Red Bull New York 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Can I Make This a Tale of Good Versus Evil? Yes, Yes, I Can

Earlier today, I saw a tweet celebrating the fact Red Bull New York crashed out of the playoffs. If I had to write a concurring opinion, I’d mourn how far they’ve fallen since the Thierry Henry/Tim Cahill/Sacha Kljestan/Dax McCarty days. Like watching 11 drunken men trying to climb a goddamn greased poll, I tell you.

I don’t have a headcount of how many neutral Major League Soccer fans wanted FC Cincinnati to come out of the...is it a play-in, or a conference quarterfinal (does it matter)? At any rate, on a day when Cincinnati managed the more controlled approaches to goal, while the Red Bulls flailed in some fortunate something from distance, Cincy left Red Bull Arena with the ticket to the next round of the 2022 MLS Playoffs. And there was much rejoicing (yaayyyyyy).

I haven’t written about FC Cincinnati since...shit, July, but I’ve dipped in here and there to stay current. Between the opposition and the plethora of draws they played in the second half of the season, I fully braced to see today’s game slump into penalties. Instead, and with the housekeeping crew at McMenamin’s Kalama Lodge impatiently tapping at the door, I had the good luck to see Brandon Vazquez’s game-winner and to miss the overstuffed stoppage time minutes tacked on to the end of the game. I doubt anyone quibbled with the final score (have I mentioned it was 2-1 to Cincy yet?), I only know I found it satisfying.

Because Pat Noonan has trotted out something like the same line-up for as far back as I’ve noticed, there’s not a lot to say about the roster beyond, I think he’s on to something. Not every part of the set-up clicked – e.g., the Red Bull Collective did a great job of keeping the ball away from Vazquez and Brenner for something like 86 minutes (Brenner’s point-blank header, saved by Carlos Coronel notwithstanding), but an in-form player needs only a chance and a (again) collective breakdown on Red Bull’s right side gave Vazquez the one clear look he needed.

How You (And I) Should Have Known the Timbers Would Miss the 2022 Playoffs

This was how I told them apart. Now?

It becomes rarer with each passing season, but I still see people argue it’s impossible to support two teams at the same time. My rebuttal: it’s as easy as wanting one of those teams win every game and wanting the other to win every game except the ones where they play that first team. And that’s how I feel about the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, respectively, and I’ll never understand how that’s complicated.

Going the other way, and unlike past three seasons, watching the Timbers play all season while I watched/tracked Cincy had more value than it did in the past – i.e., most of the past three seasons saw the Timbers wake up sometime in late summer and roll into the playoffs, while Cincy typically started wilting somewhere around late may and continued to the end like some overwrought Shakespearian actor counting his wounds until he rather loudly expired. There has always been a whiff of ne’er the twain shall meet about the experience, in other words, but that changed with Major League Soccer’s 2022 season.

To start with the full disclosures, yes, I really did believe that both Cincinnati and Portland would make the 2022 playoffs. That bet panned out for one team – FC Cincinnati – but not the other...whose name shall go unmentioned. Both teams needed to get something out of their final game of the season - Real Salt Lake away for Portland and DC United away for Cincy. I read both of those games as winnable, hence the whole thing about both teams making the 2022 playoffs, but I also overlooked something, arguably out of habit. The thing that makes that remarkable was how obvious it should have been in retrospect. And that goes back to something I would never expected going into 2022 – i.e., how similar Cincy and Portland would be by season’s end.

First and foremost, Portland and Cincinnati tied a lot - 13 games per team, i.e., tied for second under 2022’s undisputed masters of sharing points, Columbus Crew SC (who had 16 draws and who also missed the playoffs). Another fun fact (and unless I miscounted): Cincy and Portland had only six clean sheets all season, a detail that points to something else that’s obvious - i.e., both teams gave up goals with very real reliability. By the final tally, Cincinnati actually gave up three more goals than Portland did, 56 to 53. Moreover, just four points separated the two teams. And yet Cincy’s in while Portland’s out. And yet, that’s not even the weird part.

A Statement on Merritt's Statement

Dick!

