Colorado Rapids 3-1 FC Cincinnati: Putting Together a Puzzle with a Hammer

The hammer is the puzzle...whoa....

Was it nice to dream that FC Cincinnati could rescue a draw after Kekuta Manneh’s split-second equalizer, even for the minute it took for Nicolas Mezquida to slip a go-ahead goal under Spencer Richey’s arm-pit? Or was that more like someone pointing over your shoulder and yelling “Oh my God, that is the best thing I’ve ever seen!” before kicking you in the balls when you turned to look?

The Colorado Rapids would go on to score one more sloppy goal on the way to a 3-1 win over FC Cincy in the Rockies. With that, a bad streak gets one game longer and Cincinnati fans’ collective nausea at the impotency of its attack rises a little higher up the throat. It’s easy to take a walk with despair, given that fact pattern, but let me see if I can’t scrape a couple positives out of Interim Head Coach Bowl (aka, yesterday’s game…Yohan Damet and Conor Casey…right?).

Cincinnati held a solid edge in possession – damn close to 60/40 – and they impressed both me and Marcelo Balboa (who couldn’t stop talking up Cincinnati’s bravery for playing out of the back) with their composure playing between the defense and midfield…it’s just what happens when they get closer to goal. A moment early in the first half encapsulates FC Cincy’s biggest weakness. They got the ball around the Rapids’ left around the 13th minute and had the chance to play a ball into the area with the Rapids scrambling; sadly, all of Cincinnati’s players ran to more or less the same spot – at or about the penalty spot – and a lot of crowding and tripping over dicks ensued. Not surprisingly, that didn't make the highlights. In fact, the runs Colorado’s players made on their first goal late in the half provides an extremely useful contrast – e.g., see how Kei Kamara’s near-post run cleared space for Andre Shinyashiki’s shot? That’s what happens when you put players who understand that role in that role. Getting the final ball right is every bit as much about runs as it is about the quality of the passes that feed them.

To draw the obvious contrast, I see two “pure” attacking players for Cincy in yesterday’s starting XI: Fanendo Adi (who…I’ll get to it) and Roland Lamah. After that…is Allan Cruz an attacking player? Is Frankie Amaya? I’m on, I don’t think so and wait for it(?), respectively, but how does that flaccid attack play against reasonable expectations of the roster FC Cincinnati built? To (finally) go back to the positives, one of them lurks in the penumbra of the last two paragraphs: FC Cincinnati has decent pieces on the parts of the field where they have the right personnel in the right position. They looked fine knocking the ball around and out of the back, even when Colorado pressed them a little, precisely because the players they had in those roles are where they should be and know what they’re doing in those roles/ places. To flip the argument, it’s the lack of proper personnel where they need them that hurts them.

And that brings me to another positive: Cincinnati’s best playmaking came from Roland Lamah – e.g., the guy who fed Alvas Powell for what could have been a second equalizer. I noticed something in this game – and whether it’s the first time I’ve noticed it or the first time it’s happened is another question – but Lamah was dropping back deep to receive the ball, especially in the first half. When he was on the right, he often dropped back deeper than Powell to receive the ball and do something with it. That “reverse overlap” says plenty – maybe about how much Damet seems to want Lamah on the ball, maybe on what that could say about how much anyone trusts Powell to carry the attack, etc. My point here, though, is that Lamah is, for me, Cincinnati’s best attacking player. So’s that doesn’t get lost on anyone, that’s one hell of a statement about this roster.

Next, I want to contrast the difference between Amaya and Corben Bone, which is easy to do given that the latter came on for the former at the 60th minute. From what I’ve seen of him Amaya is equal parts capable and willing to do whatever is asked of him. He had some decent moments out there, making smart passes wide to Mathieu Deplagne when he came forward up Cincinnati’s left and, more than once, making himself available for shots…that he frankly failed to do much with (at one point, he found a fantastic opening that he capped off with an egregious, leaning shank; this is why I’m not sold on Amaya as an obvious attacking player). Amaya can dribble, though, and he does a fairly good job of finding good, if only mildly-threatening passes, but, if he has the killer ball in him, I haven’t seen enough of it. Bone, meanwhile, came on and almost immediately improved the passing out of midfield: he was finding other players faster and in better positions than Amaya had for most of the game.

