FC Cincinnati 0-1 Philadelphia Union: Is It a Slip When You're Shoved(?) & A Whip Around the East

What Pavel Bucha was up against...

Why don’t you love your home, FC Cincinnati? So much love in the stadium, so little love on the field.

On the plus side, it hurt more coming than it did going – i.e., not all’s lost, even as the Supporters’ Shield looks further away than it did Saturday morning – because, with one nerve-racking exception, a couple results broke Cincy’s way this weekend and, in another lane, one spoiled team’s morale took a vicious shot to the pills. With next weekend off (it’s another damn international break, isn’t it?) and a little time to kill today, I decided to take a broader look at the Eastern Conference as the regular season rounds into the stretch. Sadly, the chances at a photo finish atop the conference dropped a bit, due to…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 Philadelphia Union
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
In a game that moved 15% faster than every other one played this last weekend (made that up, but stick with me), Cincinnati spent too much of it struggling to keep up. The Union ran them over in midfield – Pavel Bucha, in particular, got mobbed like the freakin’ Beatles circa ’64 every time he so much as glanced the ball – and that kept the weight of the game leaning against Cincy’s back four-to-six. Anyone who checked just the score and final stats would walk away with a different impression – for all I know, a majority of Cincinnati fans might agree with them – but, for me, it was the visitors who signed their name on this statement game. If they scored the beautiful game by who won the most 50/50s, Philly took this one walking away.

To their very real credit, Cincinnati’s back four-to-six held firm through it all. They didn’t give up many easy chances – Tai Baribo’s step ahead of Nick Hagglund around the 30th minute might have been the easiest look for either team all night (check the highlights, nominate your candidate) – and thereby held up their end of the game. In a haunting call-back to recent home games past (more below), the Union’s midfield largely limited the Orange and Blue’s attack to hopeful little raids, most of those running into a thicket and harried on all sides. Evander smuggled through most of their chances – at times, with a whiff of tunnel-vision and an arguable failure to contemplate delegating – but both he and Kevin Denkey forced at least one hard save out of Philly’s ‘keeper, Andrew Rick. Dreaming now of what a little more calm and control behind them might have done for the effort…

FC Cincinnati 1- 0 Seattle Sounders: Smooth Like Victor...

Victor Mature, in a less than mature moment...

I can’t tell you how much hearing the broadcast booth dip into the cliche about tonight’s game being “kind of like a playoff game” got under my skin...

...and yet the sons o’ bitches got it more right than wrong. The game labored under the pacing of a slow-burn drama, but FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 home win over the (once) red-hot Seattle Sounders (I’ve earned that; Portland Timbers fan) came to life shortly after Seattle decided to take chances. To that point, yep, both teams really did play it in the risk-averse fashion of a playoff game – something I find utterly bizarre given how little any given game counts in the MLS regular season. I get playing for the win, but I also get swinging for the fences when points matter as little as they do right now, aka, buckle up for 20 weeks’ worth of loose claims about this result or that one “proving [YOUR TEAM] really belongs this season.” Yessir, “statement win” articles are already dropping.

As noted/argued in my game thread on this one, a watchable soccer game relies on one team sincerely believing it’s the better on as a starting premise. If Seattle felt that tonight, they didn’t show it, at least not at the beginning. To harp on a theme I expect I’ll be playing all season long, Seattle pumped up their aura with two season-opening wins, but...had you described the setting and opposition of each – i.e., the Colorado Rapids and Real Salt Lake, both in Seattle – I doubt you’d have to make a long case for them getting all six points. As implied at the top of the game thread, I saw Cincinnati away as Seattle’s first real challenge of 2023.

Before going any further, I want to make one thing clear: I will not be indulging in any “your team really belongs” narratives until sometime after the 20th week in the season. Going the other way, Cincy put together an impressive evening, maybe even a complete one. Call it a mature performance, the kind of wily veteran shit you see in a team that feels a breeze at its back. That’s not always entertaining to watch – won’t lie, I was bored for fair stretches of this one – but a well-managed game provides comforts and satisfactions of its own.

MLS Weakly, January 28, 2023: A Thermometer Enters an Orifice

If you know, you know.

The U.S. Men’s National Team wraps January Camp 2023 with a friendly against Colombia tonight. Be there, or expand your cable package/antenna TV offerings (c’mon, antenna TV, old buddy, don’t let me down). That wee nugget is the biggest shit in domestic soccer today, but all that will change. And soon.

