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!

Colorado Rapids 3-1 FC Cincinnati: Putting Together a Puzzle with a Hammer

The hammer is the puzzle...whoa....

Was it nice to dream that FC Cincinnati could rescue a draw after Kekuta Manneh’s split-second equalizer, even for the minute it took for Nicolas Mezquida to slip a go-ahead goal under Spencer Richey’s arm-pit? Or was that more like someone pointing over your shoulder and yelling “Oh my God, that is the best thing I’ve ever seen!” before kicking you in the balls when you turned to look?

The Colorado Rapids would go on to score one more sloppy goal on the way to a 3-1 win over FC Cincy in the Rockies. With that, a bad streak gets one game longer and Cincinnati fans’ collective nausea at the impotency of its attack rises a little higher up the throat. It’s easy to take a walk with despair, given that fact pattern, but let me see if I can’t scrape a couple positives out of Interim Head Coach Bowl (aka, yesterday’s game…Yohan Damet and Conor Casey…right?).

Cincinnati held a solid edge in possession – damn close to 60/40 – and they impressed both me and Marcelo Balboa (who couldn’t stop talking up Cincinnati’s bravery for playing out of the back) with their composure playing between the defense and midfield…it’s just what happens when they get closer to goal. A moment early in the first half encapsulates FC Cincy’s biggest weakness. They got the ball around the Rapids’ left around the 13th minute and had the chance to play a ball into the area with the Rapids scrambling; sadly, all of Cincinnati’s players ran to more or less the same spot – at or about the penalty spot – and a lot of crowding and tripping over dicks ensued. Not surprisingly, that didn't make the highlights. In fact, the runs Colorado’s players made on their first goal late in the half provides an extremely useful contrast – e.g., see how Kei Kamara’s near-post run cleared space for Andre Shinyashiki’s shot? That’s what happens when you put players who understand that role in that role. Getting the final ball right is every bit as much about runs as it is about the quality of the passes that feed them.

To draw the obvious contrast, I see two “pure” attacking players for Cincy in yesterday’s starting XI: Fanendo Adi (who…I’ll get to it) and Roland Lamah. After that…is Allan Cruz an attacking player? Is Frankie Amaya? I’m on, I don’t think so and wait for it(?), respectively, but how does that flaccid attack play against reasonable expectations of the roster FC Cincinnati built? To (finally) go back to the positives, one of them lurks in the penumbra of the last two paragraphs: FC Cincinnati has decent pieces on the parts of the field where they have the right personnel in the right position. They looked fine knocking the ball around and out of the back, even when Colorado pressed them a little, precisely because the players they had in those roles are where they should be and know what they’re doing in those roles/ places. To flip the argument, it’s the lack of proper personnel where they need them that hurts them.

FC Cincinnati 0-2 New York Red Bulls: Counting the Hands on Deck (on One Hand)

(The woman at the back senses what you're all thinking...)

I plan to start and end on the same talking point – i.e., questions personnel. First, what can a team do when its heretofore most reliable player makes a catastrophic mistake? FC Cincinnati’s shot at three points went out the door when Kaku found the ball that Mathieu Deplagne lost between his legs (dude. look down.) and slotted it past Spencer Richey. That wasn’t the only decisive moment yesterday – think what might have been had Luis Robles got a little less hand to Fanendo Adi’s header – but it came late enough in the game, and with things rolling fast enough downhill, for Cincinnati to rescue Deplagne’s error. Again, that’s one of your more reliable players…

‘Twas an ugly game, one that ultimately ended in a 2-0 loss for FC Cincinnati. The New York Red Bulls scored a second goal (1 + 1 = 2!), but that was just a little dunking that made the game read a little more lopsided than it should have. The Red Bulls were visibly the better, more talented team but that translated more to moving the ball forward than chance creation. Cincinnati created more shots – e.g., Adi had (and failed) a one-on-one test of his own – and that made this a game that could have ended either way…but you’ll have to move to an alternate universe if you want a happy ending…you think Alan Koch still coaches in that universe? (Nah…)

There isn’t a lot to analyze after that. New York tends to turn games ugly, and that bogged down large chunks of the game in a series of close-quarter wrestling matches over the ball. It wasn’t a permanent neutral, but neither team passed well (or often, for that matter) – which is to say, the Red Bulls have nothing to gloat about (and this performance makes me want to dial back talk of escape velocity for them; New York is grinding out wins, not designing them). They put two shots on goal and both of them went in, end of story. Before that point, they wandered aimlessly in the attacking wastes and survived the odd scare from Cincinnati…hold on…

I want to pause to bitch about the utility of the shots/shots on goal stat. At some point in the second half – a moment The Mothership didn’t think to add to the highlight reel – Adi and Roland Lamah combined on a solo raid that ended with Lamah getting the ball inside the Red Bulls’ penalty area. New York shut down his first look, but Lamah spun out of it and got free for a shot. He missed, obviously, and the ball rolled wide of the whole damn net. Still, that was, 1) a good chance, and 2) one of the worst looks for New York’s defense all night. And yet, according to the numbers, one of Cincy’s best chances shows up as one of its six shots off target, more fuck up than opportunity, and that's backwards.

Orlando City SC 5-1 FC Cincinnati: On Showing Up to Work Drunk

Just gimme till noon (or Colorado). I'll rally....

Shit got dark in a hurry in that one, didn’t it? FC Cincinnati managed to play Orlando City SC even in a first half that offended at least three of the senses (but which three?); the low quality aside, that’s 45 minutes’ worth of earning a point on the road. There’s no denying that Darren Mattocks pulled Cincinnati’s one bright moment from some as yet uncharted hole of his ass, but the teams went into the locker rooms tied a 1-1.

It took less than a third as much time for Orlando to rack up three more goals, only one of them not built at least partially from garbage, and they game arguably ended with that, the Lions’ third goal. The hits (to the groin) kept coming, sadly, and FC Cincinnati walked out Orlando City Stadium with the biggest loss in its short MLS history. I’m not sure how a team goes about exorcising such a low-rent demon – e.g., would beating Orlando by the same spread in Nippert Stadium do it, or will it take getting beat just as badly by a better team? (do witch doctors charge hourly?) – but, when FC Cincy fans swap horror stories, I expect this one will come up now and again. Or until the mists of time swallow it and eclipse its memory…

On a personal level, I need to acknowledge the few blind-spots I had coming into the game. While I would not have known that a family emergency would take Roland Lamah back to the Ivory Coast (and I join everyone in hoping that ends well), I definitely slept more than I should have on injuries to Allan Cruz, Leonardo Bertone, and Fatai Alashe. Bad as that was (especially, Bertone, a player I rate in line up), it should have been clear that someone connected to FC Cincy had done something unholy when Greg Garza pulled up gimpy at the fifth (fucking) minute; two of those things happening is bad luck, but all three is clearly a curse, and I can only hope that a rigorous investigation and eventual spiritual purging will follow, because things simply cannot go on like this without some unacceptable number of seals breaking.

So, no, the “dodgy-sausage” line-up didn’t help, but even that leads to my first question about what really happened out there – and bear with me a little as I talk this out. As happened last weekend in Cincinnati against Montreal, Orlando looked just fucking awful out there. To pick on just one guy, Sebastian Mendez looked borderline incompetent every time he touched the ball; Cristian Higuita, a player I’ve seen dominate games, coughed up the ball over and over again. With these two games as a sample, I’m left wondering to what extent Cincinnati makes teams bad. If that’s what’s happening, that’s a good thing, if only in a practical sense (aesthetically, on the other hand, it is death). Honestly, the two teams involved (e.g., Orlando and Montreal (who drew New England in Montreal yesterday) muddle the sample by way of being terrible, but if teams keep looking awful against Cincinnati, that would be something at least. Thus endeth the silver lining.

New York Red Bulls 1-0 FC Cincinnati: Worry.

Great album for the right people, btw. (Punk.)

Having just completed my penance for missing the first 10 minutes of the second half, I can admit that FC Cincinnati had more chances than I remembered (linked to in order, fwiw; and consider that they got a super-majority of clips in the highlights over all). All I know is that, when I watched the game in real-time, I was as focused on pulling for it to end as anything else.

Jesus Christ, what a discouraging turd of a performance – and that applies to both Cincinnati and the Red Bulls. They dragged everyone who endured the experience through, in terms of competence and technical proficiency, looked like two high school teams bumbling through 90+ minutes that only a parent (or truly dedicated fans) could love. Anyone wondering what’s throttling Red Bulls this season need look no further than their once-lethal passing drying all the fucking way up. Last season, and even a couple before, they would have cut FC Cincy to ribbons, often as they forced all those turnovers and clearances that didn’t get the clearances nearly far enough away.

