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| Abomination. |
Thanks to a 1-2 loss at home against Red Bull New York, FC Cincinnati killed the semi-pointless dream of claiming the single-season record for points in the MLS X.0 era. While I don’t like that anymore than you do, man, does it feel nice to have something to talk about besides, “yeah, still going really well.”
First things first, I wouldn’t freight this loss with a ton of meaning. Pat Noonan didn’t stir the starting XI, he shook it. I was about to digress to the culinary crime of a blended martini (hold on...has anyone...never mind), but he didn’t start any player that Cincinnati fans haven’t seen at some point in 2023. The issue – which assumes it was one – came with starting so many non-regulars. It fell well short of “who the fuck is that guy?” but, outside Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo, only Nick Hagglund and Raymon Gaddis had played more than 1,000 minutes coming in. Most of the rest have logged real minutes – e.g., 998 for Yuya Kubo, 880 for Alvas Powell, 844 (shit, when?) for Dominique Badji – but, again, most of that time came with more regulars in the eleven.
That totally showed up on the field – Cincy played most of the game in the wide expanses between in-synch, which they were not, and out-of-synch – but that didn’t hurt them as much and as fatally as the 20 opening minutes. As the Red Bulls demonstrated tonight, a little energy can go a long way and a lot of energy goes even farther. To tie that together, sure, the turnover in the line-up didn’t help, but Cincy dug a two-goal hole by a simple failure to match the energy-drink energy.
If this game has a mystery, or any real source of concern, that’s it: how did FC Cincinnati come into a game that, let’s face it, they could absolutely lose against a team that literally brands itself on high energy with, well, so little energy?
Credit where it’s due, the Red Bulls got hold of the game early. Over those opening 20 minutes, they pressed high enough to alternately frustrate and stuff a Cincinnati team that grew more disoriented and cautious with each misplayed pass out of the back. The defensive shape eventually compacted to where the hosts left all kinds of space in and around the edges of Zone 14. That burned them early when that ever-receding line left original (and impressively respectful) draftee, Frank Amaya, wide-open about 20 yards from goal...and he made it look easy from there. The same thing happened less than 10 minutes later, even if the gap opened in a different space, when the statistically-marginal Elias Manoel finished a John Tolkin cut-back from a pasture around FC Cincy’s penalty spot; this time, the back three had dropped deep while Cincy’s midfield failed to track Manoel or drop deep enough to cover: so, no, things did not go well on the defensive side.
Not much of that would have mattered – hell, how much of it wouldn’t have happened at all? – had Cincinnati been able to play out of its own half with any kind of regularity or confidence. And that was the story of a frustrating first half for Cincy. Both individually and as a team, Cincinnati struggled to play through Red Bull pressure wherever it came, something I found surprising and, again, frustrating, particularly after watching teams like the Philadelphia Union, Chicago Fire FC, and even DC United, do it over and over again while studying for the preview. Bottom line, I could have condensed all the above into, Cincinnati played consistently, only in that they didn’t play well.
Overall, the game carried out over several broad phases: the opening 30 minutes when the Red Bulls dominated; the 15 subsequent, basically inconsequential minutes when Cincy’s starters finally settled into the game; some more signs of life to the start the second half, followed by an actual, if brief course-correction that started around the 58th minute when Luciano Acosta and Alvaro Barreal came on the field. It was enough to make you believe that Cincy might turn things around...and that’s when a train came crashing through the fucking wall, yes, that one you’re looking at right now.
First things first, I wouldn’t freight this loss with a ton of meaning. Pat Noonan didn’t stir the starting XI, he shook it. I was about to digress to the culinary crime of a blended martini (hold on...has anyone...never mind), but he didn’t start any player that Cincinnati fans haven’t seen at some point in 2023. The issue – which assumes it was one – came with starting so many non-regulars. It fell well short of “who the fuck is that guy?” but, outside Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo, only Nick Hagglund and Raymon Gaddis had played more than 1,000 minutes coming in. Most of the rest have logged real minutes – e.g., 998 for Yuya Kubo, 880 for Alvas Powell, 844 (shit, when?) for Dominique Badji – but, again, most of that time came with more regulars in the eleven.
