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| Acosta in green, all day yesterday. |
I hopefully type “I’ll keep this short” to start these posts, but I think I’m going to pull it off this time...hey, nailed it....
FC Cincinnati tripped out of the inaugural edition of the Leagues Cup courtesy of a single missed penalty kick by Matt Miazga. If Nashville SC owed that thin crack of a margin to swapping in Elliott Panicco for Joe Willis immediately before the shoot-out, credit head coach Gary Smith for making a smart call. Because Nashville was perfect on their penalty kicks, Cincy only had to miss one. With that, a game that ended 1-1 regulation (still no home losses for Cincy, hyper-technically) tipped to Nashville 5-4 on PKs.
Nashville got one more thing perfect, or nearly so: smothering Luciano Acosta for over 3/4 of the game. While they didn’t man-mark him, Nashville reliably kept at least one player tight on Acosta – a defender when he pushed high, a midfielder when he dropped back – passing him off from one player(s) to the next, often by pointing at him like he never stopped farting throughout the game. That held up any time Acosta drifted into the middle of the field and only let up when the ball moved to the opposite side. Between that and Nashville compacting into a 5-3-2 tight enough to squeeze into their defensive third, Cincinnati struggled to do much of anything the entire game. I would say credit to Nashville if it didn’t make the game so goddamn unwatchable. A game killed, with malice (and great planning) aforethought...
More than anything else, this game provided a glimpse of the kind of soul-sucking bullshit riddles Cincy will need to solve if they want to lift MLS Cup. The odds that the first team or two they face in the MLS playoffs will take a similar approach to Nashville’s, if not bite it directly, are too low for the house to take them – i.e., this will happen. As such, the question for Pat Noonan et al becomes how to keep the attack lively when teams put a shadow or two on Acosta.
Cincinnati’s push for the equalizer suggested a couple approaches: playing with more urgency and begging more questions of the defense. This took the form of pushing more passes into Cincy players posted up against Nashville’s compact line(s), something they only started doing in earnest (by my count) after the 70th minute, with Obinna Nwobodo leading the way. Clearing Acosta out of that space helped, not least because the clutter didn’t accumulate when he wasn’t in the middle. Noonan loosened things up further when he replaced Alvas Powell with Bret Halsey, i.e., a player with at least some attacking upside. (And don’t dismiss Powell’s contribution entirely, because he showed his talent for open-field defending in a one-v-one against Hany Mukhtar.) Add a couple heads to the hydra, basically, or don't always demand the same one do all the biting.
FC Cincinnati tripped out of the inaugural edition of the Leagues Cup courtesy of a single missed penalty kick by Matt Miazga. If Nashville SC owed that thin crack of a margin to swapping in Elliott Panicco for Joe Willis immediately before the shoot-out, credit head coach Gary Smith for making a smart call. Because Nashville was perfect on their penalty kicks, Cincy only had to miss one. With that, a game that ended 1-1 regulation (still no home losses for Cincy, hyper-technically) tipped to Nashville 5-4 on PKs.
Nashville got one more thing perfect, or nearly so: smothering Luciano Acosta for over 3/4 of the game. While they didn’t man-mark him, Nashville reliably kept at least one player tight on Acosta – a defender when he pushed high, a midfielder when he dropped back – passing him off from one player(s) to the next, often by pointing at him like he never stopped farting throughout the game. That held up any time Acosta drifted into the middle of the field and only let up when the ball moved to the opposite side. Between that and Nashville compacting into a 5-3-2 tight enough to squeeze into their defensive third, Cincinnati struggled to do much of anything the entire game. I would say credit to Nashville if it didn’t make the game so goddamn unwatchable. A game killed, with malice (and great planning) aforethought...
More than anything else, this game provided a glimpse of the kind of soul-sucking bullshit riddles Cincy will need to solve if they want to lift MLS Cup. The odds that the first team or two they face in the MLS playoffs will take a similar approach to Nashville’s, if not bite it directly, are too low for the house to take them – i.e., this will happen. As such, the question for Pat Noonan et al becomes how to keep the attack lively when teams put a shadow or two on Acosta.
