FC Cincinnati Weekly, Part I: Flooding a Sinking Ship

Thanks, Mary!

What was better: Evander’s snap strike from the right channel to open the scoring, or the ball he clipped through the closing window between Chicago’s Sam Rogers and Jeff Gal to set up Kevin Denkey’s tap-in?

Answers may vary according to taste, but both moments mattered in a game that turned on little moments of quality. (And the answer is the assist.) To quickly kick around what happened…

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Chicago Fire FC
Cincy had the Fire pinned into their half for the opening 10+ minutes. The weight of the siege didn’t translate to any great chances and Chicago ultimately broke out, first by a couple long balls, then by getting on the ball and playing out. The snap strike flagged above came in the 19th minute, a mere five minutes into the Fire’s revival, which left them chasing the game on top of finding the beat. The rest of the first half reflected those opening 10+ minutes like an elongated mirror: the Fire found more of the chances, with Hugo Cuypers running down a ball over the top and forcing a sprawling save out of Roman Celentano probably giving them their best, and things settled into a spirted, if controlled back and forth until the halftime whistle. Cincinnati put another length between them and the Fire with Denkey’s goal at the 50th minute – again, just an incredible pass by Evander (and didn’t this look a lot like one of the goals versus Orlando? Yep!) – which obliged Chicago to take another deep breath and kick a little harder. Philip Zinckernagel did pull one back at the 58th minute – decent goal, too – and with plenty of time left and the Fire dutifully fired away to the end. A lot of those came from range – maybe talk to Mauricio Pineda about patience – and those forced some further saves from Celentano. Set pieces, corner kicks in particular, caused their share of chaos, the ball touched the ground too many times, etc., but Cincy’s make-shift back three scrambled it away every time and various Fire players nodded the ball over the net every time they didn’t.

It wasn’t a dominant performance from Cincinnati, by any means, but still one I’m confident most fans will bless; with an “Ave Maria” thrown in for getting ahead in the Supporters’ Shield race. And I’m also sure Chicago wonders what might have been had anyone stepped to Evander at the 19th minute, but the final numbers tell a tale of a reasonably-balanced game between two teams separated by eight places and fourteen points in the Eastern Conference standings – which begs the question, what to make of Chicago?

FC Cincinnati 2-2 Atlanta United FC: Heroic Striving and Achilles Heels

This with a couple turds scattered on the floor.

Not what the doctor ordered, obviously, but the prognosis never looked wholly favorable either.

About the Game
Due to the way my day shook out (Mickey 17 was pretty good, fwiw), I watched the first half live but wouldn’t see how the game ended until last night. I did, however, know the final score before wrapping up; as such, I spent the final 15 minutes wondering how the hell Atlanta United FC tied FC Cincinnati at 2-2 by the final whistle. Can’t say I cared for the reveal, but, to start at the beginning…

Not much to report from that first half besides a lot of running, kicking, and a couple of yellow cards (who knew Yuya Kubo could tackle like that?). Both teams had players missing – Miguel Almiron (mainly) for Atlanta, versus about 90% of the regular starting center backs, plus Kevin Denkey for Cincinnati (thus answering the question of who had more arms tied behind their backs) – and that created more unfinished thoughts than chances on goal through most of the first half. Atlanta found more chances over the opening 45, and probably the best one, but Cincy forced more saves out of Brad Guzan (e.g., Nick Hagglund's header that got his arms flapping). Most of Atlanta’s pressure came with overlapping runs into their right channel, but Cincinnati’s back 3-5 cobbled together a defensive line and held it together well enough, cleaning up whatever Lucas Engel let through, with a likely assist from the 45 minutes Pat Noonan got out of Hagglund. If forced to name the big moment of the first half, I’d go Tristan Muyumba getting stretchered off around the 40th minute after doing an unnatural thing to his ankle. And yet, Cincy tinkered and toiled until they finally got a hold of the game a little before Muyumba's departure - Pavel Bucha gets my man of that moment for all the times he held the ball and kept them moving forward – and they carried that momentum into the second half. It didn't save them from giving up the first goal, sadly. Thanks to some collective switching off and a stolen thrown-in, Atlanta opened the scoring in the middle of all that with a run up (again) their right and a smart finish by Emanuel Latte Lath. The shock of falling behind appeared to hit Evander, in particular, personally, so he took over the game as only he can: tempting defenders into fouls in dangerous places and orchestrating runs up Atlanta’s gut, respectively. Cincy’s equalizer came from a 70th-minute free kick earned and scored by Evander (and assisted by a deflection), while their go-ahead goal came as a bow at the end of a waltz in the space between Atlanta’s midfield and defense. And, for the next 15 minutes, the Brazilian’s clever shot against the grain looked to have settled affairs between the two teams…but then Atlanta got to pillaging up their right again and Alvas Powell couldn’t stretch far enough to keep out yet another cross from Saba Lobjanidze. One own goal, two points lost. C’est la vie and at least Cincy scored three...

FC Cincinnati 2-0 Toronto FC: A Walk in the Park on Rotated Legs

Blue leg for Saturday, yellow for Tuesday.

It took a while, even a couple of shots at and physically-on goal (i.e., the ball hit the post), before FC Cincinnati finally took the lead in yesterday’s 2-0 home win over Toronto FC. The visitors only had a chance in the way a broken watch shows the right time twice a day – accidentally, and with a massive assist from the gods and circumstance.

About the Game
Yuya Kubo put a messy opening 30 minutes to rest when he kicked his own rebound off the post into the net behind TFC’s Sean Johnson. The goal didn’t stand – a foul before his first shot erased it – but the moment seemed to settle the nerves of a somewhat-rotated Cincy starting XI and steady them for the push. Toronto effectively pinned themselves into their own half for most of the game with wayward passes, naked giveaways, and a kind of pervasive disconnection that must keep Robin Fraser awake at night as he toys with novel ways to say, “this is not who we are.” The Reds had one shot better than jack-shit to show for (almost exactly) 45 minutes’ worth of soccer (the ref couldn’t watch anymore either), but Cincinnati didn’t have much more. Toronto showed some signs of life early in the second half, with a goal-mouth scramble just after the 50th minute counting as highwater mark (was their one shot on goal somewhere in there?), but “their identity” of hitting passes short ‘n’ wild continued. With their last line of defense keeping them in it, Pat Noonan decided to throw in some fresh ammo – most notably, Evander for Luca Orellano (more later) and DeAndre Yedlin coming in for young balding man, Lukas Engel – and the push resumed. Even if it took the ref four minutes and a trip to the VAR monitor to see, Cincy finally got the break they needed when Evander’s attempted cross quite visibly hit, then ran down the length of Tyrese Spicer’s left arm (see the highlights, somewhere; really wish they'd do pull-out highlights for a penalty call). When, at some length, the penalty was given, Kevin Denkey stepped up and made it look easy. While this can’t be proven conclusively (because what would it even look like?), Toronto was probably pushing for the equalizer when Evander picked the ball off of the try-harding feet of Federico Bernardeschi, dropped the ball to Yedlin, who found Sergio Santos, who found Pavel Bucha, who found Evander loitering wide on Cincy’s left, who clipped the ball to Kubo with nothing immediately between him and Sean Johnson’s goal. The game was over but for the time left after Kubo beat Johnson to the far post.

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Columbus Crew SC: The Tragedy of Alvas Powell

From googling "tickle palace."

I don’t know what to call that besides a game that leaves you muttering, “c’mon, not like this.”

Last night, FC Cincinnati ended the best season in its – and I want fans and pundits to linger on this next word – brief history with a devastated and dizzied 2-3 loss at Tickle Palace against its dread rival, Columbus Crew SC.

First and foremost, nothing hit the gut half as hard as the blunt fact that Columbus deserved the win. Outside 15 minutes somewhere during the first part of the second half (sorry, I work real estate law), Columbus ran at a Cincy defense that toggled between adjectives all night: sturdy grew to heroic, before a quick journey through desperate yielded to a word I slipped into the conversation above, i.e., dizzied. One of the twits in the broadcast booth called the Columbus’ first goal a turning point, but I’d argue that the second pointed to where the game would ultimately end up. The only question was whether Columbus could get there before the final whistle turned the game over to soccer’s infamous tiebreaker, aka, the test of wills we all call a coin-flip, aka, the penalty shoot-out.

Columbus beat the whistle, of course, and Cincy didn’t look any better on the third goal they allowed than they did on the second. Or the first, for that matter. They didn’t just get outplayed last night; Cincy got beat. Thinking about what that does for the rivalry is the only positive I can take from the loss…

…going the other way, how dim that fire burns against what could have been had Cincinnati won ugly on the back of Aaron Boupendza putting a little more mustard on his best shot of the night? Back in the real world, Patrick Schulte came good in that moment and, I think most observers would accept that justice was served. However much it hurt to send Timmy upstate…

On a purely personal, slightly petty level, I have a notepad full of tantalizing questions that just went to waste – e.g., do you start Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji in the MLS Cup that will never happen? Or, if Obinna Nwobodo can go, do you start him or do you honor continuity and Yuya Kubo’s (sturdy?) service over the past two, three games? And to what percentage of a Nwobodo does that answer apply.

All those questions just got kicked to 2024.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 Red Bull New York: How Many Is Too Many?

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.

Columbus Crew SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: The Thing Before the Thing You Worry About

Too much of this, honestly...

It wasn’t the result, or even the final score, so much as the manner of the defeat that made FC Cincinnati’s road to the end of the regular season looks a little longer yesterday...I mean, can we just call this thing, hand them the Supporters’ Shield and start the playoffs? (If not, why not?) Most signs pointed to a Columbus Crew SC win – i.e., they hosted, they're good at it/there, etc. Cincy’s more or less complete inability to affect the game? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe some guy at the back laid down $500 on Columbus’ 3-0 win, but I doubt that particular bet drew much action by the time the opening whistle blew.

Columbus opened the scoring early (15 minutes in) when all the work down the flanks paid off by prying open gaps in the middle. Credit to the Aidan Morris (who I will never underrate again) for the efficient, high-quality finish – seriously, think about how many times you’ve seen that same opening either blown or collapsed, or, more often, the ball sky over the bar – but more credit to the Crew collective for putting in the work that made that opening.

They took even less time to score the second – a (clean) penalty kick called for an Alvaro Barreal handball (justified, if harsh; not clear on how much he planned it and he didn’t gain much by it in any case; also, arrgggh, you'll have to consult the full highlights to see the fucking call) – but not much had changed between Columbus’ first goal and that 23rd minute moment. Columbus stuffed (at least) 75% of Cincinnati’s builds and Cincinnati stopped (approximately) none of Columbus’. The hosts played out of the back at will, not infrequently by having Steven Moreira just carry the ball out of the back and across one line after the other. They passed it out other times, mostly without bother, and that’s the first segue.

Cincinnati defended very, very passively...for most of the game, honestly, offering only a shaking fist’s worth of resistance to Columbus getting into their half. A counter-punching strategy isn’t a wild call against a team that likes to use the ball, but it does absolutely require, y’know, the counter-punch. Apart from a half-desperate foray in the fifth minute built between Luciano Acosta, Aaron Boupendza and Brandon Vazquez one strained individual effort at a time, Cincy struggled to land anything. They scratched out a couple more moments – Boupendza almost poked a wrong-footed shot (hold this thought!) past Columbus’ Patrick Schulte, but he didn’t put anything on it a stiff breeze couldn’t have and the Crew SC defense scrambled admirably, in waves even. Stats, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie.

Red Bull New York 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Tactics & Strategery

No, I can't explain the W references...

Sometimes I get strategy and tactics confused. It’s less a question of knowing what one word/concept means versus the other, so much as deciding where one meets the other on its way in the other direction.

I had a whole narrative banged out for this game. It had smart little sub-plots, intrigue between the characters, maybe even a touch of hubris. Then FC Cincinnati went and won the damn thing with a late goal by, yeah, I’ll say it, my favorite who likes to match orange & blue, Obinna Nwobodo. [Ed. - The Mothership didn't provide much for individual highlights, so you'll have to dig into the full ones if you want video on, say, the penalty calls.]

Cincy beat a rising(?) Red Bull New York team in its own house, but that’s not the important thing about this game; moreover, just naming Nwobodo opens up a path to talking about what happened in last night’s 2-1 win. [Ed. – Fuck me, man. Just spit out the final score.]

I did some preliminary research on the Red Bulls yesterday, stuff I chose not to post on the grounds that I was looking at it last night, Cincy played them last night, etc. Most of what I learned dealt with characteristics that simultaneously define and limit them as a team. Famously, they press, they play “energy drink soccer,” etc. But it’s also not that – and I have to credit Calen Carr for giving me the right thought process during RBNY’s stomping of Atlanta United FC a few weeks back. They don’t press so much as they try to dictate where on the field the game gets played; to borrow another phrase Carr uses all the time, “they tilt the field.” “Pressing” and “energy drink” soccer conjure mental images of players chasing ball and players like headless ‘roided-up greyhounds and that misses it; if you watch them, the move close to the ball, often at a walk, then they start with the chasing. They mind their Ps and Qs before setting the defensive posture to “MY BALL!”

That strategy (right?) worked very well through the first half. Cincinnati didn’t do much over the first 25 minutes of the game and they couldn't do anything for the next 20. New York (I know it’s New Jersey....just roll with it) got and scored their penalty at the beginning of that period – and, just to note, I wouldn’t have called that, letter of the law be damned; sure, Hagglund’s hand strayed to face, but Kyle Duncan wasn’t gonna make shit out of that, he didn’t really unbalance him, etc. – but they way they controlled the game struck me as more significant. Cincy barely got across the center-line until something like the 46th minute when they (don’t remember who) finally fired a decent shot from a quality chance on goal and, yes, I do think that’s how xG should work. (I’ve got issues all over...)

FC Cincinnati 2022 Season Review/Preview: Competence's Unexpected Dilemmas

The view from 2019-2021. Fucker looks massive.

I decided to park on a review of FC Cincinnati’s 2022 season for a variety of reasons – the choice to check out in mid-July among them (it’s possible my middle name, “Anders,” is Norwegian for “erratic”) – but not really knowing how to read their season-ending 0-1 loss to the now-MLS-Cup-bound Philadelphia Union played its part as well. In so many words, I understood Cincy had defied virtually every observer’s expectations, but couldn’t really place them in a league-wide context.

Seeing both Philadelphia and Los Angeles FC kick great lumps out of the opposition in their respective semifinals – though, just to note it, LAFC played a more one-way game – went some distance to filling in that blank. FC Cincinnati didn’t just have their best-ever season, they had a very good one. To lift a line out of Matt Doyle’s year-end review:

“’Everything from June 18 to Decision Day is the highlight’ also has an argument, as over that 20-game stretch, Cincy lost just twice. That’s the best of anybody in MLS.”

The bitter little boy who lives inside my head compels me to point out that 10 of those games ended as draws, a point Doyle concedes sotto voce when he notes that “Cincy dropped more points from leading positions this year than anyone but the Revs” (and is it just me or did five teams drop the most points from leading positions? I’ve read that stat somewhere for at least three teams). That bitter little boy missed a deeper truth that I thought I’d written at some point this season, but, because I can’t find it, here it is again: those ten draws meant that Cincinnati went toe-to-toe against all kinds of teams, six of them future playoff teams (including New York City FC), and gave away very little. Call that a long of saying that all those dropped points didn’t matter after Decision Day: what mattered was that Cincy showed they stood just as high as (literally) half the teams in Major League Soccer. And, when you’ve got that, getting into the playoffs amounts to having a chance in every game going forward. As Red Bull New York learned in the hardest of ways.

All that’s better than laudable. It’s beautiful, especially given the dark slapstick that came before. From there, the question becomes how to get better in 2023.

FC Cincinnati Preview: Bring Your Running Shoes, the Good Ones

Lace 'em tight, stay frosty.

Club du Foot Montreal have a new crest (eh), and a solid run over the past 10 games, going 6-2-2 and against reasonably spry opposition. They lost a step on the back end of the 10, going 3-2-0; fwiw, they got home wins over Atlanta and Orlando, plus one on the road over Charlotte, but they lost away to Nashville…and then at home last weekend against Real Salt Lake. And one can make a reasonable argument that RSL outplayed them. So…what looms largest, a 6-2-2 recent record or the one oddball loss that goes against it?

I’ll start with this: Montreal doesn’t run the tightest ship at the back. They’ve allowed at least one goal in every game except that win over Charlotte. They’ve also scored above the league average (which I put at 17.5; Montreal has 24), which makes me think FC Cincinnati has another track meet on tap for this weekend. That’s not unusual for these Montreal v Cincy: they played to a 4-3 game with Cincinnati at home and on the losing end, which repeated another game in 2021, when they played the same venue (right?) with the Orange and Blue coming out at the wrong end of a 5-4 final score.

That’s the past, because a couple things have changed since even that last meeting – e.g., the arrival of Obinna Nwodobo and a fully-functioning midfield (with Junior Moreno). So, first question: can Cincinnati’s overall defensive shape/personnel keep Montreal to one or zero goals? I lean toward yes, but with some caveats and caution signs. Montreal has some sharp players working the width/channels – e.g., Djordje Mihailovic (assuming he’s not gone yet…The Mothership is behind on the availability info) and Lassi Lappalainen on their left and Alistair Johnston and Joaquin Torres on the right – and they spread the field nicely and play into the internal channels or to the far post according to the space they have. It’s a decent system, even if RSL bottled it up pretty nicely.

Against that methodology, the way Cincy plays its fullbacks – I assume Pat Noonan goes Alvas Powell and John Nelson again – looms larger than normal (also relevant: I think I say this every time). I hope they go a little conservative, at least on one side, and rely more on the fullbacks playing into Moreno and Nwobodo then out to Dominique Badji and (again, I assume) Alvaro Barreal, respectively, to work the ball up the field. I don’t mind either fullback taking chances once the ball is high, but hope they don’t hand Montreal any gifts, especially breaks behind the fullbacks inside Cincy's half. It’s not that Montreal can’t push up the gut, and Victor Wanyama does make his share of late runs to the top of the area, but he mostly seems to sit deep and coordinate, with the forward momentum happening on either side of him. That said, Montreal can change that up by calling in Kei Kamara, King of Journeymen, to act as a battering ram later in the game; that’s against Romell Quioto, who strikes me as just another guy they play into space.

Toronto FC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: I Have Seen Your Product And I'd Like to Purchase It

A visual of the game plan.

When Toronto FC started catching up to FC Cincinnati’s mildly auspicious start, I’ll confess to it: yes, I started to doubt the program again. Watching them pass through Cincy one line at a time over and over made them look likelier to take charge and, as the minutes passed, put increasing pressure of Cincinnati’s…let’s call it non-ideal center back pairing of Ian Murphy and Nick Hagglund.

And then, like a script from one of those Hollywood movies, a good one like Rudy, Hagglund and Murphy combined to put FC Cincinnati up 1-0 just before the ref’s whistle called the end of the first half.

With that in mind, you start to re-think what you watched in the second half: the palpable disappointment from Toronto’s broadcast booth gets louder - “they got to play faster,” they said, “they’re not moving Cincinnati’s defenders around enough” - and, little by little (only in the opposite direction), it dawns on you that Cincy just managed the first half of a road game, and well enough that Toronto’s attack - which had averaged 2.6 goals per game in the five games prior (said average got a bump last weekend, fwiw) - rarely got close enough to apply pressure on Murphy and Hagglund. (And then you wake up the next morning to watch the highlights, because you’re not sure if you forgot something, and that confirms the above - e.g., that Toronto only fired a couple of shots from range in that first half). And then the second half started…

Toronto’s sloppiness hurt them throughout the first half; every ball that slipped behind a smart run slowed them down and allowed Cincinnati time to get that usefully spongy defense stacked right. The problem started at their back-line, particularly in the person of Carlos Salcedo…and have I mentioned that Toronto’s Chris Mavinga limped off in the middle of the first half, because that might be relevant. At any rate and early in the second half, one of Salcedo’s stray passes rolled over the touch-line in Toronto’s defensive third. It didn’t seem like a big deal, even after Cincinnati’s Alvas Powell set up for a long throw because and, you know, how often do those work? Then, lo and behold (and who’d they pay to make it happen?), Powell’s throw-in looped over the heads of two, three Toronto defenders and falls straight to the foot of Luciano Acosta. One second and two touches later, the ball bulged the side of Alex Bono’s net. 2-0 Cincinnati.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 Los Angeles FC: Trying on Rose-Colored Glasses

FC Cincinnati at home, artist's rendering.

FC Cincinnati 3-4 Club du Foot Montreal: Look, Maybe Take a Week Off and Come Back After...

I couldn’t put FC Cincinnati’s 4-3 loss to Club du Foot Montreal at the Big Tickle to into words, but I think the image gets to the self-defeating spirit of what some of you poor bastards paid to see live.