“Yates’ investigation found that Paulson knew of other alleged, non-sexual abuses as early as 2014, but did not act on the information. It also found that in a conversation with the Western New York Flash — after Riley and the Thorns parted ways — that Wilkinson blamed Shim for ‘putting Riley in a bad position’ and said that he would ‘hire (him) in a heartbeat.’ Riley was soon hired by the Flash, which later relocated and became the North Carolina Courage.”

“’In 2014, after Riley’s first season as head coach of the Thorns, the NWSL issued an anonymous player survey in which players identified Riley as “verbally abusive,” “sexis(t),” “destructive” and stated he “s--- on (the) players every day,”’ U.S. Soccer’s report reads. ‘The survey results were shared with NWSL Executive Director Cheryl Bailey, USSF President Sunil Gulati and (CEO and secretary general) (Dan) Flynn, but no one provided them to the team and no action was taken.’”

And that’s without getting into darker findings about the Portland Timbers/Thorns front office impeding the investigation, revelations that Timbers/Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson “not only enabled, but also vouched for [former Thorns head coach Paul] Riley,” a man who, even they now agree, used his position to manipulate and do all the abuses (sexual, emotional, professional, probably some others) during his time with the team. And, as the phrase goes, they knew.

Just over(?) 24 hours passed (does it matter?) before Paulson released a statement. He attempted contrition – he may even believe it – but the substance of the response amounted to an apology that, in context, reeks of insincerity. Moreover, taking the token step of removing himself and the other executives under suspicion (Wilkinson and Mike Golub) from all “all Thorns-related decision making” raises more questions than it answers – e.g., if they didn’t take a pay-cut and now have less day-to-day responsibility, how is that not like out-of-school suspension for a high school kid who doesn’t give a fuck?

Portland Timbers 1-2 Los Angeles FC: Acceptance

Fuck it.

May as well start where the game did – i.e., with the line-up the Portland Timbers chose to field in a, for them, semi-existential Sunday afternoon. They lined up the now-familiar back three, if with the personnel gently scrambled, and Juan Mosquera and Claudio Bravo on either side of Diego Chara and Cristhian Paredes in a four-man midfield. Mosquera and Bravo played as fully-modern fullbacks - dropping back to defend and running into the attack, as needed., etc. The slightest riff on the more of the same, in other words.

The real place of curiosity, at least for me, was the front line: Dairon Asprilla and Santiago Moreno on either side of Jaroslaw Niezgoda – or at least that’s how ESPN’s broadcast had it. Then again, I’m looking at the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey version The Mothership posted as official line-up, and who really knows at this point? Assuming I have it right – i.e., Asprilla, Niezgoda and Moreno up top – the big question going in was whether that set of players knew how to handle and/or finish shot creation. Based on what I saw online, the reaction was equal parts underwhelmed and confused; “consternation” sums it up nicely.

As for me, I greeted the line-up with...all right. The broadcast team hepped me to a couple things I didn’t know – e.g., Eryk Williamson had a compromised hamstrung – but I didn’t mind it or could at least find some kind of logic to it. That assumed, however, that Timbers head coach, Giovanni Savarese, held the same thoughts in his head – e.g., that he would play a cautious first half, then trickle in game-changers like Eryk Williamson and Sebastian Blanco to salt away the big, playoff-clinching win. In short, it all made sense to me so long as Gio did certain things at certain times. For instance, get his game-changers into the game with enough time to find it.

Back in the game that happened – i.e., the Timbers 1-2 home loss to Los Angeles FC - Savarese didn’t introduce Yimmi Chara and Williamson until the 74th minute. I can’t say that cost them the game (I don’t do counterfactuals), but that doesn’t feel like enough time for most attacking players to get hold of a game. Yimmi’s special - 90 minutes may not be enough for him - but I would have liked to see another 10 minutes or more for Eryk; it’s not like Jaroslaw Niezgoda did much outside one shining moment early in the 2nd half, after all. Moreover, Eryk strikes me as the kind of player who needs some time to figure out who’s picking up what he’s dropping; Niezgoda’s seems the same, for what it's worth, but I gave up on seeing Gio put him anywhere besides the front line months ago.