New York City FC 2-1 FC Cincinnati: 20 Happy MInutes and the Nature of Inevitability

Yes,  you can play that way, but...

Not many people would take a second glance at FC Cincinnati’s 1-2 loss to New York City FC. They’d file it away as expected and move on; if anything piqued his/her/their interest it would be the fact that Cincy scored a goal. (Not that record, motherfuckers! Not today!). The bird’s-eye-view isn’t wrong, but it’s not entirely right either. This thing’s hairy with nuance…have I mentioned how much I miss the routine of soaking up context by watching too many goddamn MLS in 15 highlights? Have I mentioned how much the pandemic murdered the logic of going through that particular motion?

To stare directly at the warts, yes, FC Cincinnati played a sloppy, madding opening…65 minutes, and “opening” and “65 minutes” should never go together. To frame the point around two emblematic moments, the first came when Alexander Ring made what felt like NYCFC’s 100th scything run straight up Cincinnati’s gut; Ring slipped to the outside when Kendall Waston lunged in, but, and this is very much to Waston’s credit (especially at 32) he got enough of his body in the way and eventually muscled Ring off the ball, which almost certainly would have ended in a goal. He managed to clear it…maybe to the top of the defensive third? The ball might have crossed over into NYCFC’s half in a particularly #blessed moment, but it didn’t stray much further upfield for most of the first half and too much of the second.

The real question became apparent only after Allan Cruz and (sure, why not?) Nick Hagglund came on at the 65th minute: why the hell did FC Cincinnati spend 65 minutes hanging from the edge of a goddamn cliff when, according to what happened after the 65th minute, it’s possible - and merely possible - they didn’t have to?

The second moment relates to the first, in that it expresses the flip-side of the same dynamic. On one of the rare occasions that the ball crossed the center stripe and into NYCFC’s half, Yuya Kubo bolted up the left side of the field with the ball at his feet; the literally only other Cincinnati player who joined him on the happy side of the center stripe was Jurgen Locadia, and he was all the way on the other side of the damn field. For the sake of argument, set aside whatever specific acts you think either of those players should or should not do in any given moment and focus on the deeper question how the hell two dudes split on opposite sides of entire goddamn half of a soccer field are supposed to beat four-to-six players defending that same space?

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Columbus Crew SC: MVPs and DPs...and Deserts

What is on the dark side of the dune?

Without polling data to support it, I’d imagine that what most FC Cincinnati fans want to see out of their time right now is signs of improvement and/or life. As I’ll argue below, those are related by distinct concepts.

First, has FC Cincy improved? Yes, without question. The team ended its inaugural 2019 Major League Soccer campaign eating bowls full of shit on both sides of the ball and, so far in this 2020, they’ve cut down on the number of bowls they’re downing by…oh, ‘round about 1/3. Mos of the improvement has come on the defensive side of the ball, even if the raw numbers torture the answer a little. FC Cincy has allowed 12 goals (this link will go stale Wednesday) over eight games so far during this exceedingly janky season. To compare that against their peers, the league-wide average is 9.9 goals allowed; Eastern Conference has allowed 8.9, while Western Conference teams as a whole have let 11.1 goals slip by on average. On the one hand, yes, Cincinnati is over the average no matter where you look. On the other, they let in seven of those 12 goals during just two games - the manual colon extraction against this same Columbus Crew SC down in Orlando, and…sometime last week, and inexplicably, against Chicago Fire FC. Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t count anywhere except in the analysis, but that means Cincy allowed just 5 goals over their other six games, for an 0.83 goals against average. Very good, in other words, and Bill & Ted levels of excellence so close after 2019’s “our goal is your goal” policy (can anyone translate that into Spanish? Think it’ll read better).

Fortunately(?), yesterday’s 0-0 draw versus Columbus followed that larger pattern. Better yet, keeping the Crew off the board left Cincy a permanent opening for taking either the lead, the game or both - something they had three verygoodchances to do (plus at least one more, if you count Joe Gyau’s follow-up under “very”). Better even than that, the defensive scheme Jaap Stam deployed got deeper and deeper inside each Columbus player’s head as the game (literally) wore on. The Crew didn’t have a chance I can recall outside a (decent) flurry early in the second half (a highlight). Their attacks broke down earlier as well as forced passes gave way to wayward ones and ideas on how to get from Point A and into Cincy’s goal dried up.

