 |
| 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.
DC’s game-winner didn’t look exactly like that, but the pieces took similar places on the field. Their press harassed Gutman into a series of long touches that DC’s midfield picked off in short order; that turnover had them in a brief 3-v-2 against Cincy’s last line and Gutman chasing back to recover: when the ball went wide left, all of Cincy’s defenders collapsed centrally - the chasing Gutman very much included - which left DC’s Chris Odoi-Atsem completely alone at the back stop to stab home the put-back on the shot Edwards saved, but could not control, from the left.
And that, more or less, was that. The box score credits Cincy with six shots on goal, but I have only dim memories of everything but Gyau’s shot - oh, there was also that narrow-angle stab Vazquez attempted in the first half, but he would have been just as lucky as Gyau to get that one in the goal. Draw the lens further back to take in the big picture and you get the most damning confirmation of all: the Cincinnati “attack” has scored all of 11 goals in all the games in 2020 that counted. That’s a piteous goals per game average of 0.6875. Half of me is convinced I must be fucking up the math, while the half of me that hopes to see Cincinnati one day is about to say to hell with it and crack open the bad bourbon, because that bullshit does not deserve the good stuff.
SIGH.
The real pisser is that this looked like Cincinnati’s best shot at a hopeful performance between yesterday and the final game of the season at Inter Miami CF. (For the curious, here’s Cincy’s schedule between here and there: vs. Minnesota United FC, v. Sporting Kanas City, and at Atlanta United FC.) DC United rolled into Nippert Stadium as one of the only teams in Major League Soccer keeping Cincy's agonizing pace for league’s-worst for the 2020 season - as underlined in enraged Sharpie slashes by the fact they’re still lower than FC Cincinnati in the Eastern Conference standings today. And that’s after winning on Sunday. A very serious plague of injuries certainly hasn’t helped them, and the list of players missing and questionable - e.g., Steve Birnbaum, Bill Hamid, Felipe, Paul Arriola, and Russell Canouse (suspended) - reads like the who’s who of DC’s 2020 roster.
They even played badly as advertised for much of the game, looking dangerous only here and there, if until they grew in confidence and started to pull together the counters that spelled “doom” in some lost language known only to the bastard soccer gods.
Bottom line, Cincinnati started strong, but that only lasted until they ran out of ideas. Which they very much did. Right, let’s polish off that turd (and this one) with some more detailed notes…
- Rumor was they handed Frank Amaya the No. 10 role yesterday. While DC’s defenders hacked him like a major menace to the women and children, Amaya struggled to put even his usual stamp on the game. I do, however, want to let him off a little because I spotted a bigger problem further upfield.
- By the looks of it, Cincy coach, Jaap Stam, tasked Brandon Vazquez with the hold-up/back-to-goal roll, aka, the guy an attack uses as a possession pivot to give the numbers time to come forward. Vazquez, 1) was not up to the task, and 2) I’m not sure he ever will be. Being a big-ish guy - as Vazquez clearly is at 6’ 3” and 175 pounds - is not enough. You have to be able to out-muscle defenders to gain position, for one, Vazquez never managed that well enough to worry about the other arts of hold-up play. Moreover, he looks like a forward who’s more comfortable running to hit crosses first time, or even taking a through-ball in the channels. At any rate, if I had to flag the greatest, and most consistent breakdown in Cincinnati’s attack, I’d point to Vazquez…
…to be clear, though, the whole damn thing was dead for all intents and purposes by the 30th minute or thereabouts.
- As much as anything else, all the above leaves me wondering about Kubo and his performance against Columbus Crew SC in the game prior. As noted in my write-up, that was the best I’d ever seen Kubo play (full disclosure: I was willing to pull the plug on him…as if there are options). Is it possible he’s the best Cincinnati’s best option right now? Finally, and very much related thereto…
- Say, and this is a big one, I heard someone note a rash of hamstring injuries during the broadcast - one that had Kubo limp off last weekend, but that might have also sidelined Jurgen Locadia(?), Mathieu Deplagne(?), Greg Garza(?), and where the hell has Kendall Waston been? When I can’t figure out why this player or that is missing, I often check back to the match preview, but it’s not showing an extensive injury list for Cincinnati, so…what gives?
At any rate, that’s it for this one. Here’s to hoping Cincinnati rallies long enough to escape the cellar in 2020.
