FC Cincinnati 1-0 New York City FC, a Hot Date in Philly & A Saucy Spin 'Round the East

Too heavy for you, FRIEND?!

As I was thinking about everything to what’s on my mind to the late timing of this post, I decided to put up the FC Cincinnati post first. If nothing else, the weekend complicated their shit more than anything in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference affected the Portland Timbers.

This post also counts as my first stab at a new format/concept. On the most basic level, it involves: 1) kicking around (or just kicking) FC Cincy’s most recent result; 2) checking in on the team Cincy plays next, in this case the Philadelphia Union, and 3) taking a quick tour around the relevant parts of the Eastern Conference for perspective on the grand scheme. As for what you can expect, more style than substance, for starters, and leaning into what I’d call, for lack of a better word, riffing. Why? This is supposed to be fun, dammit. Moving on to something that wasn’t fun…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 New York City FC
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
A classic example of one of those goddamn games where your local team’s stumbles leave the proverbial door open for the opposition. In a game that found too few, NYCFC found/built the better chances – up to and including coming within a touch or two of waking the ball into the back of the net at the 76th minute (has to be in here, right?). Cincy’s attack looked anxious and flummoxed, never looked wholly connected and, in the earliest part of the game, got short-circuited by one too many impatient shots from range by Evander. To his credit, he put a tricky one on goal somewhere in the mid-20s(?), but even that effort didn’t do more than build the pile of hopeful shots on shot higher.

NYC didn’t create much more – neither team did – but they made the most out of their four shots on goal (all arguably bested by Hannes Wolf’s shot off the post). And yet, it still took a defense-wide gaffe by Cincy to clear the path for Alonso Martinez’s winner – e.g., Matt Miazga got pulled miles left (for some goddamn reason), he forced Nick Hagglund to come across when he played a soft pass out of a press, and that opened the entire right half of the field to one of The-Men-Most-Likely-to-Break-a-High-Line in all of MLS. Maybe mistakes were made in the chase, maybe Roman Celentano should have come out (gods only know how many demons live up Miazga’s ass), but the footrace was over before it started and, when you get right down to it, good defending means never having to make hard choices.

New York City FC 1-0 FC Cincinnati: The Many, Grace-Given Misses of Alonso Martinez

Alonso Martinez's afternoon, a visual.

FC Cincinnati has managed to stay one goal ahead of the opposition for the past month or so. That was always going to come to an end, of course – people change, hairstyles change, dog people wake up one day and realize they’re cat people, etc. – but Cincy was damned lucky to not lose in a blow out yesterday. New York City FC gave them a taste of their own medicine with a 1-0 win in the shitbox disgrace of a stadium they call home and I’m sure it tasted just as bitter.

About the Game, Briefly
It’s not often I find the lineup presented at the top of the broadcast – half of ‘em feel like misdirection from the head coach, honestly – but NYCFC’s attacking shape looked closer to the 3-2-4-1 than it did to the 4-3-3 shown in the official match report. Keeping all those players high served the familiar purpose of stifling Cincy’s build-out – which was huge – and having players closer to their goal to exploit any turnovers. One direct effect, aka, the huge one, was pinning both DeAndre Yedlin and Lukas Engel against their respective sidelines and cut off their outlets into the middle (hold this thought*). It took Cincy 20-25 minutes to sort out playing through it – they had their first coordinated break-out around the 30th minute (Luca Orellano missed) – or the loosening of NYC’s noose simply coincided with Keaton Parks limping off, but it proved too little, too late. The hosts had already found two quality looks within the first six minutes and it didn’t even take them 10 minutes to open the scoring. The pervasive role luck plays in goal-scoring is one of the more under-appreciated aspects of the game – e.g., it took (think it was) Miles Robinson’s feeble toe-picked “clearance” to steer the ball into the path of Julian Fernandez, who tucked the ball into the lower right corner of Roman Celetano’s – but the first half of the game saw New York make enough of its own luck to export it to abroad. The final stats erase that a bit, but it took (at least) 20 minutes for Cincy’s defense to get a handle on Andres Perea’s back-post runs and Alonso Martinez’ missed penalty kick at the 12th minute was the first of, gods, three(? four?) clear-cut-to-the-point-of-gilded opportunities he got. (To see the overstuffed catalog, kindly reference the full highlights.) If I had to guess at how NYCFC got that many trips to the same well, I’d put money on Pascal Jansen keeping Martinez close to Matt Miazga and putting them in as many foot races as he could; that led to the penalty call, if nothing else.

New York City FC Scouting Report: A Simple Matter of Overcoming Test Anxiety

You got this, bro(s)!

This feels like the first real test for FC Cincinnati in a while…even if it doesn’t look as tough – or as fun – as it used to. Is it just me, or did Cincy and New York City FC play some wild ones around the time Cincy got their shit together?

I’d look into it, but MLSSoccer.com has been stripped for parts to push people to their shitty app. I will never let this go...

Starting with the basics…

New York City FC
4-4-2, 11 pts., 12 gf, 13 ga (-1); home 3-1-0, away 1-3-2
Last...huh, 8 Results: WWDLLWLW
Strength/Location of Schedule
ORL (2-1 W); v NE (2-1 W); @ CLB (0-0 D); @ ATL (3-4 L); v MIN (1-2 L); v PHI (1-0 W); @ NE (0-2 L); @ TFC (1-0 W)

If anything made NYCFC a reliably competitive team through its best seasons, it was defense. They weren’t much better than average defensively in 2024 and merely occupy the mushy middle in that category this season. But for the fact they average just over a goal for per game (1.2), just over a goal allowed per game (1.3) wouldn’t be so bad, but that combo only makes them good enough for ninth in MLS’s Eastern Conference. One team constant for them did carry over: NYCFC get results in the vast, misshapen stadium they call home - and there lies Cincinnati’s greatest challenge. I don’t know much about their new-to-2024 Dutch head coach, Pascal Jansen, but he put in about eight years in the Eredivisie (or thereabouts; don’t know what Jong PSV is, doesn’t feel enormously important; cool detail about his mom in his bio, tho), and spent 2024 coaching Hungary’s Ferencvaros. More germane to the here and now, Jansen typically goes with a 4-3-3 and the guys he started against both Philly (in NYC) and Toronto (in Toronto) look like the early 2025 version of Plan A. That starting set includes some quality personnel – e.g., Thiago Martins in central defense (think he's shaved off a couple goals, fwiw), Keaton Parks as a ball-winning two-way player and Golden-Boot chaser, Alonso Martinez (six goals, so far) – but I like to hold up the newly-embiggened Justin Haak as a talisman for what NYCFC both has and lacks. Think more drilled competence than game-changing excellence. Something else I can’t shake: how is Maxi Moralez still starting for this team when he was “getting up there” in 2021? Rounding out the regulars, they’re getting decent early production out of Hannes Wolf, who kind of lingers on the sides behind the leading edge of the attack, and they have decent, if under-productive wing/fullbacks in Kevin O’Toole (reliably on the left) and whomever starts between Mitja Ilenic and Tayvon Gray. None of the players mentioned have produced a noteworthy number of assists – something that made sense as I watched them.