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| Well, it ain't gonna fill itself, dipshit... |
I have to start with this, mostly because I heard the name over and over: is the Louisville City FC broadcast team contractually obligated to
say, “George Davis the Fourth” every time the guy touches the ball? Does George
Davis the Third own Louisville, or something?
It’s not so bad to start with George Davis the Fourth -
beats the howlers I had lined up about how Louisville closed out the first half
with a flurry of goals, and it ended 72 hours and 38 minutes later (and don’t check
me math, I barely did) - because the man with the long, formal name wreaked
havoc down Louisville’s right. Or, rather, Blake Smith’s left side of FC Cincinnati’s
defense. I’ve been high on Smith for as long as I’ve watched FC Cincinnati, and
I’ve never seen a player make him work and/or guess as hard as…sigh, George
Davis the Fourth (treat?). Fortunately, FC Cincy’s defense held, even where
Blake did not - though they did have a trouser-filler around the 51st minute that
neither I, nor Louisville can’t believe they didn’t put away - and FC Cincinnati
walks away from this absurdist 90 with the 1-0 win.
Who knew they’d make The Puddle Goal hold
up? (On that, I can’t wait till I can easily find isolated highlights for FC Cincy
games, so I can show the water-logged freakshow that won this game for them. I mean, sure, sit
through the highlights (at the Match Center, along with everything else you
need!)). As goals go, it’s pretty fortunate and messed up. Corben Bone is
clearly among the blessed.
For all the truth of “they all count” when it comes to
goals, this game, along with the one before it, should make fairly clear that FC Cincinnati has real
work ahead on its way to the 2018 USL Championship. (Also, has the league named
its trophy? Shit, has MLS? If not, they both need to get on that shit.) I’m
looking at the top eight in the USL East right now, and I’m seeing a healthy
share of teams who gave FC Cincy a run for its money this season - not just Louisville
and Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC (both of whom played well enough to get all three
points), but teams like Bethlehem Steel FC and Nashville SC.
Back to the game(s) at hand (is it accurate to call these
two games, were they that different?), Louisville’s best chances to win it
dried up around the 58th minute, when Speedy Williams (who also received
full-name treatment) skied what I and the broadcast agreed was a sitter. They
had at least two great shots in the Saturday’s “first half” - both ably parried
by a rock-solid Spencer Richey - and Louisville squeezed FC Cincy’s defense
over at least two distressingly extended periods, once in Second First Half
(i.e., the rest of the first half played earlier tonight), but also during this
rather fascinating time in the actual second half that wound up turning the
game.
Starting around the 50th minute, I saw hints of couple FC
Cincy players deciding to put this game on their backs to see where they could carry it; Kenney Walker and Emery Welshman stood out. Louisville had at least two more outright
assaults on Cincinnati’s goal after I noted those hints, but I'd still put the
beginning of what made that 1-0 hold up in that time period. About 4 minutes later, FC Cincinnati
had this spell of dodging pressure, while also methodically marching the ball
up the field (literally) one touch at time (for that was all they were allowed;
no, you may not have more, you mooching little shit!). I want to imagine that
moment of relative untouchability turned the game. The broadcast team absolutely
noted it, for starters, but, given the way the game turned thereafter - not
quite in Cincinnati’s favor, but not in Louisville’s either - that sequence
felt like a warning shot against Louisville throwing too much caution to the wind.
To answer the top-line question - e.g., did FC Cincinnati
deserve this win? Good lord, no. And yet the they should have stolen still another
goal when Nazmi Albadawi and Fanendo Adi had what looked like a 2-v-2 late in
the second half. They fucked it up, and that’s fine….or is it? Had this gutsy,
lightly-surreal win (e.g., the winning goal/the 72+ hour game) not come
immediately after another deeply fortunate win, I would have called it a bullet dodged and moved on from there. With now two precarious wins behind them, it's fair to wonder whether FC Cincinnati are getting a little return fire on those warning shots. Things look different when they pair up against pugilists who can
punch the same weight, and that’s something to hold in the back of one’s head
going into the USL post-season.
