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This won’t take long. I’m trying to get two of these things in tonight...
If I had to choose one way to explain FC Cincinnati’s 1-1 home draw to Red Bull New York, I’d go with the passing accuracy and total passes numbers, plus a pair of passing maps that look like constellations. The Red Bulls do best when they can force the opposition to play their game – particularly the part about forever pushing the ball forward, and with all the frustrated constipation of trying to make a turducken out of a set of badly-matched birds. Cincinnati had all of....I’m calling it about 25 minutes’ worth of impetus in that game in total; the rest of it was just 10 mammals reacting to stimuli. Solid game by Roman Celentano, by the way....
To lay my cards on the table, I’m a little pissy about this draw and mostly because I’m fairly convinced it didn’t have to be this way.
J. R. R. Tolkein getting the penalty call in the 28th-minute didn’t hurt, obviously, and, I don’t care how lonely this hill is, I would never have called that as a penalty. Raymon Gaddis clearly played the ball, one that hung in the air like a slow-pitched softball and, if he kicked J. R. R. in mid-flight, I mean, haven’t we all wanted to do that, if only for the terrible dialogue and dwarf songs alone?
Call that a long, digressive way of saying, I wouldn’t have called that penalty, but that doesn’t erase the fact it 1) wasn’t crazy and 2) was called, and that’s how the Red Bulls turned a whole lot of mostly nothing into one more point on the road. Celentano made all of two saves tonight (and came close on the PK), one of them that asked no more of him than catching a placement shot at head level from range, and that gives a good measure of New Jersey’s “dominance” tonight, and the limits of their present approach to the game. They succeeded in stifling everything Cincy thought to do, as soon as they tried it – boiling over Luciano Acosta’s frustration in the process – but the return they got was almost entirely negative. RBNY only managed one good shot on goal that stuck with me (Morgan, from range, circa the 63rd), but the rest topped out at their trademark frenetic aimlessness. They’re the soccer equivalent of someone who can win the fight for the knife in a street fight, but don’t know what to do with it from there.
Now, to pick up the mail from the complaints department...
FC Cincinnati had a solid opening 20 minutes, a period they capped off with a sneaky-shit go-ahead Brandon Vazquez goal. He did enough, in my mind, the second he fox-trotted his own rebounded shot into the goal. Going the other way, I can’t think of many other Cincy players who did. For what it’s worth, I think I large part of that was the game-plan – or, because I have no actual knowledge of the game-plan – the tactical spazzing that became the game-plan, but also spazzing in general. We could go through the whole game of, “if you name the player, I can tell you what he did wrong,” but the answer would be “not enough” for most of them, plus too much of the wrong thing from Allan Cruz. That said, I can’t honestly fault Cruz, because he was alone in meeting the Red Bulls’ intensity, no matter how badly, in a game that positively screamed for every Cincy player to at least try to.
The way Cruz got sent off – i.e., for a late, tactically pointless foul – sums up the other side of Cincy’s flat night at home. The Red Bulls came in knowing what they wanted to do and, good spells at the beginning of each half aside, Cincinnati spent most of the game trying to catch up. Still, it didn’t actually turn embarrassing until Acosta got sent off...
To pull on my fantasy football cap, I’d hoped to see Cincy manage this game for a reason: playing to deflate the Red Bulls’ press – e.g., knocking the ball around, working to develop a rhythm, even if it didn’t mean throwing bodies unto the breach - struck me as the better approach. That’s nothing but a counter-factual at this point, damn it all, but Cincy fans got the game they got tonight and, no, it wasn’t great.
I only have a couple talking points from here.
If I had to choose one way to explain FC Cincinnati’s 1-1 home draw to Red Bull New York, I’d go with the passing accuracy and total passes numbers, plus a pair of passing maps that look like constellations. The Red Bulls do best when they can force the opposition to play their game – particularly the part about forever pushing the ball forward, and with all the frustrated constipation of trying to make a turducken out of a set of badly-matched birds. Cincinnati had all of....I’m calling it about 25 minutes’ worth of impetus in that game in total; the rest of it was just 10 mammals reacting to stimuli. Solid game by Roman Celentano, by the way....
To lay my cards on the table, I’m a little pissy about this draw and mostly because I’m fairly convinced it didn’t have to be this way.
J. R. R. Tolkein getting the penalty call in the 28th-minute didn’t hurt, obviously, and, I don’t care how lonely this hill is, I would never have called that as a penalty. Raymon Gaddis clearly played the ball, one that hung in the air like a slow-pitched softball and, if he kicked J. R. R. in mid-flight, I mean, haven’t we all wanted to do that, if only for the terrible dialogue and dwarf songs alone?
Call that a long, digressive way of saying, I wouldn’t have called that penalty, but that doesn’t erase the fact it 1) wasn’t crazy and 2) was called, and that’s how the Red Bulls turned a whole lot of mostly nothing into one more point on the road. Celentano made all of two saves tonight (and came close on the PK), one of them that asked no more of him than catching a placement shot at head level from range, and that gives a good measure of New Jersey’s “dominance” tonight, and the limits of their present approach to the game. They succeeded in stifling everything Cincy thought to do, as soon as they tried it – boiling over Luciano Acosta’s frustration in the process – but the return they got was almost entirely negative. RBNY only managed one good shot on goal that stuck with me (Morgan, from range, circa the 63rd), but the rest topped out at their trademark frenetic aimlessness. They’re the soccer equivalent of someone who can win the fight for the knife in a street fight, but don’t know what to do with it from there.
Now, to pick up the mail from the complaints department...
