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| I'll cut you. Bitch. |
For all the unorthodoxies you’ll see down below, my primary take-away from FC Cincinnati’s 2-0 road win over the New England Revolution is fairly direct: I trust the roster construction.
Related, the heresy lingers around those roots.
To start at the beginning (feels natural), the only thing that surprised me about today’s result was how early and easily Cincinnati got up in New England’s shit. I expected a little deference, even though I didn’t see it as justified, i.e., see the Revs’ performance today, that’s not a good team at the mo, and may never be a good team so long as Brad Friedel holds the reins on their collective future, but that’s another topic for another post. All the same, anyone who looked at Cincinnati’s rebuild and saw a team that would spend its inaugural Major League Season punching out of the confines of a turtle’s shell would do themselves a favor by reassessing that theory. And, as pointed out by plenty of people (or just the ones I follow) on twitter, FC Cincinnati beat New England soundly with “starters” missing (this is a case where it’s OK to say, fuck the box score, seriously, ask a New England fan how much they value the edge in shots, corners, crosses and fouls).
It’s here that I admit that, until literally just now, I didn’t actually know who FC Cincy’s designated players are – but, for the record, Fanendo Adi and Allan Cruz. Both players missed todays’ game, and that’s where the $64,000 question kicks in: did you FC Cincinnati miss either player? Did you miss them (OK, yes, Cruz a bit; still studying)? What does the designated player really mean beyond the guy who gets paid more to play on the same team? For now, I’m treating that as both an open question and a gadfly for the Orange and Blue’s two DPs – i.e., if the team can win without you, how much does that “designation” really matter? But that, and the general concept of earning one’s place on a roster, rightly belongs as something to file away.
Related, the heresy lingers around those roots.
To start at the beginning (feels natural), the only thing that surprised me about today’s result was how early and easily Cincinnati got up in New England’s shit. I expected a little deference, even though I didn’t see it as justified, i.e., see the Revs’ performance today, that’s not a good team at the mo, and may never be a good team so long as Brad Friedel holds the reins on their collective future, but that’s another topic for another post. All the same, anyone who looked at Cincinnati’s rebuild and saw a team that would spend its inaugural Major League Season punching out of the confines of a turtle’s shell would do themselves a favor by reassessing that theory. And, as pointed out by plenty of people (or just the ones I follow) on twitter, FC Cincinnati beat New England soundly with “starters” missing (this is a case where it’s OK to say, fuck the box score, seriously, ask a New England fan how much they value the edge in shots, corners, crosses and fouls).
It’s here that I admit that, until literally just now, I didn’t actually know who FC Cincy’s designated players are – but, for the record, Fanendo Adi and Allan Cruz. Both players missed todays’ game, and that’s where the $64,000 question kicks in: did you FC Cincinnati miss either player? Did you miss them (OK, yes, Cruz a bit; still studying)? What does the designated player really mean beyond the guy who gets paid more to play on the same team? For now, I’m treating that as both an open question and a gadfly for the Orange and Blue’s two DPs – i.e., if the team can win without you, how much does that “designation” really matter? But that, and the general concept of earning one’s place on a roster, rightly belongs as something to file away.
Now, for the specific heresy – honestly, I didn’t want to bury this, because controversy sellz – I’m not as geeked up on Kenny Saief as everyone else seems to be. And I’m talking about a reasonably healthy cross-section of FC Cincy fans and neutrals (e.g., MLS stringer Sam Stejskal). I’ll give him every manner of credit for his grass-cutting feed that Kekuta Manneh stabbed home for Cincinnati’s game-winning goal and, yes, he scored the insurance goal to boot…but it’s what he did between there and there that left me underwhelmed. First, Manneh owns Cincy’s first goal, and all the way down to his genuflection to (presumably) Mecca: he was the player who wrestled the ball up New England’s gut, found Saief wide open on the Revs’ right, and then continued his run under the decidedly unconcerned watch of New England’s Wilfried Zahibo (aka, proof that not all French players are either elegant or good). After that, in between a creditable right-time-right-place moment for Cincy’s second goal, I didn’t see much that set Saief apart from a clumsier version of an MLS-standard box-to-box midfielder. He under-hit obvious passes in momentum-killing ways throughout the game, lingered too long on the ball several times and, despite a period of 20-25 minutes when it appeared New England utterly failed to account for his presence on the field, he basically threw away at least two totally free runs up New England’s gut.
