Nashville SC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: To the Hungrier Hippo Go the Spoils

The scene from Geodis Park.

When your local team gets a game that demands about a half dozen gut-checks and they pass the majority of them. FC Cincinnati’s 2-1 road win at Nashville SC was a big one – probably the biggest of 2025 so far.

About the Game
It played out as a test of wills, honestly, an occasion where either team could have walked away with three points or both could have left with one. The momentum went back and forth throughout – e.g., I thought Nashville held the advantage from the 15th minute to the upper-mid 20s, before Cincy yanked it back over the next 5-10 minutes – and, when the goals came, it didn’t have much to do with which house was ascendant. Cincinnati had the better opening shots (one each for Evander and Luca Orellano) and a nose ahead in the game state, only to see Nashville push them back with counter-raids over the following minutes (I think Hany Mukhtar's near-miss was the first in the full highlights). That threw a wobble into Cincy’s step for a while – for what it’s worth, I don’t think Obinna Nwobodo and Pavel Bucha ever got a firm handle in the middle – but they managed to settle and clamp things down…until Nashville broke the deadlock in the late 30s. Even after Edvard “Eddi” Tagseth got behind Cincy’s (over-committed) left, the set up didn’t look like much. Nick Hagglund (literally) threw himself at the cross (sacrifice the body!), but could only lean it out of danger and accidentally teed up Jack Bauer for a short-range blast from the right side of the area. With the dread prickling up – what would a third winless game mean for Cincy, never mind a defeat? – Evander stepped in to tamp it down as only he can – i.e., getting fouled within the same ZIP Code as the opposition goal and scoring saucily on the ensuing free kick. That sent the teams in the halftime locker room tied and raring to get back to it. Nashville came out the sharper and had multiple, early opportunities to get back on top. The first – and biggest – came when Kevin Denkey did the right thing – i.e., keep tabs on Walker Zimmerman in the area on a set piece – the wrong way – i.e., by wrapping him up not once, but twice. The ref called the penalty, rightly, before Roman Celentano smacked away the penalty kick, righteously. Celentano barely had the time to roll out of that headstand before he had to get back into position for a crazy sequence of saves that included 1) punching out the original cross, 2) kicking away a point-blank shot from the weak side, and 3 (maybe 4)) slapping away one or two follow-ups from still-closer range (maybe all those saves made the official snapshort? nope; MLS doesn't do justice by saves anymore). After that little heroic miracle, the second half settled into the game I expected: long periods of the ball getting tangled among flailing legs and rushing players all over the middle of the field - think Hungry Hungry Hippos where the ball keeps bouncing off the front of the snapping mouths. Here and there throughout that period, Cincinnati exposed themselves with nervous giveaways to Nashville players (more later). They contained most of them (again, more later), just as Nashville contained most of Cincy’s escapes from the midfield scrum. Given that frenzy in the middle, seeing Nwobodo limp off early felt like a potential game-breaker, but the gravity of that battling chaos sucked everything back into itself. To make what could track as a “homer” read, I thought Cincinnati got over Nashville a little over the last 15-20 minutes of the game. Orellano pinged the crossbar off a deflection in the middle of all that, but it was a semi-hopeful ball over the top to (substitute) Corey Baird that handed Cincinnati a golden opportunity to take all three points. After playing a damn near perfect game – it was his man-bunned head that knocked Orellano’s shot to the crossbar – Zimmerman flapped the ball away with his left arm and sent Denkey to the spot. I hate the stutter-step approach, to the extent I believe it should be banned (goalkeepers have enough disadvantages on penalty kicks), but I loved the goal: Denkey beat Joe Willis on the kick and Cincy beat Nashville on the day, the end.

Nashville SC Scouting Report: Cincy's Third First Test of 2025

Walker Zimmerman, at pre-game meeting.

