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| No, I said "left" at Team Stats. LEFT! |
Before getting to the game, I want to repeat something I
said on Twitter. I am a Ronnie Woodard stan. She offered that rare commodity to
soccer color commentary - i.e., talking cause, effect, and on-field mechanics, stuff
it’s easy to miss when you’re watching through a screen - and with a quiet
confidence. It’s something you don’t even know you miss after 20 years of
listening to, say, a clown like Alexi Lalas express his love for set-pieces. To
give just one example, she praised the play of FC Cincinnati’s centerbacks,
Dekel Keinan and Forrest Lasso, on the way to damning Emanuel Ledesma, Danni
Konig and Nazmi Albadawi for failing to defend enough. Basically, the lack of
defense from the forwards made it easier for Nashville SC to find their
attacking players in front of FC Cincinnati’s defense, and that put the latter
under pressure for most of the night.
She could be wrong, but I still felt smarter. With that out of the
way, I want to focus on another in-game comment from the broadcast booth, one
pulled from some domestic soccer publication and with regard to FC Cincinnati:
“One of the most impressive teams ever assembled for a lower
division American soccer club.”
To flip the script, what does that say about Nashville SC?
The home team owned the balance of play and chances in last night’s 0-0 draw
between these two teams - or at least until the final 10 minutes. If you go to
this game’s “Match Center” (which is pretty one-stop shopping; check there for highlights) and to the “Distribution” tab under Team Stats, you
will find the buried treasure…
…sorry, kidding. To give them credit, the USL website arguably
puts up more complete data than Major League Soccer’s, but it takes a road map,
plus a couple secret handshakes to find it. Back to the game…