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.
DC’s game-winner didn’t look exactly like that, but the pieces took similar places on the field. Their press harassed Gutman into a series of long touches that DC’s midfield picked off in short order; that turnover had them in a brief 3-v-2 against Cincy’s last line and Gutman chasing back to recover: when the ball went wide left, all of Cincy’s defenders collapsed centrally - the chasing Gutman very much included - which left DC’s Chris Odoi-Atsem completely alone at the back stop to stab home the put-back on the shot Edwards saved, but could not control, from the left.
And that, more or less, was that. The box score credits Cincy with six shots on goal, but I have only dim memories of everything but Gyau’s shot - oh, there was also that narrow-angle stab Vazquez attempted in the first half, but he would have been just as lucky as Gyau to get that one in the goal. Draw the lens further back to take in the big picture and you get the most damning confirmation of all: the Cincinnati “attack” has scored all of 11 goals in all the games in 2020 that counted. That’s a piteous goals per game average of 0.6875. Half of me is convinced I must be fucking up the math, while the half of me that hopes to see Cincinnati one day is about to say to hell with it and crack open the bad bourbon, because that bullshit does not deserve the good stuff.
SIGH.
The real pisser is that this looked like Cincinnati’s best shot at a hopeful performance between yesterday and the final game of the season at Inter Miami CF. (For the curious, here’s Cincy’s schedule between here and there: vs. Minnesota United FC, v. Sporting Kanas City, and at Atlanta United FC.) DC United rolled into Nippert Stadium as one of the only teams in Major League Soccer keeping Cincy's agonizing pace for league’s-worst for the 2020 season - as underlined in enraged Sharpie slashes by the fact they’re still lower than FC Cincinnati in the Eastern Conference standings today. And that’s after winning on Sunday. A very serious plague of injuries certainly hasn’t helped them, and the list of players missing and questionable - e.g., Steve Birnbaum, Bill Hamid, Felipe, Paul Arriola, and Russell Canouse (suspended) - reads like the who’s who of DC’s 2020 roster.
They even played badly as advertised for much of the game, looking dangerous only here and there, if until they grew in confidence and started to pull together the counters that spelled “doom” in some lost language known only to the bastard soccer gods.
Bottom line, Cincinnati started strong, but that only lasted until they ran out of ideas. Which they very much did. Right, let’s polish off that turd (and this one) with some more detailed notes…
- Rumor was they handed Frank Amaya the No. 10 role yesterday. While DC’s defenders hacked him like a major menace to the women and children, Amaya struggled to put even his usual stamp on the game. I do, however, want to let him off a little because I spotted a bigger problem further upfield.
- By the looks of it, Cincy coach, Jaap Stam, tasked Brandon Vazquez with the hold-up/back-to-goal roll, aka, the guy an attack uses as a possession pivot to give the numbers time to come forward. Vazquez, 1) was not up to the task, and 2) I’m not sure he ever will be. Being a big-ish guy - as Vazquez clearly is at 6’ 3” and 175 pounds - is not enough. You have to be able to out-muscle defenders to gain position, for one, Vazquez never managed that well enough to worry about the other arts of hold-up play. Moreover, he looks like a forward who’s more comfortable running to hit crosses first time, or even taking a through-ball in the channels. At any rate, if I had to flag the greatest, and most consistent breakdown in Cincinnati’s attack, I’d point to Vazquez…
…to be clear, though, the whole damn thing was dead for all intents and purposes by the 30th minute or thereabouts.
- As much as anything else, all the above leaves me wondering about Kubo and his performance against Columbus Crew SC in the game prior. As noted in my write-up, that was the best I’d ever seen Kubo play (full disclosure: I was willing to pull the plug on him…as if there are options). Is it possible he’s the best Cincinnati’s best option right now? Finally, and very much related thereto…
- Say, and this is a big one, I heard someone note a rash of hamstring injuries during the broadcast - one that had Kubo limp off last weekend, but that might have also sidelined Jurgen Locadia(?), Mathieu Deplagne(?), Greg Garza(?), and where the hell has Kendall Waston been? When I can’t figure out why this player or that is missing, I often check back to the match preview, but it’s not showing an extensive injury list for Cincinnati, so…what gives?
At any rate, that’s it for this one. Here’s to hoping Cincinnati rallies long enough to escape the cellar in 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment