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| I've been conditioned to this FC Cincy a certain way... |
I won’t call it a whole lot of nothing (or even a whole
lotta nuthin’). I’ve gotten more pleasure out of scores of games, maybe even
several hundreds of them (I’ve been around a bit), but Cincinnati FC’s goal-less
draw at the Pittsburgh Riverhounds’ (dinky*) stadium wasn’t paint-drying/grass-growing/old-people-fucking
level of torture. At the same time, check The Match Center for highlights, and
good luck with it!
(* I’ve had the pleasure of watching U.S. domestic soccer
live for over two decades, and I can’t remember the last time I sat in a
stadium as small as Highmark Stadium. In its defense, it is only the flip-side
of the farce of playing professional soccer at, say, Gillette Stadium.)
In an attempt to explain/analogize to this game through a
series of moments, I offer the following:
Pittsburgh’s Neco Brett received a nearly perfect cut-back
from a player whose name I don’t recall; he wound up losing track of the ball,
allowing his right foot to push it past his (so they tell me) preferred left
foot. Minutes later, maybe even as few as one, FC Cincy’s Emery Welshman knocked
a loose back pass around Pittsburgh ‘keeper Dan Lynd, only to stumble onto his
can at the end of trying to run it down. For the record, neither of these moments show up in The Match Center highlights.
The other moment happened in the second half - somewhere in
the 70s, if I had to guess (which I do) - when Cincinnati’s rather large Forrest
Lasso tried to shepherd a ball over the goal line with Kay Banjo hanging on his
back; Banjo whipped his leg around Lasso’s largeness, nearly creating another
chance. This also didn't make the highlights, and that's why I chose them.
Not every shot was terrible - Christiano
Francois and Romeo Parkes tormented FC Cincy’s defense in a way I’ve never seen
(even at 18 games watched, I consider myself a noob), and both Emanuel Ledesma and
Fatai Alashe put solid shots on goal (and all those made the highlights) - but that this game didn’t see many good
chances. The detail I flagged with Banjo is meant to draw out the idea that
Pittsburgh played the better game, thereby surprising FC Cincinnati, thereby
perhaps reminding them that things only get harder for the rest of the season
and (are you paying attention??) into some indefinite future given the path this
young team has chosen.
By way of translating reality to numbers, the best stat I
can provide for Pittsburgh’s visible edge in this game would be shots, general: the
Riverhounds had 18 to Cincinnati’s four. Credit Pittsburgh for being the team
most likely to; credit Cincinnati for making them the team that never did -
even if with moments of doubt (e.g., Lasso having to pull Brett’s jersey at
34(ish) or Hoyte flirting with an own-goal when Francois broke through (yet again)
down Pittsburgh’s left in the second half). I can’t think of any way in which Pittsburgh wasn’t
the better team yesterday, and that runs counter to normal for someone who,
like me, still has yet to see FC Cincinnati lose.
Moreover, it’s telling that the possibility of a loss
intruded into my blissed-out sense of Permanent Success and Happiness, and for
the first time in weeks. That didn’t hit until the 70th minute or so, but I distinctly
remember looking at the clock and thinking that, no, the trends weren’t perfect,
and that much time for mischief remained. I'm unfamiliar with that moment and, just to note it, at this point in my
Cincinnati fandom, I’ll feel the first FC Cincy loss I see the same way a very
small child deal with the death of a beloved pet - i.e., a lot of denial,
disbelief and an overwhelming sense that the world, as I know it, is a dirty,
fucking lie, and how dare they?
I’ll get over it shortly thereafter, but that snapshot will
linger when Cincinnati loses, whenever it happens. Pittsburgh couldn’t pull it
off - in spite of doing more things right, too - and hopefully no team will
until sometime in 2019, when FC Cincinnati punches its surprisingly cheap
ticket to The Big Time/MLS (this team, for all its success, is only three years
old). But, and this is where Alan Koch and I agree, it’s great that Cincinnati’s
schedule forces them to play Pittsburgh and Nashville; like any good ninja, FC
Cincy wants to go into the playoffs at their sharpest and/or most
battle-tested, and therefore battle-ready. Even with the overall gap between
Cincinnati and Pittsburgh - 18 points, after last night - Pittsburgh remains
one of the best teams in the USL, and certainly in the USL Eastern Conference.
