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| Yes, you can play that way, but... |
Not many people would take a second glance at FC Cincinnati’s 1-2 loss to New York City FC. They’d file it away as expected and move on; if anything piqued his/her/their interest it would be the fact that Cincy scored a goal. (Not that record, motherfuckers! Not today!). The bird’s-eye-view isn’t wrong, but it’s not entirely right either. This thing’s hairy with nuance…have I mentioned how much I miss the routine of soaking up context by watching too many goddamn MLS in 15 highlights? Have I mentioned how much the pandemic murdered the logic of going through that particular motion?
To stare directly at the warts, yes, FC Cincinnati played a sloppy, madding opening…65 minutes, and “opening” and “65 minutes” should never go together. To frame the point around two emblematic moments, the first came when Alexander Ring made what felt like NYCFC’s 100th scything run straight up Cincinnati’s gut; Ring slipped to the outside when Kendall Waston lunged in, but, and this is very much to Waston’s credit (especially at 32) he got enough of his body in the way and eventually muscled Ring off the ball, which almost certainly would have ended in a goal. He managed to clear it…maybe to the top of the defensive third? The ball might have crossed over into NYCFC’s half in a particularly #blessed moment, but it didn’t stray much further upfield for most of the first half and too much of the second.
The real question became apparent only after Allan Cruz and (sure, why not?) Nick Hagglund came on at the 65th minute: why the hell did FC Cincinnati spend 65 minutes hanging from the edge of a goddamn cliff when, according to what happened after the 65th minute, it’s possible - and merely possible - they didn’t have to?
The second moment relates to the first, in that it expresses the flip-side of the same dynamic. On one of the rare occasions that the ball crossed the center stripe and into NYCFC’s half, Yuya Kubo bolted up the left side of the field with the ball at his feet; the literally only other Cincinnati player who joined him on the happy side of the center stripe was Jurgen Locadia, and he was all the way on the other side of the damn field. For the sake of argument, set aside whatever specific acts you think either of those players should or should not do in any given moment and focus on the deeper question how the hell two dudes split on opposite sides of entire goddamn half of a soccer field are supposed to beat four-to-six players defending that same space?
Specific/individual flaws aside, Cincinnati has set up its attack to fail since leaving the Orlando bubble. Alternately, it could be that other teams reviewed enough video to figure out where Cincy deploys its outlets and how to cut them off, but the distinction doesn’t mean much to the bottom-line. Cincinnati can and will never do more than score the odd goal and steal a stray point or three playing like that. It’s low-percentage to the point of being no percentage. Moreover, New York City FC responded to that hopeless approach with an aggressive press to start the second half - they came out looking to bury the game, basically - and it paid off the extent that Anton “King of the Gnomes” Tinnerholm buried the inevitable insurance goal at the 55th minute (whoops; here's NYC's first, which also felt inevitable). I accept that some hopeful moments might have got lost in larger trends, but watching Cincinnati struggle to one damn thing right from the 20th minute to the 65th left me wondering whether FC Cincinnati wasn’t just an improv troupe in costume working painfully through a new routine...
…close observers will have noted repeated references to the 65th minute by now, because something strange and very special happened around that time. On the one hand, sure, Hagglund and Cruz came on. Going the other way, I know both players pretty well and neither of them present as straight-up game-changers…so what gives?
The honest answer is, I don’t know and it lasted about 20 minutes - from the 65th minute to the 85th, or thereabouts - when FC Cincinnati started connecting passes out of the blue as if the game’s opening 65 minutes was a ruse, a dead-possum/pool-shark maneuver to shiv NYCFC down the stretch. Cincinnati found its first full chance at the 67th when Joe Gyau cut in from the left and fired a tricky shot to the Sean Johnson’s far post (no stand-alone highlights for that, dammit, but . The real key, though, was that Cincinnati started pressing an increasingly leggy NYCFC back-field and forcing mistakes out of them - up to and including the catastrophic blunder-gift that led to the Brandon Vazquez goal that should keep Cincinnati out of the wrong record books (e.g., minutes without scoring) for another season (please, no; I’m all-in watching this shit). One top-line stat demonstrates how far the game turned over those 20 minutes: Cincinnati ended the first half with just three shots, none of them on goal, but ended the game with 14 shots, and five on goal - including a fortunate save on a Kendall Waston header that would have leveled the game - which was just two shots under NYCFC's haul. Consider what a casual fan would have thought on seeing this game end at 2-2…
All in all, this was one of those games that reminds you that no matter who bad things can look for…I believe the number is 65 minutes, just about any soccer game can turn on a dime and within just as many minutes (aka, 10 minutes to defend the metaphor). Personally, I’m choosing to read both the final result and how it happened as a signal that FC Cincy needs to stop bunkering and start playing. That doesn’t necessarily mean reckless throwing players forward - which, frankly, stops making sense after watching Kubo and Locadia try to work off one another for 65 minutes - so much as it means figuring out getting a sturdy enough defensive shape to free up 4-5 players to focus on the attack, keep the other team honest or, gods forfend, score two goals in one goddamn game.
