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

Too heavy for you, FRIEND?!

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

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

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

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

Portland Timbers 2-3 FC Cincinnati: Going (Too) Deep on What Is Likely a Hiccup

I wish they'd stop too, my dude.

I had a working theory about both the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati going into Saturday’s game, to wit, Cincinnati (generally) starts strong, then throttles back and invites the opposition back in, while the Timbers like to take their sweet-ass time to get going, sometimes to where they dig themselves into a hole they can’t climb out of.

When Saturday’s 2-3 home loss for the Timbers generally supported both sides of the theory – i.e., Cincy rolled to a 3-0 lead and looked like a fair bet to run away with it before Portland clawed back two goals and piled on enough shots for an equalizer or more – and that got me all a-flutter about confirming the theory, so I circled back to mine both teams’ recent schedules (Cincy's, Portland's) for circumstantial evidence. About 40 minutes of working that mine yielded some data to support theory. It also turned up enough Fool’s gold to recommend sealing up the mine, paying off the creditors, and walking away. Still, to lay some of it out there…

I worked with a 20-game sample for both teams, including Leagues Cup results, while excluding those from the U.S. Open Cup (you ask why, I ask why not?). That period extends back to around the beginning of May, over which time both Cincy and Portland have fared well enough, 10-6-4 and 8-7-5, respectively. The difference is there, of course, and grows a bit more once you dig in.

The Timbers conceded first eleven times total: Portland failed to score in five of those games and, naturally, lost them; of the six other games when they conceded first, the Timbers rallied to win two of them (v COL, v STL), came back to draw two (v SEA, v MIN) and lost the other two (@ SJ, v CIN). The sum of that yields a 2-7-2 record when conceding first across all games and, for some, an upset tummy. That leaves Portland with a 6-0-3 record when scoring first (or sometimes not scoring at all, e.g., the goal-free turd at RSL), a vast improvement, of course, but weighing eleven games against nine comes perilously close to a wash, so, moving on...

Cincy has scored first over 13 of their past 20 games, four of them wins when they blanked the opposition, nine of them games when they scored first. They held on to win most of those games – only a sociopath sneers at a 6-1-2 record – but it did lead to dropped points (3-3 v Dallas), one searing loss (2-4 home loss to Columbus) and arguably some nervy finishes - e.g., the 3-2 “road” win over Monterrey in Leagues Cup and the nail-gnawing end to Saturday’s game. The rest played out as 2-1 wins over Austin, Orlando and Chicago, hardly the end of the world, but breathing easier feels nice too.

Portland Timbers v FC Cincinnati: A Preview/Parenting Crisis

Which is which? And can you trust what I tell you?

To make one thing clear from the top, I may or may not have two children*, but there’s no question as to which is the favorite. Even with the past three and two-thirds season asking one of them, “why can’t you be more like your brother?,” the Portland Timbers will always be my team and FC Cincinnati my sincerely cherished side-piece. [Psst...I love you, girl! I’ll leave her for you, I swear.]

(* With how often I’ve neglected Cincy, through both good times and bad, I have, at most, a fingernail’s hold on neglectful divorced dad going through…just all of it.)

That said, rooting for both kids makes plenty of sense given the state of play. They both need the win – Cincinnati to keep up with the Supporters’ Shield race/melee, the Timbers to keep in touching distance of hosting a first-round playoff game (or, worst case, just making the damn playoffs) – so any and all results serve a purpose one way or the other…and yet, and as much as I hate to ask, things have been going really well for Cincinnati lately – I know; no, I know – but it has just been so, so long since the Timbers, y’know, had a good season. I’m not asking Cincinnati to let them win, I’m just making things emotionally complicated the way a parent does when, deep down, he’s absolutely asking Cincinnati to let Portland win, but not in a fake way, because I still want them to feel good. Wow, did it feel good to get that off my chest! (Father of two, going great…)

Moving on…

Per the title, the rest of this post throws out the first five coherent thoughts I’d tell fans of one team about the other. My list won’t be everyone’s list, so I’d (literally) love to have anyone who finds this toss in their own thoughts in either the comments or to the skeets when this goes up on Bluesky…somewhat related, I stopped checking Reddit, almost certainly from failure to match the intensity of, oh, 75% of the posters. That’s to say, I miss some chatter, just not that chatter.