Looking at the numbers seems like a waste of time, even though I know I’m gonna do it - also, don’t do it, it just makes it worse - but I think the better exercise comes with marching through the parade of “what the fuck” the led to each of Montreal’s goals.

Goale the Firste: With Luciano Acosta facing upfield, Yuya Kubo peels off Djordje Mihailovic to double-team(?) Kamal Miller on (Cincy’s right touch-line), which leaves Mihailovic isolated against Nick Hagglund, never the best idea. Geoff Cameron then peels off to defend…with Tyler Blackett picking up Kei Kamara, though there are two more Montreal defenders lurking in the area. Mihailovic cuts inside Hagglund and loops the ball around Cameron, who steps forward and opens up Alec Kann’s back-post. Bad.

Goale the Seconde: Acosta drops the ball to Kubo, who has (about) 10 feet of space all around him, and Kubo chooses to dribble forward (instead of, y’know, passing the ball; related, I have a still of Alvas Powell tossing up his hands in frustration right as the turnover happens (about 0:05 in on the clip). He’s gotten away with that all season, but this time his touch carries too close to Montreal’s Victor Wanyama, who steps past Cameron’s challenge and finds Kei Kamara to his left. At this point, at least four Cincy defenders collapse toward Kamara and Wanyama on the (/Cincy’s) right, including Kubo, who was aware of Mihailovic, but lost him in that moment, and Mihailovic passes home from about 13-14 yards out. Bad, but also the beginning of a theme.

Goale the Thirde: Montreal breaks Cincy’s press by spreading the field and, after the home team thwarts Montreal right back, Alistair Johnson’s run, the ball bounces back to Wanyama who has all the freedom in the world to dream of possibilities. He lofts a ball between Blackett and Cameron, both of whom have lost track of Kamara, which sends the grey eminence of Montreal alone on goal with all three center backs chasing. They do not win. Kamara slots in Montreal’s third to Kann’s right/the far post.

FC Cincinnati 3-1 Inter Miami FC: Shit, I Underwrote My Theme...

Junior Moreno, artist's rendering.

Here I’ve been posting twitter threads that double as game summaries since the pandemic started (at least) and I never thought to just link to the fucking things. In fairness, that’s more color commentary than summary - and the notes come at what I consider appropriate intervals (i.e., I’m very much a one-dude-in-the-broadcast-booth man) - but it flags every goal, notes some broader trends and even mentions the shirtless dude in the crowd with the great state of Ohio tattooed on the skin above his beating heart.

Now, to flesh that out a little…or a lot.

FC Cincinnati started the game as well as Inter Miami CF started it badly. They stopped everything headed toward their goal before it breached their defensive third - if with a massive assist from a globally sloppy Miami team - and piled on pressure with sharp passes and a selection of first touches and shake-‘n’-shimmies that kept the ball rolling toward Miami’s goal. Whether on coach’s orders or from a bout of the jitters, the visitors let Cincy play, only really trying to pressure the ball when it rolled into their defensive third. With the home team more or less camped inside Miami’s half, that proved disastrous: Cincinnati generally only had to go as far back as the impressively effective Yuya Kubo (who added a wrinkle with a shot on goal!) and Cincy’s new stealth-fighter No. 6, Junior Moreno, who would then feed it either to Luciano Acosta, one of the forwards (Brandon Vazquez or Dominique Badji), or Alvas Powell high on the right, or Ronald Matarrita high on the left.

Given how mightily Miami struggles to score - they’ve scored just two goals over four(!?) games, with one coming from the spot (today) - Cincy effectively won the game over the first 25 minutes. Their first goal featured a lot some of the good, good things I noted above - e.g., Badji showing to receive the ball, but instead turning and letting the ball run toward goal, poking it to Acosta, who found a wide-open (this is a theme) Vazquez running up Cincy’s right. With the fullback playing to contain, Vazquez pulled up, stepped inside and scanned for the third pass, who happened to be Matarrita, who passed home the goal from the far post. Miami’s shape was a disaster, both d-mids had stepped to Badji, leaving Acosta free to run with space in front of him and Vazquez all alone.

Cincy’s second goal followed the other half of the script noted above. After making a pinned-in Miami chase around the right for a couple passes, the ball went back to Kubo, who cycled the ball to Tyler Blackett (yeah, yeah, the ball went further back), who found - again, a wide-open Matarrita, who was able to pick out Vazquez as cleanly as the latter had done for the former just six minutes earlier. In short, a low-scoring Inter Miami found themselves down 0-2 by letting too much happen around them. They showed too much respect to one of MLS’s historically bad sides.

Orlando City SC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: With a Nod to a Hero of the Salem Witch Trials

Translated to the modern idiom, "eat shit, prudes."

Had you asked me to pick the game FC Cincinnati would win from its first three, I would have picked away to Orlando City SC last. Had you told me they won it courtesy of a Brandon Vazquez brace, I would have asked for a taste of whatever you were on at the time of asking.

Chase the doubts and disbelief away because, I’ll be damned if FC Cincy didn’t roll into central Florida and win its first game of 2022. The game ended 2-1 and, numbers be damned, I thought they looked all right doing it. That’s to say, forget stats like possession and passing accuracy, look beyond Cincy’s thin passing network with its faintness of some far-off constellation, and scroll all the way to the bottom of The Mothership’s stats page to drink in the one number that gives a fair read of the game as it played out, the xG data.