Just to note it, the top three teams in the East have played themselves into
the gap between FC Cincinnati (76 points) and Pittsburgh (58); Orange County SC
has 66 points, Phoenix Rising 63, and Sacramento Republic 62. Because
Cincinnati has made the playoffs, the only question now is how far they’ll go
in them.
On balance, then, a goal-less draw isn’t bad - especially
the goal-less draw Cincinnati earned. Pittsburgh/Francois kept finding a seam
between Hoyte and the FC Cincy’s center backs, but they/he never got enough on
the shots, or someone to follow his shot on the occasions when they/he did. The
team got a draw on the road, and against a good team, something that would
prepare them very well for the post-season…in MLS. I tried to run down how the
United Soccer Leagues organizes its post-season, and, because all that proved
to be too non-intuitive for me to keep trying, I assume that the 2018 USL
playoffs will look like 2017’s, which means single-elimination to the final,
and with Cincinnati having home-field advantage all the way. If so, huzzah, and
way to grease the skids on your own path to success, FC Cincinnati!
I’m going to close with some loose thoughts, most of them
about the team FC Cincinnati will send into the 2018 USL playoffs. It might
bleed a little into 2019 and MLS, but I think I’ve successfully shifted my
attention to this team’s near-term prospects.
First (and foremost; and this will be a poll), how close was
FC Cincy’s line -up against Pittsburgh its first-choice line-up going forward?
For what it’s worth, defense and midfield (e.g., the “4” and “2” in Cincy’s
4-2-3-1) match my sense of the team at its best - and that’s a fairly major note going forward, given how much the Riverhounds stressed them - while
some parts of the attack didn’t feel entirely first string. My personal focus
there is why Corben Bone started ahead of Nazmi Albadawi, and why he didn’t
instead start over Jimmy McLaughlin at the left-sided “3” in Cincy’s 4-2-3-1. I’ll
be the first to admit that McLaughlin’s play over the last month or so has challenged my assumptions
about whether he comes up to MLS, but I’ve seen Bone
thrive in wide positions, and I’ve never seen anything to make me see Albadawi
as a problem. Given that, I’m left wondering about who Alan Koch started and
why. It wasn’t for rest near as I can tell, which forces me to assume it’s
something they’re seeing in practice. This isn’t end-of-the-world stuff, so
much as me deciding one player is better than the other and the starting
line-up arguing otherwise.
To delve into a different, sharper mystery, where was
Fanendo Adi for this game, or even Danni Konig? Why did Emery Welshman start
this game over those other two forwards and how does FC Cincy nation feel about
that? (Yeah, I’m gonna post a poll…but I don’t get much chatter back from FC Cincy
fans so far.) On a deeper level, how do Cincinnati fans feel about Adi being
only a sporadic starter? Is that what you expected?
Overall, though, the ball keeps rolling for FC Cincy. As the
best attacking team in the USL, they just held serve on the road against the USL’s
best defensive team. They didn’t get shit off of them, but they didn’t give up
much either. All in all, I’d call this a good spar with a team on the level
they’ll face in the USL post-season, maybe even one of the exact same teams they’ll
meet. Yesterday’s draw underscored the fact that FC Cincinnati can play one of
their biggest rivals to a stand-still, and in tough circumstances. That’s as
good of a chance as a team can ask for and/or design with what looks like a
great scouting/poaching system and a casual willingness to spend.
As for next season, FC Cincinnati will come up and, whatever
happens, happens. I’m going to take a break from projecting their future in MLS
from now until the end of their 2018 season. Shit just got real, and thank god
for that.
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