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| The only through-line. |
Well, FC Cincinnati fans, that was the kind of game this team was built to deliver, a safety-first grind that put a wall of defenders between the opposition and your goal. It was effective to a point – Cincy got the slow-death 0-0 draw, didn’t it? – and it was entertaining to a lower point. It lacked for moments, clearly – see the abbreviated list of “highlights” – but it provided little gasps of drama here (e.g., the five-minute flurry by the Chicago Fire after the 60th minute) and there (the last 10 minutes), and either team could have taken it…
…it fits the 2019 season for both teams that neither of them did. Still, if I had to hand out a trophy, it would go to FC Cincinnati, who had the lower bar of achievement to leap over. At this point, Cincy can only tie the single-season record for losses. Can I get a "what what?" or “huzzah” or something?! (What is the sound of enthusiastic Ohioans?)
There’s not a lot to unpack, fortunately, because I’ve got a maddening match to watch in just over an hour (go, Portland!), so I will keep this really brief. The Fire remains three points behind the New England Revolution, the only team in the Eastern Conference they have any chance of leaping over – and the Revs have a game in hand. With allowances for miracles, I’d call their chances doomed in every sense but the mathematical. Cincinnati, of course, has nothing better to do than to pick up as many scraps of their dignity as possible before the season ends. Their only real loss on the afternoon came when Kendall Waston picked a suspension in the next game for that bullshit yellow card on Nemanja Nikolic. Waston’s elbow grazed Nikolic’s chin at most, and Cincinnati still has avoiding the single-season record for goals allowed to play for.
To wrap up Chicago, they looked the better team throughout, but barely. Their best attacks came mostly from early crosses (so many crosses, and when the crossed to Cincy’s defense once it condensed, forget about it), and Maikel van der Werff and Matthieu Deplagne cleaned up the worst of those. Przemyslaw Frankowski and Nico Gaitan did their best to keep them going, but it was pretty damn headless, or Cincinnati’s defenders made it so. If I had to pass on anything from Chicago’s performance to pass down to the youth, I’d go with Bastian Schweinsteiger playing out of pressure; so composed, even elegant, that everything around him looked a little Keystone Cops. The biggest shocks included how far Aleksandar Katai has regressed and the fact that Chicago can’t field anyone better than Brandt Bronico. More than anything else, the Fire needed a player to put his laces through the ball. They never found him, or he never found the ball. Moving on...
…it fits the 2019 season for both teams that neither of them did. Still, if I had to hand out a trophy, it would go to FC Cincinnati, who had the lower bar of achievement to leap over. At this point, Cincy can only tie the single-season record for losses. Can I get a "what what?" or “huzzah” or something?! (What is the sound of enthusiastic Ohioans?)
There’s not a lot to unpack, fortunately, because I’ve got a maddening match to watch in just over an hour (go, Portland!), so I will keep this really brief. The Fire remains three points behind the New England Revolution, the only team in the Eastern Conference they have any chance of leaping over – and the Revs have a game in hand. With allowances for miracles, I’d call their chances doomed in every sense but the mathematical. Cincinnati, of course, has nothing better to do than to pick up as many scraps of their dignity as possible before the season ends. Their only real loss on the afternoon came when Kendall Waston picked a suspension in the next game for that bullshit yellow card on Nemanja Nikolic. Waston’s elbow grazed Nikolic’s chin at most, and Cincinnati still has avoiding the single-season record for goals allowed to play for.
To wrap up Chicago, they looked the better team throughout, but barely. Their best attacks came mostly from early crosses (so many crosses, and when the crossed to Cincy’s defense once it condensed, forget about it), and Maikel van der Werff and Matthieu Deplagne cleaned up the worst of those. Przemyslaw Frankowski and Nico Gaitan did their best to keep them going, but it was pretty damn headless, or Cincinnati’s defenders made it so. If I had to pass on anything from Chicago’s performance to pass down to the youth, I’d go with Bastian Schweinsteiger playing out of pressure; so composed, even elegant, that everything around him looked a little Keystone Cops. The biggest shocks included how far Aleksandar Katai has regressed and the fact that Chicago can’t field anyone better than Brandt Bronico. More than anything else, the Fire needed a player to put his laces through the ball. They never found him, or he never found the ball. Moving on...
Cincinnati’s defenders – of which, I’d argued counted five with how deep Tommy McCabe played – gave them precious little and covered what they did. And that’s cause for cheer, no matter how feeble. If they can keep those four defenders present and healthy, I see that as a competitive back four (or five) for Cincy in 2020.
Until the game hit the stretch run, it was a lot of headless chicken shit on the attacking side. I don’t recall Cincinnati even getting into Chicago’s half until 20 minutes into the match. You had flashes here and there – e.g., Emmanuel Ledesma and Greg Garza combining to create a near-break-through later in the first half, or Ledesma feeing Joe Gyau on a breakaway that got ahead of him, but Gyau blowing a three-v-two with a long touch that Chicago’s Fernando Calvo ate up completes the thought. Cincinnati didn’t get much for chances till the game opened up at the end, and a lot of it went through Roland Lamah (who probably fired the game’s best shot).
I don’t know where Cincinnati fans are on which attacking players they’d like to keep (as opposed to the ones they have to), and I’m not sure that conversation has much real-world meaning. While there’s not much question about which players I’d hold onto – Frankie Amaya (who needs to play faster), Lamah and Ledesma might be both the short list and the full one (and maybe Kekuta Manneh) – but, unlike the defense, I find it harder to make a case that FC Cincinnati has an attack worth calling competitive.
That question will get answered in the off-season (or, it won’t, and saints preserve us all), so the here-and-now turns on whether Cincinnati can stall its goals allowed at 74. It’s not a terribly important question – it’s nothing but a number, really, and giving up zero goals between now and the end of 2019 instead of allowing three or four doesn’t alter the brute reality that Cincinnati had a league-historic terrible defense this season – but it’s the only thing I can think to watch for at this point…remind me why I signed up for this shit?
Till we relive the next afternoon of Chinese water torture v. Orlando.
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