In terms of timeline, Cincy stunned Orlando a mere 13 minutes into the game when Vazquez, a man not renowned for finishing his chances, buried a tidy li’l chip into the right corner of Pedro Gallese’s net. With the wake-up call duly delivered, Orlando proceeded to pile pressure on every available side of Cincinnati’s 18 yard box. The chiseling finally broke through the walls 30 minutes later when Orlando’s Junior Urso charged buck-naked onto a Facundo Torres cross to Cincy’s back-post at which point, I, like everyone who wishes Cincinnati health and happiness, commenced to listening desperately for the first-half whistle. The game, in short, had threatened to get away from Cincinnati.

After watching the way Orlando had a rich tapestry of ways to threaten the side fringes of Cincinnati’s 18-yard box, Cincy’s newbie head coach, Pat Noonan, made some adjustments to the defensive shape. On came Isaac Atanga to take up the right (left?) side of the three in a 4-2-3-1 and back went…I’d say fullback Ian Murphy (who several faulted to Orlando’s goal) more than Alvas Powell, into the four-man defense to better defend said side fringes. And then, somewhere between out of the pale blue sky and before all that had time to settle, Yuya Kubo sent newly-minted winger Dominique Badji into a foot-race against Orlando’s left back Ruan; Badji shouldered him off the ball (and to the ground), turned the ball inside behind Orlando’s defense and, effectively, ricocheted his cross off Vazquez’s head.

FC Cincinnati 0-1 DC United: That Unfamiliar Familiar Sting

This, but maybe with the left hand.

90 minutes with a hard kick to the balls at the end. That’s my dozen-word description of FC Cincinnati’s slow-death 0-1 loss to DC United at TQL Stadium.

After absorbing an early onslaught - and high-five to Tyler Blackett for nodding out a sure goal - Cincy got hold of the game in a way I either haven’t seen or can’t recall since gods know when. And that’s the real hairy bitch about the whole situation: today’s (comparatively) glorious effort came just one week after a season opener where it looked like just about everything surprised them one way or the other. Today, though, Cincy didn’t just connect the odd pass or three; they built sequences that knocked DC from the front-foot to the back in the blink of an eye. Sweet transition, baby. I’d direct any FC Cincy fan casting about for something to hold onto after a game that felt like a betrayal to the fact that they created actual, full chances in open play. That beats the hell out of trying to squeeze a ball through that familiar, rapidly-closing window Cincinnati fans knows so well. That’s not even the best thing that happened today.

Miracle of miracles, Cincinnati fielded a fully-functional midfield today, one that, as I saw it, actually controlled the midfield space. Credit newcomer Junior Moreno and Yuya “Mr. Plug-‘n’-Play” Kubo for putting in a pair of damn good shifts (and hold that thought), and (probably) Pat Noonan (or his shadow-master, Dominic Kinnear) for sorting out a better set-up, I only know it was refreshing to see an adjustment - any adjustment - pan out into anything besides fresh disaster. Kubo, in particular, looked like an entirely new player; he kept his work-rate dizzyingly high, but he looked totally different going forward, as if he understood where to find space and where to find, whether by turning into it on the dribble (the man got away with a scandalous number of spins today) or passing usefully out of it. All in all, Kubo did a helluva job getting the ball out of defense and into the attack - and I think that was the reason why Cincy’s transition game worked today…not that it mattered.

The passing improved all over and, better, just about every man dressed in orange looked like a full, dues-paying professional soccer player out there today. And yet, it wasn't enough. Cincy's best stuff came during the game’s first 50 minutes or so (dammit), all the way down to the butter-slick goal they scored just after the 20th minute, even if it got (rightly) called back for offside…ah, Brandon Vazquez, he does it wrong even when he does it right. My best guess is that DC worked out where or how to stall Cincy’s transition game at half-time, a shift that allowed them to shift the action toward the middle of the field and away from their own goal. Prior to…whatever happened around the 50th minute, other new arrival, Dominique Badji, either got or found some real quality looks at goal - just by smart runs, too, and he should have scored one of the two truly good ones he had - while fellow-frontrunner Vazquez chipped in with a handful of half-/quarter-chances. Now, brace yourself, because things get darker from here on out…

A Premature 2022 FC Cincinnati Preview: Because I Can't Watch the Preseason Games

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought the choice was about kids?

FC Cincinnati have hired and fired three coaches in as many seasons, not counting the two interim coaches - Yoann Damet and, just last season, Tyrone Marshall - they sacrificed to appease the Soccer Gods who had clearly cursed them. Ron Jans struck me as the most competent, but he turned out to have the social skills of a man born 50 years earlier, and not one of the bright ones, and that became his legacy. With the others, I'd like to entertain the reverse of a thought experiment: I wonder what either Alan Koch or Jaap Stam could do with a better roster - i.e., one not built on a philosophy that parallels a Supermarket Sweep shopping spree of just grabbing shit in a half-conscious panic.

FC Cincy have also tried swinging big on designated players (DP), and at a clip of about two per season during their time in Major League Soccer. The 2020 crop - Jurgen Locadia and Yuya Kubo - was particularly disastrous, even if that only applies to the latter based on what he was hired to do (i.e., generate offense). Luciano Acosta and Brenner Souza da Silva made up Cincinnati’s latest DP class and, even if didn’t mean much to the team’s fortunes writ large, both Acosta and Brenner will almost certainly unseat the current all-time leading scorer, and 2019 DP, Allan Cruz, a couple weeks into 2022. That record, by the way? Nine goals. Nine. Still, trending up every so slightly beats flatlining.