Right, like they do in MLS, let’s kick this off with the home team.

FC Cincinnati 2-4 Columbus Crew: Sizing Pat Noonan for a Hairshirt

Wait'll I get this off, you little shit...

After the Columbus Crew scored their fourth goal, the camera panned to a young woman in the stands who alternated between glaring at the field in disbelief and shooting “what the fuck just happened” glances toward her father. Cincinnati’s staff should have escorted that young woman into the locker room (after all the players were dressed and decent, of course) to have her level that same withering glare at every player who suited up for FC Cincinnati on Saturday. Or maybe send in a six-year-old boy still in tears from watching his idols lose. Time for the autopsy…

FC Cincinnati 2-4 Columbus Crew
About the Game
Before getting my hands into the viscera (don’t worry; I don’t do snuff images), I want to preface the general comments with one quick note: the highlights looked worse and more hopeless than the full 90. The final stats weren't so bad, and Columbus held a slim 3-2 lead from the 60th minute and into second half stoppage and Cincy got…kinda sorta back into it with two…vaguely promising stretches of play in the late 70s and the late 80s. It wouldn’t have erased the 60 lost minutes that saw FC Cincinnati’s original two-goal lead evaporate, but a face-saving draw would have been nice, or at least nicer…

As anyone who turned off the world and turned on this game knows, FC Cincy took a two-goal lead before the Columbus Crew got their pants on (Pavel Bucha's opener; Cincy's second fit better down below). Sadly, once they got them on (about 15 minutes in) they commenced to thrashing the home team with their belts. All without their pants falling down…

Mistakes by Cincy’s defense added the final bricks to Columbus’ comeback – first, the deflection off Tah Anunga’s arm (right?), then the own goal/general clustercuss set off by Miles Robinson’s late defensive lunge – but Columbus laid the foundation with two things: by blowing through Cincy’s midfield going forward and smothering Cincy's outlets/transition. This hardly accounts for everything that happened coming at and going out Cincy’s defensive third, but I spotted two things that details that accounted for some of it:

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 2-1 Austin FC: It's All Coming Up Evander

Mistakes can be made, that's all.

Today has been unexpectedly Cincinnati heavy. Before wrapping up FC Cincinnati’s broadly satisfying 2-1 win over a visiting Austin FC, I caught the tail end of an episode of the Partridge Family titled, “I Left My Heart in Cincinnati” that was positively drunk with old footage from Kings Island. Seeing the Blue Racer running against the Red one and The Banana Splits took my back to a world both of and before my time and it did me good (awww) and bad (so, so old).

About the Game
Cincy somewhere between a couple and a few chances to run riot over Austin over the opening 20 minutes. They took an early lead at the 12th minute when Yuya Kubo ran against a retreating Austin back-line that seemed open to giving him whatever option he wanted. After some briefly bobbled connections, the ball found Lukas Engel still farther to Austin’s right, who slipped a one-time pass into Evander loitering around the left side of the 18. I went with the verb “loiter” to capture the easy freedom of Evander’s positioning, but the opening goal showed the danger of leaving him there without an army of angry chaperones. And that puts Chehkov’s gun on the table for future reference.

Luca Orellano had come close two minutes before the opener and Kevin Denkey spurned a good opening with a shot straight at Austin’s Brad Stuver a mere three minutes on the other side of it. Consult the full highlights for some more highlight-reel adjacent moments – e.g., Denkey and Evander danced as well as they have all season Saturday afternoon – including what would have been an easy candidate for Goal of the Week (have that at around the 20th minute) had Evander clipped the curl on his one-time shot from 35+ yards out a degree or two shorter. Despite a bevy of invitations, Cincy’s second goal wouldn’t materialize for some time.

