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| Bygone era, my friend. |
First, where the hell was the beer boot? You can’t get that level of (admittedly, highly-specific) juice on the internet and then fail to feature it? Was it Cincy’s fault for failing to sell them like the hot cakes they are? Was it AppleTV for missing an opportunity to find one? (That said, the camera team kept flashing to a kid eating dipping dots as if he'd discovered love for the first time...in a Disney channel kind of way...wait.)
I’ll start with the good news: FC Cincinnati won its home opener against Houston Dynamo FC by a 2-1 scoreline. Was that line fat enough? Not for my liking, but not every trip to the park can be a stroll, at least not this early in the season.
A couple Cincinnati players looked regular-season-ready – going with Roman Celentano and Obinna Nwobodo as the big, bright stand-outs (and what a time for the latter to break his duck?) – and, outside them (and a couple others), the overall performance rated somewhere between respectable, decent, and good. I’ll flag a couple soft spots later, but I really like two players as human stand-ins for the kind of night Cincinnati had.
Alvaro Barreal is the big one for me – and you can cut his effigy any number of ways. For instance, you can say (and/or theorize) that after seeing its more famous names get blocked out of the game, Cincy made adjustments to open a wide lane for Barreal on the left. To his credit, Barreal took swashbuckling advantage of that space – here, I’m thinking of the pass he picked up in the first half that sent what was left of Houston’s defense into a fire-drill – and, despite being positioned high left to the point Cincy defaulted to a back four (as opposed to the back five shown in Pravda’s line-up) for large stretches, the man made a man-of-the-match’s share worth of defensive interventions...
...and yet, that one time, when Nelson Quinones torched him so bad up Houston’s left that Barreal took a yellow, if just to save his dignity? If that broad concept wasn’t Cincinnati’s performance in a nutshell, I ask you what was?
And do I see Yerson Mosquera standing as another candidate? I have what I feel like accurate recollections of him single-handedly cutting off Houston’s attacking lanes with turf-eating recovery runs on three separate occasions. He didn’t give up much in the air, not that I saw anyway, and most of his actions fell somewhere between “no comment” and “oh, that’s good...”
...and yet, I’ll be damned if he didn’t lose all of Tate Schmitt on Houston’s potentially game-changing equalizer during the death throes of the first half.
As I tweeted at the half in the game thread, this game looked a little too much like 2022 to my eyes. Wins that became ties, games Cincy suddenly had to chase: to finally get to the bad news, the defense still needs work. Roman Celentano bailed them out with two massive saves – and those topped off a dozen smart goal-box interventions, at a minimum (not to mention four more saves) – and as much as I appreciate that he’s good for it, a defense can only draw against its insurance policy for so long....right?
Some credit for that has to go to the antagonist – i.e., defensive problems don’t just cause themselves, after all. Adalberto Carasquilla caused most of it: of all the times he found a pocket inside Cincinnati’s half, and with Houston’s attacking pieces out of defensive mode, I’d say he made the home defense uncomfortable on at least a third of them. It was good stuff too, off the dribble, combination passing, a through-ball. If Barreal had competition for best player on the field, Carrasquila’s your man.
After that, I thought Hector Herrera did a fair imitation of a metronome – though I have to say his one-on-one skills impressed me more than his range of passing – while Houston’s new signing, Ivan Franco, showed both eagerness and flashes that caught the eye. On the one hand, Artur was fine, Teenage Hadebe (love that name) may have literally mirrored Mosquera’s performance; on the other, Sebastian Ferreira managed one great right-place/right-time shot amidst a fog of anonymity and Corey Baird killed the best move that fell to him, etc.: all those count as lights, high and low, for a performance I’d give a “...not bad.” All in all, this was a road loss for Houston and against a team that I’m seeing a shocking number of people nominate as the Supporters’ Shield winner. If nothing else, they should feel encouraged by out-shooting Cincinnati and nosing them out on xG (and, fwiw, both of those numbers matched the eye-test).
I’ll start with the good news: FC Cincinnati won its home opener against Houston Dynamo FC by a 2-1 scoreline. Was that line fat enough? Not for my liking, but not every trip to the park can be a stroll, at least not this early in the season.
A couple Cincinnati players looked regular-season-ready – going with Roman Celentano and Obinna Nwobodo as the big, bright stand-outs (and what a time for the latter to break his duck?) – and, outside them (and a couple others), the overall performance rated somewhere between respectable, decent, and good. I’ll flag a couple soft spots later, but I really like two players as human stand-ins for the kind of night Cincinnati had.
Alvaro Barreal is the big one for me – and you can cut his effigy any number of ways. For instance, you can say (and/or theorize) that after seeing its more famous names get blocked out of the game, Cincy made adjustments to open a wide lane for Barreal on the left. To his credit, Barreal took swashbuckling advantage of that space – here, I’m thinking of the pass he picked up in the first half that sent what was left of Houston’s defense into a fire-drill – and, despite being positioned high left to the point Cincy defaulted to a back four (as opposed to the back five shown in Pravda’s line-up) for large stretches, the man made a man-of-the-match’s share worth of defensive interventions...