Since I started with the national team, I may as well finish the thought – though I have less to say than I thought I would (and I’ll have notes later tonight). A rash of consternation at the soap opera state of U.S. Soccer flared up across the twitters this week – one tweet flagged looming tournaments and other future events like a maid of honor staring at a wide-open to-do list through one eye and a calendar through the other – and...I just couldn’t give less of a shit about the comings and goings of Earnie Stewart, Brian McBride, and whatever the hell’s happening with Claudio Reyna. To offer some words of comfort to that hypothetical maid of honor, the big day will come and you’ll be ready for it or you won’t and you’ll celebrate or despair accordingly...and who knew this site would age into naked fatalism? I blame society, society is to blame...

After that, if you want to know what Walker Zimmerman and DeAndre Yedlin think about the state of the National Team, here you go. My main takeaway from that piece...gods preserve us, I forgot that the U.S. (and Mexico and Canada, right?) won’t have to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, courtesy of its (their?) hosting duties (I’m not looking it up). That makes me far more nervous than whatever’s happening in Salem (shout-out to Days of Our Lives...which I just discovered is set in the...Midwest. Did anyone else know this??). Oh, and this was a fun little nugget (from this):

“Setting aside the top five leagues in the world -- in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain -- MLS had the most rostered players (36) of anywhere else. It was represented by more countries (12) than any league outside the top five and, for the first time in league history, it had a player on the winning team: Argentina's Thiago Almada (Atlanta United).”

The U.S. had that midweek loss to Serbia, of course, and I queefed (sp?) out some thoughts, but Matt Doyle had a couple nice additions to my vague gesturing in his notes on the "shaky start" to the new cycle. Two things I didn’t talk about in my post: 1) I agree that Columbus’ Aidan Morris wasn’t great where he lined up...but did you expect him to be? and 2) how good could Brandon Vazquez be with the regular U.S. Men’s line-up behind him? And that segues nicely to...

MLS Weakly, January 15, 2023: Us Versus Them, Through the Lens of "Them"

Chaos can be fun.

I’ve come to the realization that this year’s season previews for both the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati will boil down to exactly one question: how they stack up against the teams in their respective conferences. In other words, the real question isn’t how good either team is, but how they stack up against the teams around them. If nothing else, it’s easier to isolate and interrogate that question – especially once you weed out the teams at the top and bottom of expectations.

Not all the pieces to that puzzle have fallen into place, of course – and they won’t until...fuck me, how is it so goddamn hard to find hard dates for the 2023 transfer windows? At any rate, I won’t deliver my best guesses on that until the week before First Kick 2023, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start pulling together the data and working toward that answer.

For instance, does either team, as presently constituted, have a realistic shot at winning the Supporters’ Shield, aka, my personal Holy Grail for the team(s) I follow?

Answer: I like Cincinnati’s chances better than Portland’s right now – just typing that feels crazy, for what it’s worth – but, no, I don’t see either team putting together than kind of season. I’ll wade about knee-deep into specifics below (but not further; too soon), but neither seems within touching distance of such a high level of consistency. Even if one team or the other cleans up in the Summer/Secondary transfer window, I expect that to work as the that little boost of nitrous that gets or keeps them in the playoff picture, not something that keeps them floating over the peons. So, you step down one rung on the ladder.

Could either contend for the 2023 MLS Cup?

The First MLS Preview Post of 2023. Probably: Eyeing the Baseline

So bright you gotta wear shades...

The turning of the calendar feels like a good time to start to wrap the head around Major League Soccer’s 2023 season. Before I get started a warning: very little of what comes below will constitute “news” to your more devoted followers of the league. To put that another way, this is a post for people who follow the league like me – e.g., those who can say, “Oh, I’ve heard to that guy” when a good/rising player’s name comes up, but who can’t drop (literally) all the relevant stats.

For the people who drop in for notes on either FC Cincinnati or the Portland Timbers, you’ll find those at the end, and in that order. I wanted to start with the big picture. With that, let’s get those fingers framed and get things into focus.

Thanks to all the baggage and clutter around the 2022 season – there, I’m thinking of a luridly tainted (yet mostly satisfying) 2022 World Cup and the rolling scandals that clouded the Timbers season and cleaned out (most, but not all) of the front office - I want the 2023 MLS season to be both as good and as normal as possible. And, there, I’m optimistic: just having the playoffs feel less rushed and, without a looming World Cup as a distraction, less like an opening act begging a restless crowd to let them reach the end of their set. That should help the 2023 MLS Playoffs feel like the closing event of the domestic soccer calendar all on its own. Now...what else?

