FC Cincinnati 0-1 Sporting Kansas City: Here's to 2021 and 20 New Players, JFC

Left at Nippert Stadium yesterday.

The best thing I can about FC Cincinnati’s 0-1 home loss last night against Sporting Kansas City was that they at least made the Western Conference’s best look average. Don’t know about you, but I was hoping they’d take one last happy memory from Nippert Stadium…then again, they’d go against FC Cincy’s history in Major League Soccer, as it has been written…

…don’t worry, this won’t take much of your time. Certainly less than 90 agonizing minutes.

Say they managed to draw the game - or, given at least two clear-cut chances, say Siem de Jong tucked away his penalty kick (nope!), or Brandon Vazquez finished his late, elegant turn with something effective (nope!), say, God forbid (because it seems he has), FC Cincy put away both chances and won the game. Say they make the Fucked Up 2020 Playoffs (and that the beef jerky maker of your dreams sponsored it): do you really think this FC Cincinnati…mess would get even one step beyond the first round? Or, to come at it from a future hypothetical, what would FC Cincinnati have to do to erase the profound, even off-putting frustration of their second season in MLS?

The short answer, and a disturbingly real one: why bother? Looking back at FC Cincinnati’s 2020 is an exercise in counting wasted hours.

Bluntly, literally every attacking player Cincinnati signed going into the 2020 season failed to pan out. Last night, I saw a couple positive reads on Jurgen Locadia switching to play wide left and, sure, he found more room out there and he posted a competent shot on goal, but what might have been isn’t what happened; the fact remains that Locadia hasn’t returned on investment any better than Fanendo Adi, and at greater effort and expense. It’s not just that he scored just one goal in 13 starts (15 games played), but that the ball gets caught in the spokes more often than he kicks it out and in anything like a useful direction.

Portland Timbers 5-2 Los Angeles Galaxy: You Know They Suck...Right?

Look into my eyes and fail, MF.

Every thought and argument takes the fact that the Los Angeles Galaxy is a terrible fucking soccer team in 2020 as a given. Dead last in the Western Conference, deep into the snipe hunt for worst defensive record in MLS (just four goals off the San Jose Earthquakes’ torrid pace of 45 goals allowed), and just two points ahead of FC Fucking Cincinnati? Live by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as they have, you wilt like flowers in direct sun when he’s gone, baby.

Also, the Portland Timbers really seem to have their number. With tonight’s 5-2 win, the Timbers have scored 15 goals against the Galaxy this season and in just four games, more than 1/3 of LA’s total goals allowed for 2020 (this assumes the interns updated the current standings timely). The numbers just keep getting bigger for LA, too, seeing that the Timbers scored eleven of those two goals over their past two….just painfully lopsided wins. I mean, holy shit, LA…

What I want to lead with tonight are the 10-15 minutes that followed the half-time whistle. It wasn’t just that the Galaxy scored a goal inside the first minute so much as what happened afterwards that really sticks with me - largely because we’ve all seen it before. First, the opposition starts cutting out the passes that used to flow freely out of the Timbers back line; next thing you know, tackles get less crisp and timely in the defensive third and, about five minutes later, the whole goddamn Timbers defense can’t clear its lines with a free header or a clean boot. It doesn’t even take a good team to set off waves of panic - as proved by tonight’s Exhibit A, the LA Galaxy. Had they pulled the game to 3-2 by, say, the 58th minute, who knows? LA had their chances, and they pulled the Timbers all over all the way up until Eryk Williamson scored one not so much against the run of play as the laws of physics to restore the Timbers the three-goal lead they never quite gave up. Seriously, for all the moments of calm Portland managed, LA tied them on shots and pushed them hard for shots on goal - oh, and neither team polished a diamond in this one.

To return to a theme, and regardless of whether or not this counts as a late development - as in, the Timbers own the 2020 series 3-1-0, and with a +6 goal differential (15 gf, 9 ga), but the last two results (6-3 and 5-2, both for Portland) skew the hell out of the sample - the Timbers have pulled some snake-charmer shit on the Galaxy recently, just a whole thing of dazing them then fucking them up over and over and over.

