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| It doesn't matter that the bar is low; it's that you clear it. |
“…but what I want to see from #FCCincy this weekend is win-or-die-trying commitment. Low bar.”
That was the last sentence of the preview thread I posted Friday afternoon for FC Cincinnati’s stunning, victorious 2-1 visit to Montreal-sur-la Gulf. I have two thoughts:
1) FC Cincy responded, with one player in particular clearing the bar; and
2) the bar wasn’t all that low in the end.
Those thoughts expand on and compliment one another: Club du Foot Montreal had Cincinnati at one form of their mercy or another for, oh, the middle 50 minutes of this game - i.e., from the 20th minute to about the 70th. It was never outright dominance - Cincy’s 5-3-2 saw to that - but the Orange & Blue played a big part of this game on the wrong side of a submission hold. Key players for Montreal got on the sharp end of their attack moves - Romell Quioto, Victor Wanyama and Djordje Mihailovic stood out; having Quioto basically post-up at the top of the area over the last 20 minutes of the first half caused all kinds of trouble - building pressure to, yes, a breaking point.
After 40 minutes of giving away very little, Cincinnati lost track of who had who on their left and Montreal got one of their bread-and-butter breakaways behind a fullback (Ronald Matarrita in this case). (I think) Zachary Brault-Guillard raced down Montreal’s right with no defenders within 10 yards of him while Quioto ran just as buck-ass nude right up the middle. Brault-Guillard squared and…we all know how that ended, a catastrophic breakdown that miraculously didn’t end in catastrophe. Given the imbalance in play to that point, it didn’t look like an omen…
Montreal did score eventually and, again, the cascade of mistakes that allowed that goal should sober up any Cincy fans getting a contact high from this win - so sit through them all, like its penance. The broadcast booth talked about Rudy Camacho’s “great pass” to Mihailovic, but he only had to walk into the space Luciano Acosta opened in the 5-3-2 when he stepped forward to become the third Cincinnati player staring at Camacho. Mihailovic a wide-open lane toward goal from beginning to end, first, because no one was near him, and then again when Geoff Cameron let him free to run onto the square pass. Cincinnati made at least one more mistake that should have been fatal - I think it was Allan Cruz who straight-up passed the ball to Quioto inside Cincinnati’s penalty area - but Cameron cleaned up that fuck up, while Gustavo Vallecilla combined with ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer to snuff out yet another occasion when Quioto got loose in the area. The point is, even in a conservative formation, Cincinnati could easily have given up three goals. Something about there but for the grace of CF Montreal…
Now comes the happy pivot and the singing of praises. Cincinnati, as a team, kept their heads on through all of that; given Montreal’s struggles with scoring, maybe the chance or two they created (including a goal called back for offside) kept them going. And it’s here where I want to single out Jurgen Locadia, in particular, as a symbol for the team as a whole. He, like FC Cincinnati as a whole, has been a persistent combination of bad and useless since joining Major League Soccer. If anyone has cause to re-examine his career choices, even to put it out of its considerable misery, it’s Locadia. I certainly didn’t think anything special when he came on at 59th minute.
Then, two things happened - as they say, gradually at first and then all at once - over the next 10 minutes. First, Montreal rather suddenly couldn’t do anything right. I don’t think I could explain how this happened, never mind why, even with four reams of slides and an overhead projector because, up to that point, every player on that team looked laughably comfortable. Case in point, somewhere after Locadia came out, I wrote this in my notes:
“MTL knows how to move/support for passes, CIN does not.”
And, at that moment, the point held: whenever a Montreal player completed a pass, the teammates around him shifted to provide the next option; it looked for all the world like Cincinnati would spend the game chasing one pass behind. L'Impact Formeur actually looked smoother in that regard in the second half than they did in the first. And then the second thing happened: Locadia scored Cincinnati’s equalizer. First, if you thought Cincy gave up a shit goal, watch the ball loop to Locadia and watch Montreal’s near-post defender (think it was Brault-Guillard) stand motionless and watch Locadia back in; that’s beyond ball watching, it’s everything watching up to and including, “large Dutch person backing toward me/goal and, look, there comes the ball, I wonder what happens next?” That gave Locadia just his second-ever goal in MLS, and his first from open play. Crazy shit…
Locadia continued from there, nearly setting up a pair of goals, both with weird, yet oddly effective lobbed passes. I’d count that his best game in FC Cincinnati colors - and not just for the attacking stuff, but for some solid defensive plays when he came on as (basically) a left wing.
The game also continued from there, only now with a clearly addled Montreal team running around as if they had their shoelaces tied together and with Cincinnati(!?) applying more and more pressure. We all remember how the dam broke: Matarrita lofted that cross to Vallecilla at the back post, who had already stepped in front of Montreal’s Erik Hurtado - a player I’ve watched for some years now and always with the same question in my head: a king in the USL or a commoner in MLS?