And that’s really where the source of my concern comes in: had Cincinnati earned this result against Red Bulls 2018, the tone of everything below would read brighter. Meanwhile, back in 2019, Cincinnati barely lost to a bad team that continues to play badly. That takes nothing away from Cincy’s back four – all of whom played well, with Kendall Waston standing rather impressively out (happy that he’s delivering for them too, something I second-guessed on my way into 2019) – but they look increasingly like the sole stable, functioning part of this expansion team. New York’s tactical/technical aimlessness lent them a pretty massive assist, but they stepped well where they had to, and didn’t give the Red Bulls much. The fact remains that they couldn't get it done against that team. They gave them enough sadly – your classic momentary loss of muscular coordination – and that got New York their first win in…six games? (Yep.)

Whatever faith I have in Cincinnati to succeed in its inaugural season is centered on Leonardo Bertone and Victor Ulloa (or whomever they start) being able to smartly manage the traffic heading in both directions through midfield. To give the Red Bulls a little credit, it felt like those two struggled to pass any direction but sideways yesterday, and that’s my theory for why FC Cincy could only snatch for scraps out there. I’m open to other theories, but I didn’t see much in the way of attacking cohesion from the visiting team. Just to note it and/or keep the spirits up, for all their woes, the Red Bulls remain one of the league’s better defensive teams. Perhaps and hopefully that goes some distance to explaining why Cincinnati looked so damn clueless out there (getting an answer to why New York looked so clueless would turn around their season).

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Sporting Kansas City: The Car Is Running All Right, But Where Is It Going?

I mean, what does this dog actually look like?

Just to mention it, ESPN’s broadcast of the game played roughly two minutes behind real-time. That allowed me to catch wind of two of FC Cincinnati’s bigger moments – the penalty call that gave them their first goal, and Nick Hagglund’s late offside goal (um, how is that not in the goddamn highlights? Are you motherfuckers Billy Barring me?) – and now I know that knowing events two minutes in the future would improve nothing in my life. It washes out as existing in a state of suspended animation, really, which I don’t recommend.

As it happens, that’s a pretty good short-hand for the state of FC Cincinnati as a team. Every game they’ve played so far bore some kind of wrinkle. When they played both of 2018’s MLS Cup finalists, they faced shadows of last year’s editions – something that’s only become more apparent since. When they hosted the Philadelphia Union, the rain pouring on the field seemed to weigh on their shoulders just as much. Today’s 1-1 draw against Sporting Kansas City, meanwhile, was lousy with wrinkles. To begin, SKC started a clear second choice team, ignoring general, well-intentioned advice to “focus on the league” after eating five fist-fulls of shit in Mexico mid-week. (Watching SKC’s Johnny Russell at the end of the game, who went the full 90 in Monterrey, makes a solid case that Peter Vermes took the correct approach; poor bastard was gassed.)

The real wrinkles broke into the skin with the unfolding of the match itself; by the end, the oldest, saggiest human being on Earth would have looked at that and thought, “goddamn, get some Oil of Olay up in this thing, stat!”

Where to begin? Players for both teams pissed away perfect chances – Kelyn Rowe for SKC, Kekuta Manneh for Cincy – and on opposite ends of the game. Just….terrible goalkeeping gaffes led to both goals – a bout of confusion by Adrian Zendejas early in the first half (link above), then Spencer Richey reprised something terrifyingly similar early in the second (also, I’m not sure that Greg Garza didn’t poke the ball past Richey when he fell down). With the exception of FC Cincinnati’s first goal – which, as I saw it, came during a time when SKC had recovered from Cincinnati’s strong opening - game-states generally loosely tracked those events. The same goes for Hagglund’s unfortunately offside winner, which capped a late (again, you must release the video), ultimately futile rally by FC Cincy, and that leaves what might have been gasping for life on this game’s cutting room floor.

Atlanta United FC 1-1 FC Cincinnati: Is It Still a Magic When You Can See the Strings?

If there's no body, it's just people standing around....

Full disclosure: I was fixing a flat on my bike during the first half of Atlanta United FC v. FC Cincinnati. For those wondering, no, it’s not a fixee.

