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| This, but maybe with the left hand. |
90 minutes with a hard kick to the balls at the end. That’s my dozen-word description of FC Cincinnati’s slow-death 0-1 loss to DC United at TQL Stadium.
After absorbing an early onslaught - and high-five to Tyler Blackett for nodding out a sure goal - Cincy got hold of the game in a way I either haven’t seen or can’t recall since gods know when. And that’s the real hairy bitch about the whole situation: today’s (comparatively) glorious effort came just one week after a season opener where it looked like just about everything surprised them one way or the other. Today, though, Cincy didn’t just connect the odd pass or three; they built sequences that knocked DC from the front-foot to the back in the blink of an eye. Sweet transition, baby. I’d direct any FC Cincy fan casting about for something to hold onto after a game that felt like a betrayal to the fact that they created actual, full chances in open play. That beats the hell out of trying to squeeze a ball through that familiar, rapidly-closing window Cincinnati fans knows so well. That’s not even the best thing that happened today.
Miracle of miracles, Cincinnati fielded a fully-functional midfield today, one that, as I saw it, actually controlled the midfield space. Credit newcomer Junior Moreno and Yuya “Mr. Plug-‘n’-Play” Kubo for putting in a pair of damn good shifts (and hold that thought), and (probably) Pat Noonan (or his shadow-master, Dominic Kinnear) for sorting out a better set-up, I only know it was refreshing to see an adjustment - any adjustment - pan out into anything besides fresh disaster. Kubo, in particular, looked like an entirely new player; he kept his work-rate dizzyingly high, but he looked totally different going forward, as if he understood where to find space and where to find, whether by turning into it on the dribble (the man got away with a scandalous number of spins today) or passing usefully out of it. All in all, Kubo did a helluva job getting the ball out of defense and into the attack - and I think that was the reason why Cincy’s transition game worked today…not that it mattered.
The passing improved all over and, better, just about every man dressed in orange looked like a full, dues-paying professional soccer player out there today. And yet, it wasn't enough. Cincy's best stuff came during the game’s first 50 minutes or so (dammit), all the way down to the butter-slick goal they scored just after the 20th minute, even if it got (rightly) called back for offside…ah, Brandon Vazquez, he does it wrong even when he does it right. My best guess is that DC worked out where or how to stall Cincy’s transition game at half-time, a shift that allowed them to shift the action toward the middle of the field and away from their own goal. Prior to…whatever happened around the 50th minute, other new arrival, Dominique Badji, either got or found some real quality looks at goal - just by smart runs, too, and he should have scored one of the two truly good ones he had - while fellow-frontrunner Vazquez chipped in with a handful of half-/quarter-chances. Now, brace yourself, because things get darker from here on out…
By the time Mosen Neyman got (justifiably) sent off around the 80th minute, whatever momentum Cincy had to that point slowed to a crawl. That’s to say, I expected nothing but more of the same after they went up a man, and got it. Sure, Geoff Cameron fired that last, diving header just as the 99th minute turned to the 100th, but even if that last-gasp shot gone in, it would have only salvaged a point. DC United had gone up 1-0 just two minutes earlier on the back of penalty kick awarded as punishment for Cameron's errant, defensive forearm. To twist the dagger a little, Cincy’s Alec Kann read Ola Kamara’s line-up well enough to guess that correct side, but he would have needed another six inches on his arms to stop it. That was the dividing line in this one: an unlucky, non-violent error in the one place on the field where such errors draw blood all but automatically.
So, what to make of all of that?
First, that formation makes sense to me - and this comes from a guy who complains about Kubo playing out of position more times than the average bear. That 3-5-2 (or something thereabouts) should make committing as many five players into the attack fairly low-risk, and Cincy got away with six often enough with Kubo’s raids into Zone 14. No defense is air-tight - e.g., committing either or both of the fullbacks (Alvas Powell and (most often) Ronald Matarrita) means leaving the space behind them open to long balls - but the three center-back set-up, plus at least one defensive midfielder free to hunt the ball in front of them, should stop most break-aways and that should be enough to keep Cincy away from blow-outs. After today, why gamble with the weird, diamond-midfield shit if you don’t have to? And you don’t…
Second, most of Cincy’s chance creation came by way of exploiting vertical space - i.e., they seemed most effective when they could get someone running toward goal from the top of DC’s defensive third. And…yeah, that probably explains why Cincy kept making the unfortunate choice to squeeze at least 20 of their 23 crosses into the games final 15+ minutes; once Nyeman left, DC’s collapsed its defense to deny Cincy space to run into and made what looks like a reasonable gamble to concede corner kicks. It paid off, of course, in that Cincy couldn’t get anything out of it better than a scramble in the area, but they also planted small giant Donovan Pines at the heart of the six to help contain the aerial threat - and he did.