Austin pushed back, of course, and threatened to pull back a goal as early as the 17th minute on a cross that Brandon Vazquez should have put somewhere between on goal and away (which doesn't appear in the highlights due to the enshittification of MLS's video product), but, per the official stats they didn’t create a ton of chances and fired just two of them on Stuver’s goal. I don’t know how all that useless energy translated for Austin fans, but I’m guessing it felt like Purgatory for Cincinnati fans, or worse, the last episode of Lost. If you found this post, I don’t need to explain the perils of 1-0 lead to you, but seeing Cincy come within a desperate lunge or two of coughing up a stupid equalizer for the simple, stupid reason of failing to decisively clear a long ball provided a sobering reminder of said perils. It takes just one mistake, right? Say, an arm left thoughtlessly hanging when covering a cross from Cincy’s left?

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Sporting Kansas City: Progress and Precarity

Not entirely apt, I just like it.

The three points look the same in the standings - and, hello, top row - and FC Cincinnati got the expected win over a Sporting Kansas City team that has at least seven reasons to feel desperate. And yet, their 2-1 win took a lot more magic than it should have. And that matters when you think about Cincy playing taller competition.

About the Game, Briefly
Cincy looked like the cat idly swatting around a mouse over the opening 10 minutes, but the mouse started nipping at the paw from there, maybe even broke a little skin. Those little nibbles took the form of half-chances, most of the early ones through Dejan Joveljic (once, it took a hastily-assembled mob to keep him from turning a Tah Anunga giveaway into a sitter), but SKC also fired the first shots on goal and generally looked like the better bet to open the scoring…until a play that came out of the backside of nowhere turned the game on its head. Whether by choice or gamble, the visitors left Lucas Engel free on their right for most of the first half and dared Cincinnati to find a use for him. The cat bit back (a little heavy on the metaphor, sorry) when the ball finally found Engel where he could get a clean look on goal. His power/placement shot forced a save/rebound out of John Pulskamp who pushed it directly to the well-compensated and, in that moment, unmarked Kevin Denkey. He finished what might have been Cincy’s first shot of the half that ended the first half at 1-0 to the hosts. SKC shook off the blow and came out as if playing for their jobs. They knocked Cincinnati back on their heels over the opening 20 minutes of the half and even made Cincy sweat a little with a Daniel Salloi shot from no more than eight yards out and someone (probably Safi Suleymanov) coming within a foot or two (at most) of clipping an own-goal off Anunga’s heel (have to think at least one of those shows up in the full highlights). With Cincinnati bringing 80% of SKC’s energy, Pat Noonan moved to bury the game around the 65th minute by bringing on a recovering Obinna Nwobodo (for Anunga) and setting Sergio Santos loose up top; the fact he pulled (the still-recovering) Matt Miazga for Santos speaks to the mindset. The impact was far from immediate – I suspect half of Cincy’s 14 shots didn’t come until those last 10 free-wheeling minutes before the final whistle – but, for my money, those changes tipped the game and brought a little more vigor and composure to a team/shape that kept bending and chasing to that point. Even then, it took something special from Denkey – we’re talking with a diamond-studded bow and like he read first your diary, then your mind to get it 1,000% perfectly-right – for Cincinnati to score the insurance goal they ultimately needed to take all three points. When Zorhan Bassong finally broke through for SKC, and on a goal that would have shined bright on any other afternoon, they got the goal their performance deserved. Not enough, but a much-needed sliver of hope for their next game.

New England Revolution Scouting Report: Where Improvement Meets Failure

Builder of dreams? Master of delusions?

Their fortunes haven’t been so good and for some time. After showing up in 2023, the New England Revolution damn near fell off the map in 2024 – only the San Jose Earthquakes strayed into “Thar Be Dragons” – finishing 16 points out of the real playoffs (and nine points below the play-in round) and one slim point above Chicago Fire FC/the abyss. Caleb Porter and The Organization overhauled the roster over the off-season – see the line up /subs in last week’s 2-1 win over Red Bull New York versus the Decision Day line up/subs that handed Inter Miami CF the all-time single-season points record – which brings things current.