Before wrapping up a couple details on FC Cincy, I want to wrap up Montreal. First, they looked decent from a distance (e.g., tracking their results, plus a handful of condensed games)…and, ah, I finally caught that typo in my preview thread. Montreal only got three points out of their Week 5 double-header, not four, but, they really did run over Inter Miami CF - and, to outline a semi-laughable thought process, if Miami beat Cincinnati at home, and Montreal beat Miami, when Montreal plays Cincinnati, etc. Almost nothing about any sport is that linear, obviously, but it still followed from one way of reading Cincy’s home loss to Miami - e.g., they couldn’t even beat a team that’s proving to be quite bad at home. As it happened, another reading of that home loss to Miami mattered more: Cincinnati showed they have it in them to get back into a game. And now they've shown it two games in a row.
That should hearten Cincy fans, even if one makes the argument they came back against two “weak” teams…and, no, I don’t know why I hung scare quotes around that word. Cincinnati’s first fights in climbing up from their three-season stay at the bottom of the table doesn’t come against the best MLS has to offer: it comes with beating lunch money out of weaker teams. Sure, that makes that loss to Miami more of a shame, but they got it right in (their) Week 5 and they got three points in the same bargain. Now, is this the first step in a Big 2021 Turn-Around for Cincinnati? I have no idea. I can’t remember the last time I saw a team totally shit themselves the way Montreal did yesterday - moreover, it confirmed something I saw in the first half, i.e., that Montreal’s defense looked shaky on the rare occasions when Cincinnati managed to get past their midfield. The begs a question: how bad is Montreal’s last line of defense? And that segues nicely to some final talking points…
1) Until Montreal got the bed-shitting bug, Cincinnati struggled powerfully with getting the ball out of its defense and into midfield - i.e., one the basic, necessary things a team must do to soccer effectively. Again, they looked all right once they got past it, but they spent a lot of time not getting past it and, against better teams, that should be fatal. The next point follows from…
2) Acosta also looked better this week, at least as often as he got the ball in a place where he could do something with it. His passing on breakaways impressed me most - clean, good angles, well-weighted, etc. That’s promising…
3) You know how some whackjo…er, people buy a toy just to leave it in the original box, untouched and never used? That’s Brenner. So far. I don’t think Cincinnati has played him into scoring position even once this season. That’s one hell of a waste of $15 million (or whatever it was). More significantly, Brenner isn’t finding those positions himself, which also makes one wonder.
4) I named the best of his feats above, but Vallecilla has started strong. I’d keep starting him till he gives me reason not to.
And that’s it. Till the next one.
That was the last sentence of the preview thread I posted Friday afternoon for FC Cincinnati’s stunning, victorious 2-1 visit to Montreal-sur-la Gulf. I have two thoughts:
1) FC Cincy responded, with one player in particular clearing the bar; and
2) the bar wasn’t all that low in the end.
Those thoughts expand on and compliment one another: Club du Foot Montreal had Cincinnati at one form of their mercy or another for, oh, the middle 50 minutes of this game - i.e., from the 20th minute to about the 70th. It was never outright dominance - Cincy’s 5-3-2 saw to that - but the Orange & Blue played a big part of this game on the wrong side of a submission hold. Key players for Montreal got on the sharp end of their attack moves - Romell Quioto, Victor Wanyama and Djordje Mihailovic stood out; having Quioto basically post-up at the top of the area over the last 20 minutes of the first half caused all kinds of trouble - building pressure to, yes, a breaking point.
After 40 minutes of giving away very little, Cincinnati lost track of who had who on their left and Montreal got one of their bread-and-butter breakaways behind a fullback (Ronald Matarrita in this case). (I think) Zachary Brault-Guillard raced down Montreal’s right with no defenders within 10 yards of him while Quioto ran just as buck-ass nude right up the middle. Brault-Guillard squared and…we all know how that ended, a catastrophic breakdown that miraculously didn’t end in catastrophe. Given the imbalance in play to that point, it didn’t look like an omen…
Montreal did score eventually and, again, the cascade of mistakes that allowed that goal should sober up any Cincy fans getting a contact high from this win - so sit through them all, like its penance. The broadcast booth talked about Rudy Camacho’s “great pass” to Mihailovic, but he only had to walk into the space Luciano Acosta opened in the 5-3-2 when he stepped forward to become the third Cincinnati player staring at Camacho. Mihailovic a wide-open lane toward goal from beginning to end, first, because no one was near him, and then again when Geoff Cameron let him free to run onto the square pass. Cincinnati made at least one more mistake that should have been fatal - I think it was Allan Cruz who straight-up passed the ball to Quioto inside Cincinnati’s penalty area - but Cameron cleaned up that fuck up, while Gustavo Vallecilla combined with ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer to snuff out yet another occasion when Quioto got loose in the area. The point is, even in a conservative formation, Cincinnati could easily have given up three goals. Something about there but for the grace of CF Montreal…
Now comes the happy pivot and the singing of praises. Cincinnati, as a team, kept their heads on through all of that; given Montreal’s struggles with scoring, maybe the chance or two they created (including a goal called back for offside) kept them going. And it’s here where I want to single out Jurgen Locadia, in particular, as a symbol for the team as a whole. He, like FC Cincinnati as a whole, has been a persistent combination of bad and useless since joining Major League Soccer. If anyone has cause to re-examine his career choices, even to put it out of its considerable misery, it’s Locadia. I certainly didn’t think anything special when he came on at 59th minute.