Seattle Sounders 1-1 Portland Timbers: Theories on Erosion

Wears one down a bit...

Personally, I can spin the Portland Timbers' 1-1 draw on the road to the loath’d Seattle Sounders several ways. A sampling:

The Optimist: The Timbers paced the first 60 minutes and could have scored several times over the next 20 minutes. The last 15 minutes never happened, there were no last 15 minutes.

The Pessimist: When your bend-don’t-break defense keeps breaking, you no longer have a bend-don’t-break defense. (Hold this thought, because it’s a biggie.)

The Fatalist: The Timbers can score on any team and pace large portions of any game; they also reliably give up goals: this is the unbendable nature of this timeline.

The Psychologist/Gambler: Everyone makes the playoffs and, with Portland and Seattle at No. 1 and No. 2 in the Western Conference and wholly manageable regular season schedules ahead of them* and only Sporting Kansas City as immediate competition (e.g., seven points separate both teams from Los Angeles FC (today)), there’s a decent chance that the Timbers and Sounders won’t meet until the Conference semis and Portland has a 2-1-1 edge in the series for 2020 - i.e., they grabbed four of those seven points in the series in Seattle - so they’re deep enough in Seattle’s head to hold the edge in that eventual match-up.

(* Portland’s remaining schedule: v. LA Galaxy, v. Vancouver, v. Colorado (maybe), @ LAFC;
Seattle’s remaining schedule: @ Vancouver, @ Colorado (maybe), @ LA Galaxy, v. San Jose)

All those arguments strike me as reasonable, for what it’s worth, because, per the fatalist take (aka, my jam), this is the team that Timbers fans have in front of them right now. What causes those late, fatal defensive mistakes? Beats the hell out of me. Also worth mentioning, the Timbers have only done the “draw-that-feels-like-a-loss” thing four times in 19 games this season. On the one hand, yes, that is just north of something happening 20% of the time. On the other hand, and prior to the recent shitty, 0-1-2 stretch, Portland won five straight games. Most of those happened at "home" (see the Vancouver Whitecaps), but the real blowouts - e.g., the 6-1 dismantling of San Jose and the 6-3 fun-fest against the Galaxy - happened on the road. Like tonight’s draw against a team that is, by common consent, the best in the Western Conference…except the Timbers for some damn reason, but, when the only real measure is who lifts the trophy in the end, who fucking cares about the chatter?

FC Cincinnati 1-2 DC United: Fall Down, Go Boom

I laugh every time. And I have children.

There is almost nothing to say about FC Cincinnati that doesn’t acknowledge a damning reality about the team - i.e., that they’re more or less doomd the second they go behind a goal. After that, every other thing you want to state or argue about them is academic.

As such, no, it didn’t help when their young stand-in goalkeeper, Bobby Edwards, screwed all the way up on a thoroughly innocuous DC United set-piece by misreading the flight of the ball and then “recovering” by trying too damn hard to prevent a corner kick. He effectively corralled the ball for DC’s Donovan Pines, instead, who collected the ball and poked it home. To get a real-time sense of how unexpected all that was, track Andrew Gutman’s movement and attention during that play. He clearly assumed it was over after glancing at Edwards’ attempt to keep in the ball; little did he know, Edwards would fall down and Cincinnati’s goal would go “boom.”

Now one year, plus one fucked-up year into their existence - what’s that, like a year and five-fourths or some shit? - FC Cincinnati still has no reliable approach to goal, neither a functioning attacking mechanism (e.g., get behind and play crosses) nor any one player or combination of attacking players to play through to get things moving. It’s just guys running around hoping the next pass finds an open player with a good sight of goal - preferably a better one than Joe Gyau’s shot through a thicket of players at or around the 25th minute.

More to the point, the earlier to opposition goes up, the more time FC Cincy spends chasing the game and/or opening themselves up on the counter. This played out in almost insulting effect in Cincinnati’s 1-2 home loss yesterday. As the good lord tormented Job, so the soccer fates gleefully gifted the theretofore struggling Brandon Vazquez with the gift of a bobble by DC’s stand-in ‘keeper, the experienced Chris Seitz. That tied the game on paper, but another, more meaningful dynamic had taken hold on the field: DC kept breaking through in midfield and pushing even-numbered counters against Cincinnati’s back-pedaling defense. On one occasion before Cincy equalized, a cross to the far side found a wide-open (I think) Erik Sorga, who skied his shot over a (basically) open net with a first-time strike.

Portland Timbers 1-1 Los Angeles FC: Aggressively Sticking with the Positives

And here I shall stay until I am moved...

To come right out and say it, the Portland Timbers' 1-1 home draw against Los Angeles FC broadcast a freaky signal. On the one hand, you’ve got the bare result - i.e., a loss at home and against a direct rival - while, on the other, you had had the Timbers best-possible attacking set-up pin-down and straight-up fuck-up one the league’s reigning powers, yes, even with several key players missing, but didn’t they already kick their own ass by shipping Walker Zimmermann, I mean, it’s not like the Timbers stipulated to that in the pre-game, but I digress…

To continue a stray thought in the above, the Timbers got all the way up LAFC’s head and well into their ass from, loosely, the 35th minute to the 55th, and it was equal parts relentless and delightful. As often happens with LAFC and Portland, they played a wide-open game, with both teams wanting space and, where they wanted to, giving it, and with most of the defending coming in either final third; it was confident and tidy on both sides. All that chaos failed to show up as shots in the box score for a reason, in other words, but the Timbers put their boot on the game and created enough chances until they finally unlocked LAFC’s defense for Jeremy Ebobisse. That goal didn’t just put a bow on a team effort: it reminded anyone who’s watching of all the ways that Portland’s attack can hurt you…which is not to say that Ebobisse hasn’t scored plenty in 2020, because he has. And that’s global for the Timbers at the moment.

That’s genuinely impressive, by the way, because not every fan gets to follow a team with actual game-winning talent. I know people in that predicament and I experience it myself, if not as acutely. The affliction is real…

And there’s no real flip on this one, no point where I cut against what feels like a reasonable assumption right now: the Timbers are, at worst, competitive for just about any trophy for 2020 that COVID-19 doesn’t take out of the running first. When you consider the grand/decidedly uneven scheme that is the MLS 2020 “regular season” schedule - Portland has lined up against the Seattle Sounders, aka, league special boo, and…fallen legends LAFC, and [mumble, mumble] San Jose [mumble, mumble], while Eastern Conference “royalty” like Toronto FC, the Philadelphia Union, Columbus Crew SC have faced a lot of FC Cincinnati, L’Impact Montreal, DC United, Inter Miami CF, and the New York Red Bulls - even if to varying degrees, you can’t help but have questions about all the hidden strengths and weaknesses getting buried with every passing week. To clarify and confirm everything in the above, yes, I do think that Seattle, Portland, and LAFC are playing among the hardest schedules in MLS right now, and I suspect that’ll come through in the end. In other words, the team that crawls out of that pile should have a dynamite shot at a trophy.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Columbus Crew SC: A Faint Glimmering From Hell?

One of you ordered the salmon pate, right?

FC Cincinnati has shown fans a couple looks over this short, weird 2020, but joylessly organized on defense and a combination of clueless and inept in the attack has remained the go-to since they surprised a couple teams (the New York Red Bulls, mostly) back in the Orlando bubble.

