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| What is on the dark side of the dune? |
Without polling data to support it, I’d imagine that what most FC Cincinnati fans want to see out of their time right now is signs of improvement and/or life. As I’ll argue below, those are related by distinct concepts.
First, has FC Cincy improved? Yes, without question. The team ended its inaugural 2019 Major League Soccer campaign eating bowls full of shit on both sides of the ball and, so far in this 2020, they’ve cut down on the number of bowls they’re downing by…oh, ‘round about 1/3. Mos of the improvement has come on the defensive side of the ball, even if the raw numbers torture the answer a little. FC Cincy has allowed 12 goals (this link will go stale Wednesday) over eight games so far during this exceedingly janky season. To compare that against their peers, the league-wide average is 9.9 goals allowed; Eastern Conference has allowed 8.9, while Western Conference teams as a whole have let 11.1 goals slip by on average. On the one hand, yes, Cincinnati is over the average no matter where you look. On the other, they let in seven of those 12 goals during just two games - the manual colon extraction against this same Columbus Crew SC down in Orlando, and…sometime last week, and inexplicably, against Chicago Fire FC. Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t count anywhere except in the analysis, but that means Cincy allowed just 5 goals over their other six games, for an 0.83 goals against average. Very good, in other words, and Bill & Ted levels of excellence so close after 2019’s “our goal is your goal” policy (can anyone translate that into Spanish? Think it’ll read better).
Fortunately(?), yesterday’s 0-0 draw versus Columbus followed that larger pattern. Better yet, keeping the Crew off the board left Cincy a permanent opening for taking either the lead, the game or both - something they had three verygoodchances to do (plus at least one more, if you count Joe Gyau’s follow-up under “very”). Better even than that, the defensive scheme Jaap Stam deployed got deeper and deeper inside each Columbus player’s head as the game (literally) wore on. The Crew didn’t have a chance I can recall outside a (decent) flurry early in the second half (a highlight). Their attacks broke down earlier as well as forced passes gave way to wayward ones and ideas on how to get from Point A and into Cincy’s goal dried up.
The story gets trickier on the other side of the ledger - e.g., signs of life. Even if you set aside the question of whether MLS’s official stats low-balled Cincinnati’s opportunities at just five shots, and only two on goal (but…Room made…three saves), that doesn’t change the reality that the ball spent a lot more time in their end of their end of the field. In other words, Cincinnati put Columbus under pressure only fleetingly; moreover, the period when they tried to open up the game coincided with, 1) Columbus finding some of its best chances (and even the side netting), and 2) me enjoying the game much, much more.
To make an argument supported by absolutely nothing more than the (specific) highlights (i.e., the stuff in the sidebar), I’d call Cincinnati the better team yesterday - or, if not that, the team most likely to. Once their frustrations got the better of Columbus, the game was destined to end in either a goal-less draw or a 1-0 win for Cincy (and they came so close). At the same time, it’s hard to see actual progress in the result or the overall approach to play. There’s nothing wrong with stealing the odd game, at least so long as that’s a contingent strategy as opposed to how your team gets any result at all. As I’ll get to below, it’s not all doom and gloom, but, over the past couple years, FC Cincinnati went from falling off a cliff (2019) to climbing out of the canyon (2020). They’re safe, in other words, but still in the desert (and I think I’ve exhausted that analogy by now).
Now, to dig into some specifics.
Double-Pivot?
Broadly, I liked what I saw out of the Frankie (Frank?) Amaya/Siem de Jong deep central midfield. With an assist from severely contracted lines, they strangled most of the space around Zone 14 (top of the area) and forced Columbus to try to beat them on crosses. I was more impressed, though, by how quickly Amaya and (particularly) de Jong play the ball. While they didn’t complete every play and every pass wasn’t perfect, they both seem to understand their role as getting the ball the hell away from the defense as quickly and for as long as possible. De Jong’s a little better at smarter passing at this point, and he’s got better vision, but Amaya attempted three or four line-breakers up the gut that I rather admired. And he’s got real terrier-like qualities on the defensive side; the kid had real moments out there tonight and that’s clearing up my anxiety about defensive midfield.
To address the title, are they playing a double-pivot (and is that phrase hyphenated? Do I care?)? My personal theory is that both Amaya and de Jong present as two-way midfielders and, as such, the real No. 6 on this team the choice to keep the lines very, very compact.