FC Cincinnati, 2019 in Review: A Puzzle and a Carousel

The problem, in WPA format.

For starters, I’ve never followed a team that suffered so much in one season. The world around me turned clockwise or counter-clockwise, but I’ve lead a charmed life when it comes to spectator sports.

And yet is was worse than that for FC Cincinnati in a lot of ways. In the big picture, they had their brightest moments early in the season; but for their March 30 loss to the Philadelphia Union, FC Cincy could have had the strongest start for an expansion team in Major League Soccer history. It probably wouldn't have mattered, but that game marked the turning point in Cincinnati’s 2019 season: after one more promising result – a 1-1 home draw versus Sporting Kansas City (that later provided both irrelevant and predictive for both teams, aka, more time for golf!) - they wouldn’t just lose, they’d lose in bunches: first five straight games, then six straight games, then four straight games, then four more. The end of the season looked a bit brighter, or at least fulfilled the theoretical promise of the team’s original roster construction – the defensive team they designed finally showed up, and that let them ruin a couple seasons (e.g., the Chicago Fire’s and Orlando City SC’s) – but it was too little and too late, on top of being basically unwatchable.

I’m going to (finally) close the chapter on FC Cincinnati’s inaugural 2019 season today. Rather than make anyone but the emotionally sturdiest people stick around till the end in the hope that I’ll have something bright, never mind helpful or insightful to say about 2020, I don’t. I expect hella turnover (as indicated by all the “Thank You __________” posts I see on the FC Cincinnati news page), and, between all the expected personnel turnover and a new coach (Ron Jans, whose current lease on (coaching life) expires December 2020), predictions can’t be anything but a mug’s game. Moving on…

I’ll close out with big-picture talking points, I'll name my personal team MVP…and, yeah, I think that’s about it, but I want to start by drafting a narrative for the 2019 season based on the notes I banged out through the season. And, golly, did production drop off at the end. And, frankly, so did my interest. As they say in France, allons y!

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Chicago Fire: What Should Have Been (And Are You Thankful?)

The only through-line.

Well, FC Cincinnati fans, that was the kind of game this team was built to deliver, a safety-first grind that put a wall of defenders between the opposition and your goal. It was effective to a point – Cincy got the slow-death 0-0 draw, didn’t it? – and it was entertaining to a lower point. It lacked for moments, clearly – see the abbreviated list of “highlights” – but it provided little gasps of drama here (e.g., the five-minute flurry by the Chicago Fire after the 60th minute) and there (the last 10 minutes), and either team could have taken it…

…it fits the 2019 season for both teams that neither of them did. Still, if I had to hand out a trophy, it would go to FC Cincinnati, who had the lower bar of achievement to leap over. At this point, Cincy can only tie the single-season record for losses. Can I get a "what what?" or “huzzah” or something?! (What is the sound of enthusiastic Ohioans?)

There’s not a lot to unpack, fortunately, because I’ve got a maddening match to watch in just over an hour (go, Portland!), so I will keep this really brief. The Fire remains three points behind the New England Revolution, the only team in the Eastern Conference they have any chance of leaping over – and the Revs have a game in hand. With allowances for miracles, I’d call their chances doomed in every sense but the mathematical. Cincinnati, of course, has nothing better to do than to pick up as many scraps of their dignity as possible before the season ends. Their only real loss on the afternoon came when Kendall Waston picked a suspension in the next game for that bullshit yellow card on Nemanja Nikolic. Waston’s elbow grazed Nikolic’s chin at most, and Cincinnati still has avoiding the single-season record for goals allowed to play for.

To wrap up Chicago, they looked the better team throughout, but barely. Their best attacks came mostly from early crosses (so many crosses, and when the crossed to Cincy’s defense once it condensed, forget about it), and Maikel van der Werff and Matthieu Deplagne cleaned up the worst of those. Przemyslaw Frankowski and Nico Gaitan did their best to keep them going, but it was pretty damn headless, or Cincinnati’s defenders made it so. If I had to pass on anything from Chicago’s performance to pass down to the youth, I’d go with Bastian Schweinsteiger playing out of pressure; so composed, even elegant, that everything around him looked a little Keystone Cops. The biggest shocks included how far Aleksandar Katai has regressed and the fact that Chicago can’t field anyone better than Brandt Bronico. More than anything else, the Fire needed a player to put his laces through the ball. They never found him, or he never found the ball. Moving on...