Over the weeks after it went up, Nashville SC seems to have made making me eat the somewhat dismissive Scouting Report I posted ahead of their Week 3 game against my Portland Timbers. They whooped the Timbers’ asses, of course, but some of the positives I flagged in my match report have come good. So, yeah, not totally useless. Let’s get into it…

Nashville SC
3-1-1, 10 pts., 8 gf, 3 ga (+5); home 2-0-1, away 1-1-0
Last Results: DLWWW
Strength/Location of Schedule
v NE (0-0 D); @ RBNY (0-2 L); v POR (2-0 W); @ PHI (3-1 W); v MTL (3-0 W)

Notes from the Field
In my defense, between their 2024 season and their first two games of 2025, Nashville didn’t give much reason to believe in them. Moreover, I don’t think anyone would have any reason to talk about them, never mind talk them up, if it weren’t for their cool as you like Week 4 win over the then-unbeaten Philadelphia Union. Three straight wins never looks bad, obviously, but beating Montreal doesn’t impresses anyone (their “loose slots” vibe sent Laurent Courtois to the unemployment line) and trust me when I say Portland is going through some shit - or was it the time (c'mon, lemme have it). Watching far too much of that Montreal game didn’t give me much you haven’t heard before – e.g., losing Walker Zimmerman in the area is bad, Nashville’s a strong defensive team, etc. – but the main takeaway there was Sam Surridge continuing a strong run of minutes that started with wreaking havoc against the Union. If Nashville can get the assist he teed up against Montreal and the goal he scored at Philly once even one-third as often, they’ll be better; Surridge becoming a reliable foil for Hany Mukhtar and Ahmed Qasem could take them all the way to competitive. The only other thing that jumped out over the 35+ minutes of that first half at Philly was how well Nashville handled one of MLS's better presses. They looked comfortable on the ball, both individually and as a team, and even pushed back after going up. The defense looked strong in both games (and versus Portland), but Zimmerman looking whole and imposing at the back tasks FC Cincinnati with battling the soccer equivalent of an ogre.

Nashville SC 2-0 Portland Timbers: March, or Something Darker?

You get weird shit searching "lion eats lamb."

Nothing says your local team is killing it quite like the broadcast booth doofus saying they “need this half-time whistle." And Nashville SC still had one more goal in them…

About the Game
I noted the Portland Timbers’ first competent breach Nashville’s defensive at the 35th minute in last night’s game. Also of note, the Timbers gave up two penalty kicks in half that time. It’s a hell, goddamn, ass miracle they lost just 0-2 yesterday. No less miraculously, and gods bless James Pantemis, neither of those penalty kicks resulted in a goal. Somewhat maddingly, Nashville didn't need either penalty kick to win the game. Firing at least 21 shots (with 11 on goal) does that for a team. On the same Official Stats page, I see that the Timbers’ fired four shots on goal and, after reviewing the highlights, I also know that half of those came softly off Antony’s shoe, so small wonder, etc. Nashville ran away with just about every attacking statistic and, whatever you think of xG as a concept, seeing theirs at almost eight times Portland’s passes the smell test…

…here I thought the Timbers had a chance at Nashville. Now, I’m just wondering about...things.

Nashville unnerved Portland early by playing balls over the top that put (mostly) Sam Surridge and Hany Mukhtar into a foot race with the Timbers CBs. One super-early one, we're talking just four minutes into the game, saw Finn Surman haul down Mukhtar before he could reach the box, and Zac McGraw shove over Surridge inside it. That was the first penalty, taken by Mukhtar, saved by Pantemis. They got a fair amount of mileage out of that direct attack through the first half, but their second penalty came when Ahmed Qasem slipped into the top left corner of the Timbers’ 18-yard box and Joao Ortiz made that the time to announce his presence with a shove under Qasem’s shoulder. The second penalty, taken by Surridge, and to the same damn spot for some reason, was also saved by Pantemis. Saved penalty kicks often lift a team. Meanwhile, back in Nashville...

Thus began the search for signs of coherence in Portland’s movement on and off the ball and I’m sad to report that the party never came back. Things improved slightly in the second half, notably after Phil Neville pulled Ortiz for Diego Chara (more on that later), but Nashville was already up one goal by then and the rest of game boiled down to them poking and prodding the soft spots in the Timbers’ defense. The goals came, of course, and the only thing that made Nashville’s goals remarkable were the failures that allowed them – e.g., after saving two penalties, how does Pantemis let Andy Najar’s tight-angled shot slip under him? And how much ball-watching does it take for Qasem to run right to left across the seam between Portland’s defense and midfield, before God and everyone, and still get a free, near-post header? Between those and the PKs, that’s four chances, at a minimum, straight-up handed to Nashville. (They left Walker Zimmerman free on a corner! I'm such a snitch!). After the second goal, there was nothing left after that, but the final whistle.