Second…half of second, Cincy could draw some conclusions from everything in the paragraph above. For instance, can they organize their defensive block in a way that gives the (current) attack (e.g., Badji and Vazquez) room to run? Does that rule out the press as a tactic? (No, fwiw.) The other part of that - the one concerning crossing the ball - gets a little more complicated. Cincy got nuthin' out of their volley of late, hopefully-panicked crosses against a packed defense, but they didn’t get a lot more out of early crosses to the far post from Powell and, from the same side, Kubo. I get the concept of putting pressure on a defense, but that can only work when it feels like…y’know, pressure. There’s more work to do on the attack, basically, and probably more still to figure out what to do with Brenner. I guess it's a matter of holding one's breath until they sort it out, or self-torture can no longer be justified.
Third, my very favorite thing in the whole game was watching Cincy sort out how to stall DC’s attack in midfield. A lot of that work involved stopping Brad Smith from running up DC’s left, and Cincy was able to pull that off by having Powell stand him up and Kubo pressure him from his right. I don’t know if that came before or in-game, but Cincy’s greatest accomplishment today was flummoxing DC’s attack - and they did it in midfield, i.e., before the defense had to scramble. Where to defend on the field; something else to consider.
That’s all I’ve got on this one. I didn’t think any Cincy player had a bad game today and that makes this one hurt a bit, or at least in a different way from the shame-pain that follows the majority of Cincy's games like a hangover. Badji found seams in DC’s defense for as long as he was on the field, Vazquez did a good impression (and matched the precision) of a wrecking ball, Powell won the battle with Smith for about 2/3 of his time, Moreno and Kubo did a damned good job of commanding the midfield space and in both directions: it was a good performance that deserved better than nothing, even if, in sum, all of it quite added up to three points. Every player on the field progressed between this week and last based on the eye-test…and that’s when you start interrogating the word “progress.” I believe Cincy played the better game today and across the board; I’m less concerned by the fact they lost, than the fact that they couldn’t win. Because they need to start getting those. Soon.
As I learned tonight, it’s been longer than I thought (something like 176 days, in fact). Till the next one…
After absorbing an early onslaught - and high-five to Tyler Blackett for nodding out a sure goal - Cincy got hold of the game in a way I either haven’t seen or can’t recall since gods know when. And that’s the real hairy bitch about the whole situation: today’s (comparatively) glorious effort came just one week after a season opener where it looked like just about everything surprised them one way or the other. Today, though, Cincy didn’t just connect the odd pass or three; they built sequences that knocked DC from the front-foot to the back in the blink of an eye. Sweet transition, baby. I’d direct any FC Cincy fan casting about for something to hold onto after a game that felt like a betrayal to the fact that they created actual, full chances in open play. That beats the hell out of trying to squeeze a ball through that familiar, rapidly-closing window Cincinnati fans knows so well. That’s not even the best thing that happened today.
Miracle of miracles, Cincinnati fielded a fully-functional midfield today, one that, as I saw it, actually controlled the midfield space. Credit newcomer Junior Moreno and Yuya “Mr. Plug-‘n’-Play” Kubo for putting in a pair of damn good shifts (and hold that thought), and (probably) Pat Noonan (or his shadow-master, Dominic Kinnear) for sorting out a better set-up, I only know it was refreshing to see an adjustment - any adjustment - pan out into anything besides fresh disaster. Kubo, in particular, looked like an entirely new player; he kept his work-rate dizzyingly high, but he looked totally different going forward, as if he understood where to find space and where to find, whether by turning into it on the dribble (the man got away with a scandalous number of spins today) or passing usefully out of it. All in all, Kubo did a helluva job getting the ball out of defense and into the attack - and I think that was the reason why Cincy’s transition game worked today…not that it mattered.