Chicago Fire 1-2 FC Cincinnati: What Schweinsteiger Said

He knows...

Anyone unable to appreciate the full narrative satisfaction of Fanendo Adi giving FC Cincinnati the moment both he and the team needed very, very badly does not deserve spectator sports. I mean, you could write a movie about Adi’s season and end it on the moment where he sat cross-legged on the ground in clearly grateful prayer. Even I, who's agnostic on my more pious days, felt all of that. Something else to note here: that's Adi’s best attacking play; running onto a pass and hitting the ball first time toward (or, god forbid, on) goal. That’s how he scored his best goals with the Portland Timbers. Use it.

Happily, that rare positive act was enough to carry Cincinnati to a 2-1 road win over a disconnected and aimless Chicago Fire team. It took an unlikely, lucky goal to gain an early advantage (Fabian Herbers…dude) and Nico Gaitan struggling from the penalty spot to allow the game to play out as it did to let the result hold up, but it did. As noted by the guys in Chicago’s broadcast booth, the Fire did the balance of whatever “doing” happened in the second half – i.e., they dominated possession and “piled on the shots” – but it’s not often that the gap between shots (20) and shots on goal (7) tells the story of a game so well. For every opening Chicago created, they somehow squandered two of them (absurdity deliberate; I know math), whether by Aleksandar Katai wandering the world over to tee up a shot (when he might have done better to lift his head and look around) or by attacking runs that took the runner out of the play. (C. J. Sapong deserves exemption from that statement; he was one of the few Fire attackers to use his runs to create space for the players around him.)

As sometimes happens when I watch FC Cincy games, I found myself watching Chicago more than I watched them – especially in the second half. Not to take anything away from Cincinnati, because they succeeded in their primary task of staying organized and forcing Chicago to break them down. More often than not, this took the form of watching Chicago under-achieve.

At some point during the game, the suspended Bastian Schweinsteiger stepped into the broadcast both where Chicago’s commenters talked to him about the first half of Chicago’s season. When the conversation turned to the things that might have held them back this year, Schweinsteiger named some demons that plagued Chicago in this loss: not all eleven players showing up (only Francisco Calvo, Dax McCarty and Gaitan stood out as clear positives, kind of the point); issues with communication/coordination (the serial mistiming of passes to runs; by the end of the game, both McCarty and Gaitan resorted to angrily gesturing at teammates to fulfill their most basic functions) and a lack of intention and purpose among the attacking players (which most often manifested in “wings-‘n’ prayers” flails from range from far too many Chicago players). One could make a decent case that Cincinnati didn’t win this game, so much as Chicago lost it. Chicago’s 5-2-4 home record shows they do this (literally) more often than not - again, math: 6 not-fully successful home results > 5 fully-successful results – and, when you’re not winning on the road ever, you need three points at home to get anywhere.

Minnesota United FC 7-1 FC Cincinnati: Knocked on Their Heels, Then Their Asses

Moving on to Ulloa, I'm not sold...

When it comes to choosing between the defining moments of FC Cincinnati’s disastrous, season-worst performance in a season presently collecting them like a wildly indiscriminate philatelist, I have a wide selection from which to choose. Was it when Justin Hoyte slammed the ground in frustration after Emmanuel Ledesma’s “defending” on Cincinnati’s right let Minnesota United FC’s Chase Gasper run into a pasture with time to write a novel about what he would do next? Was it Frankie Amaya standing six feet away from…honestly, does it matter? Anyway, Amaya stood, calling/gesturing for the ball and with no apparent sense of what he’d do with it, he just wanted the ball. Or was it that one time when, with Minnesota ceding ground and FC Cincy plainly bereft of ideas and/or willingness to move, that (probably) Ledesma dished the ball sideways for Victor Ulloa to strike hopelessly toward goal from (at least) 25 yards out?

