as wise to pay attention.