FC Cincinnati 0-2 New England Revolution: I Blame Cruz for Everything and Nothing

I only wrote this, because I think he can handle it...

[Ed. - I understand that my chosen situation is unique, and I don’t expect MLS’s schedulers to anticipate that some random guy from Portland, Oregon will choose FC Cincinnati as his second default club…but I will still blame them every time their scheduling forces me to post late]

It sucks to lose at home – twice as much when you’ve done it so often – but FC Cincinnati put up a…fight Sunday night and, as I see it, that's all a reasonable fan can ask for at this point. And, to be clear, that statement assumes that FC Cincinnati doesn’t have the roster - or, to stretch in a rather desperate direction, the correct alignment of that roster - to make the playoffs, never mind win the league. And, until further notice, that’s the operational assumption of this site.

Before I get into the weeds, the New England Revolution wouldn’t have broken into a sweat beating FC Cincinnati 2-0 at home if it wasn’t so goddamn hot and humid on Sunday (hi, from Portland!). Cincinnati played well enough to end roughly even on numbers – which surprises me more than it should, given my belief that Cincy ended all right – but they didn’t create more than a couple convincing openings and, much as happened against DC United, they never looked like winning the game. It was possible to keep one’s hopes up until the Revs’ second goal at the 55th minute (and, golly what a howler); the odds on getting a draw spiked in that moment and the whole thing played out under a cloud.

It’s a fairly straightforward dynamic, sadly: like any inexperienced group of people, FC Cincinnati lacks the reps to transform mechanics into rhythm. More reps certainly won’t hurt them, but, that will always careen headlong into the buzz-saw of lacking the personnel for as long as that pertains. And, as a thought exercise, I’m going to channel all of that into the body of one player – and I do this no animus toward the player in question - and call this “The Allan Cruz Problem.” First, and to be clear, Allan Cruz is not the problem. The problem is that he’s being asked to do things he’s not up for doing: Cruz doesn’t have the instincts and/or skill-set for the attacking third, or he doesn’t have enough of them: he doesn’t risk passes that force the defense to make decisions and he doesn’t make his own decisions quickly enough.

Watching the way Roland Lamah used the ball during his (wow) just 12 minutes on the field provides the telling contrast. Lamah’s not perfect (and, full disclosure, I count him as Cincy’s most important attacking piece, at least for now), but he’s comfortable making the kinds of sudden decisions - e.g., taking the ball there to stretch the field, or passing it into the teeth of the defense and running off of it - that force a defense to react; he helped construct one of Cincy’s best attacking sequences of the game doing just that about five minutes after coming on. By way of contrast, a pair of moments at the start of the second half showed Cruz’s limitations, but I’ll bring up only one of them: as he dribbled into the left side of the attacking third, first two, then three defenders worked to shepherd Cruz away from goal; he response was to dribble slowly to nowhere; he never got his head up to pass, or dropped the ball, or did anything to change the position of his body vis-à-vis the ball. It was just this agonizingly slow drift and then one of New England’s guys picked it off, and that ended the move.

Again, this isn’t about shitting on Cruz; if anything it’s about shitting on management/roster construction. This was the risk of building half a team, of drafting a succession of defensive midfielders to play the ball to Fanendo Adi and (literally) a pair of wingers (Lamah and Kekuta Manneh). And it’s not like the team didn’t understand the problem: whatever you thought of the Kenny Saief Situation (personally, I never thought much of it), that at least felt like an attempt to answer the need. Even without Saief (and the team is very much without Saief), these are still professional soccer players and, by virtue of that earned position, they are all capable of doing good things now and again – very much including Cruz; sometimes all it takes is another player seeing the right run, and any player can make “the right run.” They just do it less often, and that’s how an attack, as well as the confidence to keep after it, withers. And that's where FC Cincinnati is right now.

Before opening the suggestions box I left myself over the weekend, there was one moment of genuine attacking promise out there. Adi made a run somewhere in the middle 60s where he ran into the channel on the outside of the(ir left) centerback; someone on that side spotted the run and hit an early, diagonal all into Adi’s run. That is hella simple, but it’s also the kind of run Adi can make and, with Portland, he did his best work from chances like that. Simple, playing to your forward's strength: why, that’s the kind of attacking play I’d adopt/attempt throughout the game; even if it doesn’t work, whatever adjustments a defense makes to address it could open up space on the far side, and Cincy could have a player on that side run up the field when Adi receives that ball, so, if the shot's not on, he can push the ball outside and have that overlapping player cross to the far side, etc. In so many words, this is what you have, so start working with it.

And that brings me back to Allan Cruz, and the whole goddamn line-up really. If I were Yohann Damet, I’d start playing the pieces he has in their best position right now. With Cruz, I’d try him as a box-to-box midfielder, maybe pair him with Leonardo Bertone. I don’t think much of Caleb Stanko, so off he goes (or pair Cruz with Stanko; I’m very open on all of this), but, my larger point is this: if Lamah or Manneh can’t go, start the guys who’ve played that role before – e.g., Emmanuel Ledesma and, to dig a little deeper, Corben Bone. I believe they’ll cover in disposition what they lack in talent – and I think that’s an easier transition than making Cruz into something he’s not.

Even if I’m not sure how I’d line people up – at least not outside with what I’d do with Cruz, and where I’d send Stanko – but this is a lot about next season. Getting players where they ought to be will give you the best sense of how much they’ll be able to help next year’s New Model Team (at least to the extent it can be one). This will lose the team games in all likelihood, but, I don’t see much harm when you’ve already lost 15 games and it sure as hell looks like you’ll keep losing regardless. I know I’ve flogged this horse before (and it’s not getting up), but I also think the case for building toward next season in any way you can makes sense at this point.

I’ll close with a player who, careful readers might have already noticed, I haven’t mentioned yet: Frankie Amaya. The kid does good things, and on both sides of the ball: he put up one of his best shots of the season late in the game, as if he’s developing a better sense of how to pull it off, and he did a healthy amount of harassing and/or ball-winning on the other end. At the same time, I couldn’t name his best spot on the field, the place where he’ll well and truly add value. If you can…congratulations? I wouldn’t be averse to dialing back his time for the rest of this season, not because any failure on Amaya’s part, but to give an 18-year-old player without a clear brief time to find his feet.

All in all, just about everything Cincinnati tries to pull out of the flame-out feels forced – and, for what it’s worth, the weight of that falls on Cruz and Amaya, and I don’t think to good effect. FC Cincinnati will build a team better than this one; trouble is, they’ll be playing catch-up until they can catch up to the pack. Patience in the present feels like a smarter choice for a doomed season than spending the rest of it trying to ram square pegs into round holes.