That totally showed up on the field – Cincy played most of the game in the wide expanses between in-synch, which they were not, and out-of-synch – but that didn’t hurt them as much and as fatally as the 20 opening minutes. As the Red Bulls demonstrated tonight, a little energy can go a long way and a lot of energy goes even farther. To tie that together, sure, the turnover in the line-up didn’t help, but Cincy dug a two-goal hole by a simple failure to match the energy-drink energy.
If this game has a mystery, or any real source of concern, that’s it: how did FC Cincinnati come into a game that, let’s face it, they could absolutely lose against a team that literally brands itself on high energy with, well, so little energy?
Credit where it’s due, the Red Bulls got hold of the game early. Over those opening 20 minutes, they pressed high enough to alternately frustrate and stuff a Cincinnati team that grew more disoriented and cautious with each misplayed pass out of the back. The defensive shape eventually compacted to where the hosts left all kinds of space in and around the edges of Zone 14. That burned them early when that ever-receding line left original (and impressively respectful) draftee, Frank Amaya, wide-open about 20 yards from goal...and he made it look easy from there. The same thing happened less than 10 minutes later, even if the gap opened in a different space, when the statistically-marginal Elias Manoel finished a John Tolkin cut-back from a pasture around FC Cincy’s penalty spot; this time, the back three had dropped deep while Cincy’s midfield failed to track Manoel or drop deep enough to cover: so, no, things did not go well on the defensive side.
Not much of that would have mattered – hell, how much of it wouldn’t have happened at all? – had Cincinnati been able to play out of its own half with any kind of regularity or confidence. And that was the story of a frustrating first half for Cincy. Both individually and as a team, Cincinnati struggled to play through Red Bull pressure wherever it came, something I found surprising and, again, frustrating, particularly after watching teams like the Philadelphia Union, Chicago Fire FC, and even DC United, do it over and over again while studying for the preview. Bottom line, I could have condensed all the above into, Cincinnati played consistently, only in that they didn’t play well.
Overall, the game carried out over several broad phases: the opening 30 minutes when the Red Bulls dominated; the 15 subsequent, basically inconsequential minutes when Cincy’s starters finally settled into the game; some more signs of life to the start the second half, followed by an actual, if brief course-correction that started around the 58th minute when Luciano Acosta and Alvaro Barreal came on the field. It was enough to make you believe that Cincy might turn things around...and that’s when a train came crashing through the fucking wall, yes, that one you’re looking at right now.
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| A metaphor for refs. Probably. |
Second things second, MLS PRO referee Chris Penso called a bad, weird game. To be clear, I rarely comment on the refs (on the grounds that a bad ref is a natural phenomenon, akin to rain-fall), but several of Penso’s calls bolted past “bad” so as to run into the fevered embrace of baffling; when even the broadcast team notes it...yikes! Most of that, however, came after Penso aggressively waived off an obvious hand-ball by Red Bulls' Andres Reyes– with a good line of sight to boot! – in Cincy’s favor, only to find himself more than a little exposed after Manoel scored the kind of beautiful goal the Red Bull FO almost certainly expected when they signed him. Cut to Penso, head stuffed in monitor, and just long enough to suggest the thing he missed wasn’t glaringly obvious. When he emerged, Penso erased Manoel’s goal and pointed to the penalty spot for Cincinnati. Acosta scored it, because of course he did, and that very public edit seemed to flip a switch in Penso's head, to a point where he saw everything with the Bizarro-clarity of an online contrarian – i.e., he almost consciously crossed the line between wrong and just plain not right.
That long digression had a point (maybe): FC Cincinnati got back in the game, but only so far, and even their biggest step toward felt like a Rube Goldberg machine marching toward some unknown (but almost certainly satisfying) end. After that, Cincinnati enjoyed somewhere between five and ten minutes of looking like they’d get all the way back in before the Red Bulls re-aligned the kill-switches and throttled the game. That last phase started somewhere around the 80th minute and continued, with only moderate interruption, until the ref put an end to the game 20 minutes later. A shorter version of all the above: Penso was next-level bad, but Cincy still deserved to lose this one.
To return to the first sentence of the second paragraph, yeah, how much does either this loss or the manner of it matter? The Red Bulls upended a couple theories in my preview, again, credit to them, but not only was this not Cincinnati’s best lineup, it’s a lineup we’re almost certain not to see between today and 2024. I see this as Pat Noonan weighing between giving several key starters a breather against playing for the single-season points record, and deciding on the former - and that's the right call, at least for me. I’d even say he did his damnedest to keep the training wheels on by starting Nwobodo and Miazga. If those two failed in any way, it came with letting the Red Bulls depress their defensive shape to where they could go two goals up.
