Toronto FC 2-1 FC Cincinnati: My Ongoing Allan Cruz Obsession

This is on the ceiling above my bed, and in 3 other rooms. No, 4.

To start with the good news, FC Cincinnati gave fans a couple things to chew on last night. And, for those who know how this schtick works, the bad news is that the game ended in (yet) another loss for FC Cincy, 2-1 at Toronto FC this time. Moving on now to ambiguous news, what does pushing this current iteration of Toronto FC to within one header of coughing up a point actually mean at this point?

First and foremost, this game recalled the home loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy as much as any recent game. It took Cincinnati too long to come into the game - during which dry spell they gave up a goal they can ill afford – but, once they did, they generally passed the eye test, looked the part of team in North American soccer’s top flight, and so on. In something that may or may not come as a surprise, Cincinnati wound up creating more/better shots by the end of the game – and that’s without some (“alleged”) stars missing. I’ll get to that, but the sad, blunt truth is that Jozy Altidore’s goal for Toronto put the game beyond realistic reach for the Ohioans.

Before focusing on Cincinnati, I want to say, this win should scare the crap out of Toronto and their fans. I think as highly as the next guy of Altidore, but that’s not a goal he scores every week; what’s more, he benefitted (a little) from the pass coming in slightly behind him, in that his touch backwards widened the space for that shot between him and the nearest defender (Hoyte, whose momentum carried him deeper toward Cincinnati’s goal). You can quibble with that – I mean, Wonderwheel (that’s Mikael van der Werff) had the angle to step harder to close down the shot – but, as the broadcast booth kept repeating down the stretch, all it takes is a moment, and Jozy fired that shot pretty goddamn fast.

TFC had a moment or two after that, but nothing remarkable – and certainly not anything like the unrelenting frequency of what Nick DeLeon and Richie Laryea did to Mathieu Deplagne’s flank during the first half. Had you watched only the first half of that game – or even if you shut it off after Jozy’s goal – you probably would have expected the gradual withering of FC Cincy’s resistance until TFC knocked in another goal or two to labor the point about which was the better team. That didn’t happen, and that’s how Cincinnati replicated and, as I see it, improved on that earlier performance against LA. And, Toronto, one of the most expensive teams in MLS, almost let that happen, at home and against the worst team in the league. These are not TFC's finest days...

After singling him out last after last week’s game, it just feels good, just and right to single out Allan Cruz again – only this time in stating that he deserved the game ball yesterday. With a tricky move here (followed by a cross to Roland Lamah, who really should have done better with it), tenacious D there (e.g., clawing the ball off Pozuela as he schemed at the top of Cincy’s area), to carrying forward the play (started by Lamah; note the collection of names) that wound up as Cincinnati’s goal (scored by Emmanuel Ledesma, but, hold that thought, I'm on a roll). Last week’s post centered on the argument that Cincinnati needed to start playing their people in their correct position and, according to this version of the lineup, they did that with Cruz this week and, I’m willing to believe that paid off…to the extent it did, anyway.

I had reasons for believing that role suited Cruz: he’s got a good engine, and decent speed (faster than I thought, honestly), but he doesn’t defend like a d-mid (i.e., he’s more positionally sound than he’s a powerful tackler), and he’s not great at unlocking a defense in the attacking third, but he does great work making it hard for the opposition to play through midfield and gets the ball upfield pretty well. That’s a box-to-box profile in my book, and god willing, he stays there. It’ll help, certainly, if both Lamah and Ledesma stay healthy enough to remove the temptation of playing Cruz elsewhere. And that raises another point…a larger and less comfortable one at that.

Injuries have been a plague on Cincinnati, no question, but the situation writ large feels more like bad planning than bad luck. Notwithstanding my improving opinion of him, I still have no clear idea why Cincinnati signed him, except that they could and he was too good to take a pass. I finally got cranky enough to look into where Cruz (generally) lines up for Costa Rica and, in 2019 at least, he lines up where I’d expect him to – e.g., centrally, looking a lot like a box-to-box guy (and that looks like a fun and useful website for obsessives). I don’t know where he played for Herediano (and I’m not about to look it up), but, based on where he plays for Costa Rica, why would a team drunk on defensive midfielders add yet another one? Unless the goal was corner the market and deny teams across the league a supply of their own, I will struggle to make sense of this till the expected roster rebuild makes it all go away.

At this point, the glut of defensive midfielders feels like something that can be resolved by sending out the correct mixture of personnel and placement every week. It’s the rest of the roster that makes you queasy. If you think back to the heady days of March and early April, it’s worth asking who hasn’t stood out. Even if Fanendo Adi was injured last night, what does it say that Rashawn Dally started over Darren Mattocks, another player of whom bigger things, certainly, were expected? You can build a rather dispiriting list just of names that appear (or have appeared) on FC Cincy’s roster this season: Przemyslaw Tyton still hasn’t fully seized the starting spot in goal; Alvas Powell brought a little attacking upside (a very little), but costs the team goals; Kenny Saief came, saw and whined a little. Greg Garza and Fatai Alashe get a pass due to long-term injury issues, but Cincinnati’s roster is littered with decent players who either just aren’t consistent, but who consistently underwhelm: I’d put Kekuta Manneh on that list, as well as Victor Ulloa and, at this point, Leonardo Bertone.

I’ve got to raise my hand on that last one, because I’ve talked up Bertone with some regularity, and yet, as it was with Adi, I didn’t blink when I didn’t see him in the starting eleven…and, if I remember correctly, everyone was antsy about Nick Hagglund from the get-go.

I feel like I’m rambling at this point, and about the same kinds of things I do every week. So I’ll close with an observation that actually comes from Toronto. Marky Delgado is basically a role player for them, a guy who rarely centers a post-game conversation. And yet, if you watched him last night, he played to something close to Cruz’s level; he even played the kind of final ball you don’t see out of Cruz too often, e.g., the grass-cutter across the top of Cincinnati’s 18 to Jacob Shaffelburg. In other words, Toronto’s getting roughly the same thing out of Delgado that Cincinnati gets out of Cruz – but, Delgado has guys like Altidore and Alejandro Pozuelo to play to, and a calming presence like Michael Bradley behind him. Even with a monkey on their backs whispering “you suck” in their collective ears – that is, their confidence is low (and what has Pozuelo done lately?) – that’s the gap between Toronto and Cincinnati, and it’s here for the rest of this season, at least.

Best-case, FC Cincinnati figures out the following before the end of 2019: 1) not giving up the first goal, and 2) which guys can perform for them and where. I think they probably have a couple wins left in ‘em (please?), and I think they'll get them in games against teams struggling with "[X]," but getting a clear picture of where they have needs and, no less crucially, where there’s fat to cut, feels like the team’s primary mission for the rest of 2019.