“It seems like once they give up a goal…”
I didn’t catch the name of Columbus Crew SC’s color commentator, but 1) she’s pretty good at her job, and 2) she summed up the state of play for FC Cincinnati’s 2020 in those few words. A season defined in less than a sentence.
Cincy is a limited team, without question. The only real question is whether they can be better with the current roster. I’d like to think so, but that’s without having any stirring ideas for rearranging the players in a way that makes them a more dangerous team and in a way that doesn’t leave the back-line for dead. With all that noted, I don’t like how Jaap Stam lined them up against Columbus yesterday - which, despite how MLS’s site mapped that for the prior game against Columbus, looked like the same thing to me. It looks…cluttered, I guess, in terms of going forward. I’ll elaborate on that in a bit. First, some notes on the game/0-3 loss for FC Cincy.
Did Cincinnati ever really look like scoring to you? Was there a moment you thought, “they’re getting closer,” or did the whole thing look like an exercise in holding on for dear life from the starting whistle till the final one? I mean, set aside the fact they didn’t put even one shot on goal (also, really?), obviously.
The way I saw it, it was possible to see the outlines of a goal-less draw, maybe even dream about a 1-0 Cincinnati win until somewhere around the 30th minute. From that point forward, and as happens when a better team plays a weaker on, Columbus started finding seams to spaces ever closer to Cincinnati’s goal. Having Darlington Nagbe around, doing his free-radical thing of unbalancing the defensive and collecting one foul after another in Zone 14, probably did as much as anything to force the slow unraveling, but Pedro Santos, Youness Mokhtar and, later, Luis Diaz joined in the “fun” of tormenting Cincy’s defense. The wheels came all the way off when Gyasi Zardes came on in the 62nd minute and couldn’t stop beating Cincinnati defenders to the ball. Had aliens watched that game, they would have applauded the amount and variety of probing.
I don’t recall many shots by Cincinnati - their highest highlight probably happened when a soft clearance fell to Adrien Regattin on the edge of the 18, and his blocked shot spun over to Jurgen Locadia to tee up another one - and the MLS’s in-house video-geeks didn’t rate them enough to make a stand-alone highlight out of any of them. As such, I hope the above description of that Regattin/Locadia one-two gives any Cincy fans who need one a wee flutter of pride.
Then again, it all goes back to the hard reality of the quote at the top of the page. On the evidence of 2020, Cincinnati can only score more than once against the New York Red Bulls; for those interested in some really bleak math, the goals scored in those two games against the Red Bulls account for two-thirds of Cincy’s goals scored all season. Take those out of the equation and weep…two goals over eight games…almost beggars belief a team of professionals could struggle so much with scoring, and yet here we are…so…what’s next?
One could put everything into hoping that new kids, Kamohelo Mokotjo and Alvaro Barreal, turn out to be revelations, but they’d have to be quite something to turn around the current scoring drought. A little more bite and ability up the middle would give Cincinnati freedom to throw more players forward, but doubt seems more justifiable than not given all the various givens. Moreover, just about everything that has happened so far justifies some skepticism about the quality of Cincy’s scouting structure. It’s not as though they haven’t already reloaded the roster - especially in the attack - with players like Locadia, Regattin, Yuya Kubo, and Siem de Jong. Those guys came in as the Plan A for improving the team - to give them an attack, really -and…I’m just going to let that thought trail off.
To offer something by way of a solution, I don’t think playing Kubo and Regattin at the same time works. I’d try playing with one - Regattin’s my very narrow preference…for now - and have one of lurk in the vicinity of Locadia, maybe see if they can’t generate some shots by playing off one another. I don’t mean do that exclusively, but I’d start trying just about anything that ends the effective isolation of Locadia. Cincy doesn’t necessarily need width - Greg Garza or Andrew Gutman provide that on one side, while Joseph Gyau does it on the other - and they’re not so good and making the most of it in any case…
…and yet, as I type that, I think about who to play behind them - there, I’m thinking Franklin Amaya and de Jong on either side of Mokotjo, whenever he’s ready to play - and, no, I don’t see how that translates to anything but a bunch of route one soccer. God, what a mess. I mean, is there a plan when they go out and buy players, or do they just say "yes" to whoever shows up?
I dunno, maybe Mokotjo gets Cincy into a 4-3-3, where you have Amaya on one side of him and Gyau on the other. Maybe de Jong stays on and Gyau pushes up into that front three. Overall, my sense of the best way for FC Cincinnati to turn things around is throwing caution to the wind (and losing some number of games) to try to figure out how to attack the opposition’s goal. At time of writing, literally all the pressure on this team rests on the defense and I don’t see how that continues, at least not without morale totally cratering.
At any rate, here’s to hoping I get to describe a Cincinnati goal next weekend. What’s that? Who’s on tap? Well, shit...
I didn’t catch the name of Columbus Crew SC’s color commentator, but 1) she’s pretty good at her job, and 2) she summed up the state of play for FC Cincinnati’s 2020 in those few words. A season defined in less than a sentence.
