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| No, it's "Corben." "C-O-R-B-E-N," |
Are your favorite goals individual or team? I ask because FC
Cincinnati scored one of each - the former by Fanendo Adi, the latter by Corben
Bone - on their way to resuscitating a 4-3 win at home against an eternally
gasping Toronto FC II. I’m Team Bone because I feel like team goals are more
replicable than solo flights, they make teams feel more like, y’know, a team,
and there’s just…something about pulling a defense apart by running and
passing. (For me, that’s soccer at its best.) Don’t get me wrong: Adi’s goal
was a whole lotta something, one of those moments where a player puts it on
himself to make something happen. (You can find that, and reference for
everything that comes below at The Match Center.)
The downside: FC Cincy needed both of those goals, and more,
to beat a team that has lost twenty one (21) times in this 2018 season. On the
plus side, FC Cincy has players capable of turning a game all on his lonesome.
Birthday Boy Bone (googled that; results above) would score the winner in this
one, but it really is remarkable that Cincinnati would need as many as four
goals to beat a team as bad as TFC II, aka, the only team already out of the United
Soccer League’s playoffs. (Actually, now that I’m looking, they’ve now been
joined by the Richmond Kickers, Seattle Sounders FC 2, Tulsa Roughnecks FC, and
Rio Grande Valley FC, though, mysteriously, not Las Vegas Lights FC, who are
factually beneath Rio Grande in the standings, but who also have a game in
hand, but doesn’t that still look like inoperable cancer for Las Vegas Lights
FC? Why dick around with the whole “mathematically eliminated” charade. This is
when, people, not if. That patient is dead. Moving on…because life is for the
living…)
The other remarkable thing about tonight’s (narrow) win:
Cincinnati hasn’t allowed three goals against any team going back to June 27 – when
they allowed three goals to the same TFC II team. It was a step in an
unfamiliar direction for FC Cincy’s defense, because, whether they’ve paired
Forrest Lasso and Dekel Keinan or Lasso and Patrick Barrett, the team’s central
defensive pairing generally gets along like steak and chianti, controlled,
classy, just hugging every taste bud, etc. There is, however, sub-plot to that,
an asterisk hanging at the end: TFC II’s Tsubasa Endoh scored each goal in his
hat trick from several yards beyond the lands where central defenders roam;
even his third, closer goal came from a place where you’d want a midfielder to
shut him down, not a defender.
At the same time, there’s no shame in this. If this is the
same Endoh I remember from a year or two ago, there was a team when people
thought they couldn’t find his ceiling in MLS. He’s a good player, in other
words, one a team loses track of at its own (apparently) three-goal peril. So,
no, I wouldn’t blame Lasso and Barrett for allowing three goals, nor would I
blame Justin Hoyte or Blake Smith. All of Endoh’s goals were good, true, but
that doesn’t answer why he had as much space as he did for…yeah, all of those
shots that became goals.
That leaves open the question of where Michael Lahoud and
Kenney Walker went on any of those goals. I can only answer that on the first
goal (from memory): that happened when Adi tried to prove his work ethic by chasing
a ball he lost from TFC II’s 18 all the way back to midfield; Adi wound up getting
tangled up with Lasso at midfield, and the ball then squirted free to Endoh in
his the open acres of his own personal kingdom on Cincinnati’s right. Maybe
something like that happened on all three goals – call it lost in transition –
and Endoh had more than enough leg to make good on it.
It feels weird hard to care about all this, or at least
needlessly grudging. FC Cincy hasn’t lost since I’ve started watching them, for
one [Ed. - True story: my first FC Cincy game was their home win over Carolina
FC on May 19.], and they always figure out a way, like they’ve always done, and
that’s just how they did it tonight…
…again, against the, literally, worst team in the United
Soccer Leagues. That particular detail only lingers with me because unless
Cincinnati hadn’t looked a little wan going back two games, if not three.
That’s just something I’ve filed away for future reference, but, honestly, wringing
my hands over any detail - no matter how significant - feels silly, especially
when the wins keep coming: call it bitching about hospital corners. Better
still, positive results should continue over the next two games as well (@ Penn
FC and @ Richmond Kickers FC). Seeing as they’ve now given up six goals across
two games against TFC II, maybe these two teams just fit together a certain way
in 2018? That’s no call to complacency, not with the competition slated to get
stronger in just three games’ time – and not just next season, but in the
post-season of 2018. Call it confident, but concerned: only time will tell if
the Orange and Blue are recharging their batteries or if they’re running out of
steam.
Now, to finally pick up the title, I thought Walker had an
amazing game tonight, patient, next-level passing nicely complimented by
strength in the tackle. (Something else I noticed tonight, but only after the
broadcast team pointed it out: Barrett plays a pretty strong long diagonal.) He
was as good as any FC Cincy player tonight, up to and including playing one of
those “cousins-once-removed” roles on (I think) two of Cincinnati’s goals.
Walker is as honest a player as you’ll ever see, and I’d love to see him step
up into MLS with FC Cincinnati. His chances aren’t terrible - he’s been
starting often enough, and playing well enough that he feels as integral to the
team’s success as any player out there. He also looks too slow - and generally.
Just watching him next to Lahoud - an MLS-marginal player, probably – Walker’s
speed of thought, as well as his actual, physical speed, both look a step too
slow. Sometimes good things come from Walker lingering on the ball, and that’s
what I like about him; I’m just not sure I see him getting away with lingering
on the ball in MLS. I can’t see a role for Walker on next year’s team that
couldn’t be better played a lot of other players.
I’m using Walker as a stand-in for any number of players on
FC Cincy. I know they’re not all going to come up with the team and, now that I’ve
grown a little attached, that sucks a little. I also find myself falling prey
to some serious “one-in-the-hand” logic with players I once wrote off, only to
find myself thinking, “HOLD!” Take Jimmy McLaughlin: he just didn’t convince me
for whatever reason, but he’s been a great sub/catalyst the last two, three
games; hell, it’s possible his contributions turned the tide tonight (whereas
site favorite Nazmi Albadawi didn’t shake up nearly enough shit). McLaughlin
was all over Cincy’s equalizer, from working the ball out of the defense, up
the right, to providing the butter-soft pass that Bone buried into the net. His
entire body of work in recent weeks suddenly looks like giant middle finger
pointed straight back at my own judgment call.
As a fan, you just sort of adopt players on a team, you get
used to their upsides and, so long as they’re not terrible, they just sort of
morph into one of those “givens” on the field. As such, I have a lot of thoughts
in my head about FC Cincinnati at this particular, peculiar crossroads in their
young life. If players like Walker and McLaughlin do get dropped - and,
man-child that I am, I hope neither does - I will feel this odd, and largely
unearned sense of loss. At the same time, it’s hard to wrap my head around the
idea that the same player who can be that useful today will abruptly stop being
useful tomorrow. That doesn’t add up; or, better maybe it doesn’t seem fair.
To close with the game itself, what’s there to say except
that it’s another FC Cincinnati win. Moreover, this win felt better than the
last two - and that’s only in the sense that it didn’t feel like Cincinnati
stole it. No, they hauled it back this time, and in a way that felt curiously
inevitable. And maybe it should have been against a lesser club – inevitable, I
mean – but they got the job down last night. And they keep doing the job. Good
times, all ‘round. Enjoy 'em while you got 'em.
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