FC Cincinnati 3-1 Inter Miami FC: Shit, I Underwrote My Theme...

Junior Moreno, artist's rendering.

Here I’ve been posting twitter threads that double as game summaries since the pandemic started (at least) and I never thought to just link to the fucking things. In fairness, that’s more color commentary than summary - and the notes come at what I consider appropriate intervals (i.e., I’m very much a one-dude-in-the-broadcast-booth man) - but it flags every goal, notes some broader trends and even mentions the shirtless dude in the crowd with the great state of Ohio tattooed on the skin above his beating heart.

Now, to flesh that out a little…or a lot.

FC Cincinnati started the game as well as Inter Miami CF started it badly. They stopped everything headed toward their goal before it breached their defensive third - if with a massive assist from a globally sloppy Miami team - and piled on pressure with sharp passes and a selection of first touches and shake-‘n’-shimmies that kept the ball rolling toward Miami’s goal. Whether on coach’s orders or from a bout of the jitters, the visitors let Cincy play, only really trying to pressure the ball when it rolled into their defensive third. With the home team more or less camped inside Miami’s half, that proved disastrous: Cincinnati generally only had to go as far back as the impressively effective Yuya Kubo (who added a wrinkle with a shot on goal!) and Cincy’s new stealth-fighter No. 6, Junior Moreno, who would then feed it either to Luciano Acosta, one of the forwards (Brandon Vazquez or Dominique Badji), or Alvas Powell high on the right, or Ronald Matarrita high on the left.

Given how mightily Miami struggles to score - they’ve scored just two goals over four(!?) games, with one coming from the spot (today) - Cincy effectively won the game over the first 25 minutes. Their first goal featured a lot some of the good, good things I noted above - e.g., Badji showing to receive the ball, but instead turning and letting the ball run toward goal, poking it to Acosta, who found a wide-open (this is a theme) Vazquez running up Cincy’s right. With the fullback playing to contain, Vazquez pulled up, stepped inside and scanned for the third pass, who happened to be Matarrita, who passed home the goal from the far post. Miami’s shape was a disaster, both d-mids had stepped to Badji, leaving Acosta free to run with space in front of him and Vazquez all alone.

Cincy’s second goal followed the other half of the script noted above. After making a pinned-in Miami chase around the right for a couple passes, the ball went back to Kubo, who cycled the ball to Tyler Blackett (yeah, yeah, the ball went further back), who found - again, a wide-open Matarrita, who was able to pick out Vazquez as cleanly as the latter had done for the former just six minutes earlier. In short, a low-scoring Inter Miami found themselves down 0-2 by letting too much happen around them. They showed too much respect to one of MLS’s historically bad sides.

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.