Regardless, I think FC Cincy booked home field with this
win. I’ll get that sorted out (probably), but I’m finally looking ahead at the
remaining schedule and, based on what I’m seeing, they’ve got a few games ahead
that all present as opportunities for morale-boosting. A home game against TFC
II gives them a chance to share an ecstatic night with the fans at Nippert (can
I get a demolition?), while Penn FC and Richmond Kickers get them out on the
road, but in practice-esque conditions. And you want these guys feeling good
for their end-run, because they host Indy Eleven (currently playoff-bound),
then Pittsburgh and Nashville on the road (both in the playoffs, or the hunt). I like that, personally, on the
grounds that it’s a helluva a primer for post-season opposition.
To loop back to the game one last time, first, the more
I watch FC Cincinnati, the more they make me think of Seattle Sounders FC in
MLS. Their defense keeps them in games, and nearly ad infinitum. The model even
held up when Blake Smith broke down. Better still, it survived at least three
periods of spazzing and bad decisions at three different points in the match.
And, for the thousandth time, credit for that goes to Patrick Barrett and
Forrest Lasso. They’re…just pretty goddamn amazing back there: I have memories
of Barrett getting taken inside by Cameron Lancaster, and he still caught up to
smother the shot; with Lasso it’s this…just fucking lunge that looked wild and
legal at the same time, and he laid out for the sucker about 10 yards inside FC
Cincy’s half. Those guys are special for the USL - the broadcast booth said
Lasso’s name is already down for USL Defender of the Year in pen - and that’s the massive back-stop for Cincinnati’s success…
...and, just because I've neither asked before, nor looked it up, why the hell did another team let Forrest Lasso move sideways in the USL (it was the Charleston Battery, right? It's madness, whoever did it).
The attacking side could be the bigger story tonight, even if I'm not sure how to gut it. While I’d argue Albadawi came on late, both Emanuel Ledesma
and Corben Bone didn’t so much find the game as play Peek-a-Boo with it. Louisville
smothered FC Cincy’s stars to the point where you couldn’t see them - and it’s
both promising and telling that the team, led by Fatai Alashe and Welshman,
started to find ways around that in the second half. Again, if your defense is
good enough…
I have one last point I want to make, one specifically about
the new guys. While Alashe has settled in (and I’d trust long-as-they’ve-had FC
Cincy fans to tell me why that is), Adi doesn’t look like the player I know.
After he came on and got played past with a couple hopeful balls, I decided to
start counting Adi’s touches for the 15 minutes he was in the game. I counted
seven in the end, the first two listed as “fleeting” (e.g., he had to fight for
the touch and it didn’t matter) and the last three as “bad” (he got the ball
with time and cocked it up). Something else I saw: Adi walking a lot. He’s
never been a chaser, but I saw him make no attempt at all to challenge a player
just five feet away - and that’s after coming on as a sub. It’s the contrast
with Welshman’s play tonight that forces that conversation because, again, I
credit him for lighting a fire under the rest of the team through leading by
example - i.e., chasing and fighting, even if he has to run 10 yards to make
first contact. Substitutes usually freshen up a team. Adi managed to do the
opposite. All the same, give him time. He got accused of being “lazy” for as
long as he played with the Portland Timbers. And then he scored a shitload of
goals for them.
So…where does all that mess above leave the conversation? In
progress, I’d say. When Cincinnati comes up to MLS, they’ll get subsumed into
this sort of madness, and I’ll finally have them in a context I’ll understand
fully, or at least to the extent I can. In the here and now, though, I see a
team that hasn't yet fully outstripped its bigger rivals, all while playing - let’s
face it - unstoppable soccer. It was only a week or two ago when I finally got
snapped back to the idea that FC Cincinnati had a season ahead of them, instead
of a coronation, and, now, I can’t wait to see whether or not they win the
title.
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