I’m still working out how to make this work, but I do believe that what’s hurting Cincinnati more than anything else in the attack, it’s a consistent failure to get enough players forward. Related thereto, I can still replay the first credible Cincy attack of the game. It was stupidly simple - a player got hold of the ball at near the center of midfield and kicked it wide to someone high and wide on Cincy’s right (think it was Deplagne) that NYCFC had left exposed. The crucial difference in that moment: Cincinnati had three players in the area and, related thereto, a snowball’s chance in hell of one of them getting on the end of the cross.
To answer the largest question, no, Cincinnati still isn’t a competitive team. Coaches don’t game-plan around completely pissing away 45 minutes of soccer. But I do think there are small steps they can take toward becoming more competitive generally. One of them I’ve already hinted at above - e.g., playing over the midfield to 4-5 players (or, more realistically, 3-4 players) waiting as outlets while 5-6 players keep shit tight at the back. My other thought might be more controversial, but here it is: I want a more aggressive defensive posture out of FC Cincy. This is less about the line of engagement - fwiw, I think the midfield stripe is a good place based on the talent on hand - than how hard the defenders close on the ball. What I’m envisioning sees Cincy pressing into the opposition half occasionally, but that relies on defenders bolting toward everything inside their own half like ten methed-up terriers. Credit where it’s due, Caleb Stanko played that role tonight (and to the point to where he should have got a yellow card), and Frank Amaya has killed the same over the past 5-6 games. Overall, though, I think staying compact and playing aggressively is the best way for FC Cincy to wrestle out of the 2-6-3 doldrums. The risk, of course, is straining the defensive shape, or losing it entirely, which isn't insignificant.
And now, some stray notes.
- I’ve more or less given up on Kubo - or, more fair to him, the way he plays doesn’t give Cincinnati what they need. I’d file Haris Medunjanin under the same file. And that brings the discussion to a deeper issue.
- Even if I can see how the pieces might one day click into place, Siem de Jong has also underwhelmed, or maybe just never whelmed. If there’s anything that works in his favor, he understands the need for speed in the attack and releases his passes quickly. Going the other way, he seems to miss a lot of those, but that’s what I mean by “clicking into place” - he’ll start getting other players’ tendencies right (I mean…he has to, right?) and vice versa. To make one thing very clear: the thing I just described is something that might happen, a possibility in other words, as opposed to something I’m actually seeing come together. And that’s the real pickle:
If you take de Jong out of the equation, then Kubo, and take into account Adrien Regattin’s return to France…what does Cincy have left for attacking players? There's Allan Cruz, obviously, but from there?
To stare directly at the warts, yes, FC Cincinnati played a sloppy, madding opening…65 minutes, and “opening” and “65 minutes” should never go together. To frame the point around two emblematic moments, the first came when Alexander Ring made what felt like NYCFC’s 100th scything run straight up Cincinnati’s gut; Ring slipped to the outside when Kendall Waston lunged in, but, and this is very much to Waston’s credit (especially at 32) he got enough of his body in the way and eventually muscled Ring off the ball, which almost certainly would have ended in a goal. He managed to clear it…maybe to the top of the defensive third? The ball might have crossed over into NYCFC’s half in a particularly #blessed moment, but it didn’t stray much further upfield for most of the first half and too much of the second.
The real question became apparent only after Allan Cruz and (sure, why not?) Nick Hagglund came on at the 65th minute: why the hell did FC Cincinnati spend 65 minutes hanging from the edge of a goddamn cliff when, according to what happened after the 65th minute, it’s possible - and merely possible - they didn’t have to?
The second moment relates to the first, in that it expresses the flip-side of the same dynamic. On one of the rare occasions that the ball crossed the center stripe and into NYCFC’s half, Yuya Kubo bolted up the left side of the field with the ball at his feet; the literally only other Cincinnati player who joined him on the happy side of the center stripe was Jurgen Locadia, and he was all the way on the other side of the damn field. For the sake of argument, set aside whatever specific acts you think either of those players should or should not do in any given moment and focus on the deeper question how the hell two dudes split on opposite sides of entire goddamn half of a soccer field are supposed to beat four-to-six players defending that same space?
Specific/individual flaws aside, Cincinnati has set up its attack to fail since leaving the Orlando bubble. Alternately, it could be that other teams reviewed enough video to figure out where Cincy deploys its outlets and how to cut them off, but the distinction doesn’t mean much to the bottom-line. Cincinnati can and will never do more than score the odd goal and steal a stray point or three playing like that. It’s low-percentage to the point of being no percentage. Moreover, New York City FC responded to that hopeless approach with an aggressive press to start the second half - they came out looking to bury the game, basically - and it paid off the extent that Anton “King of the Gnomes” Tinnerholm buried the inevitable insurance goal at the 55th minute (whoops; here's NYC's first, which also felt inevitable). I accept that some hopeful moments might have got lost in larger trends, but watching Cincinnati struggle to one damn thing right from the 20th minute to the 65th left me wondering whether FC Cincinnati wasn’t just an improv troupe in costume working painfully through a new routine...
