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| 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.
That just fucking hurtful number carries over to every attacking player on FC Cincinnati, who amount to a collection of unfulfilled hopes, only with different names on each shirt. Yuya Kubo, Adrien Regattin, Siem de Jong, Haris Medunjanin, hell, why not throw in Brandon Vazquez, though I don’t know how much anyone expected out of him: whatever alignment you play them in, they not only haven’t delivered, they’re about as close to “rounding the turn” as the country is to getting COVID under control.
Whether or not it’s statistically accurate, but I use DC United’s shit-show of a 2013 campaign as my go-to point of reference for the worst season for any team in Major League Soccer history. DC won just three games of 34 that season and they stalled at 16 for points. For anyone who needs to see a silver lining, Cincy already has more win in 2020 (four! woo-hoo!), so at least that record won’t fall. Also, if they can swing just one fucking point over the next two games (that’s ONE, guys!), they’ll top the 2013 DC team on total points earned - and they’ll have done it in fewer games.
But here’s the kicker and the crisis in one heart-stopping number: for all its jaw-dropping, thoroughgoing shittiness, that DC United team scored 22 goals over 34 games, for an average of 0.64 goals/game. And…just did some digging and it turns out that DC United’s 2010 team holds the record for the least goals scored in a regular season at 21 goals over 34 games - i.e., an average of 0.62 goals/game. FC Cincinnati’s current pace - 11 goals scored in 21 games - puts them at 0.52 goals/game. By my math (and do check it), Cincy needs to score four goals over its final two games in order to avoid ending the 2020 season with the worst-ever goals-for average in MLS history. In other words, it's still possible Cincinnati will end 2020 in the wrong pages of the history book…and I’m back to meditating on all those lost hours…Jesus, I mean, Jesus, what else can go wrong?
I want to close on one specific number from last night’s box score and run that against a detail that came into sharper relief as I watched the Portland Timbers’ win over the (shockingly weak) Los Angeles Galaxy. When Timbers midfielders got on the ball - e.g., Diego Chara or Eryk Williamson, even in their own defensive third - they went forward 6 times out of 10 at a minimum, looking for a maximal disruption whether by a pass or a dribble. Not every team in MLS does that, and by no means do I hold that up as some kind of unerring key to success, but that formula or something like it, has kept Portland a reliably competitive team for the past several seasons; it doesn’t hurt that it’s fun to watch.
Now the number/contrast: FC Cincinnati passed the ball 593 times last night and held 62.4% of possession. If you get on the matchcenter and start putzing around with the “Distribution” tab and isolate Cincy’s passing map, you’ll notice a tangled thicket of numbers and arrows inside their defensive third - and this matches what I saw out there. Over and over again, Cincinnati would get on the ball and knock it around little eddying passing triangles and rectangles in this dead space between the top of their attacking third and their side of the center stripe. They’d play three or four passes backwards and sideways for every pass forward - too often without so much as glancing up for forward options. At times, it looked like they prioritized possession and rhythm of any kind over productive possession.
On a team level, the hard reality is that FC Cincinnati hasn’t figured out how to play. Apart from having exactly one tangible thing to play for - e.g., four goals over their last two games and an escape from the history books - their 2020 season is over. I don’t know how much they can learn between today and the beginning of the 2021 campaign, or even which players they’ll try to teach: I just know the clock is ticking if they want to get anything besides a dull, exhausted pain out of 2021.
…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.
That just fucking hurtful number carries over to every attacking player on FC Cincinnati, who amount to a collection of unfulfilled hopes, only with different names on each shirt. Yuya Kubo, Adrien Regattin, Siem de Jong, Haris Medunjanin, hell, why not throw in Brandon Vazquez, though I don’t know how much anyone expected out of him: whatever alignment you play them in, they not only haven’t delivered, they’re about as close to “rounding the turn” as the country is to getting COVID under control.
Whether or not it’s statistically accurate, but I use DC United’s shit-show of a 2013 campaign as my go-to point of reference for the worst season for any team in Major League Soccer history. DC won just three games of 34 that season and they stalled at 16 for points. For anyone who needs to see a silver lining, Cincy already has more win in 2020 (four! woo-hoo!), so at least that record won’t fall. Also, if they can swing just one fucking point over the next two games (that’s ONE, guys!), they’ll top the 2013 DC team on total points earned - and they’ll have done it in fewer games.
But here’s the kicker and the crisis in one heart-stopping number: for all its jaw-dropping, thoroughgoing shittiness, that DC United team scored 22 goals over 34 games, for an average of 0.64 goals/game. And…just did some digging and it turns out that DC United’s 2010 team holds the record for the least goals scored in a regular season at 21 goals over 34 games - i.e., an average of 0.62 goals/game. FC Cincinnati’s current pace - 11 goals scored in 21 games - puts them at 0.52 goals/game. By my math (and do check it), Cincy needs to score four goals over its final two games in order to avoid ending the 2020 season with the worst-ever goals-for average in MLS history. In other words, it's still possible Cincinnati will end 2020 in the wrong pages of the history book…and I’m back to meditating on all those lost hours…Jesus, I mean, Jesus, what else can go wrong?
I want to close on one specific number from last night’s box score and run that against a detail that came into sharper relief as I watched the Portland Timbers’ win over the (shockingly weak) Los Angeles Galaxy. When Timbers midfielders got on the ball - e.g., Diego Chara or Eryk Williamson, even in their own defensive third - they went forward 6 times out of 10 at a minimum, looking for a maximal disruption whether by a pass or a dribble. Not every team in MLS does that, and by no means do I hold that up as some kind of unerring key to success, but that formula or something like it, has kept Portland a reliably competitive team for the past several seasons; it doesn’t hurt that it’s fun to watch.
Now the number/contrast: FC Cincinnati passed the ball 593 times last night and held 62.4% of possession. If you get on the matchcenter and start putzing around with the “Distribution” tab and isolate Cincy’s passing map, you’ll notice a tangled thicket of numbers and arrows inside their defensive third - and this matches what I saw out there. Over and over again, Cincinnati would get on the ball and knock it around little eddying passing triangles and rectangles in this dead space between the top of their attacking third and their side of the center stripe. They’d play three or four passes backwards and sideways for every pass forward - too often without so much as glancing up for forward options. At times, it looked like they prioritized possession and rhythm of any kind over productive possession.
On a team level, the hard reality is that FC Cincinnati hasn’t figured out how to play. Apart from having exactly one tangible thing to play for - e.g., four goals over their last two games and an escape from the history books - their 2020 season is over. I don’t know how much they can learn between today and the beginning of the 2021 campaign, or even which players they’ll try to teach: I just know the clock is ticking if they want to get anything besides a dull, exhausted pain out of 2021.
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