New England Revolution
1-3-1, 4 pts., 3 gf, 6 ga (-3); home 1-2-0, away 0-1-1
Last Results: DLLLW (yep, just five games played so far)
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ NSH (0-0 D); v CLB (0-1 L); v PHI (0-2 L); @ NYC (1-2 L); v RBNY (2-1 W)

Notes from the Field
Toward the beginning of last weekend’s broadcast, the color commentary guy announced New England had fired just 5 shots on goal in 2025. This has been confirmed. Their first goal of 2025 was an own-goal scored by New York City FC’s Thiago Martins (who, just to note it, had the audacity to lose his shit at his back-line colleagues after last weekend’s collapse at Atlanta United FC after that). How many shots did the Revs fire on goal in that one? Just one. Out of six total. Having sat through about 40 minutes of that game, I’d note a few things: 1) the Revolution didn’t look as incompetent as those top-line numbers suggest, you could see the green shoots, etc., and 2) as suggested by their other top-line numbers (e.g., 6 goals allowed), they can defend. The latter gets a bit sloppy in transition – and NYC took advantage, if just once – but it’s not defense that’s killing them. Also of note, the Revs started 2025 against taller opposition than some, maybe even many. That can be looked at two ways, of course – i.e., are those teams good, or does New England make them so by being bad? – and that’s where recent trends come in. The win over the Red Bulls – which came fucking late, by the way, and after a build-up held together by spit and the gospel according to Norman Vincent Peale (see full highlights?) – was the first time they’d won the xG battle all season (and they posted some harrowing numbers prior). They looked good for it too – had a couple things going on – e.g., Carles Gil feeding Luca Langoni through the right-side channel and playing to a late run by Ignatius Ganago – and that allowed them to more than double their shots on goal on the season. A multitude of questions hang over the win – e.g., how good are the New York teams this season, or just right now? (Red Bull has looked a little baffled every time I’ve watched them, fwiw); is the new Revs roster coming together? – and that points to the main question FC Cincinnati has to answer: are they one of the “good teams” this season?

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

The scene from Geodis Park.

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

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

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

Walker Zimmerman, at pre-game meeting.

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

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

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

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...

Atlanta United FC Scouting Report: Dueling Works in Progress

Tough bunch to impress, too.

Week 5 feels as good a week as any for FC Cincinnati to get back on the right side of the results ledger. More to the point, starting 2025 with three straight losses on the road will hurt prospects and reputation…so, let’s not do that, yes? Let’s get into it.

Atlanta United FC
1-2-1, 4 pts., 4 gf, 6 ga (-2); home 1-1-1, away 0-1-0
Last Results: WLDL
Strength/Location of Schedule
v MTL (3-2 W); @ CLT (0-2 L); v RBNY (0-0 D), v MIA (1-2 L);

Broad Strokes
The furious, hydra-headed attack that MLS Wrap Up’s hype merchants tried to sell after Week 1 hasn’t survived opposition stiffer than Club du Foot Montreal. Then again, goals do tend to dry up against strong defensive teams – e.g., Charlotte FC and Red Bull New York (Inter Miami CF ain’t bad either) – so it’ll be interesting to see how FC Cincinnati holds up against what Atlanta throws at them. Because I’d already watched Atlanta’s one road game of 2025 (at Charlotte, bit of a blur by now), I split 90 minutes between their two most recent games, both played in Atlanta. They approached each team differently – i.e., they ran at the Red Bulls in waves reckless enough to make a World War I general say “goddamn!” versus a more measured, even tentative posture versus Miami – but I can’t say whether new head coach Ronny Deila’s adjustments followed from a general change in plan, or just fear of getting countered to death by Miami. The latter strikes me as plausible enough that I wonder whether Atlanta won’t go closer to broke versus Cincinnati. If they do go that route, Cincy will need their heads and swivels and their boots strapped right, because the Five Stripes can kick up a frenzy.