...and yet, that one time, when Nelson Quinones torched him so bad up Houston’s left that Barreal took a yellow, if just to save his dignity? If that broad concept wasn’t Cincinnati’s performance in a nutshell, I ask you what was?
And do I see Yerson Mosquera standing as another candidate? I have what I feel like accurate recollections of him single-handedly cutting off Houston’s attacking lanes with turf-eating recovery runs on three separate occasions. He didn’t give up much in the air, not that I saw anyway, and most of his actions fell somewhere between “no comment” and “oh, that’s good...”
...and yet, I’ll be damned if he didn’t lose all of Tate Schmitt on Houston’s potentially game-changing equalizer during the death throes of the first half.
As I tweeted at the half in the game thread, this game looked a little too much like 2022 to my eyes. Wins that became ties, games Cincy suddenly had to chase: to finally get to the bad news, the defense still needs work. Roman Celentano bailed them out with two massive saves – and those topped off a dozen smart goal-box interventions, at a minimum (not to mention four more saves) – and as much as I appreciate that he’s good for it, a defense can only draw against its insurance policy for so long....right?
Some credit for that has to go to the antagonist – i.e., defensive problems don’t just cause themselves, after all. Adalberto Carasquilla caused most of it: of all the times he found a pocket inside Cincinnati’s half, and with Houston’s attacking pieces out of defensive mode, I’d say he made the home defense uncomfortable on at least a third of them. It was good stuff too, off the dribble, combination passing, a through-ball. If Barreal had competition for best player on the field, Carrasquila’s your man.
After that, I thought Hector Herrera did a fair imitation of a metronome – though I have to say his one-on-one skills impressed me more than his range of passing – while Houston’s new signing, Ivan Franco, showed both eagerness and flashes that caught the eye. On the one hand, Artur was fine, Teenage Hadebe (love that name) may have literally mirrored Mosquera’s performance; on the other, Sebastian Ferreira managed one great right-place/right-time shot amidst a fog of anonymity and Corey Baird killed the best move that fell to him, etc.: all those count as lights, high and low, for a performance I’d give a “...not bad.” All in all, this was a road loss for Houston and against a team that I’m seeing a shocking number of people nominate as the Supporters’ Shield winner. If nothing else, they should feel encouraged by out-shooting Cincinnati and nosing them out on xG (and, fwiw, both of those numbers matched the eye-test).
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| No, it's cool. He's breakdancing. |
The home team assisted with some of that – e.g., Houston repeatedly found space on the right behind new guy, Santiago Arias, in the first half, something they repeated a little too easily late in the second half with Quinones behind Barreal. All in all, I’d argue the defense on the flanks left a lot to be desired; related, I wasn’t a huge fan of the two or three periods of serial emergency defending that saw Cincy clogging up the middle like so many (armless) human shields: all that’s a concern up to the day that you consider Houston a world-beating attack. Junior Moreno played, for me, the worst game of any man wearing blue tonight and you have to believe that no small number of Houston’s forays up the middle followed from seams left open by a combination of miscommunication and Moreno playing the kind of game you never want to see from a man literally playing for his job (because Marco Angulo), aka, the stuff of nightmares.
It's quibbles from there – e.g., apart from a brilliantly destabilizing piece of work against Houston’s left that set up a sloppy game-winner (see Nwobodo link above), Luciano Acosta rushed a couple promising breaks with attempted passes that defied geometry, maybe even physics, and I make my first mention of Brandon Vazquez all the way down here for a reason – so I don’t want to give the impression that Cincinnati didn’t do enough to win the game. Even if I can’t go so far as to say the final score didn’t lie, I doubt anyone would call it unfair. Still, the concerns I have come in two, related parts:
1) the defense looked well softer than rock-solid; and
2) even if this was a new-look Houston Dynamo FC, it wasn’t all of it and they still gave FC Cincinnati plenty to think about.
To point to a silver lining you can only catch as a reflection, between a new coach and personnel, Houston has seen too many changes to be the same team they were last season. It’s possible, in other words, that they will prove to be decent or, gods forbid, competitive in 2023 and this was nothing but a case of Cincy being the first team to get notice.
My thought on that....beats the alternative. All that said, put this down as three points banked in the new campaign and just general TCOB.
It's quibbles from there – e.g., apart from a brilliantly destabilizing piece of work against Houston’s left that set up a sloppy game-winner (see Nwobodo link above), Luciano Acosta rushed a couple promising breaks with attempted passes that defied geometry, maybe even physics, and I make my first mention of Brandon Vazquez all the way down here for a reason – so I don’t want to give the impression that Cincinnati didn’t do enough to win the game. Even if I can’t go so far as to say the final score didn’t lie, I doubt anyone would call it unfair. Still, the concerns I have come in two, related parts:
1) the defense looked well softer than rock-solid; and
2) even if this was a new-look Houston Dynamo FC, it wasn’t all of it and they still gave FC Cincinnati plenty to think about.
To point to a silver lining you can only catch as a reflection, between a new coach and personnel, Houston has seen too many changes to be the same team they were last season. It’s possible, in other words, that they will prove to be decent or, gods forbid, competitive in 2023 and this was nothing but a case of Cincy being the first team to get notice.
My thought on that....beats the alternative. All that said, put this down as three points banked in the new campaign and just general TCOB.
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