In my mind, that’s the case of a veteran player understanding what he can add in the moment (Bone), versus a younger player being charged with making things happen out there (Amaya); Bone was often playing from outside the Rapids’ defensive third, while the way Cincinnati played Amaya meant he had to make plays within the same space. There’s a tension in there that I don’t quite know how resolve, but, again, it’s about having the right personnel in the right places on the field. And that’s how I finally get to Adi.

I’d be surprised if Adi’s reputation isn’t slowly dying among Cincinnati fans. That’s reasonably earned at this point and one moment really underlined that. In the preview thread I posted to twitter, I made the case that Adi is capable of hitting a ball in stride – which is exactly what he got only to his left foot. Instead of taking the chance to hit that one time, Adi pulled the ball back to his right and went on to sail the ball over the net with his right. It wasn’t raw awful or anything – he still had an opening and Tim Howard beat - but, when your club’s DP does worse with his shot than a much-maligned fullback (Powell) and in the same game, something about that feels either not right, or like wasted money. Then there’s the DUII…or whatever the hell people in Ohio call drunk driving. The larger point is that just one of the obvious attacking players that Cincinnati started tonight played a good game – and that player was Lamah.

I have one more player to mention, someone else who I feel Cincinnati has tripped up with weird decisions. As noted way up above Manneh scored their one goal tonight; more to the point, he did it in a way that would look familiar to Vancouver Whitecaps fans, something that carries through the larger point about yesterday’s loss, and Manneh’s role in the season so far. Manneh started in this league as a winger – and he was a damn terrifying one before injuries and blows to his confidence took their toll, in the discussion for the U.S. Men’s National Team, etc. Because they lack clear playmakers, Cincinnati tried Manneh in central midfield, where he did…all right(?), but, again, that doesn’t play to Manneh’s strengths and/or history.

With the exception of Adi, who simply isn’t delivering (and we can argue over why he isn’t), I think an argument can be made that Cincinnati is taking a bad roster and making it worse by playing guys in a fairly WTF manner. While I still don’t have Cruz worked out, he doesn’t look like a guy who’s comfortable near goal; if I had to analogize Amaya to any other player in MLS, he’s reminding me more and more of Darlington Nagbe – i.e., a guy who will never be an attacking star, no matter how much fans believe (and, sweet Jesus, did they believe against all reason in Portland; no amount of evidence, I tell you). Amaya may yet make the flip, but watching him shoot (he doesn’t get over the ball, even when he’s got time to line it up) at least suggests he might be a quality shuttler in MLS (a guy who carries the ball from Point A to Point B then dishes off to others), but I have yet to see the guy who gets the final ball to those profoundly-improved runs that a better-constructed FC Cincinnati team will make in the future.

To wrap this thing up, Jesus, yes, I hurt to lose to the worst team in the Western Conference. At the same time, given a game on the road (where Cincinnati has, in its short history, sucked), and all of the obstacles between Cincinnati and regular success, the Orange and Blue stayed in this game for a long time and – maybe, just maybe – if it was anyone else but Powell running onto that ball from Lamah, Cincy would have equalized. I don’t want to pass this off as bad luck (an argument that should resonate with/piss off some people who might read this), but I do wonder whether Cincinnati can improve their circumstances by thinking more clearly about what they players they have can actually do and to field them accordingly…

…to float an idea for Thursday’s game at New York City FC, why not start a front-three with Lamah and Manneh on either side of Adi? They might want to play a little different too, maybe strike from deeper in the field to open space. All in all, things look dire because they are. Maybe the answer is looking at what they’ve got from a different, maybe even more historically-informed angle.