Montreal Impact 0-1 FC Cincinnati: Taking Care of (Super-Belated) Business

Elvis would be super-belatedly proud.

I won’t pretend that was enjoyable. My phone became infinitely more interesting around the 20th minute, but I more or less hung in there (hanged in there?), with allowances for prep-cooking and my cat doing something vaguely interesting. FC Cincinnati was reasonably good for its 1-0 win over the Montreal Impact. In Montreal, too. I’m not sure that matters, because neither of these teams has a future that extends beyond October 6.

When Allan Cruz stabbed that lucky bounce home about halfway through the first minute, the only relevant question became whether Cincy could hold out for the 90+ minutes ahead (also, against pretty much anyone). Cincinnati answered by clogging the middle with a low-block, which L’Impact got worse at figuring it out as the minutes ticked higher. They found Orji Okwonwko on the weak-side a couple times in the first half, but he was offside or sloppy in the defining moment, and things generally descended into hope-and-a-prayer crosses by the end of the game, Ignacio Piatti looking about a month too early (for him) and too late (for Montreal), and a lot of aimless possession by Saphir Taider and Samuel Piette. Montreal never looked particularly threatening, so…yay, Cincinnati!

Cincinnati ground out this game and, based on the attack last night, and recent games generally, that looks more or less like the entire tool-kit. They don’t have an attacking upside to save them. Even with most of the season gone, you still see Cincy players make runs to the same space (Darren Mattocks is freakin’ awful about crowding the left), and don’t even get me started about transition – e.g., at least two breaks forward, and with numbers in Cincinnati’s favor. In both those moments (and maybe a couple others), the runs came straight out of a family Thanksgiving Day “Turkey Bowl” after “first dinner” and the first fifth of whiskey, and the final pass referenced neither run, so, no, I wouldn’t call transition Cincy’s long suit either.

They scored first, though, and that’s all that mattered last night. Well, that and Przemyslaw Tyton pawing away a rare, truly clean shot on goal by Montreal. Had that gone in – or even had Joe Gyau’s stumble into Bacary Sagna been called as a PK (I would have called it) – Cincinnati could have drawn, or, god forbid, lost this game.

They didn’t and that puts Cincinnati within one result – win or draw – of dodging the MLS single-season record for losses, set by DC United in 2013, at 24 games. At this point, Cincy would have to lose out to the end of the season and, given the games ahead – e.g., v ATL, v CHI, v ORL, @ DC – I can see 3-4 just hideous points coming out of that stretch. Cincinnati head coach, Ron Jans, had no trouble admitting they played to win rather than impress yesterday. (For what it’s worth, I’ve been impressed generally by Jans’ jovial bluntness.) I advocated the same approach in my preview thread because I thought it would work; I never expected to like it and I didn’t – it’s an assault on the eyes, really - but that’s less important than 3 points and one step out of the wrong pages of the MLS history books and having something tangible to build on going into 2020. That’s enough to hold my interest till the end of this season, and I’m happy to have it. Mid-table is where one gets the real soul-sucking absence…Montreal.

Speaking of history, that was Cincinnati’s first clean sheet since March 24, 2019. Containing the goals against was always going to be key last night and they did it. They had a couple chances to extend their lead, but Montreal carried the game (feebly), while Cincy…just struggled for coherence, outside the one barely-coherent moment that gave them the lead. If I had to pull the most relevant numbers from the boxscore, I’d go with Shot, shots on goal, duels won, and, finally, crosses, with all that on Montreal’s side of the ledger. Credit Cincinnati defenders for getting in the way, but Montreal never created much worth worrying about; moreover, their abundance of crosses were piteous and nearly always over-hit.

With that, Montreal lost to the worst team in MLS, and at home. That should spell, “Montreal is in trouble,” but God knows how this league and the punditry around it works.

Overall, though, that’s what stood out about FC Cincy last night: it looked like they “improvised” their way to goal every time they got there. The defense was solid, determined, even willing to take a (stupid) red (dude, next game, srsly?), but Cincinnati didn’t get much out of their most dangerous moments; putting the foot on the ball and gaping till everyone got covered seemed the far more popular option. According to the numbers, improvisation paid off eight times over the course of 90+ minutes (with three times on target), so if your overall impression was that Cincinnati didn’t do much last night, the numbers have your back. There are probably advantages to playing that way, nothing that man-marking doesn’t take out of it when you think about it, but “random” confuses both defenders and attackers, and a lot more than, say, a simple, two-prong game-plan – e.g., overload one side and see if you can’t play through, then switch and have the weak side fire in crosses. Cincinnati has nothing like that, at least not to the naked eye, and watching them is mostly hoping for a set-piece at this point. At any rate, and as much as they could’ve padded the score, Cincy failed to take advantage.

To go back to The Big Picture, scoring very few goals pairs detrimentally with allowing a lot of them, and that’s the trap Cincinnati has been in since, oh, July. Yesterday’s result was big for that alone.

And yet it doesn’t matter in a lot of ways. With just four games left in the 2019 season, and nothing new for options right now – or even on the horizon – it’s almost impossible to say what the future holds for FC Cincinnati’s attack. Emmanuel Ledesma still counts as my favorite attacking player –for the coherence he brings to attacking movements – but I’d still make him the best damn player in the USL (again) for an upgrade. Overall, I can’t call many of the attacking players on Cincinnati’s roster that I’d protect as vital – and that brings a somewhat creepy, “dead-man-walking” vibe to the conversation about what’s ahead for FC Cincinnati. In fewer words, I don’t know how many of these guys stay around for 2020 and, in the event that the worst of them do….Lord preserve the Queen City.

I’ll close out with some loose thoughts. No particular order.

- After a couple weeks of not seeing his upside, Maikel van der Werff looked solid, assertive and decently omnipresent yesterday. Montreal’s comparative bungling offers a caveat – e.g., is easier to be better against worse players.

- Ditto for the three-man midfield of Leo Bertone, Allan Cruz and Frankie Amaya. Wasn’t sure how that’d hold up against Piette and Taider – didn’t seem to be a real ball-winner in that mix – but it held reasonably well, especially when the defense compacted. I still like Bertone’s upside as a distributor.

- I'd play Mattocks on the wing, or not at all...

- Two players I want to really credit for their defensive work yesterday are Ledesma and Gyau. I saw them fighting for balls at the outer edges of Cincy’s defensive third over and over again. That made it really hard for L’Impact to get anything going. Solid stuff.