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| Picture the "before" house on fire. |
FC Cincinnati came into MLS like a paper-mache wrecking ball, starting with one of the worst roster builds in MLS history. They invested heavily in No. 8s for that inaugural 2019 roster - not a true No. 6 in sight, never mind a No. 10 - and rounded it out with a thin foundation of center backs, a couple attack-oriented fullbacks, plus a couple random wingers and two or three forwards with a history of needing service to be effective. The first of their three consecutive Wooden Spoons followed surely as night follows day. This year’s absolutely woeful San Jose Earthquakes team just unburdened them of the record for the most goals allowed in a single season, but Cincinnati may never let go of their claim to the all-time worst goal differential. They barely improved over the next two seasons (seriously, see the goals allowed by the 2021 team), and some of that surely followed from the wild game of musical chairs around the coaching seat - Alan Koch gave way to Yoann Damet, gave way to Ron Jans/some casual racism, then came Jaap Stam, there might have been another coach in there, who can say, really, then Yoann Damet again. Rebuilding from that first, fucking terrible roster was always going to take time, but doing it headless was madness. Small wonder the rehabilitation took a lot of time and, at last, some smart hiring. The Organization helped and hurt on the way to that – by throwing money at all the problems here, and (I think mostly one owner-dude) meddling on the wrong (i.e., soccer) side there – but the former translated as a willingness to burn money until the (many) problem(s) was(were) solved. The Organization kept faith through the failures – e.g., the Spoon-spank’d 2021 team had the still-capable Geoff Cameron and Haris Medunjanin, plus Luciano Acosta, Brandon Vazquez and Brenner, if in pre-threatening form – and, more crucially, seemed to genuinely learn from failure. The biggest shift came with two hirings: first, coaxing Chris Albright away from Philadelphia to act as general manager, then betting on Pat Noonan’s potential by anointing him head coach ahead of the 2022 season; second, they signed Nigerian midfielder, Obinna Nwobodo, at the beginning of the same year, a man who chews real estate and wins 75% of the battles he engages. Those two changes alone made some prior investments – e.g., Alvaro Barreal, Vazquez, and, even if it took a minute, Yuya Kubo – look a whole lot smarter. With all that in place, it took just a couple, if big, defensive signings (Matt Miazga and Yerson Mosquera) and the arrival of a budding goalkeeping star (Roman Celentano) to turn Cincinnati into a Supporters’ Shield-winning team by their 2023 season. Cincy made the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs that same season and might have gone farther had (Defender of the Year!) Matt Miazga not lost his whole goddamn mind at the end of a playoff win over the Red Bulls. At any rate, they lost some key players either before (Brenner, gone by April 2023) or during (Vazquez) the 2024 season, but Cincy has a remarkable talent for finding new players when they need them…it’s like they figured out how the rules work or something…
Total Joy Points: -1
How They Earned Them (& * How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2023
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2023
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2022
Wooden Spoon: 2019, 2020, 2021
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| Too...good...too fast....AAaarrgghhh! |
Cincinnati never had “tendencies” so much as periods of 100%-shame-inducing failure (e.g., 2019-2021), followed by almost vertiginously abrupt success (e.g., 2023). No pattern to speak of, in other words, and last season only made it harder to see one Moving on….
How 2024 Measured Up
If memory serves, the2024 Shield race was running at something like a four-way tie when the calendar turned to July, with Inter Miami CF v Los Angeles FC v Columbus v FC Cincinnati as the contenders. When Cincy dropped out of the race – to be very clear, this happened almost immediately and only stopped long enough for them to beat Philly on Decision Day (a classic nut-drag, did it for the fans) – anyone but the most tireless/delusional fan could see they had lost whatever made them dangerous through 2023. That could have been lost personnel and how they replaced them (random e.g., Aaron Boupendza) – e.g., Cincy barely kept up with the league-wide mini-explosion in scoring between 2023 and 2024 (46.8 gf/ga average v 53.5) - but losing the whole goddam defense, but for Miles Robinson (and Ian Murphy?), hurt them just as much, if not more. Against that, Acosta had another MVP-worthy season, Luca Orellano raised his stock considerably, and the season ended with the defense healing (except Miazga) and Teenage Hadebe coming into to solidify it (this goes back to note about finding players above; how’d they do that? How’d they land Robinson, ffs?). All that only did them so much good in the end. Lacking any kind of momentum and caught up in a little drama, New York City FC shoved Cincinnati out of the post-season before the Joy Point Scale* noted their existence.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
A fair amount of this turns on what happens with Acosta, who, last I heard still hasn’t meaningfully engaged camp, never mind reported to it. If he leaves the team, Cincinnati will need to replace not just a quarter of their total offense, but also the brain/spring-mechanism that makes the rest of the attack click and/or misfire. [UPDATE: I'm seeing internet chatter than Acosta will indeed report to camp and/or FC Cincinnati. Huzzah, if true!] Another major piece would be getting Miazga healthy again, maybe unfucking his ego a bit, but time will tell there as well. Still, Cincy has been busy (in a way that makes me jealous), declining options (e.g. Yamil Asad, Malik Pinto), allowing loans to expire (e.g., Kevin Kelsy (thanks!), Niko Gioacchini) and, even if they re-up one or two of those, generally comporting themselves like a fighter trying to cut weight . They also made it official with Orellano and broke the bank (think this is the MLS-wide bank) by bringing in Togolese forward Kevin Denkey from Belgium’s Cercle Brugge. With all that in mind, I suppose the question is whether they can sort out, or just plain avoid, all the things that led to their late-season collapse in 2024. It’s not like they weren’t keeping up for most of the last season….
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