Counter-point: if you pull up the MLS App’s summary for the eventual 1-1 draw and check the timeline, you will see very few dots on the thin grey line that corresponds with that time period. Don’t think I missed much, in other words (and, holy shit, do I need bifocals). Here is what I did see:

Two classic banks of four that looked solid, if not impenetrable. Heartening as it was to see that, my personal most heartening moment came with Mathieu Deplagne crossed the ball and Fanendo Adi nodded it home. A conspiracy of “rules” declared the goal offside (again, I would have allowed it*, this is how I roll), but that moment gives at least an answer to the question of whether Cincinnati can be competitive in 2019. Cincinnati did not create many chances overall (WARNING: the box score may cause depression; other side effects may include a burning sensation, mild psychosis, the runs and immediate death), but that move came during open play and, if you worry about the team surviving on set-pieces alone, seeing decent attacking play of any kind spells R-E-L-I-E-F.

Better still, Roland Lamah scored FC Cincy’s late, reasonably deserved equalizer in open play as well, and this is how one winds up with hot cockles (and helluva(n) assist by Kenny Saief!). Just to note it, Lamah looks better than I thought he would coming into the season. Also, the selected highlights on MLSSoccer.com come just one clip shy of showing every single one of Cincinnati’s chances in this game. Marinate on that for a minute.

(* To wrap up the offside thing, I had an interesting debate with a guy on twitter about this and, as conceded there, calling offside on a strict black-and-white system simplifies things for all concerned; and yet I would adjust the rule to read that, if a player is mostly on-side (say, 80% or more), the goal should count. The way I see it, players already have to adjust to the way any given referee calls a game, so what’s one more wrinkle? But I digress.)

FC Cincinnati, And the Fall Into MLS 2019

Hopes/dreams.

This preview as an expanded part of the larger project of offering my current best opinion/narrative on every team in Major League Soccer at the beginning of the 2019 regular season. That post will go up tomorrow (probably), and with much shorter entries for each of those teams – because I know less about them than I do FC Cincinnati, the subject of this post.

At the same time, I don’t have a deep, rich history with Ohio’s newest team. I only started watching them June 10, 2018 and, until just this past weekend, I had never seen them lose a game. Like nature in Jurassic Park, they always found a way…until they didn’t…

Preseason (domestic results only, and games that I watched): 1-1-0 

Even if I digested FC Cincinnati’s win over the Charleston Battery with a little more insouciance than justified, the fairly large part of me that hates being wrong larded that post with caveats. “It’ll get harder,” “Chicago is basically a USL team”: those are classic dodges, and I love them for it, but not even all of those psychically and emotionally-protective qualifiers prepared me for the full-eclipse darkness of what Columbus Crew SC…did to FC Cincinnati [a woman screams] in its final preseason game of its MLS existence (and I didn’t even get cool glasses).

As argued in the write-up, I interpreted Cincinnati’s win over Charleston as a reasonable result of having better individual players. To take two steps forward, I went into the game against Columbus with a headful of whispers that FC Cincy died over the first 70 minutes in the prior game against Chicago, but with more of a make-shift line-up (also, checks out). The team came back, I was told, on the strength of a rush of first-teamers and a wonder goal by Roland “Huzzah!” Lamah (look, just run with it, someone?). When the game against Columbus didn’t start so good, it all tracked as, “Columbus is better than Chicago, so this is expected, but, look! Lamah made a play! Green shoots!”

Trouble is, it never stopped looking not so good, and the green shoot got sent off for a two-footed tackle from behind. Cincinnati looked helpless before that, and utterly lost after it. Had Columbus played that game (and that game alone) for the kill, God help us. Or them. By which I mean FC Cincinnati. Here’s why:

FC Cincinnati 0-3 Columbus Crew SC: A Collection of Negative Metaphors

Fucking adorable, but it still has to change...

In my youth soccer days, I had a coach who turned his back on us after getting fed up with how the team practiced. He insisted we continue, only without him watching. It didn’t bother me (seemed for the best, really; he was unhappy, we were unhappy, etc.), but my teammates cracked within minutes and started begging him to watch again. That was the goal, of course, and he gave everyone reminders on “goals and attitudes,” etc. I don’t recall if we did any better, but that was never the point of the exercise.

I don’t know why that story came to me, but watching FC Cincinnati get destroyed by Columbus Crew SC by an ultimately merciful 3-0 final score allowed me to sympathize a little with my old coach.