Cincy is a limited team, without question. The only real question is whether they can be better with the current roster. I’d like to think so, but that’s without having any stirring ideas for rearranging the players in a way that makes them a more dangerous team and in a way that doesn’t leave the back-line for dead. With all that noted, I don’t like how Jaap Stam lined them up against Columbus yesterday - which, despite how MLS’s site mapped that for the prior game against Columbus, looked like the same thing to me. It looks…cluttered, I guess, in terms of going forward. I’ll elaborate on that in a bit. First, some notes on the game/0-3 loss for FC Cincy.
Did Cincinnati ever really look like scoring to you? Was there a moment you thought, “they’re getting closer,” or did the whole thing look like an exercise in holding on for dear life from the starting whistle till the final one? I mean, set aside the fact they didn’t put even one shot on goal (also, really?), obviously.
The way I saw it, it was possible to see the outlines of a goal-less draw, maybe even dream about a 1-0 Cincinnati win until somewhere around the 30th minute. From that point forward, and as happens when a better team plays a weaker on, Columbus started finding seams to spaces ever closer to Cincinnati’s goal. Having Darlington Nagbe around, doing his free-radical thing of unbalancing the defensive and collecting one foul after another in Zone 14, probably did as much as anything to force the slow unraveling, but Pedro Santos, Youness Mokhtar and, later, Luis Diaz joined in the “fun” of tormenting Cincy’s defense. The wheels came all the way off when Gyasi Zardes came on in the 62nd minute and couldn’t stop beating Cincinnati defenders to the ball. Had aliens watched that game, they would have applauded the amount and variety of probing.
I don’t recall many shots by Cincinnati - their highest highlight probably happened when a soft clearance fell to Adrien Regattin on the edge of the 18, and his blocked shot spun over to Jurgen Locadia to tee up another one - and the MLS’s in-house video-geeks didn’t rate them enough to make a stand-alone highlight out of any of them. As such, I hope the above description of that Regattin/Locadia one-two gives any Cincy fans who need one a wee flutter of pride.
Then again, it all goes back to the hard reality of the quote at the top of the page. On the evidence of 2020, Cincinnati can only score more than once against the New York Red Bulls; for those interested in some really bleak math, the goals scored in those two games against the Red Bulls account for two-thirds of Cincy’s goals scored all season. Take those out of the equation and weep…two goals over eight games…almost beggars belief a team of professionals could struggle so much with scoring, and yet here we are…so…what’s next?
One could put everything into hoping that new kids, Kamohelo Mokotjo and Alvaro Barreal, turn out to be revelations, but they’d have to be quite something to turn around the current scoring drought. A little more bite and ability up the middle would give Cincinnati freedom to throw more players forward, but doubt seems more justifiable than not given all the various givens. Moreover, just about everything that has happened so far justifies some skepticism about the quality of Cincy’s scouting structure. It’s not as though they haven’t already reloaded the roster - especially in the attack - with players like Locadia, Regattin, Yuya Kubo, and Siem de Jong. Those guys came in as the Plan A for improving the team - to give them an attack, really -and…I’m just going to let that thought trail off.
To offer something by way of a solution, I don’t think playing Kubo and Regattin at the same time works. I’d try playing with one - Regattin’s my very narrow preference…for now - and have one of lurk in the vicinity of Locadia, maybe see if they can’t generate some shots by playing off one another. I don’t mean do that exclusively, but I’d start trying just about anything that ends the effective isolation of Locadia. Cincy doesn’t necessarily need width - Greg Garza or Andrew Gutman provide that on one side, while Joseph Gyau does it on the other - and they’re not so good and making the most of it in any case…
…and yet, as I type that, I think about who to play behind them - there, I’m thinking Franklin Amaya and de Jong on either side of Mokotjo, whenever he’s ready to play - and, no, I don’t see how that translates to anything but a bunch of route one soccer. God, what a mess. I mean, is there a plan when they go out and buy players, or do they just say "yes" to whoever shows up?
I dunno, maybe Mokotjo gets Cincy into a 4-3-3, where you have Amaya on one side of him and Gyau on the other. Maybe de Jong stays on and Gyau pushes up into that front three. Overall, my sense of the best way for FC Cincinnati to turn things around is throwing caution to the wind (and losing some number of games) to try to figure out how to attack the opposition’s goal. At time of writing, literally all the pressure on this team rests on the defense and I don’t see how that continues, at least not without morale totally cratering.
At any rate, here’s to hoping I get to describe a Cincinnati goal next weekend. What’s that? Who’s on tap? Well, shit...
Not to jump into a FCC post I know nothing about, but the color commentator for Crew is Jordan Angeli, who co-hosts the MLS Assist Podcast, which I highly recommend. Co-hosted by Joe Lowry, he's the nerd, she's the ex-pro, is a fantastic duo! It's a tactical podcast about the whole league and my-oh-my has it come into its' own after jumping out of the Total Soccer Show feed.
ReplyDeleteWorth the 30ish minute listen just about every danged time!