The new [Apple]+ TV deal will be in place, for one. I’ve seen some gripes about the cost – and, now that I no longer have SlingTV, I’m feeling the slings ‘n’ arrows of the exclusivity (e.g., my access to random soccer leagues has cratered) – and I fully sympathize with anyone who either can’t or won’t find a path to squeezing that into his/her/their personal budget. Speaking solely for myself, I calculate the real cost of things by breaking things down into individual units. What I mean by that is, even at the highest subscription rate - $99 for a full year – you’re looking at $3.30 per game to watch every game for any given team and, unless they’re blowing smoke up my ass or it’s getting lost in the other smoke, you get to watch it on your time, however and often you want. And if you’re like me and like to follow two teams, that cuts your per-game cost in half. Bottom line, the way you value MLS’s new TV deal tracks almost perfectly with the number of games you want to watch.

That’s to say, I like that and it makes me happy. Now, for some things I don’t like.

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.

How You (And I) Should Have Known the Timbers Would Miss the 2022 Playoffs

This was how I told them apart. Now?

It becomes rarer with each passing season, but I still see people argue it’s impossible to support two teams at the same time. My rebuttal: it’s as easy as wanting one of those teams win every game and wanting the other to win every game except the ones where they play that first team. And that’s how I feel about the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, respectively, and I’ll never understand how that’s complicated.

Going the other way, and unlike past three seasons, watching the Timbers play all season while I watched/tracked Cincy had more value than it did in the past – i.e., most of the past three seasons saw the Timbers wake up sometime in late summer and roll into the playoffs, while Cincy typically started wilting somewhere around late may and continued to the end like some overwrought Shakespearian actor counting his wounds until he rather loudly expired. There has always been a whiff of ne’er the twain shall meet about the experience, in other words, but that changed with Major League Soccer’s 2022 season.

To start with the full disclosures, yes, I really did believe that both Cincinnati and Portland would make the 2022 playoffs. That bet panned out for one team – FC Cincinnati – but not the other...whose name shall go unmentioned. Both teams needed to get something out of their final game of the season - Real Salt Lake away for Portland and DC United away for Cincy. I read both of those games as winnable, hence the whole thing about both teams making the 2022 playoffs, but I also overlooked something, arguably out of habit. The thing that makes that remarkable was how obvious it should have been in retrospect. And that goes back to something I would never expected going into 2022 – i.e., how similar Cincy and Portland would be by season’s end.

First and foremost, Portland and Cincinnati tied a lot - 13 games per team, i.e., tied for second under 2022’s undisputed masters of sharing points, Columbus Crew SC (who had 16 draws and who also missed the playoffs). Another fun fact (and unless I miscounted): Cincy and Portland had only six clean sheets all season, a detail that points to something else that’s obvious - i.e., both teams gave up goals with very real reliability. By the final tally, Cincinnati actually gave up three more goals than Portland did, 56 to 53. Moreover, just four points separated the two teams. And yet Cincy’s in while Portland’s out. And yet, that’s not even the weird part.

FC Cincinnati 2-2 Vancouver Whitecaps: It's Time to Fly, Little Chickadee

I'm going to need you to flap those wings like you mean it.

First, I want to applaud The Bailey for chanting “Cody Cropper” after Vancouver’s goalkeeper went down after a, frankly, terrifying foul. That’s class, no further comment. Now, about that game...

To expand on a phrase I typed throughout 2022, “there are no moral victories.” There comes a time when a team (say, FC Cincinnati) kicks off three seasons on training wheels (this was on a busted-down trike inherited from an eccentric grandparent) and builds a certain amount of expectation. They leave the nest, wings spread, out in the world and...that’s just it: they keep flying or they fall back to the ground.

It’s in that full, little chickadee in the big city sense that I view Cincinnati’s 2-2 home draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps as a bad result. Worse, the goal that pulled the ‘Caps level was a two-fire-alarm fucking disaster; as a (side-piece) fan, I’m angry that Cincy’s last line of defenders didn’t direct more anger at the midfielders and/or Tyler Blackett, all of whom fell so far behind the play and didn’t look all that interest in catching up. That left Toisant Ricketts with at least two wide-the-fuck-open players to pass to inside Cincinnati’s 18 and, in a game where the imperative to “leave it all on the field” was sharp and urgent, they did not. There is no universe in which that is not the worst, defining moment of the game.