Personnel
Brad Guzan will start in goal (until the seas consume us, maybe even after), so let’s look at the rest of Atlanta’s likely line-up. Even if he tweaked the formation last week, Deila has called most of the same numbers so far: a back four with Pedro Amador at left back (know jack about him, fwiw), Derrick Williams and Stian Gregersen as (slightly shaky) center backs, and, after a couple of starts for Matthew Edwards, I expect to see Brooks Lennon at right back; because I think last Sunday’s 4-2-3-1 makes most sense from what I know of the players, I see Bartosz Slisz and Tristan Muyumba as “the 2,” Saba Lobjanidze, Aleksey Miranchuk, and Miguel Almiron stretched left to right across “the 3,” and big, new signing (or new, big signing) Emmanuel Latte Lath running wild, free and alone up top. (It could, on the other hand, look like this 4-3-3.)

Charlotte FC 2--0 FC Cincinnati: On Keeping the Powder Dry and, Oh, Well!

DC has a character called "Everyman." Huh.

While this constitutes extreme (literal) Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking, I do stand by the argument I made for resting players in my Charlotte FC Scouting Report. That’s less to say that Pat Noonan got it wrong than to suggest that giving key starters time to process the CONCACAF Champions League might have been better than immediately throwing them back in the deep end and yelling “SWIM” at them…

…then again, I saw the “Hell Is Real” episode of The On Side and now have no doubt as to which of the above options came naturally to Pat (would not want to golf with him, not as a youngster). With that, let’s talk…

About the Game
Pretty much what one should expect from Charlotte v Cincy in these dark days of the middle 2020s: a game decided by a combination of mistakes, saves, and chances yanked out of ye olde magician’s hat. About 20 minutes passed before the “real” game got started and, for a while, it featured two teams setting up, from wherever their first touch happened, and then sending a more or less successful attack at the opposition’s defense. A good, competent battle between two capable teams, in other words, and that dynamic held until Cincinnati made its first fatal mistake. The game didn’t necessarily end when Pavel Bucha’s ill-advised header gave Liel Abada and Patrick Agyemang(?) a head-start in the foot race toward Roman Celentano’s goal, but Charlotte's first goal did shrink Cincinnati’s odds of getting back into it to a 1:1 ratio with the reputation of Charlotte’s defense – more on that later. With Cincy in Democratic levels of disarray, Charlotte raised the pressure. It took all of three minutes – which, for the record, included time for celebrating the prior goal and the usual amount of milling about – for that to pay off with Charlotte’s second goal of the night and that's where things ended, 2-0 to the home team. Credit to Charlotte – and to Brandt “Every Guy” Bronico for the simple, yet slick assist on the insurance goal – for making all that work against one of MLS’s better defenses (the 2nd half of 2024 excepted), but the likely winner of this game was always going to be the team that scored first. The highlights reminded me that Cincy fired more good shots than I remembered and, on some level, I find that encouraging, even as I continue to have questions about the packaging*. I’ll dig into those details some more below, but I’m still hung up on why Noonan didn’t take 90% of the sting out of any loss out of this game by starting a rotated starting XI. Maybe plausible deniability means more to me than it does to Noonan, maybe he quietly committed to winning the Supporters’ Shield until the possibility evaporates, but the odds of Cincinnati winning this game sucked from the jump, and I thought the mental space of “sure, we lost to Charlotte in March, but we were missing a lot of guys” feels like a good psychological wild card to have later in the season. If nothing else, it beats dragging the regulars through 90 minutes of, again, likely futility. I suspect Cincinnati got their first glimpse of the real tendencies of a new player, but I’ll hold that thought till the talking points.

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.

Philadelphia Union 4-1 FC Cincinnati: All Kinds of Things Blowing in Their Faces, Plus a Toronto FC Scouting Report!

The wind was a factor, but not an excuse.

