Toronto FC 0-2 FC Cincinnati: Big Win! (& 280 Characters Is Too Limiting)

Who squares off against who matters.

I know. I know. Look, 280 characters is really confining. I tried. Once.

Overall
FC Cincinnati won its second straight (road?) game against Toronto FC (I asked the question because I’m not sure what mattered more, venue or opposition). The game ended 2-0 and Cincy never looked like losing. I reviewed the condensed game to confirm I wasn’t missing anything and, some half-chances on a couple set-pieces and a full chance Patrick Mullins absolutely should have buried aside, I did not. The box score backs it up as well.

Toronto was a mess yesterday and is a mess in general in the season’s early weeks. Moreover, I can’t see them turning it around. Players they rely on - e.g., Jonathan Osorio and Marky Delgado (in particular) - had horrible games and, to name and credit the one guy who looked good for them, I’d be pissed off if I was Chris Mavinga.

Oh, and I need to retract a tweet: Kenneth Vermeer was not pretty good; he flailed a lot, especially on crosses. That’s it for a summary, on to…

Five Thoughts
1) Who’s Next?
As MLS’s Matt Doyle noted yesterday, the first step to becoming a good team comes with beating bad/struggling teams. FC Cincinnati has done that twice now. As such, I’m excited to see them play different and slightly better teams - Houston on the road will do nicely - which will give Cincinnati fans a clearer benchmark for what’s starting to look like progress in 2021. Too many fans make the mistake of treating every game like the one before it, but there’s a world of difference between losing to New York City FC or Orlando on the road (because, good teams) and losing to, say, Inter Miami CF at home. The latter should surprise/anger you; the former, less so.

Club du Foot Montreal 1-2 FC Cincinnati: (Long-Suffering) Heroes & Off-Switches

It doesn't matter that the bar is low; it's that you clear it.

“…but what I want to see from #FCCincy this weekend is win-or-die-trying commitment. Low bar.”

That was the last sentence of the preview thread I posted Friday afternoon for FC Cincinnati’s stunning, victorious 2-1 visit to Montreal-sur-la Gulf. I have two thoughts:

1) FC Cincy responded, with one player in particular clearing the bar; and
2) the bar wasn’t all that low in the end.

Those thoughts expand on and compliment one another: Club du Foot Montreal had Cincinnati at one form of their mercy or another for, oh, the middle 50 minutes of this game - i.e., from the 20th minute to about the 70th. It was never outright dominance - Cincy’s 5-3-2 saw to that - but the Orange & Blue played a big part of this game on the wrong side of a submission hold. Key players for Montreal got on the sharp end of their attack moves - Romell Quioto, Victor Wanyama and Djordje Mihailovic stood out; having Quioto basically post-up at the top of the area over the last 20 minutes of the first half caused all kinds of trouble - building pressure to, yes, a breaking point.

After 40 minutes of giving away very little, Cincinnati lost track of who had who on their left and Montreal got one of their bread-and-butter breakaways behind a fullback (Ronald Matarrita in this case). (I think) Zachary Brault-Guillard raced down Montreal’s right with no defenders within 10 yards of him while Quioto ran just as buck-ass nude right up the middle. Brault-Guillard squared and…we all know how that ended, a catastrophic breakdown that miraculously didn’t end in catastrophe. Given the imbalance in play to that point, it didn’t look like an omen…

Montreal did score eventually and, again, the cascade of mistakes that allowed that goal should sober up any Cincy fans getting a contact high from this win - so sit through them all, like its penance. The broadcast booth talked about Rudy Camacho’s “great pass” to Mihailovic, but he only had to walk into the space Luciano Acosta opened in the 5-3-2 when he stepped forward to become the third Cincinnati player staring at Camacho. Mihailovic a wide-open lane toward goal from beginning to end, first, because no one was near him, and then again when Geoff Cameron let him free to run onto the square pass. Cincinnati made at least one more mistake that should have been fatal - I think it was Allan Cruz who straight-up passed the ball to Quioto inside Cincinnati’s penalty area - but Cameron cleaned up that fuck up, while Gustavo Vallecilla combined with ‘keeper Kenneth Vermeer to snuff out yet another occasion when Quioto got loose in the area. The point is, even in a conservative formation, Cincinnati could easily have given up three goals. Something about there but for the grace of CF Montreal…