Flatlining describes FC Cincinnati’s history in MLS as well as any word. The phrase “wooden spoon” got thrown at them at the end of every season they’ve spent in the top flight, but it takes surfacing some blunt numbers gets at how hard. Cincinnati has won just...14 games over 2 2/3 season (the 2/3 comes from 2020, when they played just 23 games). That's just north of 15% of the time...ouch, and that earned them a total of 60 points. For perspective, three teams either tied or topped that “haul” in 2021 alone (the Colorado Rapids, the Seattle Sounders and, of course, the record-setting New England Revolution). I’ve obsessed/marveled over their repeated runs at all the wrong single-season records enough that I won't do it again here, but the cold, hard reality is that you can’t dig into Cincinnati’s numbers without hitting a sewer line. While you're down there, here's another one: would you believe Cincinnati produced its worst points per game total (0.59, people) just last season? Hence the point about Brenner, Acosta and fortunes writ large.

FC Cincinnati, in the Ass Crack Between '21 and '22

FC Cincinnati, the stuff of mythology.

In preparing this post, I tried to sort out the rules around the 2021 Re-Entry Draft, but lost interest in just a couple minutes. One third of that impulse came from boredom with over-technical bullshit, but the list of FC Cincinnati players who are either out of contract, or who did not have their contract options picked up another third:

Options Declined (for now, I think?)
Edgar Castillo
Chris Duvall
Jonas Fjeldberg
Avionne Flanagan
Joseph-Claude Gyau
Nick Hagglund
Ben Lundt
Caleb Stanko
Przemyslaw Tyton

Out of Contract
Haris Medunjanin
Florian Valot
Maikel van der Werff

The other third of me checking out follows from essential fatalism - i.e., accepting things over which I have no control, e.g., rosters of the teams I love and follow - but, to the point at hand, the word “irreplaceable” does not cross my mind when I review that list. Moreover, I don’t even know who Fjeldberg or Flanagan are, the latter sounds made up to the point I’m not even sure he really exists, and, turning to more existential questions, can one miss something that one has never seen? Bottom line - and I say this with zero malice toward anyone on that list, and affection for a couple - all those players file under too old, too injured, or somewhere south of what’s needed for the heavy, seemingly-eternal lift of getting FC Cincy out of its three-year wallow in the gutter.

Ideally, though, some or all those players going will make room for new players to come in. A review of what’s left of Cincinnati’s roster as of today’s speaks to the need, but, call me lazy (ignore the post/thoughts, etc.), I’m not inclined to sort out options beyond bare, non-financial numbers, and here are those: at time of writing, Cincinnati has six senior roster spots open, one spot for Supplemental Slots 21-14, two for 25-28, and one more for 29-30. So, if I’m understanding the rules right, that’s grand total of 11 potential new players. Only, it’s not: the return of Alvas Powell makes it ten and it could be as few as nine if the twitter rumors around Dominique Badji translate into him signing. Based on the numbers from the MLS Players’ Association 2021 MLS Player Salaries data-dump, it looks like Powell can come in as a Supplemental Slot 21-24 player, while Badji, assuming he does come in, will occupy a senior spot. Alec Kann already shows up on Cincy’s roster as a senior player, so, assuming I have all of that right (or will be shortly), that leaves Cincinnati with:

MLS Off-Season Weekly: Comings, Goings, Expansion

A statement on one team I follow...

“If you take the best part of Europe and the best part of North America, you’re arriving in Montreal.”
- Thierry Henry

I think I spoke my little piece about Henry coming to coach L’Impact Montreal (wait, see, and hope for the best), but the man knows how to work a crowd. For what it’s worth, seeing Montreal pick up Ignacio Piatti’s option for another year, at age 35 (come April) and after he limped all the way through 2019.

That, of course, was one of hundreds, even millions of moves in a week that started with the Expansion Draft and ended with roster deadline day. Teams across Major League Soccer protected the players they wanted to keep and sent the rest out to play in the rain for a while where strangers can line up to gawk at them, maybe even make an indecent proposal or two. Some trades went on under all that, and some players stepped into the square work-force (aka, retired). I’ll touch on some big picture stuff at the end – e.g., notes on the first drafts turned in by Nashville SC and Inter Miami CF, then some stray notes about the house-cleaning, etc. – but the balance of this will talk about the two teams I follow, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers. I’m going to start with Portland, because the tea leaves around Cincinnati all over the goddamn place, even outside the damn tea cup.

Before getting to that, I want to restate/rename a personal rule that I try to follow when new players come into a team: you cannot know how well or poorly any new player will do in MLS until they do it, and that’s regardless of how much your team paid for the player, or where that player was before. I hereby rename this the "Brian Fernandez Rule." Got it? Good. Time to dig in.

Timbers: Special Friends, Coming and Going
First, the Timbers signed a 27-year-old Croatian centerback named Dario Zuparic, and they might sign a 20-year-old Venezuelan right back named Pablo Bonilla. I predict neither success nor failure for either player (two Brian Fernandezes), but I will say that I expect more of Zuparic. He’s actually signed, obviously, but Portland needs either stability or an upgrade at his position (please?) and it’s always encouraging to see a steady history of deployment (e.g., 88 starts, 97 appearances, out of ~152+ games for Pescara). If the Timbers do sign Bonilla, I’d set expectations to emotional self-preservation – especially for 2020 – because the youth revolution rolls slowly in Portland. Still, he’d fulfill a need as well…let the mourning begin…

Colorado Rapids 3-1 FC Cincinnati: Putting Together a Puzzle with a Hammer

The hammer is the puzzle...whoa....