On a meat-‘n’-potatoes level, I don’t think Cincinnati deserved to win this game – that’s despite having quality chances to get all three points (they posted a win-worthy number of shots, and with enough on goal.) Debutante Sergio Santos had two good-to-great looks – including one that any eager fan would love to see a new signing put away (e.g., the one shot with his feet) – Obinna Nwobodo had a non-crazy shot from range, Alvaro Barreal forced a good save out of 20-year-old substitute ‘keeper, Ian(?) Boehmer (and that’s on top of attempting an olimpico on every corner), and so on. Cincinnati had chances to put a little padding between them and a Vancouver comeback, They never managed to pull it off leaving Vancouver free to walk through a door they left open, and end of game

 It hardly helped that a fair number of Cincy players had off nights. That happens, obviously, but eve accounting for key absences and injuries (to name the bigs, Luciano Acosta, Junior Moreno, and, circumstantially, Alvas Powell....Ronald Matarrita’s been out long enough that losing him amounts to losing an arm – i.e., that’s just something one adjusts to), Cincinnati didn’t have anything to overcome Vancouver didn’t (Cincy’s broadcast team would not let this go, btw), and it shaped the game in...a way. Nwobodo was loose on the ball in a way that led to too many turnovers, Blackett’s passing out of the back ranged from dubious to bad, John Nelson failed to add much in the attack and Raymon Gaddis...every player makes mistakes, and fatal ones come with defending. Had Gaddis done everything else all right, you can still salute the outing...but he did not. Basically, the combined team put out enough collective “bad” for Cincinnati to drop two points last night and can I get a “goddammit” on that?

New England Revolution 2-2 FC Cincinnati: Rhymin & Stealin

Remember when they used to smoke after sex in the movies?

And...yep, FC Cincinnati’s 2-2 draw at the New England Revolution lifted them to their personal best for points in a single Major League Soccer season. 25 > 24, people. And still so much time to play.

Before digging into it, I’d like to pause here to appreciate the weirdness of Cincy’s 2022 season.

When the season started, bringing Brenner off the bench, or just leaving him there, made perfect sense. And when he did come in, he just kind of wandered around, looking some pitiful combination of sad, confused and lost. From (weighty) sunk cost to a forward scoring goals worthy of his price tag in just a handful of games. Who saw that coming?

The conversation around Brandon Vazquez talked more about the ceiling hanging over all the good things he does rather than those good things as recently as the end of last season. Today, Vazquez is in the conversation for the U.S. Men’s National Team.

Nick Hagglund has been a regular starter for most of the season. And I don’t mind it one bit.

And, yesterday, Pat Noonan trotted out the kind of defensive midfield – Allan Cruz paired with Yuya Kubo – that had spelled spinning wheels in one direction and getting run over in the other.

I type this while craving, not so much the cigarette it sold, but the branding they used to sell it: you’ve come a long way, baby, aka, FC Cincinnati.

I started with the forest because I don’t have much to say about the trees except, they’re fine. I can’t think of one Cincy player I’d accuse of having a bad game yesterday, even as I imagine Geoff Cameron is still yelling self-affirmations into his bathroom mirror after giving up the second go-ahead goal to the theretofore silent Gustavo Bou’s near-post run. The team as a whole looked a little shaky for the 10+ minutes that followed, but they regained their footing and played their way back into the match.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Orlando City SC: Yes, They Were Dazed, but Hear Me Out...

Arguably, the true margin of victory.

Due to a series of random accidents, I sat through FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 home win over Orlando City SC a day late. Absent a total media blackout going in – which, in light of recent events and anger re, I didn’t even attempt – you can’t help but see the game through the lens of whatever information fell in your lap. It was mostly jokes about Cincinnati owning Orlando – e.g., aka Wikipedia page shenanigans – dazed musing over whether Cincy should perhaps look for a taller target for the 2022 season.

After dipping into the highlights, I clicked over the game stats, which showed an efficient game for Cincy – i.e., a high percentage of their 14 shots on goal – and a stunning 0.3 xG for Orlando. All I could think was, “how the hell was Nick Hagglund more dangerous than the entire Orlando roster?” Again, that's Nick Hagglund.