“…I can’t imagine a world where Philadelphia pushes Cincinnati around and back like they did against the Lions. Everything I’ve seen from them tells me Cincy will defend not just higher, but more aggressively than Orlando ever did…”

Few things kick a guy’s ego harder than seeing a confident prediction (from here; scroll way down) blow up in his face in just four days’ time. The Philadelphia Union shoved FC Cincinnati into a fucking locker last Saturday, posting a 4-1 home win that left their fans merrily dooping into the night. By the time the ref blew the final whistle, Philly had made off with their lunch money, best friend and first two girlfriends.

About the Game
Both teams came to battle and both looked game for it – even after the Union forced their first goal around Cincy’s right flank a mere six minutes into the game. Related, if mostly in a vibez/spiritual sense, Kai Wagner’s decision to continue his overlapping run contained the seed narrative for the way the entire game played out. Philadelphia’s players read a bounce before Cincy’s time and time again and saw a play develop two beats ahead: whether it was a sixth sense or the sixth day into some shared Groundhog Day, everything a Union player touched turned into something a little better; they played with their wind at their backs, literally, and somehow in both directions. Another thing I noticed: Philly didn’t press, at least not in a greyhound-after-a-mechanical rabbit way; it was more pushing a 4-2-4 to the top of Cincinnati’s defensive third, daring them to play, then getting after anything that moved like a greyhound getting after a mechanical rabbit. The approach proved beyond effective. Cincy struggled to get the ball to the center-stripe and saw it roll back into their defense more times than the Union’s 14 shots (7 on goal!) suggest. Philadelphia would score two more – one at the 30th minute, which included one of those moments when you appreciated VAR for teaching refs some humility (this was an easy call in real time), the second at the 52nd when Tai Baribo wrapped up his hat trick – without Cincy showing any meaningful signs of life. Cincinnati continued to play as if running knee-deep through mud even after Evander scored A Very Evander Goal (i.e., he did it all, start to finish). I’m told Cincinnati fired seven shots somewhere from inside that void and I’m guessing three of those shots and both of the shots on goal came at the end of Alvas Powell’s run from right back to (near) glory just after the 70th minute (this made the full highlights). If this game has a “what might have been,” it was Kevin Denkey tagging his rebound off Andre Blake’s right post instead of into the goal. If that shot goes in, maybe Philly sweats a little instead of making a feast out of another turnover by way of (the impressively effective) Quinn Sullivan feeding Uruguayan striker Bruno Damiani for their fourth. The game was over before it started and Baribo is, however implausibly, the current 2025 Golden Boot leader.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Red Bull New York: Pour One Out for Daniel Edelman...

The Dream, circa June 2025.

To start with a biographical note, for context: I followed FC Cincinnati really closely through the second half of 2018, damn near all of 2019, through the second half of 2020, barely in 2021, through the middle of 2022, and sporadically in 2023. Based on the number of Word docs I have saved in various folders, that came to around 120 games total of attentive viewing, if with the balance coming in seasons when FC Cincy, for lack of a smarter pair of words, fucking sucked…

…a normal fan/person would have been utterly enrapt in the 2023 Supporters' Shield run, but that just meant less to write about for me. I ran out of ways to say, “still killin’ it, full-time and every day.”

After what looked like a complicated 2024 season – i.e., they looked genuinely competitive until the middle of July and/or the defense broke – I decided to reconnect with Cincinnati as my main East Conference squeeze. If nothing else, it felt like a good anchor for keeping an eye on the East, but it came with the added bonus of watching a team that went through at least two ambitious changes in personnel – e.g., the signing of forward Kevin Denkey and swapping Luciano Acosta for recent Portland Timbers transplant, Evander. Both moves speak to the “not-fucking-around” mentality that Cincy’s front office has embraced after those searing, worst seasons.

Part of the work of getting back into the swing with FC Cincy comes with humbly accepting that I’ll need some time to get to know the latest iteration; the first eight-to-ten games of season will be more about learning than dropping judgments from the mountain top (also, not my style). The goal is to be in full, limbs-swinging double-Dutch mode and capable of seeing what's up with clear, perhaps even cold, eyes by mid-summer. We'll see how that goes, but let's start with (the wild guesswork) and...