Describing everything that went wrong in this game would take as long as picking one card from a 52-card deck that someone fanned in front of you and discussing each card at length after flipping it over. Hell, even the one clear bright spot Cincinnati can claim from the afternoon – Ledesma’s goal – probably shouldn’t have gone in. The fact that the “Amaya Moment” described above happened immediately before that goal just underlines how unlikely that goal really was.

By my personal account, Cincinnati enjoyed a decent stretch of soccer, one that lasted from around the 30th minute of their home loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy through the first 20 minutes of this game. They passed the ball fairly well over that period and several players seemed to have some idea as to how to make things happen on the field. Hell, there was even a moment tonight when Rashawn Dally looked like he had some ideas. That was his last one, sadly, and Cincinnati ceded the game onepainfulfuck up at a time until it ended in a crushing [rubbing my eyes] 1-7 loss for FC Cincinnati.

There is literally nothing to analyze about this game (and yet...). Anything Minnesota did right must necessarily be measured against Cincinnati’s sheer, gutted awfulness. Cincy simply didn’t have players with the quality of, to name some examples, Ike Opara, Osvaldo Alonso, or Darwin Quintero. They might make up the first and last with the return of Kendall Waston and (bigger maybe) Roland Lamah, but nothing I’ve seen makes a plausible case that FC Cincy is the equal of Minnesota – a middling Western Conference team at best, btw – even with all present and accounted for. Worse, the game swallowed up Amaya, the one young player on Cincinnati’s roster with any kind of upside. Without dipping too deeply into naked, “what-about-the-children” panic, how will a season or two of effective helplessness shape the kid’s self-belief?

Portland Timbers 2-1 Vancouver Whitecaps: A Quick Rummage Through Our Back Pocket

Because not all back pockets are created equal...

Because I’ve basically stopped reading about soccer and can only make it through about 20 minutes of any soccer podcast, I got a little blindsided by yesterday’s starting line-up for the Portland Timbers. And I have the pre-game tweets to prove it. Just thankful I didn’t cough up something like, “Fanendo Adi’s contribution will define this game; nothing else matters” or “The Timbers need Jake Gleeson in goal or the entire goddamn house will come down.”

For fans, the cost/benefit break for these kinds of things doesn’t actually matter (con: you’re more likely to go home unhappy; pro: hey, now you have something to talk about before and after the game), because they’re gonna play the game regardless and, in that sense, the line-up is what it is. What can players and coaches do except play the hand dealt them by The Fates, The Furies, the referees – aka, the delegation from the Cosmos sent to every game.

Even with regular starters like Fanendo Adi out for suspension, and regular starters like Jake Gleeson and Sebastian Blanco missing through injury (the latter, only mostly missing), the Timbers knocked off the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 yesterday at Providence Park. That’s good as a stand-alone fact, obviously, and the Timbers played all right, the depth stepped up smartly enough, etc. The specifics of yesterday matter most in the sense of knowing what the team has in its back pocket (“what does it have in his pocketssss?”), at least when it comes to the subs, but, still, let’s mash all that together for a bit and see what the lump looks like when I’m done. I’ll start with Vancouver, sort of draw an outline of the shape of the challenge.

If you go back and look at those preview tweets, you’ll notice I flubbed pieces of the ‘Caps line-up as well. Their biggest changes came with sitting Alphonso Davies and pulling Christian Bolanos from the center of midfield to play at the midfield left in a 4-1-4-1 (dammit; I hate when the TV splits from the website on formation, but I think the 4-1-4-1 is more accurate). Presumably, Vancouver coach Carl Robinson did that so he could bulk up the midfield by starting Andrew Jacobson and Tony Tchani in front of Matias Laba – i.e., putting all that muscle in the middle, so that the Timbers couldn’t play through it. I won’t pretend to know whether having Davies’ moxie and talents on the field would have pulled back at least a point for Vancouver and, even as both of the breakdowns that lead to Portland goals originated from (essentially) central areas, the ‘Caps midfield gave their opposites a game. For me, the biggest open question comes with what Vancouver lost by having Jacobson play the role that Bolanos has been playing – and I’m flagging Jacobson here instead of Tchani, because when it came to late runs into the area, it was the former who most often made them. The ‘Caps did their best coming inside from the wings and they got a decent share of chances – two or three of them quite good, too. To take the next step, and not to knock the win overly, but if Jacobson knocks in Cristian Techera’s cross (he had a good afternoon) or if Fredy Montero’s chip over Liam Ridgewell finds the side netting, this post would read both differently and a little gloomy.