You know the “but” is coming, but I am not going to shit on this win. I can’t think of one stretch of the game that gave Cincy cause to fret, never mind worry. Orlando had a little more of the ball, but Cincinnati did twice as much with their time; movement off the ball and movement around it tended toward clean and high-percentage, player had little trouble playing out of pressure or playing forward. Cincy’s defensive posture was sharp ‘n’ solid, they played high, but not reckless, closed quickly and did an impressive job of keeping Orlando in front of them...

...but (there it is) Orlando helped a lot with all that. Patient to the point of being idle, too quick to play the ball backward, indecisive in movement and trying to do too much with too few: all that gave Cincinnati’s defense time to organize over and a consistent advantage in the numbers. I saw both of Orlando’s shots on goal and only one gave Roman Celentano a time to shine; their arguable best shot came in a play called back for offside, but Celentano got even that. And that’s how a team ends on an xG of 0.3.

That kept Orlando from winning the game...or doing much of anything, but the general malaise the defense mirrored back to its offense, with like for like clarity (not since Narcissus has a reflection been so fair and true), and that caused them to lose it. Tweets about “that Brenner goal” (or something to that effect) freckled my time-line and those got me dreaming of possibilities...instead I got a tap-in from the rough location of where the generally steady Pedro Gallase’s lap would have been. The kid needed to break his duck, obviously, but wouldn’t it have been nice to see that broken duck come from something Brenner did, as opposed to drifting half-asleep to the right place?

Philadelphia Union 1-1 FC Cincinnati: What Does One Break Out Before the Bubbly?

Or am I getting carried away?

I can think of a dozen ways that FC Cincinnati’s 1-1 road draw at the Philadelphia Union would have left me feeling more relieved than happy - most of which involve Cincinnati scoring first and leaving their fans biting their nails bloody to the end.

The actual game reversed those scenarios, almost exactly. If either team made their fans sweat, it was Philly. And who saw that coming?

The draw boosted Cincy back over the playoff line - wherefore I know not why; what the weird hell is MLS using for tie-breakers this season? – but I got a bigger boost out of, 1) seeing them both manage a game that 90% of neutrals would call tricky-on-paper, and 2) doing it with a juggled line-up. Pat Noonan gave several regular starters – e.g., Luciano Acosta, Junior Moreno, Ian Murphy(?), and Dominique Badji(?) – the afternoon off for reasons I missed and that hardly matter now, but that lone detail raises possibilities and expectations at the same time. That’s so say, holy shit, does FC Cincinnati have actual depth?

Geoff Cameron plugged in for Murphy, Haris Medunjanin for Moreno, Alvaro Barreal for Acosta and Brenner for Badji and that make-shift line-up did more than hold up: it grew into the game. Cincinnati was the better team for fair chunks of it, as well as by most of the numbers, and they had the Union misfiring on passes and movement for 50+ of the game’s 90 minutes. The pessimist in me (trust me; that fucker talks loud) wants to temper my expectations with arguments like, “Pat Noonan knows Philly’s system like the back of his hand”; my wee cowering optimist mutters back, “true, but it’s up to the players to execute, and they did.”

In other words, for all the “there but for the grace of” – e.g., the Union’s fairly-hot Daniel Gazdag missing at least two looks he often sees into the goal or Nick Hagglund dodging a red card for his flying demolition of Kai Wagner’s right(?) leg – Cincinnati has good reason to feel like they could have won this game. For perspective, how many people think “that’s three points” right after hearing “Philadelphia on the road”?

FC Cincinnati 2-0 Toronto FC: Caveats on the Edge of Expectation

You can't talk around some things.

I can no other but start with the caveats…don’t worry, I’m not gonna bitch about how FC Cincinnati should have won this by more than two goals…

…but they should have…

…I mean, just the two chances for Brenner alone. And, yeah, I have to break a rule I only laid down last weekend, because we have to talk about Brenner. Just not quite yet. Because caveats.

Toronto rolled into town down starting center backs (Chris Mavinga and Carlos Salcedo, even if the latter didn’t cover himself in glory last Saturday), and without club mascot, Jonathan Osorio. Just five of the players who started Toronto’s eye-catching, and yet possibly deceiving loss to New York City FC way back on April 24 started tonight. You could say they had their stars - e.g., Jesus Jimenez, Alejandro Pozuelo and Michael Bradley - but both experience and name recognition falls off a cliff from there.