Call it a dumb loss, hope FC Cincinnati can learn from it, if not parlay it into something during the 2023 playoffs, and move on. That’s it for the big picture. To close on some stray notes:
- Alvas Powell may have been Cincinnati’s most effective player over the full 90 minutes. Extrapolate from there.
- As much as Cincy’s midfield struggled with playing through the New York’s pressure, Marco Angulo came closest to simple failure. Confident as I am that the numbers will disprove the statement, he lost or pissed away more passes in and from the midfield.
- I appreciate how much Cincinnati fans love Yuya Kubo; tactial flexibility and unflaggng commitment, I get it, I get it. And I appreciate the multi-positional depth he provides, but he was at least 75% invisible tonight. I see his upside more than I rate it, basically. Related...
- On the one hand, it took Acosta and Barreal coming on for either Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji to get the ball in good and useful places; on the other, both players failed to make anything out of the scraps that came their way earlier in the game and all over the field, Boupendza, in particular
Put that all together and one walks away with a couple thoughts: 1) FC Cincinnati really does rely on the creative core of Acosta, Barreal, and Brandon Vazquez, if with steady assists from Santiago Arias; and 2) how fucking lucky have they been with injuries this season. If that didn’t carry them halfway to the Shield on its own...
Right. That’s it for the whole thing. For those who haven’t heard, Chicago kicked the shit out of Inter Miami CF tonight. And that gives Cincy the chance to finish Miami’s season this weekend, aka, stakes, people. Weee.
That long digression had a point (maybe): FC Cincinnati got back in the game, but only so far, and even their biggest step toward felt like a Rube Goldberg machine marching toward some unknown (but almost certainly satisfying) end. After that, Cincinnati enjoyed somewhere between five and ten minutes of looking like they’d get all the way back in before the Red Bulls re-aligned the kill-switches and throttled the game. That last phase started somewhere around the 80th minute and continued, with only moderate interruption, until the ref put an end to the game 20 minutes later. A shorter version of all the above: Penso was next-level bad, but Cincy still deserved to lose this one.
To return to the first sentence of the second paragraph, yeah, how much does either this loss or the manner of it matter? The Red Bulls upended a couple theories in my preview, again, credit to them, but not only was this not Cincinnati’s best lineup, it’s a lineup we’re almost certain not to see between today and 2024. I see this as Pat Noonan weighing between giving several key starters a breather against playing for the single-season points record, and deciding on the former - and that's the right call, at least for me. I’d even say he did his damnedest to keep the training wheels on by starting Nwobodo and Miazga. If those two failed in any way, it came with letting the Red Bulls depress their defensive shape to where they could go two goals up.
Call it a dumb loss, hope FC Cincinnati can learn from it, if not parlay it into something during the 2023 playoffs, and move on. That’s it for the big picture. To close on some stray notes:
- Alvas Powell may have been Cincinnati’s most effective player over the full 90 minutes. Extrapolate from there.
- As much as Cincy’s midfield struggled with playing through the New York’s pressure, Marco Angulo came closest to simple failure. Confident as I am that the numbers will disprove the statement, he lost or pissed away more passes in and from the midfield.
- I appreciate how much Cincinnati fans love Yuya Kubo; tactial flexibility and unflaggng commitment, I get it, I get it. And I appreciate the multi-positional depth he provides, but he was at least 75% invisible tonight. I see his upside more than I rate it, basically. Related...
- On the one hand, it took Acosta and Barreal coming on for either Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji to get the ball in good and useful places; on the other, both players failed to make anything out of the scraps that came their way earlier in the game and all over the field, Boupendza, in particular
Put that all together and one walks away with a couple thoughts: 1) FC Cincinnati really does rely on the creative core of Acosta, Barreal, and Brandon Vazquez, if with steady assists from Santiago Arias; and 2) how fucking lucky have they been with injuries this season. If that didn’t carry them halfway to the Shield on its own...
Right. That’s it for the whole thing. For those who haven’t heard, Chicago kicked the shit out of Inter Miami CF tonight. And that gives Cincy the chance to finish Miami’s season this weekend, aka, stakes, people. Weee.
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