Was it nice to dream that FC Cincinnati could rescue a draw after Kekuta Manneh’s split-second equalizer, even for the minute it took for Nicolas Mezquida to slip a go-ahead goal under Spencer Richey’s arm-pit? Or was that more like someone pointing over your shoulder and yelling “Oh my God, that is the best thing I’ve ever seen!” before kicking you in the balls when you turned to look?

The Colorado Rapids would go on to score one more sloppy goal on the way to a 3-1 win over FC Cincy in the Rockies. With that, a bad streak gets one game longer and Cincinnati fans’ collective nausea at the impotency of its attack rises a little higher up the throat. It’s easy to take a walk with despair, given that fact pattern, but let me see if I can’t scrape a couple positives out of Interim Head Coach Bowl (aka, yesterday’s game…Yohan Damet and Conor Casey…right?).

Cincinnati held a solid edge in possession – damn close to 60/40 – and they impressed both me and Marcelo Balboa (who couldn’t stop talking up Cincinnati’s bravery for playing out of the back) with their composure playing between the defense and midfield…it’s just what happens when they get closer to goal. A moment early in the first half encapsulates FC Cincy’s biggest weakness. They got the ball around the Rapids’ left around the 13th minute and had the chance to play a ball into the area with the Rapids scrambling; sadly, all of Cincinnati’s players ran to more or less the same spot – at or about the penalty spot – and a lot of crowding and tripping over dicks ensued. Not surprisingly, that didn't make the highlights. In fact, the runs Colorado’s players made on their first goal late in the half provides an extremely useful contrast – e.g., see how Kei Kamara’s near-post run cleared space for Andre Shinyashiki’s shot? That’s what happens when you put players who understand that role in that role. Getting the final ball right is every bit as much about runs as it is about the quality of the passes that feed them.

To draw the obvious contrast, I see two “pure” attacking players for Cincy in yesterday’s starting XI: Fanendo Adi (who…I’ll get to it) and Roland Lamah. After that…is Allan Cruz an attacking player? Is Frankie Amaya? I’m on, I don’t think so and wait for it(?), respectively, but how does that flaccid attack play against reasonable expectations of the roster FC Cincinnati built? To (finally) go back to the positives, one of them lurks in the penumbra of the last two paragraphs: FC Cincinnati has decent pieces on the parts of the field where they have the right personnel in the right position. They looked fine knocking the ball around and out of the back, even when Colorado pressed them a little, precisely because the players they had in those roles are where they should be and know what they’re doing in those roles/ places. To flip the argument, it’s the lack of proper personnel where they need them that hurts them.

FC Cincinnati 0-2 New York Red Bulls: Counting the Hands on Deck (on One Hand)

(The woman at the back senses what you're all thinking...)

I plan to start and end on the same talking point – i.e., questions personnel. First, what can a team do when its heretofore most reliable player makes a catastrophic mistake? FC Cincinnati’s shot at three points went out the door when Kaku found the ball that Mathieu Deplagne lost between his legs (dude. look down.) and slotted it past Spencer Richey. That wasn’t the only decisive moment yesterday – think what might have been had Luis Robles got a little less hand to Fanendo Adi’s header – but it came late enough in the game, and with things rolling fast enough downhill, for Cincinnati to rescue Deplagne’s error. Again, that’s one of your more reliable players…

‘Twas an ugly game, one that ultimately ended in a 2-0 loss for FC Cincinnati. The New York Red Bulls scored a second goal (1 + 1 = 2!), but that was just a little dunking that made the game read a little more lopsided than it should have. The Red Bulls were visibly the better, more talented team but that translated more to moving the ball forward than chance creation. Cincinnati created more shots – e.g., Adi had (and failed) a one-on-one test of his own – and that made this a game that could have ended either way…but you’ll have to move to an alternate universe if you want a happy ending…you think Alan Koch still coaches in that universe? (Nah…)

There isn’t a lot to analyze after that. New York tends to turn games ugly, and that bogged down large chunks of the game in a series of close-quarter wrestling matches over the ball. It wasn’t a permanent neutral, but neither team passed well (or often, for that matter) – which is to say, the Red Bulls have nothing to gloat about (and this performance makes me want to dial back talk of escape velocity for them; New York is grinding out wins, not designing them). They put two shots on goal and both of them went in, end of story. Before that point, they wandered aimlessly in the attacking wastes and survived the odd scare from Cincinnati…hold on…

I want to pause to bitch about the utility of the shots/shots on goal stat. At some point in the second half – a moment The Mothership didn’t think to add to the highlight reel – Adi and Roland Lamah combined on a solo raid that ended with Lamah getting the ball inside the Red Bulls’ penalty area. New York shut down his first look, but Lamah spun out of it and got free for a shot. He missed, obviously, and the ball rolled wide of the whole damn net. Still, that was, 1) a good chance, and 2) one of the worst looks for New York’s defense all night. And yet, according to the numbers, one of Cincy’s best chances shows up as one of its six shots off target, more fuck up than opportunity, and that's backwards.