And then the bottom fell of what already started as non-ideal for Toronto. First, Brandon Vazquez broke their (why?) high line and sliced a cross from right to left for Calvin Harris to slot home. Like, at most, two minutes later, Osorio’s stand-in, Ralph Priso-Mbongue, lunged at Obinna Nwodobo’s leg, cleats about knee level, and off he goes. So, that’s Toronto down a man and a goal inside the first five minutes. Toronto battled on gamely from that, even punched close to level on a couple stats (but the xG speaks volumes), but I’m guessing they asked themselves why bother at that point.

All that’s to say, last night’s game ended 2-0 to Cincy on the scoreboard, but it might have ended before Toronto even caught the plane. I mean, Cincinnati scored again, a penalty kick, but...eh. There’s not much game to analyze, so I’m just going to pass on a some notes and get ready for the next one. Of which…

I Would Have Liked a Tougher Game
To be clear, I am delighted to see Cincinnati in 6th place (sixth!), and on 13 points(!; just seven points shy of 2021’s total! can you believe that shit!?), but a more whole opponent and fewer gifts would have sent them to Minnesota in a sharper frame of mind. Arguably. Call it free-floating anxiety about complacency, but Minnesota will be tougher, and in both directions, success is forged in iron, etc.

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

FC Cincinnati at home, artist's rendering.

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.

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: Requiem for a Team

I couldn’t watch FC Cincinnati’s latest debacle last night, and The Mothership spared me from the temptation of pissing away another 15 minutes of my life by not posting an MLS in 15 highlight reel. I did, however, take in the highlights, which means I saw Luka Stojanovic kick a rare happy ending into submission. Nine times out of ten, any player skies that shot miles above the bar, but, when you're born under a bad sign...

What I did see of this game immediately reminded me of the road game in back in July, the one in Montreal where Cincy blew two two-point leads in the same afternoon. When they jumped out to the early lead, fans could day-dream a little, maybe even think 2021 would be different. It was early enough in the season for that, honest. That might have been the high water-mark for optimism.

It just occurred to me all three of FC Cincinnati’s seasons in MLS have unfolded the same way. They start out all right - remember flirting with the strongest start for an expansion team in 2019? the playoff-like game against the Portland Timbers in 2020’s MLS Got Back tournament? - and then spend the rest of the season stepping on rakes.

As some point, you’d think all involved would ask themselves who is making decisions for the team and tell (beg?) them to stop. I’ve heard rumors Ken(?) Berding sticks his nose into shit, which makes some sense, given the rich asshole habit of confusing wealth with having useful contributions to make on any subject. They hired Chris Albright, so here’s to hoping the author(s) of the team’s construction and woe steps back, shuts up and gives him room to try to right a ship that starts sinking about ten games into every season.

I put in the time to read Matt Doyle’s wrap on FC Cincy’s 2021, and that’s far more words that anyone needs to put another bad season to bed. What’s wrong with this team?

Everything. Literally everything.

Club de Foot Montreal 5-4 FC Cincinnati: ................You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me

Another weakness: terrible box office numbers...

When I saw who Club de Foot Montreal had avaiable in defense, I had a sense they’d struggle at the back. When I saw who FC Cincinnati started in defense, the stench of trouble wafted into my nostrils.

Even with all those tells, I don’t believe a single human being who thinks and exists could have called the final 5-4(!) win for Montreal. “Hows” gave way to “whys” gave way to “what the fucks”: there’s almost no point in asking what went wrong when it’s that close to everything. Montreal gave up goals through sleepwalking nonchalance - if with an assist from Cincy’s press - but Cincinnati gave out both shots and goals like candy. For as many times as one could argue Cincinnati got robbed on this or that play - and I count three - Montreal found a shot and missed it by inches as many times. About those three times:

1) yes, play should have been stopped on Montreal’s first goal because the ref impeded Joe Gyau;

2) Montreal’s dude (think it was Victor Wanyama) fell into Yuya Kubo and that could have easily been called; and

3) it probably would have helped Kenneth Vermeer’s case that Mason Toye took a dive had he not got a cut on his forehead that clearly signaled some form of contact…and he came out too hot.

I’ll get to five thoughts on FC Cincinnati - and I’m gonna squeeze all the happiness I can out of them - but to start with Montreal.