Vancouver v. Portland: One Game and A Whole Lotta Marbles

When life gives you grapefruit, make grapefruitade.

In my brief (won’t lie) researches for this post, I noticed the MLSSoccer.com’s injury page lists Diego Valeri as “OUT,” with an “undisclosed injury.” On reading that, I hit up twitter, where @KipKesgard helpfully informed me that Timbers Brass will decide Valeri’s fate/health on game day. Now, personally, I’m guessing that Brass’ll slip a little “happy, numb, numb” into Valeri’s veins, and pray his hamstring doesn’t explode during or after the match. After all, Sunday’s game, when the Portland Timbers will face the Vancouver Whitecaps in BC, will be that most exotic of creatures in Major League Soccer, a decisive game.

I think Valeri will make it, and it’s fairly important that he matters out there (so whatever drugs they use better include active ingredients that confer at least the belief in god-like strength and self-belief, e.g., whatever Tom Cruise is on). For the reasons why, I’m going to pass on @Shotboxer told me when I asked him for notes (because I didn't watch it) on the Timbers’ midweek draw-that-was-a-loss to Deportivo Saprissa (the bit I’m fixating on in bold):

“I think we played well enough given the circumstances. In the first half it felt like our passing was crisp and in form. I think part of that was Saprissa played like a team with a point lead on the road on a weird and wet pitch. It was fairly clear that we couldn’t break them down. Regardless petty good effort for a team with little depth and its two best players out.”

When you need to win, you need to score and Valeri sure seems like the guy most likely to make that happen (see: 13 goals, 7 assists; and, holy poop, how did Portland win 2015 with Valeri at those numbers?!). Aside from Fanendo Adi, not a lot of other Timbers have posted the kind of numbers to steel fans’ spines, but Adi will be busy bodying up against the ‘Caps Kendall Waston, one MLS’s bigger defenders, so, yeah, now would be a great time for Lucas Melano to come good on the investment. Or for Darlington Nagbe to channel his inner rage demons (think about all that time on the U.S. Men’s bench, darling, and let it make you powerful!) and post a hat-trick. Speaking of Waston. And Vancouver…

Timbers Draw Vancouver: Expectations Managed

Dear World: You're welcome.

Before getting into the meat of this thing, I want to state that I will post some thoughts on the first legs of the other three MLS Conference semifinals. It's only the mini-games for Montreal Impact v. Columbus Crew and Seattle Sounders v. FC Dallas. I sat all the way through DC United v. New York Red Bulls...of which I could say I have no regrets, but...

While we're on the mini-games, something struck me as I reviewed the (limited) tape for the Portland Timbers goal-less draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps. They're funny things, the mini-games, in that they inflate the competence and calamity of any given game. Don't know why that never hit me till today, but, yeah, that's a pretty distorted lens in the end. Have no goddamn clue how I'll adjust to that next season.

Wait, they're also the opportunity to pick up on little things one might have missed – e.g. because I watched the game with muffled sound, I didn't know that Taylor Twellman and Adrian Heath spotted a naked tricyclist in Portland last night. Ah, shine on Rose City, you crazy diamonds. I also missed how Madden-esque Twellman has become (e.g. obsessed with his own sometimes trivial fixations at time; see, potential concussions and theories on the state and presence of Steven Beitashour's wedding ring). There's a certain charm to it, really, Anyway, the game. The game, the game...

At least three people today told me that they were satisfied with the result, again the goal-less draw that, let's face it, anyone reading this post watched earlier today. Once one takes in all the factors – injuries/ailments to Diego "Mystery Ailment" Chara and Adam "Flu" Kwarasey, respectively, as well as a sometimes visible lack of rest (for some more than others) - that's a damned hard position to argue against. And I don't intend to argue against that, so much as to drag the result back to a kind of cold, neutral perspective. Because, to be clear, today's draw would pop little beads of sweat into Timbers fans' brows, and rightly so, under virtually any other set of circumstances. And so begins today's tale of acceptance...