FC Cincinnati 2-1 Louisville City FC: Holy Shit, a Win! (And the Scrabbling Path Forward!)

Suspense is contextual.

I will be brief, I will be brief, I will be brief. [Eh, you be the judge.]

I have two big, related takeaways from FC Cincinnati finally gaining a clear positive during its 2019 season with a 2-1 win (in extra time!) over Louisville City at scenic Nippert Stadium in the over-revered, yet under-valued U.S. Open Cup. First, Louisville’s press disrupted everything Cincinnati so much thought of doing for most of regulation time. Sub-first, I do wonder whether they ran themselves legless – not that I blame them either, given how close that came to being the path to success.

Second, and most crucially, how much did knowing how to manage Louisville help FC Cincy? My personal theory: an uncomfortable amount.

By pressing the way they did – and successfully - Louisville played an underdog’s hand in this game, but Cincinnati holds a clear edge in talent. Making that count took playing around Louisville’s press – something it took Cincinnati the first five minutes of the game to break even once, but it took most of regulation to finally tilt the field in its favor and, this is key, irrevocably.

Once Louisville gave up the (glorious) second goal (Team Kekuta!), and after so much exertion, I couldn’t see them coming back into the game. The underdogs had to take their foot off the gas eventually and, once they did, Cincinnati put the game in a…well, stunningly poorly executed choke-hold. Fuck me, if I didn’t feel like I was yelling “finish him” for a whole goddamn hour.

I’m happy for the win, particularly the spirit of it. Anyone watching the huddle after Fanendo Adi scored his first goal of 2019 (srsly, that can’t be right) should feel heartened by Forrest Lasso’s cross-talk with Adi over the celebrating mob. I have no idea what Lasso said, but everyone looked bought in and that’s how you build a team – aka, Step 1 to Success in team sports.

To go the other way with a thought that feels complicated: the first 70 minutes felt like Cincy bending without breaking while getting muscled all over by Louisville. That dredged up something I’ve noticed from FC Cincy during its long, dark winter-but-it’s-summer in MLS. FC Cincinnati has one hell of a time getting on the front foot in any game. Against a team capable of dominating them, the switch never flips and that's one theory on their string of regular season losses; when playing a Louisville team doing the soccer equivalent of throwing itself onto a hand-grenade to victory, it takes, as it happens, about 78 minutes. The larger point, and I’m going to emphasize this: Cicinnati does not have a reliable way to assert itself in games.

To float a new theory – because I like doing that – the issue might start at midfield. I’ve advocated for so many things by this point that I’ve forgotten at least half of them, so, duly warned, but I don’t like Caleb Stanko anywhere on the roster, except maybe defense(?). He’s played as a fifth defender, and I wonder how much that contributes to Cincy’s broader issues. Stanko doesn’t do enough to push the opposing team's attack away from the backline; whether by instruction or inclination, he sits too deep; moreover, I don’t see an upside from him with playing the ball out of the back. Those last two thoughts – how/where a midfielder defends, and how smartly he passes out of the back – feel like two decent ways to dominate a midfield. Cincinnati isn’t doing that right now…so, what’s the answer? Or, an answer?

Unless they let Stanko run loose – and he’s up to the task – he doesn’t start anymore. I’ve seen Fatai Alashe make his role in midfield look big, so I’d consider starting/building around him. If you go that way, who do you pair with him: do you like Leanardo Bertone’s range of passing more than Victor Ulloa’s box-to-box skill-set – also, in what order in terms of substitution and/or opponent?

Even if that last contrast doesn’t match how you see either Bertone or Ulloa, it goes to the heart of what I’d argue (nay, submit!) ails FC Cincy this season: a clear sense of how to fit together the parts it has. Due to a combination of newness, injuries (especially injuries), and a succession of slaps on the panic button, it’s mostly been monkeys flinging shit on the planning side for FC Cincinnati this season. Some experimentation can't be avoided, but there's an issue of not having a sense of direction; some people call that an "identity," but I like a sense of direction just as well. If you want a midfield that pushes the game away from the defense, which players on the roster have the best chance to make that happen? I don’t know about you, but the more I watch this team, the clearer I feel about how some partnerships are, or are not, working out there. And that feels like progress.

Every so often, I see the outline of a foundation in this team, something that can be organized and built upon to build Version 1.1 of Cincinnati’s first-ever functioning team (or, dare I dream, Version 1.4?). I think that’ll be built on functioning partnerships, and along the lines of whether Emmanuel Ledesma makes a good side with Mathieu Deplagne, or, again, how to get the most out of the midfield you have, instead of some aspirational two-birds-in-the-hand bullshit like the most standard solution in soccer punditry, "we need a number 10." That’s where the thought should go, in my mind, and wherever you nail something down, keep it there until you figure out a way to make it better…instead of, say, grabbing the nearest, convenient Kenny Saief…sorry, that’s an axe I’ve been waiting to grind for a while…

That’s more or less everything – e.g., I’m delighted Cincinnati won, best of luck going forward, but, for the love of God, don’t qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League before your (MLS) bar mitzvah. (When David Gass said that during the broadcast, I wanted to crawl through the monitor and strangle him.) Most importantly the current team should be made better before another binge of signing random expensive players onto a scheme you haven’t figured out yet (unless you find a star who’s willing to sign, do it and figure out the rest later, but it better be a fucking star). To retract/amend anything I’ve either written or said in a conversation I don’t remember, I think this team has the makings of a team that can defend from the front-foot. Once that’s in place, that’s when you start looking for players who can profit from that.

I’m going to close with Adi, because I think he really has suffered from the construction of the team behind him. As bad as Cincinnati looked in the first half, they played passes to Adi that I’ve seen work for him in Portland – e.g., something for him to run onto between a high defensive line and places where goalkeepers fear to tread – and that’s the key to Adi. He plays a couple roles well, but the most important thing is to vary them; Adi’s at his best when he’s playing both back-to-goal and running the channels. Moreover, switching between those gives defenders more looks to deal with.

And…yeah, aside from the slosh in my head, that’s everything. Bottom line, you just can’t take anything real away from this game – not unless it comes together going forward from right now, by which I really mean five straight games from this one. It was USL v MLS, and MLS won. All the same, the things that held FC Cincy back tonight have held them back all season against MLS teams. That’s the takeaway.