At least that’s where I left off with them about a month ago after that win over (again) the Red Bulls. I’d kept tabs while I was checked out, even took a longer look at a couple results. The results didn’t look great - they’d gone 0-4-1 over that time - even if all the results mostly made sense (e.g., losing 0-4 away to New York City FC and 0-3 on the road to the Philadelphia Union, both of which still hold double-digit leads over Cincy, even in a low-points season). Frustration mounted among the fan-base, or at least the corner of it I see on twitter, often to the point where thinking ahead to the 2021 season felt better than living through 2020…and I realize, as I typed those words, what a very low bar that is. So, so pervasively, consumingly low….

When I finally decided to tune back in for last night’s game against Columbus Crew SC, in a match-up I still can’t bring myself to call “Hell Is Real” (I mean, if just one of the teams has taken up full-time residence in hell, aren’t they just hosting at that point?), someone on the twitters pointed out that FC Cincy’s supporters’ groups had packed up all the banners and tifos with an eye to sending the team a message. I don’t know whether or not the players received it, but I had one hell of a laugh when a player alluding to it in an post-game interview. (Something like, “yeah, I noticed that. I heard they were trying to tell us something.” Ach, priceless…)

In fewer words, I’d missed more games than I’d noticed (FC Cincy went to Minnesota? huh), while getting the clear, steady message that not much of meaning had changed. As such, I tuned in last night bracing for more of the same. FC Cincinnati delivered something else. A 2-1 home win, for starters, but also more coherence on the attacking side than I’d seen since…well, let’s call it a while, because that could be 2019 on the phone for all I know. (Wait! You’re not gonna believe this, but it’s a guy telling me I won a prize! All I have to do is give him my bank account and routing numbers! Yaayyyyyy!)

Real Salt Lake 2-1 Portland Timbers: So Much Not Trying

Yeah, why not?

Near as I can tell, the Portland Timbers made a total and collective decision to do as little as possible tonight, just to see if they could get away with it. More than anything else, tonight’s 1-2 road loss to Real Salt Lake felt like watching a B-movie, like a real one. It has scene and setting like any other movie, action and dialogue, and real people playing the parts, but everyone involved feels it falling apart around them from one scene to the next, only no one can put their finger on the one change to make, so that everything can fall into place and make something half-decent. And so everyone keeps doing the things they’re supposed to, one bad scene after another; they keep going because that’s the only way to make it end and go home.

What the hell happened out there tonight? I’m too confused to be angry. Moving on…

Judging by what…just kept going on the field tonight, I assume Portland decided to open up the game by spreading out its players, probably with the idea of making space in which to run, play and generally frolick. Playing in Salt Lake usually means saving lungs and legs, so maybe the coaching staff issued a secondary order about taking chances carefully and only moving when the reward outweighed the risk. Setting aside the question of whether or not this was Portland’s game-plan - I have no insight into that - I don’t see anything odd or irresponsible about those choices…but what adjustments do you make when those choices don’t work?

When I talk about a “total and collective decision,” that absolutely includes the coaching staff - it might even start with them - because what the Timbers got nothing of value out of what happened tonight. Not only did the game-plan suck, it shouldn't take two dumps on said game-plan - Douglas Martinez's and Damir Kreilach's - to change the revise or even re-write the damn thing. Worse, they taxed the Diegos (Valeri’s and Chara’s) (slowly) aging legs with 90 full minutes at altitude - and with Portland hosting Los Angeles FC at home this Sunday (so that’s travel too). I mean, if you're gonna go for it, shouldn't you?

Worst, the two main players they called up to audition for playing time - Tomas Conechny and Cristhian Paredes - continued to show they’re not even ready to study under the understudies. Thus, worst feeds worse and you’ve got nothing to show from a trip to Utah.

Portland Timbers 3-0 San Jose Earthquakes: GUYS....

Mood.

Was it a solid win? Absolutely. The first half fulfilled my pre-game prophecy - the prediction of equivalent of saying, “you will get sliced bread for dinner tonight” - but the Portland Timbers scored…was it even minute(?), into the second half. Diego Chara and Eryk Williamson worked something breezy up the right and Chara finished their work with a perfect cross to Jaroslaw Niezgoda, who finished with a header that I can’t imagine 95% of ‘keepers keeping out.

