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| All due respect to TQL Stadium, this is Cincy's home. |
This game was (much) more and (a lot) less of a projection of what I saw in FC Cincinnati’s 2021 season opener: Cincy doesn’t know how to move the ball forward fer shit and, once they lose control of a game, they’re looking at [X minutes] of emergency defending. They failed very, very badly to contain the damage this week, and went all the way down 5-0 on the road against New York City FC. And, with the way NYC played through, over and around them over the last half hour of the game, it could have ended 7-0.
I’m not going to futz around much with the stats or the box score - what does it matter with that final score, for one? - but instead will talk about some obvious, present realities.
Cincinnati Failed to Address Its Greatest Need (…even if it wasn’t obvious)
I’m not talking about the central defense here, though that obviously remains an issue; a starting tandem of Nick Hagglund and Tom Pettersson will only carry them so far - and Maikel van Der Werff and a 21-year-old kid from Ecuador don’t look like saviors to me.
It is still what remains in front of them that most worries me, i.e., an incoherent midfield scheme made WTFAYFKM (that’s “what the fuck are you fucking kidding me”) worse by way of just baffling personnel decisions. I’ll expand on Kamohelo Mokotjo below, but can Jaap Stam kindly pull the fucking plug on the Yuya Kubo central midfielder experiment and light that plug on fire, please? An idea that looked fucking stupid turned out to be fucking stupid: just about anyone should have seen that coming. Kubo is not a central midfielder; on the evidence, he’s barely a forward or a winger. Next…
I’ve sat on judging Mokotjo to see what he could do and the current returns ain’t good. They absolutely suck, in fact, and to flag just one thing in the stats section, please see the passing map around No. 15 and those thin, short forward lines. For my money, the root of Cincy’s problem with moving the ball forward follows from playing Kubo and Mokotjo together; neither has shown they know how to do it - or even how to get to the ball to other players who can (more later). Worse, neither shows any capacity to stop traffic from running back toward Cincinnati’s (again) sub-standard defense. With the ball rolling the wrong direction for the (overwhelming?) majority of both games, it’s a miracle humping a miracle that Cincinnati didn’t start 2021 with two losses.
I’m not going to futz around much with the stats or the box score - what does it matter with that final score, for one? - but instead will talk about some obvious, present realities.
Cincinnati Failed to Address Its Greatest Need (…even if it wasn’t obvious)
I’m not talking about the central defense here, though that obviously remains an issue; a starting tandem of Nick Hagglund and Tom Pettersson will only carry them so far - and Maikel van Der Werff and a 21-year-old kid from Ecuador don’t look like saviors to me.
It is still what remains in front of them that most worries me, i.e., an incoherent midfield scheme made WTFAYFKM (that’s “what the fuck are you fucking kidding me”) worse by way of just baffling personnel decisions. I’ll expand on Kamohelo Mokotjo below, but can Jaap Stam kindly pull the fucking plug on the Yuya Kubo central midfielder experiment and light that plug on fire, please? An idea that looked fucking stupid turned out to be fucking stupid: just about anyone should have seen that coming. Kubo is not a central midfielder; on the evidence, he’s barely a forward or a winger. Next…
I’ve sat on judging Mokotjo to see what he could do and the current returns ain’t good. They absolutely suck, in fact, and to flag just one thing in the stats section, please see the passing map around No. 15 and those thin, short forward lines. For my money, the root of Cincy’s problem with moving the ball forward follows from playing Kubo and Mokotjo together; neither has shown they know how to do it - or even how to get to the ball to other players who can (more later). Worse, neither shows any capacity to stop traffic from running back toward Cincinnati’s (again) sub-standard defense. With the ball rolling the wrong direction for the (overwhelming?) majority of both games, it’s a miracle humping a miracle that Cincinnati didn’t start 2021 with two losses.
