Atlanta United FC 4-2 FC Cincinnati: Bewitched, Bedazzled & Kinda Weird

Plenty to go around, sadly.

As anyone who has interacted with the MLS Season Pass interface knows, it can still slip in the odd the spoiler. For instance, I caught the fact that Miles Robinson scored a goal out of the corner of my eye before starting the full replay, so I had that at back of mind when Atlanta United FC opened the scoring at the 15th minute. I only got halfway through, "nothing to worry about" when Atlanta scored a second goal. I spent the rest of the game hoping that the caption read “Miles Robinson hat trick.” It did not. Atlanta carried that early lead to the final whistle, and only a little uncomfortably, outrunning Cincinnati to a 4-2 win at home.

About the Game
Atlanta looked a (promising) mess over the opening ten minutes with balls played in behind to phantom runs and a full-field defensive shape that looked doomed to watch Cincinnati pull them apart; the two quality shots the visitors created – one a close solo run by Gerardo Valenzuela, the other a sparkling team effort – had the feeling of heavy knocks rattling a door. Next thing you know, Nick Hagglund went down and off on a hard charge by Emmanuel Latte Lath (“I'll show you soft, Ronny!”; weird injury, too; ribs and lung?) and, mere minutes later, Derrick Williams headed home what might have been Atlanta’s first competent pass of the game on a set piece and it was off to the races. Atlanta scored again, of course, with a tap-in by Ajani Fortune five short minutes later after Saba "Well Janice*" Lobjanidze bewitched and bedazzled Lukas Engel on Cincy’s left (* I get so much free delight from closed captioning). From there, a broadcast booth narrative developed that Atlanta had pounced on a defense still working out its assignments. That argument holds up better in a world where Latte Lath didn’t miss two massive, free-free-free opportunities (more on one of those later), all of which fell outside that crucial window. Atlanta had gilded chances at an even half-dozen goals - a rightly shocking note given Cincinnati's typically tight defense - but all those chances ran against an undercurrent of Cincy playing through them with relative ease. That's to say, this was a weird one.

No one knew the game would end where it did when Robinson’s goal finally came just after halftime, of course, especially with Taylor Twellman treating Atlanta’s woes over the first 15 minutes of every second half as a disaster to count on. That note came against the backdrop of some of the best attacking builds Cincinnati has produced all season; the chances rained and the shots poured until they piled up to nearly 30, with nine on goal. Not all of them made Brad Guzan sweat – I’d say Evander’s 60th minute effort gave his Old Spice the biggest workout – but his every save and the 21 shots off target (some of them more wise than good) meant more time playing catch-up for Cincy and with less time to get there. Another defensive breakdown – and on a set piece, again, and with the ball bouncing all over inside the six, again – restored Atlanta’s two-goal margin at the 66th minute, forcing Cincy back into a sprint. The Orange and Blue pulled within one a mere four minutes later when Valenzuela finally got his prize for a great game, but it wouldn’t take look for them to succumb to the game’s other defining feature, fully-bodied defensive breakdowns by the visitors. That hadn’t happened since the opening weeks of 2025 (e.g., the ass-kicking at Philly), but Jamal Thiare insured the win in stoppage time on what must have been Atlanta’s third clean break behind Cincy’s defense. Everything that could go wrong did, basically, and it was more than enough to erase a good amount of right.

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

Alonso Martinez's afternoon, a visual.

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

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