They play soccer the same way one wears an ill-fitting sweater in general, but Montreal surprised me yesterday. The midfield spine (Wanyama and Emanuel Maciel) labored more than I thought it would against Cincy’s, but the defense…I mean, sure, Cincinnati pressed but their play was casual to the point of outright nudity back there - e.g, this should never happen anywhere outside pee-wee soccer. Going the other way, Montreal clearly have some decent pieces - new kid Joaquin Torres looks like one to watch (or Cincy’s bumbles made him so) - but, after watching them for a second full 90 minutes in 2021, my main question is....that [gestures toward Montreal] fourth in the Eastern Conference again? I get that I’m seeing them at their worst - maybe orange and blue hits them the same way the color yellow hits the Green Lantern? - but they’ve looked just as ragged every time I’ve taken 15 minutes to watch them. I’m not expecting them to stay fourth, basically.

Houston Dynamo FC 1-1 FC Cincinnati: ...Better...

The road to success means figuring this out.

Overall
A game that started rife with opportunity (via fuck-ups), gave way to about 20 minutes’ worth of Houston Dynamo command and (less) control (more later), which then devolved into what I’m going to call a fan’s second half - which, here, means a fair amount of nothing with rare and late bursts of hopeful interest.

Or, shorter, FC Cincinnati choked out the Dynamo for a 1-1 road draw. They also never really looked the lesser team, which brings me to:

A Brief Note on the Dynamo
The one dominant thought: they’re sloppy. Even during their period of dominance, Houston stopped their own attacks as often as Cincinnati defenders did (…Geoff Cameron excepted; great game) by way of a combination of forced and/or mis-hit passes; if you're wondering how Cincy edged the home team in xG, that's my answer. They play to force mistakes for a reason, basically, and that means maintaining a certain pitch and ferocity of upfield tackling. Because Cincy was able to play out of that pressure fairly reliably, Houston’s game-plan fell apart. They’re spinning their wheels generally at this point, Cincinnati was just the latest obstacle they couldn’t get over. And am I alone in thinking Tyler Pasher looks like a young Bill Burr?

5 Thoughts on FC Cincy
1) They Did Their One Job
A personal or collective lack of composure was the one thing Cincinnati’s defenders couldn’t afford and, until Nick Hagglund’s weird late fuck-up, the worst mistakes made by the back four + ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer came with the odd errant pass and Gustavo Vallecilla waltzing out of pressure only to shank his clearance out of bounds. The defenders found the midfielders fairly easily, then the midfielders found the seams to break the pressure. This allowed them to absorb Houston’s pressure until the home team all but gave up. Related thereto…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 New England Revolution: Inching Toward Competitive?

There was ample room for improvement, and yet...

If a game can feel busy and uneventful at the same time, I think I just watched it. All kinds of things happened - not least FC Cincinnati and the New England Revolution combined for nearly 40 shots, some of them quite good - but both ‘keepers spent most of the game looking unbeatable and both teams a step or two away from that defining moment when it all comes together and the crowd goes wild. Maybe it’s apt that the only goal came off a sleeper of a set-piece that didn’t feel any more dangerous than the rest of them.

That came in the 70th minute, when Cincy’s Ken Vermeer could only paw Adam Buksa’s header into the side netting (more later). With that, the Revs won a deceptively close game 1-0, leaving the universe feeling right and better at the same time.

My biggest takeaway is pretty straightforward: FC Cincinnati played a team that most people can see winning a trophy this season without squinting too hard and looked more or less competitive throughout. They got on the wrong side of dominated more often than any Cincy fan would like to see - an impression the xG numbers back up - but they also made more and better shots than they have all season, they had a shift of dominance of their own (about the 20th to the 25th minute), and after the Revs ended the first half strong, the defense adjusted and improved: if memory serves, New England ended the first half with 21 shots or thereabouts; they ended the game with just 26. (Related: if you watch the MLS in 15 highlights, the first half takes up at least 10 minutes of the run time.)

Now, to pick through the details…

Cincinnati seems to like the 5-3-2/3-5-2 they’ve used for the last couple games, even if they still struggle with getting the former to flip to the latter (that’s to say, neither Joe Gyau nor Ronald Matarrita impacted the game that much). They set a tone of “ain’t backin’ down” - see Caleb Stanko’s heavy lunge at Arnor Traustason and the fairly visible shove Jurgen Locadia used to throw off Henry Kessler to set up his first (pretty damn solid) shot - and I think that set a bar that referee David Gantar struggled to interpret consistently toward the end (and with no small part of that hovering in Kessler’s general vicinity). I can excuse all that on the grounds that it was the right tone to set - especially when playing in a new home Cincinnati both wants and needs to make into a fortress.