Charlotte FC 2-0 Portland Timbers: About the Thing That Happened and the Thing to Happen

Evander II is dead, long live [Evander II.]

Over the opening six to eight minutes of today’s final preseason game, the Portland Timbers played some of the finest soccer I’ve seen from them since the salad days of mid-June to mid-July 2024. The defensive lines pressed high and disrupted 90% of what Charlotte FC tried to do and Diego Chara sat deep, playing balls long wide to Jimer Fory on the right and…Eric Miller on the left.

Treat the words after the ellipses as a short way of saying that the lineup that Portland started today – a 3-5-2 (probably?) with Felipe Mora and Kevin Kelsy up top, Fory and E. Miller on either side of a midfield block built around Chara, Joao Ortiz, and David Ayala, a back three of Dario Zuparic, Zac McGraw, and Kamal Miller, and Maxime Crepeau in goal – was not and, ideally, will not, could not, and cannot be Phil Neville’s Plan A for the 2025 campaign. I have no insight into how long regular starters like Santiago Moreno, Jonathan Rodriguez, Juan David Mosquera and [New Evander] will get back on the field. I can only hope that start trickling in soon enough to take advantage of one of the softer opening stretches the Timbers have seen for gods know how long. Between First Kick and mid-April, Portland has four home games, three of them winnable and one against a dismantled and limping Los Angeles Galaxy team, and even if Nashville SC has improved (rumors of a flawless preseason have reached this monitoring station), I’ve seen tougher road games. That’s 24 points up for grabs, the balance of them for the taking. Gods know a strong start would do this team good.

Getting back to today’s 0-2 loss to Charlotte, the remaining 72 to 74 didn’t go so good. Even when the game was somewhat even – aka, the first half – Charlotte managed to turn possession into chances before Portland could. Worse, the Timbers faded out of the game, both gradually and quickly (neat trick, btw), and to a point where forcing a draw looked like the best possible outcome for a generally impotent Timbers team. That possibility went “poof” when Charlotte opened the scoring at the 65th minute by working the ball up Portland’s left and finishing the play by findin Kerwin Vargas in a half-space, in the channel (with the butcher knife). From there, there was nothing left to do but let the clock run out…but then new guy, Joao Ortiz, squared the ball one step away from Tyger Smalls (great name, no notes) and he literally lumbered out the field and finished off one of the clumsiest goals I’ve ever seen scored by a professional (which you can relive through the link above, if you so choose). In a world where Portland looked like they’d ever score, that might have a hurt a little. On this one, it just felt like finishing a thought.

Mild Dread & the Preseason So Far

"Mild dread" is very literal on today's internet.

To get preliminaries out of the way, it’s the preseason, nothing matters, not just in the Portland Timbers extended universe, but generally, and I’m not taking much of anything, or even anything at all, from either today’s 0-0 draw against Chicago Fire FC or Wednesday’s 2-1 win over the San Jose Earthquakes. With that in mind…

Broadly
The Timbers looked sharper against San Jose than they did against Chicago, but I didn’t see much for fluid attacking movement in either game – Portland scored two goals against San Jose, one a set-piece, the other one half-trash – so opportunism looks to continue its long reign over well-oiled attacking machinery. Chicago provided stiffer competition – more on that shortly – but I don’t see the point of reading too much into any of that beyond filing away the possibility that the Fire may be further along in its rebuild than San Jose is in theirs. Based on what I saw, Portland’s 2025 Preseason First Team has some capacity to press – with the caveat that starting Felipe Mora disarms that a bit – and that gave them a good half against San Jose and a strong opening 10 minutes against Chicago. Related, I don’t expect much pressing to continue once Evander and Jonathan Rodriguez get back into the fold, but who knows?

Also, four points in two games would look a lot better if it hadn’t come against two of MLS’s most-plagued franchises (seriously, I’ve done the math, both teams are cursed). Still, Portland cleared the bar on the (meaningless) results side…woo-hooooooo.

