Tampa Bay Rowdies 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Stolen Goods, aka, We Interrupt This Coronation

It's still a gift.

It takes a game where the gap between good things for FC Cincinnati extended for over 90 minutes to return one’s focus to present concerns. Those two things were, 1) the penalty kick that FC Cincy drew in the first minute and scored in the second, and 2) the team’s first coherent approach to goal around the 94th minute. And maybe the “one” in the first sentence refers only to me, but Cincinnati bumbling, terrible outing didn’t deserved one point, never mind all three. And yet through the good graces and terrible eyesight of referee Kevin Broadley*, they left Florida with a 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rowdies…

…maybe those heavy rains were the Soccer Gods’ tears at the injustice of it all?

Careful readers might have noticed the two-stop time-line above skipped over Cincinnati’s second goal. I excluded it on the grounds that it was some bullshit. Ref Broadley had been unusually solicitous about the health and welfare of FC Cincy players throughout the game - he fell easily for flops by Fanendo Adi, Patrick Barrett and Emanuel Ledesma - but I can’t begin to imagine how the word “foul” came to him when replacement left back Pa Konate went down late in Tampa Bay’s penalty area. Konate lost track of the ball, ran into Pape Diakate’s feet and fell down. When Ref Broadley blew the whistle for the foul, at least two Rowdies hit the turf in unbelieving despair, as if struck low in the Biblical sense?

Can you blame them? The Rowdies had Cincinnati pinned against its (fortunately) sturdy back four for nearly the entire game. You can see all the bad calls for Cincy and all Tampa Bay’s boned shots through the Match Center (looking so at Georgi Hristov, in the event they don't show him missing two he shouldn’t have), as well as (the notably itinerant) Kwadwo Poku’s lone goal for Tampa. Short as they are, the highlights can’t possibly show each of Tampa’s steady succession of forays toward Cincinnati’s goal, and how hard players like Poku and Junior Flemmings pushed to break that steady line; Flemmings, in particular, gave Cincy’s left back, Blake Smith, more trouble than any other player I’ve seen this season. When I saw Cincinnati’s midfielders, it was Michael Lahoud and Fatai Alashe shuttling a ball to nowhere terribly useful more often than not, and from inside their defensive third. Stats don’t always work in soccer (though I am coming around on this), but sometimes they translate a game fairly well - e.g., by the time Smith got sent off for Cincinnati (62nd minute), Tampa Bay had 25 shots, with 5 on goal, to Cincy’s 4 shots, with 1 on goal.

The specific unfairness of the game notwithstanding - and Tampa tripped over their own dicks by failing to score - it’s important to highlight the just plain daffiness of this game. FC Cincy had just rolled straight through Atlanta United 2 Wednesday, and, for as long as I’ve watched them, Cincinnati has “struggled” in the insufferable spirit of an honor student crying over her first “B.” A(nother) stat posted during the broadcast recalled this Sunday drive down Easy Street: Cincinnati has had multi-goal games in 11 of their last 14, have (I think) averaged 2.21 goals a game over that time. For as long as I’ve known this team, they have always rolled one way, and that almost certainly left me unprepared to see the ball roll the other way - especially against a Tampa Bay team separated from them by 26 points and 12 spots in the USL’s Eastern Conference standings at time of kick-off. On the flip-side of the same token, I’ve talked up this defense over and over again, and it bailed out the team last night, even if it looked “lungier” than usual (not that I don’t celebrate the eternal importance of simply getting in the way in defense).

Anyone who has read these FC Cincinnati posts know that I put at least 1/3 of my energy into thinking about this team’s future - specifically, which of the current players might come into MLS with the team - and, to pick up with where this post started, this game served as a cold, wet-blanket reminder that FC Cincinnati still has plenty of season left in both 2018 and the USL. And, obviously, I needed this slap to the face, even if the win takes a little of the sting out of it. Massive unbeaten streaks are delightful and all, but, God bless the beauty of American sports, they don’t mean shit once Second Season (aka, the playoffs) gets started. When FC Cincy takes the field against the USL’s better teams in the post-season - e.g., Louisville City FC, the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, or even a reportedly surging North Carolina FC (True? False? I’m just echoing what the broadcast booth told me) - the 11-point cushion they have in the table will mean half as much as their form and their opponent’s form in that moment. And that’s what I’m thinking of when I sit through a turd of an outing like this one. Sure, the ref gift-wrapped the thing, but it’s still a turd inside the damn box.

It’s not that every FC Cincy player stunk up the soggy joint last night in Saint Petersburg (and how does that work, the whole “Tampa Bay” and “St. Peterburg” thing?), but no one had a good game either. Well, Cincinnati’s goalkeeper, Evan Newton, did his best imitation of a rock back there, but a busy goalkeeper is often a symptom of a bad game. The attack simply couldn’t get going for reasons I can’t quite divine (was it just Tampa Bay’s 5-man midfield? could it be that simple? a case of one crucial, missing (Corben) Bone?), and that meant a lot of traffic headed toward Newton’s goal. Again, the defense struggled, but it also held and that flags another positive: a good defense doesn’t just win championships, it brushes the bad games heading up to the real stuff under the commune’s sofa, along with all the other things you’d prefer to forget (your roommates, sometimes).

All the above said, I’ll acknowledge what’s both obvious and important: this is the first time I’ve seen Cincinnati get outplayed. Literally. I’ve seen them take a while to get warmed up often enough that I kept waiting for the same last night, something that lasted all the way up to Smith getting sent off for the silliest possible reason. (Also, make-up call? y’know, for everything?) They still won (the bastards) and even that can happen in the post-season, it’s just that the odds get way higher. If there’s a silver lining to this game, it did the singular service of interrupting the coronation that was already taking shape in my head. I’d gotten so used to the idea of FC Cincinnati winning that I started spending a lot of time thinking about tomorrow. Too much, probably.

I don’t remember which team knocked Cincinnati out of last year’s playoffs - not least because I wasn’t watching then; and I’m not going to look it up either, because I haven’t earned the privilege. I’m also confident that this team would love nothing more than to have the USL Championship in its back pocket when it steps up into Major League Soccer. Thinking too hard about next season is the surest way to let that slip away. As such, I’m happy for the reminder. Now, bring on the next opponent. I’ve got a taste in my mouth that I wanna wash out (no, no, besides the stale IPA).

(* To take a position on this, Broadley should sit and think about his sins for a while. That was one of the worst outings by an official that I've seen in years.)