Then, two things happened - as they say, gradually at first and then all at once - over the next 10 minutes. First, Montreal rather suddenly couldn’t do anything right. I don’t think I could explain how this happened, never mind why, even with four reams of slides and an overhead projector because, up to that point, every player on that team looked laughably comfortable. Case in point, somewhere after Locadia came out, I wrote this in my notes:
“MTL knows how to move/support for passes, CIN does not.”
And, at that moment, the point held: whenever a Montreal player completed a pass, the teammates around him shifted to provide the next option; it looked for all the world like Cincinnati would spend the game chasing one pass behind. L'Impact Formeur actually looked smoother in that regard in the second half than they did in the first. And then the second thing happened: Locadia scored Cincinnati’s equalizer. First, if you thought Cincy gave up a shit goal, watch the ball loop to Locadia and watch Montreal’s near-post defender (think it was Brault-Guillard) stand motionless and watch Locadia back in; that’s beyond ball watching, it’s everything watching up to and including, “large Dutch person backing toward me/goal and, look, there comes the ball, I wonder what happens next?” That gave Locadia just his second-ever goal in MLS, and his first from open play. Crazy shit…
Locadia continued from there, nearly setting up a pair of goals, both with weird, yet oddly effective lobbed passes. I’d count that his best game in FC Cincinnati colors - and not just for the attacking stuff, but for some solid defensive plays when he came on as (basically) a left wing.
The game also continued from there, only now with a clearly addled Montreal team running around as if they had their shoelaces tied together and with Cincinnati(!?) applying more and more pressure. We all remember how the dam broke: Matarrita lofted that cross to Vallecilla at the back post, who had already stepped in front of Montreal’s Erik Hurtado - a player I’ve watched for some years now and always with the same question in my head: a king in the USL or a commoner in MLS?
Before wrapping up a couple details on FC Cincy, I want to wrap up Montreal. First, they looked decent from a distance (e.g., tracking their results, plus a handful of condensed games)…and, ah, I finally caught that typo in my preview thread. Montreal only got three points out of their Week 5 double-header, not four, but, they really did run over Inter Miami CF - and, to outline a semi-laughable thought process, if Miami beat Cincinnati at home, and Montreal beat Miami, when Montreal plays Cincinnati, etc. Almost nothing about any sport is that linear, obviously, but it still followed from one way of reading Cincy’s home loss to Miami - e.g., they couldn’t even beat a team that’s proving to be quite bad at home. As it happened, another reading of that home loss to Miami mattered more: Cincinnati showed they have it in them to get back into a game. And now they've shown it two games in a row.
That should hearten Cincy fans, even if one makes the argument they came back against two “weak” teams…and, no, I don’t know why I hung scare quotes around that word. Cincinnati’s first fights in climbing up from their three-season stay at the bottom of the table doesn’t come against the best MLS has to offer: it comes with beating lunch money out of weaker teams. Sure, that makes that loss to Miami more of a shame, but they got it right in (their) Week 5 and they got three points in the same bargain. Now, is this the first step in a Big 2021 Turn-Around for Cincinnati? I have no idea. I can’t remember the last time I saw a team totally shit themselves the way Montreal did yesterday - moreover, it confirmed something I saw in the first half, i.e., that Montreal’s defense looked shaky on the rare occasions when Cincinnati managed to get past their midfield. The begs a question: how bad is Montreal’s last line of defense? And that segues nicely to some final talking points…
1) Until Montreal got the bed-shitting bug, Cincinnati struggled powerfully with getting the ball out of its defense and into midfield - i.e., one the basic, necessary things a team must do to soccer effectively. Again, they looked all right once they got past it, but they spent a lot of time not getting past it and, against better teams, that should be fatal. The next point follows from…
2) Acosta also looked better this week, at least as often as he got the ball in a place where he could do something with it. His passing on breakaways impressed me most - clean, good angles, well-weighted, etc. That’s promising…
3) You know how some whackjo…er, people buy a toy just to leave it in the original box, untouched and never used? That’s Brenner. So far. I don’t think Cincinnati has played him into scoring position even once this season. That’s one hell of a waste of $15 million (or whatever it was). More significantly, Brenner isn’t finding those positions himself, which also makes one wonder.
4) I named the best of his feats above, but Vallecilla has started strong. I’d keep starting him till he gives me reason not to.
And that’s it. Till the next one.
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