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| Chicago, shortly after equalizing. |
This post won’t take long and it turns on a single question:
If someone just gives you something, did you really earn it?
Both FC Cincinnati goals came from mistakes by Chicago Fire FC - in a spin on something familiar to the sport, one of them indirect, the other direct as it gets - and those gave them their margin of victory. You can argue - as I would - that, when it came to shots fired, Cincy made up in quality what Chicago offered in quantity. And that concept carries over into the game as a whole - e.g., Cincinnati didn’t move the ball nearly as much, but did it more effectively than the home team.
Still, the timing of the second, indirect gift in Cincinnati’s 2-1 road win over Chicago bears noting. After 65-plus of running and kicking like it was the point of the game, the Fire started to apply real pressure toward the end of the game. And, almost immediately after I mocked their slurry of half-effectual corner kicks on my in-game twitter thread, Chicago tied the game at 1-1 with a glancing headed goal by Jhon Duran on a run to the near-post. For all that amounted to trying the same thing over and over until it works, it finally paid off (or just did) and the broadcast booth started talking about how much a comeback win could help get Chicago’s season back on track.
And then every neutral’s favorite goalkeeper, Gabriel Slonina, mishandled a back-pass and cut off that conversation mid-sentence. Credit to Cincy’s Luciano Acosta for making it count - and that’s after giving real, nerve-addling indications that he wouldn’t (see the "indirect" mistake above) - but after a long, blindfolded walk to nowhere, Chicago had at long last ripped off the blindfold and started walking in a good and useful direction. And then the boy-‘keeper who has the world raving commits the inevitable rookie error. And Cincy wins, Cincy wins.
Once you put all the above together, I don’t know how to get a read out of this game beyond, yep, good enough. A couple Cincinnati players stood out - e.g., Nick Hagglund won an eye-catching number of aerial duels at the heart of the defense and you love to see Junior Moreno clogging the channels inside the 18, as he did more than once - and the Orange and Blue made the result stand up collectively and with a lot of attacking options off the table (with the baseline value of those options - e.g., Brenner, Isaac Atanga, Calvin Harris - left an open question). In the broadest of terms, Cincinnati did its job as a team and cashed the checks Chicago left unsigned in their mailbox.
All that said, winning the games you should is a great habit to pick up, not playing your best doesn’t become a bad day at the office if you take advantage, and so on. Think of them as three free points and take them. Now, about Chicago…
The no-clear destination of its attack stood out as much as anything, something summarized in their star-player, Xherdan Shaqiri. He got on the ball often and shows a respectable ability to hold onto it under pressure. Far too often, though, he’d turn in circles in search of something useful only to come up with something short thereof; worse, Shaqiri mis-hit a number of passes when Chicago’s rare good runs materialized. That’s one-man microcosm, but, on a broader level, the Fire’s attacking patterns simply didn’t make sense. If Ezra Hendrickson laid down a method, I couldn’t see it - and, to single out another Chicago player, I didn’t know where or what the hell Chinoso Offor was doing out there, but his biggest moment might came when he got between Gaston Gimenez and Chicago’s best attacking (and yet still low-percentage) move of the game.
To step back and savor the moment, this win lifts FC Cincinnati into the company of the Eastern Conference teams that most pundits and neutrals talk up. They’re level on points with Red Bull New York (and somehow one spot higher in the standings; what are the tie-breakers in 2022?), and just one point behind two teams I’ve heard in conversations about the Supporters’ Shield - the Philadelphia Union and Club du Foot Montreal. And also Orlando City SC, who I haven’t heard in that conversation. Heady stuff, obviously, but it’s still good and wise to step closer at a couple things.
Looking to the past, Cincy picked up three of those four straight wins against the weakest teams in the Eastern Conference - Toronto FC and Chicago. Again, I don’t intend to take anything away because, had Cincinnati lost or drew those games - a habit that very directly built their horrific past - they would be one of those weakest teams in the Eastern Conference. And that’s why I keep that the road win over Minnesota as a kind of North Star pointing toward a hopeful near-term future.
Now, to look toward the future (and I referenced the Form Guide for both past and future): Cincinnati plays literally every one of those “teams that most pundits and neutrals talk up” between now and the middle of July; moreover, they play Montreal and Philly on the road in two of the next three games, with the third being a home game against a New England Revolution team that’s mad to get going. Given the state of the Revs defense, I actually like Cincy’s chances in that game, but, after those three games, they host Orlando, New York City FC and the Red Bulls, with a road game at New England stuffed in between. All that, taken together, should give a better, truer impression of how far FC Cincinnati will go in 2022. They’ll be going in with heads screwed on right, fortunately, but that’s still one hell of a stretch.