And, yes, San Jose forced a cold-sweat moment of doubt, one that sounded loud echoes of a dreaded relapse into one or two of the deadly sins - this was Tanner Beason’s put-back (speaking of, this kid looked good) - but Referee Guido Gonzalez, Jr. (badass handle, btw) called it back for handball or offside. Honestly, the Timbers leaned a little too heavily into the “most dangerous lead in soccer” trope tonight, but when Chara (yes, again; do they give medals for MVP?) floated another assist to Felipe Mora running naked at the back-post that put away the game and the jitters. The game ended 3-0, Portland over the San Jose Earthquakes…

…but let’s not speak of the Timbers’ second goal. And if the Timbers Army could turn this song into a chant, I’d be both happy and very, very impressed. Factually, you could squeeze that goal through the lens of San Jose ‘keeper, James Marcinkowski’s frayed second half. Who was it that he presented the open-goal opportunity to? That’s the kind of night it was: Portland could throw away gold tonight and it didn’t cost ‘em. Reminded me of the win over the Los Angeles Galaxy…and the obscured the memory of those dreary back-to-back wins over the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps.

That said, to continue from the title, GUYS, has anyone either noticed or commented upon the fact that every player Portland brought in for 2020 has worked, like, all the way out (so far)?? For instance:

MLS 2020 Down the Stretch: Expectations, Oddballs & Watercoolers

Valeri's goal, amirite?

Before getting into the details, I’ll start with an observation: I see almost no real give in the Eastern Conference standings - i.e., I don’t really see any of the bottom four climbing out of the outhouse - while the Western Conference looks decently interesting from 6th place on down. Do note, however, the 8th-place Colorado Rapids’ two-three games in hand on everyone around them.

As threatened last week, I’m back to handicapping MLS as a whole, if from a greater distance. The formula will likely evolve from the original plan of separating expected results from the oddballs, but the general idea is to dig deeper on the results that don’t make sense to try to figure out how they happened. I want to go Monday-to-Monday for the long haul, but I got this itch to drop a prototype and that’s what this is. Plus, I wanted to see (some of) what happened when FC Cincinnati visited Philadelphia last Wednesday. (The short, familiar answer: nothing good.)

What I’m fishing for with these weekly posts is enough information to clock some general trends, maybe drop some names about who did what and how often. Call it an acquaintance level relationship with Major League Soccer in sum, enough to join a water-cooler conversation about comings and goings and talking from somewhere more sophisticated than my ass.

Most weeks, I’ll start by ticking through the expected results, touching (very) briefly on stray points of interest. I’ll then close with as many of the oddballs as I can get to - which, for this week, included only two games (though it should've included one more) - and dig deeper into those. The biggest difference comes with the amount of video review - e.g., “baby highlights” + box scores for the expected results and MLS-in-15 plus box scores for the oddballs.

I’ll start this edition with a (very) late round-up of FC Cincy’s midweek loss to Philly, a result that was…so very expected.

Los Angeles Galaxy 3-6 Portland Timbers: A Dream-Logic Romp

Ooh, better than my metaphor...

That was weird, right? Fun, for sure…but weird.

No question surrounds the game’s decisive factor: the Los Angeles Galaxy’s defense, which fucking s-s-s-s-s-sucked tonight. I’m going to check something, but I swear I’m not peaking. How many shots on goal did the Portland Timbers post tonight?

Ah, off by one. I was almost certain the Timbers had as many shots on goal and they had goals tonight, but that still makes the same point: Portland put just 10 shots on LA’s goal tonight, and that’s a rarefied strike-rate, six to ten. Or the indication of a defense - and a back-line, in particular - at odds with itself. When Portland broke down the Galaxy’s defense tonight, I damn near shattered - see here and definitely here. How many things had to go wrong, all the way down to LA’s defense almost miraculously keeping Jorge Villafana onside for the knock-back to Eryk Williamson (right?) - and, like most miracles, you don’t want to look too closely (fuck off, VAR!) - for that goal to come together? And yet, the Galaxy still had a couple more fuck-ups in ‘em, and on that one play, God bless ‘em.