MVPs and DPs
It feels like I keep seeing the same names one game to the next: Amaya in midfield, Gyau in the attack, and with a wee side shout to Andrew Gutman and a louder, general one to Przemyslaw Tyton (who had a delightful comedy of errors with letting the ball over the end-line), Kendall Waston and whomever he happens to be partnered with during the game in question. I’d argue that de Jong played himself into that company this week - a thought that begs all kinds of questions, btw - and that’s over half the team, but…
It’s not that Adrien Regattin, Yuya Kubo and Jurgen Locadia are bad players or that they aren’t working out - they’re doing the most complicated work on the team, for one - but they also aren’t doing what the team paid them to do - e.g., give the team life. Of the three, I’ll call Locadia the most hard done by. He doesn’t look like the kind of forward who can do much with the ball when he keeps receives the ball in the middle third; he’s more of an outlet pass for now, than he is a focal point for the attack and, for what it’s worth, the latter looks more like his strength.
Regattin and Kubo, meanwhile, need to figure out how to be more effective in the attack. Moreover, they have to figure out a way to build a little forward momentum, to become dangerous enough to keep the opposing defense honest, not just in the moment, but for a full 90 minutes. Kubo, especially, had his odd moments against Columbus, and Regattin did all right…but most of that work of pushing the game has fallen to Gyau. Cincy could do worse than Gyau, obviously, but he’s not the only player who looks a little lonely when he’s striving toward goal.
To finally go a little deeper on Columbus, you could see the cockiness drain out of them, not to mention feel the draw coming, during the second half. Having followed a Caleb Porter team for some years, I will say this: he’s not a terribly flexible tactician; things tend to fall apart once you make his system unravel. To put that in personal terms, watching the last half hour of last night’s game reminded me a lot of Porter’s Portland teams from 2016 and 2017: all that talent, trying to make the same song sound better when a different song is needed. Going the other way, the Crew will be fine: they’ve allowed just two goals over 8 games, a frankly, and temporarily insane 0.25 goals-against average.
That’s all I’ve got on this one. Like most of MLS, Cincinnati has just three or four games’ worth of future mapped out - Wednesday versus Chicago, Sunday at Columbus, then the following Saturday against New York City FC. To break it down, I’d be thrilled by four points, and delirious about six; one point wouldn’t shock me, but I’m expecting two. Also, I expect two of those games - the away games to Columbus and NYCFC - to look more or less exactly like last night. I was let down when I advocated online (the most important place evah!) for an aggressive approach against Chicago on the road, but I never got that. And, really, I think that's the only way Cincy gets a decent points-haul out of these games.
I’d like to think I will get that against Chicago at home on Wednesday night, but, given all the above - e.g., what happened when Cincy opened it up against Columbus - I don’t know why I’d expect to see it at home on Wednesday either.
Until that one...
First, has FC Cincy improved? Yes, without question. The team ended its inaugural 2019 Major League Soccer campaign eating bowls full of shit on both sides of the ball and, so far in this 2020, they’ve cut down on the number of bowls they’re downing by…oh, ‘round about 1/3. Mos of the improvement has come on the defensive side of the ball, even if the raw numbers torture the answer a little. FC Cincy has allowed 12 goals (this link will go stale Wednesday) over eight games so far during this exceedingly janky season. To compare that against their peers, the league-wide average is 9.9 goals allowed; Eastern Conference has allowed 8.9, while Western Conference teams as a whole have let 11.1 goals slip by on average. On the one hand, yes, Cincinnati is over the average no matter where you look. On the other, they let in seven of those 12 goals during just two games - the manual colon extraction against this same Columbus Crew SC down in Orlando, and…sometime last week, and inexplicably, against Chicago Fire FC. Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t count anywhere except in the analysis, but that means Cincy allowed just 5 goals over their other six games, for an 0.83 goals against average. Very good, in other words, and Bill & Ted levels of excellence so close after 2019’s “our goal is your goal” policy (can anyone translate that into Spanish? Think it’ll read better).
Fortunately(?), yesterday’s 0-0 draw versus Columbus followed that larger pattern. Better yet, keeping the Crew off the board left Cincy a permanent opening for taking either the lead, the game or both - something they had three verygoodchances to do (plus at least one more, if you count Joe Gyau’s follow-up under “very”). Better even than that, the defensive scheme Jaap Stam deployed got deeper and deeper inside each Columbus player’s head as the game (literally) wore on. The Crew didn’t have a chance I can recall outside a (decent) flurry early in the second half (a highlight). Their attacks broke down earlier as well as forced passes gave way to wayward ones and ideas on how to get from Point A and into Cincy’s goal dried up.
The story gets trickier on the other side of the ledger - e.g., signs of life. Even if you set aside the question of whether MLS’s official stats low-balled Cincinnati’s opportunities at just five shots, and only two on goal (but…Room made…three saves), that doesn’t change the reality that the ball spent a lot more time in their end of their end of the field. In other words, Cincinnati put Columbus under pressure only fleetingly; moreover, the period when they tried to open up the game coincided with, 1) Columbus finding some of its best chances (and even the side netting), and 2) me enjoying the game much, much more.