Till the next one…
If someone just gives you something, did you really earn it?
Both FC Cincinnati goals came from mistakes by Chicago Fire FC - in a spin on something familiar to the sport, one of them indirect, the other direct as it gets - and those gave them their margin of victory. You can argue - as I would - that, when it came to shots fired, Cincy made up in quality what Chicago offered in quantity. And that concept carries over into the game as a whole - e.g., Cincinnati didn’t move the ball nearly as much, but did it more effectively than the home team.
Still, the timing of the second, indirect gift in Cincinnati’s 2-1 road win over Chicago bears noting. After 65-plus of running and kicking like it was the point of the game, the Fire started to apply real pressure toward the end of the game. And, almost immediately after I mocked their slurry of half-effectual corner kicks on my in-game twitter thread, Chicago tied the game at 1-1 with a glancing headed goal by Jhon Duran on a run to the near-post. For all that amounted to trying the same thing over and over until it works, it finally paid off (or just did) and the broadcast booth started talking about how much a comeback win could help get Chicago’s season back on track.
And then every neutral’s favorite goalkeeper, Gabriel Slonina, mishandled a back-pass and cut off that conversation mid-sentence. Credit to Cincy’s Luciano Acosta for making it count - and that’s after giving real, nerve-addling indications that he wouldn’t (see the "indirect" mistake above) - but after a long, blindfolded walk to nowhere, Chicago had at long last ripped off the blindfold and started walking in a good and useful direction. And then the boy-‘keeper who has the world raving commits the inevitable rookie error. And Cincy wins, Cincy wins.
Once you put all the above together, I don’t know how to get a read out of this game beyond, yep, good enough. A couple Cincinnati players stood out - e.g., Nick Hagglund won an eye-catching number of aerial duels at the heart of the defense and you love to see Junior Moreno clogging the channels inside the 18, as he did more than once - and the Orange and Blue made the result stand up collectively and with a lot of attacking options off the table (with the baseline value of those options - e.g., Brenner, Isaac Atanga, Calvin Harris - left an open question). In the broadest of terms, Cincinnati did its job as a team and cashed the checks Chicago left unsigned in their mailbox.
All that said, winning the games you should is a great habit to pick up, not playing your best doesn’t become a bad day at the office if you take advantage, and so on. Think of them as three free points and take them. Now, about Chicago…
The no-clear destination of its attack stood out as much as anything, something summarized in their star-player, Xherdan Shaqiri. He got on the ball often and shows a respectable ability to hold onto it under pressure. Far too often, though, he’d turn in circles in search of something useful only to come up with something short thereof; worse, Shaqiri mis-hit a number of passes when Chicago’s rare good runs materialized. That’s one-man microcosm, but, on a broader level, the Fire’s attacking patterns simply didn’t make sense. If Ezra Hendrickson laid down a method, I couldn’t see it - and, to single out another Chicago player, I didn’t know where or what the hell Chinoso Offor was doing out there, but his biggest moment might came when he got between Gaston Gimenez and Chicago’s best attacking (and yet still low-percentage) move of the game.
To step back and savor the moment, this win lifts FC Cincinnati into the company of the Eastern Conference teams that most pundits and neutrals talk up. They’re level on points with Red Bull New York (and somehow one spot higher in the standings; what are the tie-breakers in 2022?), and just one point behind two teams I’ve heard in conversations about the Supporters’ Shield - the Philadelphia Union and Club du Foot Montreal. And also Orlando City SC, who I haven’t heard in that conversation. Heady stuff, obviously, but it’s still good and wise to step closer at a couple things.
Looking to the past, Cincy picked up three of those four straight wins against the weakest teams in the Eastern Conference - Toronto FC and Chicago. Again, I don’t intend to take anything away because, had Cincinnati lost or drew those games - a habit that very directly built their horrific past - they would be one of those weakest teams in the Eastern Conference. And that’s why I keep that the road win over Minnesota as a kind of North Star pointing toward a hopeful near-term future.
Now, to look toward the future (and I referenced the Form Guide for both past and future): Cincinnati plays literally every one of those “teams that most pundits and neutrals talk up” between now and the middle of July; moreover, they play Montreal and Philly on the road in two of the next three games, with the third being a home game against a New England Revolution team that’s mad to get going. Given the state of the Revs defense, I actually like Cincy’s chances in that game, but, after those three games, they host Orlando, New York City FC and the Red Bulls, with a road game at New England stuffed in between. All that, taken together, should give a better, truer impression of how far FC Cincinnati will go in 2022. They’ll be going in with heads screwed on right, fortunately, but that’s still one hell of a stretch.
Till the next one…
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