I multi-tasked through the San Jose game (because working), so the notes below come more from what I saw against Chicago today…but I’m noting them because I believe they still (unfortunately) pertain generally.

The Lingering Issue
The Timbers continue to present as a combination of rushed and disconnected when they get on the ball. The symptoms get worse anytime they play teams that press, or even mark man-to-man, but this feels ominous against a scrolling backdrop of Portland struggling with passing and/or composure on the ball for some seasons now. A few overlapping pathologies either create or play into this problem. Because I just burned a half hour failing to wrestle this into bullet-points, and my bastard brain refused to tap-out, please consider this stream-of-consciousness up-chuck my first draft at examining the problem:

Getting Reacquainted with the Portland Timbers, My Burden, My Boo

Ah, memories.

For obvious reasons, this one’s going to go on a bit longer than the others in the series…

Thumbnail History
In my head, I knew the Portland Timbers had some lean seasons before they won MLS Cup 2015, but it receded to where it felt like some other team’s history until I picked through Wikipedia posts about those early seasons, as if thumbing through a yearbook. I also remember the 2015 season through a very specific lens, but I’ll get to that. Starting at the beginning…

Now that I’ve posted mini-histories for every other team in Major League Soccer (may not be better than a Wikipedia post, but definitely shorter), I was struck by how steadily the Timbers pieced together a competitive team, and how early it came in their MLS history. When Portland graduated from the USL to MLS in 2011, they came in with a roster typical of that time (MLS…2.5?): it started with a few players who came up from the USL team – e.g., Futty Danso, Steve Purdy, Bright Dike, and Kalif Alhassan – which was then beefed up with players typical of every Expansion Draft, i.e., fixer-uppers with a good season or two behind them – e.g., Eric Brunner, Eric Alexander, Kenny Cooper – and capped with the player who was born a cagey vet and who would captain through (most of?) their first several seasons, “Captain” Jack Jewsbury. The key additions from outside the domestic professional ranks included a hot college draft pick named Darlington Nagbe and a Colombian midfielder named Diego Chara, who was sold to expectant fans as an “attacking midfielder.” The front office hired a cliché, aka, a “fiery Scotsman,” aka, John Spencer to coach them, and off they went. The Timbers did reasonably well in that expansion season, missing the playoffs by an AI-generated handful, but they fell headlong into a sophomore slump in Year 2. Despite spotting the right weakness – the attack – and upgrading with a couple Colombians (Sebastian Rincon and Jose Adolfo Valencia, who I barely remember), another reclamation project (Danny Mwanga), and spending on a DP forward (Kris Boyd), all that tinkering didn’t lead to anything good and Boyd, in particular, didn't match the hype.  2012 might have been the Timbers’ worst all-time season (and big shout to Chivas USA and Toronto FC for sparing them the blushes!) - haven’t run the numbers, don’t see the point – but the building blocks started falling in place fairly quickly thereafter. First the front office plucked Caleb Porter from the college ranks (University of Akron) before the end of 2012. The players came next, starting with the Flying Johnsons, Will and Ryan (also, no one called them that), Pa Modou Kah (why not?) came over from the Dutch top-flight, by way of Saudi Arabia – Portland even got a little jiggy when they signed former Manchester United stand-out Mikael Silvestre (who broke quickly) – and, of course, the crown jewel of the 2013 renovation, Diego Valeri. He joined on loan, but made it official (I think) before the year was over and would become a fixture/face-of-the-franchise for the next nine seasons (right? because you count both 2013 and 2021?). The result was an about-face from 2012, and an appetizer for the peak seasons to come: 2013 was arguably the Timbers’ best-ever season, if only on paper: the team was balanced, going well over the average for goals scored, while keeping out well below the average; their post-season ended in the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs against what was probably the last, best season for Real Salt Lake’s golden-generation. Portland suffered a…senior slump(?) in the 2014 season, missing the playoffs…and this is where the way I remember 2015 comes up.