St. Louis CITY FC 5-1 FC Cincinnati: Beaten, But How Bowed?

The spirit I hope to see...just not next weekend.

I stopped watching the game at the 58th minute and I don’t care who knows it. That’s right, I had to dip into the highlights to see Sergio Santos pull back FC Cincinnati’s one, lonely goal against St. Louis CITY (every time) FC’s five-goal onslaught.

To start, some stray notes from the preview I posted on Thursday night:

“First and foremost, expect a battle. If St. Louis CITY gets Cincy on the back foot, the game becomes 40/60 proposition until they get their steps right again.”

“...the real trick with surviving St. Louis comes with working through their press and matching their intensity (which, here, means tackle-fouls, aka, tackles that come close enough to fouls as to constitute a new species).”

“This game will feature some tricky matchups – e.g., the bruising and active Joao Klauss versus (pretty sure) Matt Miazga, Brandon Vazquez trying to get the better of Tim Parker, and the question of whether St. Louis tries to play Nikos Giaocchini into the space behind Alvaro Barreal...”

My primary motivation for pulling those quotes from that preview isn’t about patting myself on the back, because I also typed this:

“For what it’s worth, I think a lot of the matchups favor Cincy. St. Louis has talent – I didn’t even mention Eduard Lowen, who acts more as a distributor than a No. 10 (based on what I’ve seen) – but there’s a lot of MLS-slightly-above-average in their regular eleven. Don’t get me wrong: I’d take all the ones I recognize on either team I follow, but the 'league-elite' stuff does fall off.”

A fair amount of “what might have been” lurks in the spaces of FC Cincinnati first, and frankly crushing, loss of the 2023 season. What if Alvaro Barreal hadn’t made that pointless shove in the 2nd minute, i.e., the one that handed St. Louis the free kick that led, somewhat indirectly, to their first goal. There’s also the question of what would have happened had Santos pulled one back for Cincinnati at the 13th minute as opposed to the consolation goal that came 60 minutes too late, or why Junior Moreno didn’t shoot first time on a loose ball at the top of St. Louis’ 18 not five minutes later. And that brings me to one more note from the preview:

FC Cincinnati Preview: Bring Your Running Shoes, the Good Ones

Lace 'em tight, stay frosty.

Club du Foot Montreal have a new crest (eh), and a solid run over the past 10 games, going 6-2-2 and against reasonably spry opposition. They lost a step on the back end of the 10, going 3-2-0; fwiw, they got home wins over Atlanta and Orlando, plus one on the road over Charlotte, but they lost away to Nashville…and then at home last weekend against Real Salt Lake. And one can make a reasonable argument that RSL outplayed them. So…what looms largest, a 6-2-2 recent record or the one oddball loss that goes against it?

I’ll start with this: Montreal doesn’t run the tightest ship at the back. They’ve allowed at least one goal in every game except that win over Charlotte. They’ve also scored above the league average (which I put at 17.5; Montreal has 24), which makes me think FC Cincinnati has another track meet on tap for this weekend. That’s not unusual for these Montreal v Cincy: they played to a 4-3 game with Cincinnati at home and on the losing end, which repeated another game in 2021, when they played the same venue (right?) with the Orange and Blue coming out at the wrong end of a 5-4 final score.

That’s the past, because a couple things have changed since even that last meeting – e.g., the arrival of Obinna Nwodobo and a fully-functioning midfield (with Junior Moreno). So, first question: can Cincinnati’s overall defensive shape/personnel keep Montreal to one or zero goals? I lean toward yes, but with some caveats and caution signs. Montreal has some sharp players working the width/channels – e.g., Djordje Mihailovic (assuming he’s not gone yet…The Mothership is behind on the availability info) and Lassi Lappalainen on their left and Alistair Johnston and Joaquin Torres on the right – and they spread the field nicely and play into the internal channels or to the far post according to the space they have. It’s a decent system, even if RSL bottled it up pretty nicely.

Against that methodology, the way Cincy plays its fullbacks – I assume Pat Noonan goes Alvas Powell and John Nelson again – looms larger than normal (also relevant: I think I say this every time). I hope they go a little conservative, at least on one side, and rely more on the fullbacks playing into Moreno and Nwobodo then out to Dominique Badji and (again, I assume) Alvaro Barreal, respectively, to work the ball up the field. I don’t mind either fullback taking chances once the ball is high, but hope they don’t hand Montreal any gifts, especially breaks behind the fullbacks inside Cincy's half. It’s not that Montreal can’t push up the gut, and Victor Wanyama does make his share of late runs to the top of the area, but he mostly seems to sit deep and coordinate, with the forward momentum happening on either side of him. That said, Montreal can change that up by calling in Kei Kamara, King of Journeymen, to act as a battering ram later in the game; that’s against Romell Quioto, who strikes me as just another guy they play into space.