FC Cincinnati 1-2 Red Bull New York: How Many Is Too Many?

Abomination.

Thanks to a 1-2 loss at home against Red Bull New York, FC Cincinnati killed the semi-pointless dream of claiming the single-season record for points in the MLS X.0 era. While I don’t like that anymore than you do, man, does it feel nice to have something to talk about besides, “yeah, still going really well.”

First things first, I wouldn’t freight this loss with a ton of meaning. Pat Noonan didn’t stir the starting XI, he shook it. I was about to digress to the culinary crime of a blended martini (hold on...has anyone...never mind), but he didn’t start any player that Cincinnati fans haven’t seen at some point in 2023. The issue – which assumes it was one – came with starting so many non-regulars. It fell well short of “who the fuck is that guy?” but, outside Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo, only Nick Hagglund and Raymon Gaddis had played more than 1,000 minutes coming in. Most of the rest have logged real minutes – e.g., 998 for Yuya Kubo, 880 for Alvas Powell, 844 (shit, when?) for Dominique Badji – but, again, most of that time came with more regulars in the eleven.

That totally showed up on the field – Cincy played most of the game in the wide expanses between in-synch, which they were not, and out-of-synch – but that didn’t hurt them as much and as fatally as the 20 opening minutes. As the Red Bulls demonstrated tonight, a little energy can go a long way and a lot of energy goes even farther. To tie that together, sure, the turnover in the line-up didn’t help, but Cincy dug a two-goal hole by a simple failure to match the energy-drink energy.

If this game has a mystery, or any real source of concern, that’s it: how did FC Cincinnati come into a game that, let’s face it, they could absolutely lose against a team that literally brands itself on high energy with, well, so little energy?

Credit where it’s due, the Red Bulls got hold of the game early. Over those opening 20 minutes, they pressed high enough to alternately frustrate and stuff a Cincinnati team that grew more disoriented and cautious with each misplayed pass out of the back. The defensive shape eventually compacted to where the hosts left all kinds of space in and around the edges of Zone 14. That burned them early when that ever-receding line left original (and impressively respectful) draftee, Frank Amaya, wide-open about 20 yards from goal...and he made it look easy from there. The same thing happened less than 10 minutes later, even if the gap opened in a different space, when the statistically-marginal Elias Manoel finished a John Tolkin cut-back from a pasture around FC Cincy’s penalty spot; this time, the back three had dropped deep while Cincy’s midfield failed to track Manoel or drop deep enough to cover: so, no, things did not go well on the defensive side.

A Still More Casual Fan's Review: MLS Week 6, Not the Best, fwiw, and FC Cincinnati on the Grind

More of this energy, please.

As hinted it...maybe on twitter, maybe just in my head, I’m thinning out these review posts – and mostly on the grounds that not a lot of people read them. The biggest change will be a switch from writing long blurbs about featured games – with the accompanying pain of marching through nearly all of them - to just writing a narrative that puts the prior weekend’s action in context. And categories. I can’t get enough of those goddamn things. Like popcorn that tastes like jalapeno...

To summarize/judge MLS Week 6 as a whole...it wasn’t the best. Too many ties, too much slouching toward the mid-table, too little rising, shining, showing God your glory, glory, and so on. All the ties involves crap teams and most of the blowouts saw crap teams on the logical end of that equation. It could have used a little more pizazz, basically. Not unlike the one match that will continue to feature at the top of each and every one of these reviews – any game involving FC Cincinnati. On with the show, this is it....

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Inter Miami CF: I Mean, It Was Good. No, It Was Good....

So...do the dots on The Mothership’s xG charts represent the shots on goal? For what it’s worth, I did count 10 dots in Miami’s slowly rising line and noticed how it nudged them one step ahead of a FC Cincy in the second half – at least until they very end when the host’s late chances could have well and truly sealed the game and padded the final score.

Then again, wouldn’t that have misrepresented the game just a touch?

I’d argue a goal-less draw would have provided a fairer result for a Miami team that often gave a little better than they got. A team gets what it earns, of course – and the visitors and/or Phil Neville (or an ill-advised on-field adjustment) did hand Cincy the game winner by having DeAndre Yedlin and Josef Martinez guard Yerson Mosquera at the near post – but Miami did a handful of things better than Cincinnati on the day, most of them following from winning the lion’s share of the 50/50 balls. Going the other way, Miami’s passing map tells another story with its mullet shape – i.e., thick and luxuriantly connected at the back but thinned out up front.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes the final result fair: Cincy defended very well, they didn’t give Miami many clear looks, and Roman Celentano cleaned up the rest – for instance, a shot that a largely locked-out Josef Martinez didn’t hit hard enough to rattle anyone. The only time I recall seeing Celentano really beat was the bomb Franco Negri bounced off the crossbar from the depths of Miami’s attacking third (which I imagine has to be somewhere in the highlights). For all times the visitors set up a siege just beyond the top of Cincinnati’s 18, they rarely broke through the lines, which limited them to half-looks – a reality that, for me, begs the question of why Neville doesn’t consider starting the young Shanyder Borgelin until their regular big-‘n’-bulky, Leo Campana, can tie on his starting boots.

The First MLS Preview Post of 2023. Probably: Eyeing the Baseline

So bright you gotta wear shades...

The turning of the calendar feels like a good time to start to wrap the head around Major League Soccer’s 2023 season. Before I get started a warning: very little of what comes below will constitute “news” to your more devoted followers of the league. To put that another way, this is a post for people who follow the league like me – e.g., those who can say, “Oh, I’ve heard to that guy” when a good/rising player’s name comes up, but who can’t drop (literally) all the relevant stats.

For the people who drop in for notes on either FC Cincinnati or the Portland Timbers, you’ll find those at the end, and in that order. I wanted to start with the big picture. With that, let’s get those fingers framed and get things into focus.

Thanks to all the baggage and clutter around the 2022 season – there, I’m thinking of a luridly tainted (yet mostly satisfying) 2022 World Cup and the rolling scandals that clouded the Timbers season and cleaned out (most, but not all) of the front office - I want the 2023 MLS season to be both as good and as normal as possible. And, there, I’m optimistic: just having the playoffs feel less rushed and, without a looming World Cup as a distraction, less like an opening act begging a restless crowd to let them reach the end of their set. That should help the 2023 MLS Playoffs feel like the closing event of the domestic soccer calendar all on its own. Now...what else?

The new [Apple]+ TV deal will be in place, for one. I’ve seen some gripes about the cost – and, now that I no longer have SlingTV, I’m feeling the slings ‘n’ arrows of the exclusivity (e.g., my access to random soccer leagues has cratered) – and I fully sympathize with anyone who either can’t or won’t find a path to squeezing that into his/her/their personal budget. Speaking solely for myself, I calculate the real cost of things by breaking things down into individual units. What I mean by that is, even at the highest subscription rate - $99 for a full year – you’re looking at $3.30 per game to watch every game for any given team and, unless they’re blowing smoke up my ass or it’s getting lost in the other smoke, you get to watch it on your time, however and often you want. And if you’re like me and like to follow two teams, that cuts your per-game cost in half. Bottom line, the way you value MLS’s new TV deal tracks almost perfectly with the number of games you want to watch.

That’s to say, I like that and it makes me happy. Now, for some things I don’t like.