FC Cincinnati had a solid opening 20 minutes, a period they capped off with a sneaky-shit go-ahead Brandon Vazquez goal. He did enough, in my mind, the second he fox-trotted his own rebounded shot into the goal. Going the other way, I can’t think of many other Cincy players who did. For what it’s worth, I think I large part of that was the game-plan – or, because I have no actual knowledge of the game-plan – the tactical spazzing that became the game-plan, but also spazzing in general. We could go through the whole game of, “if you name the player, I can tell you what he did wrong,” but the answer would be “not enough” for most of them, plus too much of the wrong thing from Allan Cruz. That said, I can’t honestly fault Cruz, because he was alone in meeting the Red Bulls’ intensity, no matter how badly, in a game that positively screamed for every Cincy player to at least try to.
The way Cruz got sent off – i.e., for a late, tactically pointless foul – sums up the other side of Cincy’s flat night at home. The Red Bulls came in knowing what they wanted to do and, good spells at the beginning of each half aside, Cincinnati spent most of the game trying to catch up. Still, it didn’t actually turn embarrassing until Acosta got sent off...
To pull on my fantasy football cap, I’d hoped to see Cincy manage this game for a reason: playing to deflate the Red Bulls’ press – e.g., knocking the ball around, working to develop a rhythm, even if it didn’t mean throwing bodies unto the breach - struck me as the better approach. That’s nothing but a counter-factual at this point, damn it all, but Cincy fans got the game they got tonight and, no, it wasn’t great.
I only have a couple talking points from here.
1) Nwobodo v The Blob
After weeks of him looking like the most or, at worst, the third-most dominant player on the field, today’s game mostly played around Obinna Nwobodo. First, I’d love to hear theories as to how far that took Cincinnati out of their game. Second, and more to the point, I don’t have this mental memory of him, or any other Cincinnati player getting slaughtered in defense. On the other side of the same coin, I also don’t have a mental picture of Cincy playing a self-defeating number of wayward passes. New York’s tactical triumph in defense boiled down a kind of general erasure: most of the balls Cincinnati played forward vanished into something like a fog, something dense, but shapeless. Also, something that fired the ball in the other direction a couple seconds later. Cincy played something less like a team and more like an elemental force, basically.
2) Yes, I’m About to Argue with an MVP Candidate
For me, Acosta played one of his most useless game in Orange and (mostly) Blue tonight. I’ve already covered the red card, but my biggest complaint was that he got “I’m the man” syndrome something bad. In the first half, especially, he would drop back to demand the ball, not infrequently crowding teammates out of attacking lanes they might have more profitably mined had he, oh, say, ran up the field to pull away a defender instead of acting like he’s the only player capable of moving the ball up the field. Sometimes the smartest thing a star player can do is becoming team player. Acosta spun out of control one step at a time tonight and, again, on a night where the team could have used a calming influence.
That’s it for this one, and sorry it’s so damn messy and non-linear. In light of...just so many things, it feels a little odd to get uptight about this result. After three straight seasons of outright suffering, it probably sounds fucking nuts to complain about a succession of draws against the East’s best teams – as Cincinnati has, and to the tune of four games of the last five – but that’s where I am. Consider it a side-effect of raised expectations. It’s nice to feel like they could have won with a smarter, calmer game-plan – and I think that’s the case with bells and make-up on – so the fact they didn’t introduces an entirely new kind of frustration. The indiscipline was bad – there, I’m talking about the two reds/two absentees for the Vancouver game – but the tactical failure looms larger for me.
Hoping the next one is what is needed (aka, all three points). Till then...
After weeks of him looking like the most or, at worst, the third-most dominant player on the field, today’s game mostly played around Obinna Nwobodo. First, I’d love to hear theories as to how far that took Cincinnati out of their game. Second, and more to the point, I don’t have this mental memory of him, or any other Cincinnati player getting slaughtered in defense. On the other side of the same coin, I also don’t have a mental picture of Cincy playing a self-defeating number of wayward passes. New York’s tactical triumph in defense boiled down a kind of general erasure: most of the balls Cincinnati played forward vanished into something like a fog, something dense, but shapeless. Also, something that fired the ball in the other direction a couple seconds later. Cincy played something less like a team and more like an elemental force, basically.
2) Yes, I’m About to Argue with an MVP Candidate
For me, Acosta played one of his most useless game in Orange and (mostly) Blue tonight. I’ve already covered the red card, but my biggest complaint was that he got “I’m the man” syndrome something bad. In the first half, especially, he would drop back to demand the ball, not infrequently crowding teammates out of attacking lanes they might have more profitably mined had he, oh, say, ran up the field to pull away a defender instead of acting like he’s the only player capable of moving the ball up the field. Sometimes the smartest thing a star player can do is becoming team player. Acosta spun out of control one step at a time tonight and, again, on a night where the team could have used a calming influence.
That’s it for this one, and sorry it’s so damn messy and non-linear. In light of...just so many things, it feels a little odd to get uptight about this result. After three straight seasons of outright suffering, it probably sounds fucking nuts to complain about a succession of draws against the East’s best teams – as Cincinnati has, and to the tune of four games of the last five – but that’s where I am. Consider it a side-effect of raised expectations. It’s nice to feel like they could have won with a smarter, calmer game-plan – and I think that’s the case with bells and make-up on – so the fact they didn’t introduces an entirely new kind of frustration. The indiscipline was bad – there, I’m talking about the two reds/two absentees for the Vancouver game – but the tactical failure looms larger for me.
Hoping the next one is what is needed (aka, all three points). Till then...
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