…close observers will have noted repeated references to the 65th minute by now, because something strange and very special happened around that time. On the one hand, sure, Hagglund and Cruz came on. Going the other way, I know both players pretty well and neither of them present as straight-up game-changers…so what gives?
The honest answer is, I don’t know and it lasted about 20 minutes - from the 65th minute to the 85th, or thereabouts - when FC Cincinnati started connecting passes out of the blue as if the game’s opening 65 minutes was a ruse, a dead-possum/pool-shark maneuver to shiv NYCFC down the stretch. Cincinnati found its first full chance at the 67th when Joe Gyau cut in from the left and fired a tricky shot to the Sean Johnson’s far post (no stand-alone highlights for that, dammit, but . The real key, though, was that Cincinnati started pressing an increasingly leggy NYCFC back-field and forcing mistakes out of them - up to and including the catastrophic blunder-gift that led to the Brandon Vazquez goal that should keep Cincinnati out of the wrong record books (e.g., minutes without scoring) for another season (please, no; I’m all-in watching this shit). One top-line stat demonstrates how far the game turned over those 20 minutes: Cincinnati ended the first half with just three shots, none of them on goal, but ended the game with 14 shots, and five on goal - including a fortunate save on a Kendall Waston header that would have leveled the game - which was just two shots under NYCFC's haul. Consider what a casual fan would have thought on seeing this game end at 2-2…
All in all, this was one of those games that reminds you that no matter who bad things can look for…I believe the number is 65 minutes, just about any soccer game can turn on a dime and within just as many minutes (aka, 10 minutes to defend the metaphor). Personally, I’m choosing to read both the final result and how it happened as a signal that FC Cincy needs to stop bunkering and start playing. That doesn’t necessarily mean reckless throwing players forward - which, frankly, stops making sense after watching Kubo and Locadia try to work off one another for 65 minutes - so much as it means figuring out getting a sturdy enough defensive shape to free up 4-5 players to focus on the attack, keep the other team honest or, gods forfend, score two goals in one goddamn game.
I’m still working out how to make this work, but I do believe that what’s hurting Cincinnati more than anything else in the attack, it’s a consistent failure to get enough players forward. Related thereto, I can still replay the first credible Cincy attack of the game. It was stupidly simple - a player got hold of the ball at near the center of midfield and kicked it wide to someone high and wide on Cincy’s right (think it was Deplagne) that NYCFC had left exposed. The crucial difference in that moment: Cincinnati had three players in the area and, related thereto, a snowball’s chance in hell of one of them getting on the end of the cross.
To answer the largest question, no, Cincinnati still isn’t a competitive team. Coaches don’t game-plan around completely pissing away 45 minutes of soccer. But I do think there are small steps they can take toward becoming more competitive generally. One of them I’ve already hinted at above - e.g., playing over the midfield to 4-5 players (or, more realistically, 3-4 players) waiting as outlets while 5-6 players keep shit tight at the back. My other thought might be more controversial, but here it is: I want a more aggressive defensive posture out of FC Cincy. This is less about the line of engagement - fwiw, I think the midfield stripe is a good place based on the talent on hand - than how hard the defenders close on the ball. What I’m envisioning sees Cincy pressing into the opposition half occasionally, but that relies on defenders bolting toward everything inside their own half like ten methed-up terriers. Credit where it’s due, Caleb Stanko played that role tonight (and to the point to where he should have got a yellow card), and Frank Amaya has killed the same over the past 5-6 games. Overall, though, I think staying compact and playing aggressively is the best way for FC Cincy to wrestle out of the 2-6-3 doldrums. The risk, of course, is straining the defensive shape, or losing it entirely, which isn't insignificant.
And now, some stray notes.
- I’ve more or less given up on Kubo - or, more fair to him, the way he plays doesn’t give Cincinnati what they need. I’d file Haris Medunjanin under the same file. And that brings the discussion to a deeper issue.
- Even if I can see how the pieces might one day click into place, Siem de Jong has also underwhelmed, or maybe just never whelmed. If there’s anything that works in his favor, he understands the need for speed in the attack and releases his passes quickly. Going the other way, he seems to miss a lot of those, but that’s what I mean by “clicking into place” - he’ll start getting other players’ tendencies right (I mean…he has to, right?) and vice versa. To make one thing very clear: the thing I just described is something that might happen, a possibility in other words, as opposed to something I’m actually seeing come together. And that’s the real pickle:
If you take de Jong out of the equation, then Kubo, and take into account Adrien Regattin’s return to France…what does Cincy have left for attacking players? There's Allan Cruz, obviously, but from there?
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