To make an argument supported by absolutely nothing more than the (specific) highlights (i.e., the stuff in the sidebar), I’d call Cincinnati the better team yesterday - or, if not that, the team most likely to. Once their frustrations got the better of Columbus, the game was destined to end in either a goal-less draw or a 1-0 win for Cincy (and they came so close). At the same time, it’s hard to see actual progress in the result or the overall approach to play. There’s nothing wrong with stealing the odd game, at least so long as that’s a contingent strategy as opposed to how your team gets any result at all. As I’ll get to below, it’s not all doom and gloom, but, over the past couple years, FC Cincinnati went from falling off a cliff (2019) to climbing out of the canyon (2020). They’re safe, in other words, but still in the desert (and I think I’ve exhausted that analogy by now).
Now, to dig into some specifics.
Double-Pivot?
Broadly, I liked what I saw out of the Frankie (Frank?) Amaya/Siem de Jong deep central midfield. With an assist from severely contracted lines, they strangled most of the space around Zone 14 (top of the area) and forced Columbus to try to beat them on crosses. I was more impressed, though, by how quickly Amaya and (particularly) de Jong play the ball. While they didn’t complete every play and every pass wasn’t perfect, they both seem to understand their role as getting the ball the hell away from the defense as quickly and for as long as possible. De Jong’s a little better at smarter passing at this point, and he’s got better vision, but Amaya attempted three or four line-breakers up the gut that I rather admired. And he’s got real terrier-like qualities on the defensive side; the kid had real moments out there tonight and that’s clearing up my anxiety about defensive midfield.
To address the title, are they playing a double-pivot (and is that phrase hyphenated? Do I care?)? My personal theory is that both Amaya and de Jong present as two-way midfielders and, as such, the real No. 6 on this team the choice to keep the lines very, very compact.
MVPs and DPs
It feels like I keep seeing the same names one game to the next: Amaya in midfield, Gyau in the attack, and with a wee side shout to Andrew Gutman and a louder, general one to Przemyslaw Tyton (who had a delightful comedy of errors with letting the ball over the end-line), Kendall Waston and whomever he happens to be partnered with during the game in question. I’d argue that de Jong played himself into that company this week - a thought that begs all kinds of questions, btw - and that’s over half the team, but…
It’s not that Adrien Regattin, Yuya Kubo and Jurgen Locadia are bad players or that they aren’t working out - they’re doing the most complicated work on the team, for one - but they also aren’t doing what the team paid them to do - e.g., give the team life. Of the three, I’ll call Locadia the most hard done by. He doesn’t look like the kind of forward who can do much with the ball when he keeps receives the ball in the middle third; he’s more of an outlet pass for now, than he is a focal point for the attack and, for what it’s worth, the latter looks more like his strength.
Regattin and Kubo, meanwhile, need to figure out how to be more effective in the attack. Moreover, they have to figure out a way to build a little forward momentum, to become dangerous enough to keep the opposing defense honest, not just in the moment, but for a full 90 minutes. Kubo, especially, had his odd moments against Columbus, and Regattin did all right…but most of that work of pushing the game has fallen to Gyau. Cincy could do worse than Gyau, obviously, but he’s not the only player who looks a little lonely when he’s striving toward goal.
To finally go a little deeper on Columbus, you could see the cockiness drain out of them, not to mention feel the draw coming, during the second half. Having followed a Caleb Porter team for some years, I will say this: he’s not a terribly flexible tactician; things tend to fall apart once you make his system unravel. To put that in personal terms, watching the last half hour of last night’s game reminded me a lot of Porter’s Portland teams from 2016 and 2017: all that talent, trying to make the same song sound better when a different song is needed. Going the other way, the Crew will be fine: they’ve allowed just two goals over 8 games, a frankly, and temporarily insane 0.25 goals-against average.
That’s all I’ve got on this one. Like most of MLS, Cincinnati has just three or four games’ worth of future mapped out - Wednesday versus Chicago, Sunday at Columbus, then the following Saturday against New York City FC. To break it down, I’d be thrilled by four points, and delirious about six; one point wouldn’t shock me, but I’m expecting two. Also, I expect two of those games - the away games to Columbus and NYCFC - to look more or less exactly like last night. I was let down when I advocated online (the most important place evah!) for an aggressive approach against Chicago on the road, but I never got that. And, really, I think that's the only way Cincy gets a decent points-haul out of these games.
I’d like to think I will get that against Chicago at home on Wednesday night, but, given all the above - e.g., what happened when Cincy opened it up against Columbus - I don’t know why I’d expect to see it at home on Wednesday either.
Until that one...
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