That takes nothing away from Jeremy Ebobisse’s hammer of a short-range free-kick (and I’m always shocked when they go in clean from that close), or Diego Valeri’s cross-body, seeing-eye lob over LA ‘keeper, David Bingham, who probably didn’t even know he was exposed until he watched the ball sail over his head. In true Timbers fashion, they gave fans reason to doubt they’d hold a succession of leads, but they held on for what, when you add it all up, was a solid 6-3 win. And, for those not keeping track, Portland has built an impressive road record since coming back from Orlando. That kind of resilience serves a team well in playoff systems.

LA fought sporadically but fought hard when they did. For stretches of the game, they pushed the ball back into Portland’s half as if sending wave after wave of fresh players at them (it’s good; it was just the same eleven dudes). And congrats to Julian Araujo on his first MLS goal, because breaking your duck that hard sticks nicely in the memory, but it captured the essence of LA’s attack tonight: if you take away Christian Pavon’s final attempt to throw his team a life-line, something about the Galaxy attack felt over-improvised. I held out Pavon’s goal because, going from memory and broadcast-booth chatter, he tries that same move all the time. At times, LA took a basketball-style approach to Pavon - e.g., give him the rock and let him loose.

Major League Soccer 2020: Acts of Penance on the Back 8

Once the Magical World of Major League Soccer ended and all the teams returned to the far Less Magical World of COVID, I pretty much checked out of everything related to MLS except the feats and failures of the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. I even dialed back on FC Cincy a couple weeks ago, and with regrets, because what’s more compelling than an eternal mystery? (In this case, how a collection of professional athletes can so consistently fail to do anything well for that long.)

With just eight games left in Fucking 2020 for nearly every team in MLS (cue faint coughing from Colorado), the lack of context for the results I’m seeing - e.g., San Jose Earthquakes 2-1 Los Angeles Galaxy, a couple nights ago, in the conservatory, with gods know what for a murder weapon - prompts that twitch I get in my right eyebrow when I feel too disconnected from what’s going on…

…so I’ve decided to review the results and compile them in one place, perhaps as some kind of monastic-style penance, to get myself re-centered (breath). The grander, more deluded effort is to once again chase the damned white whale of my amateur pundit existence - e.g., a way that lets me keep current on comings and goings of this weird little league, but without it consuming every minute of my free time. I think I have one, but I’ve thought that literally every time I’ve attempted the same thing over the whole goddamn life of my homely, yet much-beloved little league. Little league…funny...

I’ll describe what I have in mind at the end of this post. For now, let's get caught up! And let’s do this best teams to worst, i.e., from the teams likely to do something interesting to those ones who rarely do anything you want to look at. TO BE CLEAR, the ONLY thing I’m looking at below are the top-liniest of top-line numbers: results, goal-differential, and a loose read on the relative strength of the opposition that each team has faced since the Magical World of Major League Soccer (MWoMLS) sprinkled the last of its pixie dust on this wretched motherfucker of a year. With that, here goes…and expect the odd factual error and I'll apologize for and/or retract dumb opinions as needed.

Columbus Crew SC: 9-2-4, 31 pts., +15 goal-differential (GD), goals for (GF), 25, post-MLS Is Back Record (“post-MIB”), 5-2-3
Results, post-MIB
Wins: v CHI, v PHI, v CIN, v NSH, v MIN
Losses: @ NYC, @ TFC
Draws: @CIN, @CHI, @FCD
Last 10: WLDWWDWWLD
Notes
What stands out here is the divide between home and road records; I’m not seeing the line drawn that cleanly anywhere else below, and maybe that’s the key tell with Columbus. They’re beating…loosely credible teams at home (Philly, mostly), but even patsies (and Dallas) can hold them when they travel. That said, the losses are reasonable and they do have the best records, so…