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| Loving cradling our collective asses...is it good for you? |
FC Cincinnati rotated its squad - more than a little, too -
and they still comfortably outplayed visiting Indy Eleven, 3-1. Hey…I lead with
the score. (And here’s The Match Center for all the numbers and videos you’re
going to get on this game.)
The machinery didn’t run without friction, some portions of
it more manifest than others - e.g., Indy made Cincy ‘keeper Evan Newton
stretch for a couple shots, and, when Pa Konate came off the field at 53’,
nothing about that substitution made me scratch my head - but it never felt
like Indy’s game to win. And that makes the numbers from the match curious reading
- especially the figures for attack and distribution. A couple testaments to
the gap between the game I thought I saw and those numbers lurk on my twitter
feed (@JeffBull5), but, who is to say what is real in paranoid times? Who’s to
say that some miscreant statistician within the secret sanctums of the USL FO didn’t
replace the actual numbers from this game in an attempt to hide FC Cincinnati’s
true greatness? No, I can’t prove it, but you can’t not prove it either.
(CITIZENS: Keep your eye on the Orange and Blue’s record, watch for skullduggery! Eternal vigilance!!)
(Speaking of conspiracies, did that Cincinnati’s Matt Bahner
get away with a goal-line handball early in the second half? And what to make
of the Zapruder-esque quality on those replays? Wait...can someone make a basement
disappear with the push of a button?)
Whatever the numbers say, Cincy created better openings,
some of them boulevard-wide - e.g., when the wonderful work down Indy’s right by
Michael Lahoud and Jimmy McLaughlin so mesmerized the defense that they gave Fanendo
Adi a public-park’s worth of free acreage. McLaughlin would strike again later,
and with a ball over the top to a surging Danni Konig that I didn’t credit
enough when I watched it live. Then again, for all the good work by McLaughlin
and Konig, the latter couldn’t have finished that chance without a blundering assist
by Indy’s ‘keeper, Owain Fon Williams, and two of his defenders. Indy’s defense
would cough up yet another mistake when Carlyle Mitchell pinged a (good) Russell
Cicerone cross into his own team’s side netting…hell, maybe there is no need
for a conspiracy to explain this result.
I guess the question
raised by all the above is when Indy piled up their chances; based on what I
watched, they racked up their numbers early in the 1st half - and before Adi’s
goal. Fatal errors aside (which, like goals, still count), it’s not like they
had a bad game, not even on the defensive side. As good a job as FC Cincinnati
did pulling them around, once Indy got their defense set, they would steadily
pushed Cincy out. And if you watch the highlights, you’ll see that they did
have good shots…but what you won’t see is how they put only every fourth shot
on goal, which means you’ll come very close to seeing all of their chances.
All’s well that ends well, and, while I only heard about the
celebration FC Cincinnati threw itself for winning the regular season (I missed
all of my own graduations, and with no regrets), it’s just fucking great that
the team could reward the fan-base with A Complete Fan Experience before they
close things out with two games on the road. For myself, I know I’ll see this
team lose a game someday - something that’s starting to freak me out a little
(am I lucky rabbit foot?) - but I hope it won’t come any time soon, or at least
not till next season.
I’ll leave next season at next season, for now (or at least
until the final paragraph), because the positives for rest of 2018 keep coming.
FC Cincy was able to give a full 90 minutes’ worth of rest for some players they’ll
rely on as they strive toward the USL championship - e.g., Corben Bone, Emanuel Ledesma,
Nazmi Albadawi, Fatai Alashe, Forrest Lasso, Patrick Barrett, and, regardless
of where he lurks in the hierarchy of Cincy’s forwards, Emery Welshman. That’s
over half a full squad, obviously, and that, my friends, is luxury with rich
Corinthian leather seats that keep your butt warm and everything. While I’ve
seen plenty of teams with a great starting eleven, and a good, say, 12-16
behind them that gives them real depth at certain positions, I have never seen a
team as spoiled for choice as this FC Cincinnati team, not in domestic soccer.
For the record, I’m sure there’s some part of me that finds
that grossly unfair, but I can’t hear it because the rest of me keeps
screaming, “Holy shit! They did it again!” over it.
I’m going to close out this post with some personnel notes,
both of them looking toward the future, and one of them with a jaundiced eye.
To start with the happy thought - and this answers a (little-noticed)
poll I posted on twitter - if someone asked me to name FC Cincinnati’s indispensable
player, I would call it a two-way race between Ledesma and Lahoud. The people
at home got treated with a highlight reel of Ledesma’s goals and assists, and
that made tangible tribute to the Argentine’s contributions this season. With
Lahoud, though…look, he just plays a style I like, enough to write his name
into the team’s regular starting eleven in ink (aka, “Michael Lahoud and Guest”).
To repeat myself (not sure how many times, but I apologize for the last two),
it’s his speed of thought that most impresses me. Lahoud rarely holds the ball for
long, and he’s got the precision to complete a good pass, as well as the talent
to play a better one; better yet, he’ll see either option within, at most, just
over a second. During yesterday’s game, the contrast with Tyler Gibson stood
out. That’s not a clean knock on Gibson - who holds onto the ball in traffic
fairly well - but he got dispossessed a couple times and, however well he kept
the ball from Indy’s defenders in search of a good pass, taking that extra
second or two more than Lahoud buys defenses as a whole time to get settled.
Speed matters, and Lahoud plays with it.
Yeah, yeah, it probably helps Lahoud plays where I used to
like playing, and in a very similar style, but that’s something I’d look for
were I building a team for MLS (or any league). For what it’s worth, I’d be
willing to wager on a Lahoud/Alashe midfield for Cincy’s inaugural top-flight
season. That said, put an upgrade next to Lahoud - maybe like Diego Chara (who
is God), maybe not - and they’d have something to say about who runs the
midfield in most games.
On the darker side, and the sad side of it, I still can’t
see McLaughlin come up with the team into MLS - and that strikes me as a
combination of wrong and crazy after the game he had yesterday. It wasn’t just
his two assists (again, that second one); after spending 30 minutes waiting for
anyone on the attacking side of Cincy’s left to take on Indy’s right back,
McLaughlin bolted to the end line then walked it like a tightrope past another
one or two defenders. Moreover, he has stood out more and more in the past
couple games, more often than not as a game-changing sub, but that hyphenated
adjective completes the thought: McLaughlin has changed games - and recently -
so…what am I seeing?
Don’t know. Too little size, too little speed, both maybe?
There’s just something in his game that makes me think he tops out around the
same level as, say, the San Jose Earthquakes’ Shea Salinas or Ned Grabavoy,
mostly of Real Salt Lake fame. This isn’t an argument that McLaughlin couldn’t
play in MLS - clearly, because those guys did - but whether Cincinnati, as a
team, can thrive in MLS with a player at that level, at that position. I guess
that’s where my uncertainty comes in. I say all that with all due respect to
McLaughlin as a player (and not in the low-key shitty way far too many people
use the phrase “with all due respect,” which has a long history of implying a
total lack of respect). I’d be fine if I got my calls on Lahoud and McLaughlin
backwards; I’m content with whatever works for the team.
Whatever happens next season, the above paragraph has me
pulling a little harder for McLaughlin for the rest of this season. And I’m
very much looking forward to that.
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