Cincinnati’s push for the equalizer suggested a couple approaches: playing with more urgency and begging more questions of the defense. This took the form of pushing more passes into Cincy players posted up against Nashville’s compact line(s), something they only started doing in earnest (by my count) after the 70th minute, with Obinna Nwobodo leading the way. Clearing Acosta out of that space helped, not least because the clutter didn’t accumulate when he wasn’t in the middle. Noonan loosened things up further when he replaced Alvas Powell with Bret Halsey, i.e., a player with at least some attacking upside. (And don’t dismiss Powell’s contribution entirely, because he showed his talent for open-field defending in a one-v-one against Hany Mukhtar.) Add a couple heads to the hydra, basically, or don't always demand the same one do all the biting.
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| Goals. |
The main question that hangs over the (technical) loss was whether Noonan/Cincinnati stuck with Plan A too long. Did they play too patiently, maybe wait too long for Acosta to shake loose from the mob of defenders that stalked him like stans? Did they burn too much time trying to play around Nashville when the only path went through them, red-rover style? Valid questions all, and ones I might have been better equipped to answer had my eyes not glazed over for half the game (so, so much undifferentiated running about). I find myself asking the same question more and more as Cincinnati’s season goes on: at what point in any given game do the move away from passing most of the attack through Acosta?
Don’t get me wrong: getting the balance and timing right on that poses one hell of a challenge, a monumental one even, because running the O through Acosta has served Cincy very, very well all season And yet I can't escape the idea that getting this right may be the most consequential question for the remainder of 2023.
That’s the big picture stuff – which I think is all that matters when there is no tomorrow for Cincy in the Leagues Cup. And, yeah, I’ll grudgingly give credit to Nashville because they did the things: they defended like a swarm of hornets (six legs and all) and made the most of their handful of chances. I’m not sure Nashville would have scored had Cincy’s defense made the bizarre, collective choice to leave Dax McCarty wide open inside the six on the crucial set piece, but, as with the PKs, when your team gets defending (or goalkeeping) that right, you only need the one goal.
Cincinnati deserves collective credit for getting back in the game, or at least finally forcing the issue; going the other way, how many times will they catch a break like the one Jack Maher(?) handed them with a pointless shove to the back on Brandon Vazquez? All in all, I’d call it a game Cincinnati never really looked like winning, but also one they probably shouldn’t have lost. Unfortunately, those are exactly the kind of games that end a playoff run early.
Till the next one...
Don’t get me wrong: getting the balance and timing right on that poses one hell of a challenge, a monumental one even, because running the O through Acosta has served Cincy very, very well all season And yet I can't escape the idea that getting this right may be the most consequential question for the remainder of 2023.
That’s the big picture stuff – which I think is all that matters when there is no tomorrow for Cincy in the Leagues Cup. And, yeah, I’ll grudgingly give credit to Nashville because they did the things: they defended like a swarm of hornets (six legs and all) and made the most of their handful of chances. I’m not sure Nashville would have scored had Cincy’s defense made the bizarre, collective choice to leave Dax McCarty wide open inside the six on the crucial set piece, but, as with the PKs, when your team gets defending (or goalkeeping) that right, you only need the one goal.
Cincinnati deserves collective credit for getting back in the game, or at least finally forcing the issue; going the other way, how many times will they catch a break like the one Jack Maher(?) handed them with a pointless shove to the back on Brandon Vazquez? All in all, I’d call it a game Cincinnati never really looked like winning, but also one they probably shouldn’t have lost. Unfortunately, those are exactly the kind of games that end a playoff run early.
Till the next one...
As proof of your premise, the bizarrely lackadasical defending of Messi in MLS so far shows how, when it matters less (mid-season league matches), the defensive quality on many teams seems almost random.
ReplyDeleteWhen it gets to knock-out matches, suddenly man-marking skills are remembered, and coaches re-read ancient treatises on Serie A catenaccio formations. "First we stifle, then we win."
Cincinnati will have learned a lesson for the playoffs.