I’ve been waiting to see how FC Cincinnati stacked up against Major League Soccer competition since June 10, 2018 – that was the first time I saw them play (and, for the record, they beat North Carolina in that one). Between my commute and some questionable choices on the video streaming side by and among FC Cincy, the Chicago Fire and the good people who run the Carolina Challenge Cup, I missed the live, and only, video stream of Cincinnati’s draw against Chicago. Watching them play the Charleston Battery…I dunno, it felt less like something any of us needed to know than a lazy farewell fuck with an old flame. (Also, I’d already watched them play Charleston last year as well). Given all the above, and unless I blacked out them playing an MLS team in last year’s U.S. Open Cup, yesterday’s game against Columbus really did count as my first time seeing FC Cincinnati against MLS opposition and…yeah, where to begin?

Saying a team got “played off the park” is one of soccer’s most familiar clichés, but FC Cincinnati did something more disturbing in Charleston yesterday: they didn’t to show up. They looked every bit as unready for primetime as the “jerseys” in which they played. By the end of getting spun dizzy by Columbus, I’m guessing some of them appreciated that little taste of anonymity. A few of them might have appreciated a bag to wear over their heads. Beat on both sides of the ball, they didn’t defend well and attacked with the force of three kittens, that’s the kind of shit you see in the FA Cup when the Premier League teams come in to face the amateurs. Worse, Roland Lamah, the only guy to produce a highlight reel moment (and he managed two…ish) let his final highlight take the form of a two-footed tackle from behind and a deserved sending off…

…to turn to another cliché, yes, sometimes a team needs that spark and that's probably what Lamah was after. Sparks are funny, though, inspiration in one scenario, and step one to a dumpster conflagration in another.

Late Tackle 01 19 2017: Questions for the Timbers, Chicago's Rebuild, and 10 Other Things (or Players) Who Excite Me

Dream big, Fire fans...could be your bandwagon...

In keeping with this site’s practice of starting local…

The Oregonian posted one of their damn slideshows (sorry, hate the things, because they feel more about the ads; yes, I’m aware of the state of the news industry) that framed the issues facing the Portland Timbers in the form of 11 questions, some more pointed than others. To quibble with the premise a little, I’d argue that, if you can come up with 11 questions – if you get that granular – you probably have 20+ questions. To hit that from the other side, with the way personnel overlaps and cross-pollinates, I think the Timbers have between three and five questions to answer in 2017.

I’ll come up with those later (tomorrow, maybe; or Monday), but, for now, the best question of The Oregonian's 11 was the last (paraphrasing): are the Timbers good enough to make the 2017 playoffs?

And they flagged the one major detail that slips my mind every time I think about the Portland Timbers: how large-scale erratic they’ve been. Or that’s just another way of admitting that the flukiness of the 2015 Run to Glory still somehow doesn’t sit right with me. At any rate, that whole “erratic” theme is something head coach Caleb Porter has to answer for.

Moving on to other pastures…

The Late (Late) Tackle 12 16 2016: Portland Timbers Trade Crap, FC Dallas Keeping Busy, and January Camp

I’ll be waiting, my lov…OH MY GOD, WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY FOOT!?

I’m half following a couple Portland Timbers-related things on twitter, something about Jeff Attinella (which sounds like it’s got a little traction), plus something about centerbacks at or around 30 years of age.

I like Attinella. Have seen him stand on his head in a couple games. Competition is good, so it’s good to see someone come in to push Jake Gleeson, especially when you feel good about both competitors. And they are vying for your love…

…I’m in the lounge, gentlemen, on the fainting couch. Don’t make me wait too long…

Starting elsewhere in Timbers world, however (wait, no, you just started with…never mind).

A Future Without Taylors

Because I don’t think there’s a dissenting opinion on this, I’ll just note Steven Taylor’s departure from the Portland Timbers. Here’s to wishing him the best, and a future in a league where attacking players are slower in body and thought…

…to hit this from another angle, though (and, please, tell me I haven’t already), as much as this Taylor particularly worried me, I am a little anxious about the magnitude of the turnover in the Timbers’ defense, and the roster as a whole, at time of writing. I know there’s always an argument for just ripping off the damn band aid, and lord knows the Timbers need to get younger (and faster) back there. Still…The Kick Off ran a piece from a site that covers the Philadelphia Union. The article talks about how the Union needs to manage a transition in their defensive set-up (for they did struggle), and while the particular dynamics aren’t anything like identical to Portland’s, I like the guy’s thought process.