The passing improved all over and, better, just about every man dressed in orange looked like a full, dues-paying professional soccer player out there today. And yet, it wasn't enough. Cincy's best stuff came during the game’s first 50 minutes or so (dammit), all the way down to the butter-slick goal they scored just after the 20th minute, even if it got (rightly) called back for offside…ah, Brandon Vazquez, he does it wrong even when he does it right. My best guess is that DC worked out where or how to stall Cincy’s transition game at half-time, a shift that allowed them to shift the action toward the middle of the field and away from their own goal. Prior to…whatever happened around the 50th minute, other new arrival, Dominique Badji, either got or found some real quality looks at goal - just by smart runs, too, and he should have scored one of the two truly good ones he had - while fellow-frontrunner Vazquez chipped in with a handful of half-/quarter-chances. Now, brace yourself, because things get darker from here on out…
By the time Mosen Neyman got (justifiably) sent off around the 80th minute, whatever momentum Cincy had to that point slowed to a crawl. That’s to say, I expected nothing but more of the same after they went up a man, and got it. Sure, Geoff Cameron fired that last, diving header just as the 99th minute turned to the 100th, but even if that last-gasp shot gone in, it would have only salvaged a point. DC United had gone up 1-0 just two minutes earlier on the back of penalty kick awarded as punishment for Cameron's errant, defensive forearm. To twist the dagger a little, Cincy’s Alec Kann read Ola Kamara’s line-up well enough to guess that correct side, but he would have needed another six inches on his arms to stop it. That was the dividing line in this one: an unlucky, non-violent error in the one place on the field where such errors draw blood all but automatically.
So, what to make of all of that?
First, that formation makes sense to me - and this comes from a guy who complains about Kubo playing out of position more times than the average bear. That 3-5-2 (or something thereabouts) should make committing as many five players into the attack fairly low-risk, and Cincy got away with six often enough with Kubo’s raids into Zone 14. No defense is air-tight - e.g., committing either or both of the fullbacks (Alvas Powell and (most often) Ronald Matarrita) means leaving the space behind them open to long balls - but the three center-back set-up, plus at least one defensive midfielder free to hunt the ball in front of them, should stop most break-aways and that should be enough to keep Cincy away from blow-outs. After today, why gamble with the weird, diamond-midfield shit if you don’t have to? And you don’t…
Second, most of Cincy’s chance creation came by way of exploiting vertical space - i.e., they seemed most effective when they could get someone running toward goal from the top of DC’s defensive third. And…yeah, that probably explains why Cincy kept making the unfortunate choice to squeeze at least 20 of their 23 crosses into the games final 15+ minutes; once Nyeman left, DC’s collapsed its defense to deny Cincy space to run into and made what looks like a reasonable gamble to concede corner kicks. It paid off, of course, in that Cincy couldn’t get anything out of it better than a scramble in the area, but they also planted small giant Donovan Pines at the heart of the six to help contain the aerial threat - and he did.
Second…half of second, Cincy could draw some conclusions from everything in the paragraph above. For instance, can they organize their defensive block in a way that gives the (current) attack (e.g., Badji and Vazquez) room to run? Does that rule out the press as a tactic? (No, fwiw.) The other part of that - the one concerning crossing the ball - gets a little more complicated. Cincy got nuthin' out of their volley of late, hopefully-panicked crosses against a packed defense, but they didn’t get a lot more out of early crosses to the far post from Powell and, from the same side, Kubo. I get the concept of putting pressure on a defense, but that can only work when it feels like…y’know, pressure. There’s more work to do on the attack, basically, and probably more still to figure out what to do with Brenner. I guess it's a matter of holding one's breath until they sort it out, or self-torture can no longer be justified.
Third, my very favorite thing in the whole game was watching Cincy sort out how to stall DC’s attack in midfield. A lot of that work involved stopping Brad Smith from running up DC’s left, and Cincy was able to pull that off by having Powell stand him up and Kubo pressure him from his right. I don’t know if that came before or in-game, but Cincy’s greatest accomplishment today was flummoxing DC’s attack - and they did it in midfield, i.e., before the defense had to scramble. Where to defend on the field; something else to consider.
That’s all I’ve got on this one. I didn’t think any Cincy player had a bad game today and that makes this one hurt a bit, or at least in a different way from the shame-pain that follows the majority of Cincy's games like a hangover. Badji found seams in DC’s defense for as long as he was on the field, Vazquez did a good impression (and matched the precision) of a wrecking ball, Powell won the battle with Smith for about 2/3 of his time, Moreno and Kubo did a damned good job of commanding the midfield space and in both directions: it was a good performance that deserved better than nothing, even if, in sum, all of it quite added up to three points. Every player on the field progressed between this week and last based on the eye-test…and that’s when you start interrogating the word “progress.” I believe Cincy played the better game today and across the board; I’m less concerned by the fact they lost, than the fact that they couldn’t win. Because they need to start getting those. Soon.
As I learned tonight, it’s been longer than I thought (something like 176 days, in fact). Till the next one…
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