FC Cincinnati 1-1 Nashville FC: Hell, Yes, And to Hell with False Narratives

A lie, I tell you. A damned, dirty lie. Either way.

It’s rare that you have to wait that long for at least one person to fuck up during a penalty kick shoot-out, but that was in keeping with the game: tighter than a duck’s ass and, don’t worry, I won’t use that for the image. FC Cincinnati slammed the first decisive kick over the line, and they left tonight with their first playoff win in team history (seriously?). (Also, here's the Match Center for all of the details you want and more!)

Nothing should be taken away from Nashville SC, because they played a hell of a game. They even came damn near to fluking to victory by way of a looping oddball of a goal by Anthony Bourgeois. That erased Corben Bone’s far more attractive (can I call it sexy?) extra-time goal, the one that let me think - no, dream - that this game would end within the time allotted by The Founders (aka, 90 minutes). When the game reached the penalty kick shoot-out and Nashville couldn’t stop scoring…I don’t know. I’d prepared various parts of my body for some kind of inevitable, even if I can’t remember what parts guarded against which event. As one ball followed another into the back of the net and the inevitable drifted into the unimaginable…look, I’m glass half-empty as a motherfucker. I wasn’t expecting the best.

Curiously - or not, honestly - the glass filled over that invisible halfway mark when Kenney Walker stepped to the spot after Nashville’s Justin Davis skied his missed penalty kick into history. I trust Walker to piss ice water, and he did. Moreover, Cincinnati had just survived Forrest Lasso stepping to the spot just one kick before and - won’t lie - that worried me. I can’t explain why, especially when I rate Lasso’s foot-work higher than your average defender’s. Maybe it’s simple as a life-long bias against central defenders in attacking roles that don’t involve their heads. Whatever, I held my breath all the way through his wind-up, hands and arms wrapped around my head to keep…I dunno, something in. The doubts from spreading, maybe?

Seeing a man of technique like Walker stride forward, and a team leader to boot? I’d prepped for him missing but mostly out of respect for The Fates. Of course Kenney Walker buried it, and FC Cincy won the shoot-out, its first playoff win in team history, and the chance to keep dreaming of arriving in Major League Soccer with a trophy in the trunk.

FC Cincinnati 4-3 Toronto FC II: I'm Going to Miss Kenney Walker

No,  it's "Corben." "C-O-R-B-E-N,"

Are your favorite goals individual or team? I ask because FC Cincinnati scored one of each - the former by Fanendo Adi, the latter by Corben Bone - on their way to resuscitating a 4-3 win at home against an eternally gasping Toronto FC II. I’m Team Bone because I feel like team goals are more replicable than solo flights, they make teams feel more like, y’know, a team, and there’s just…something about pulling a defense apart by running and passing. (For me, that’s soccer at its best.) Don’t get me wrong: Adi’s goal was a whole lotta something, one of those moments where a player puts it on himself to make something happen. (You can find that, and reference for everything that comes below at The Match Center.)

The downside: FC Cincy needed both of those goals, and more, to beat a team that has lost twenty one (21) times in this 2018 season. On the plus side, FC Cincy has players capable of turning a game all on his lonesome. Birthday Boy Bone (googled that; results above) would score the winner in this one, but it really is remarkable that Cincinnati would need as many as four goals to beat a team as bad as TFC II, aka, the only team already out of the United Soccer League’s playoffs. (Actually, now that I’m looking, they’ve now been joined by the Richmond Kickers, Seattle Sounders FC 2, Tulsa Roughnecks FC, and Rio Grande Valley FC, though, mysteriously, not Las Vegas Lights FC, who are factually beneath Rio Grande in the standings, but who also have a game in hand, but doesn’t that still look like inoperable cancer for Las Vegas Lights FC? Why dick around with the whole “mathematically eliminated” charade. This is when, people, not if. That patient is dead. Moving on…because life is for the living…)

The other remarkable thing about tonight’s (narrow) win: Cincinnati hasn’t allowed three goals against any team going back to June 27 – when they allowed three goals to the same TFC II team. It was a step in an unfamiliar direction for FC Cincy’s defense, because, whether they’ve paired Forrest Lasso and Dekel Keinan or Lasso and Patrick Barrett, the team’s central defensive pairing generally gets along like steak and chianti, controlled, classy, just hugging every taste bud, etc. There is, however, sub-plot to that, an asterisk hanging at the end: TFC II’s Tsubasa Endoh scored each goal in his hat trick from several yards beyond the lands where central defenders roam; even his third, closer goal came from a place where you’d want a midfielder to shut him down, not a defender.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Pittsburgh Riverhounds: On Primal Noises and Rumors of Hierarchies

Y'all...

That was ballsy last night, some Cool Hand Luke shit, the kind of win that FC Cincinnati fans will remember for the rest of 2018, if not beyond. I mumbled a slurry “holy shit” (and nearly fell off the household typing stool) when Dekel Keinan powered home his headed equalizer, but Fanendo Adi’s freight-train of a game-winning goal got a noise out of me that I usually save for the bedroom (sweet, sweet release…aahhhhhhh!!!).

Thus came the 2-1 win over the visiting, visibly-engaged Pittsburgh Riverhounds (for numbers and highlights, do visit the Match Center), so continues an ever-lengthening unbeaten streak, and, forgive me I missed it earlier, but did the “(x)” next to FC Cincinnati’s name in the standings appear only last night? They’ve booked their place in the United Soccer League’s post-season regardless, and taking down a rival this immediate in every sense of the word can’t help but bode well for the post-season.

Due to the timing of my getting into FC Cincinnati, I have never seen them in defeat; as such, I have no sense of what that looks like. Due to some perversity in my nature, some part of me wants to see it - maybe on the theory that you can’t really know anyone or anything till you’ve seen them/it fuck up - and last night sure looked like a strong candidate to make that happen. To give just one example, I saw Cincy defender/giant Forrest Lasso struggle like never before: I would have sent him off for his tackle in the 38th minute (he got a yellow, but…hmm, maybe I want this team to lose more than I thought (hey there, my subconscious mind!)), and I still don’t know the meaning of his hand gestures after he committed a clear, clumsy foul in the penalty area…

…there’s a fun thought: could FC Cincy even come back from two goals down? And, holy crap, was that a terrible penalty kick by Kay Banjo (but, lo, his name is unstoppable).

To state the broad contours of the game, Cincinnati looked comfortable enough, but Pittsburgh looked the sharper team (and the numbers bear that out). That held, at least, until Cincy started bringing on subs, starting with Michael Lahoud coming on for Pa Konate - a player, by the way, whose upside I still have yet to see. Jimmy McLaughlin (that name…sounds like an angelic child waiting for a lung transplant) replaced Fatai Alashe, and Adi came on for Danni Konig (who’d been…all right), and that’s probably the biggest difference between my fan experience watching the Portland Timbers and my fan experience watching FC Cincinnati: the idea/presence of game-changers on the bench. Just…count yourselves lucky, FC Cincy fans, and savor it for as long as it lasts, because it won't.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 New York Red Bulls II: Who You Got?

It comes with dessert. No way.

Just to note it, I’m reminded that I know something less than fuck-all about the Western Conference every time I check scores for the USL. Please get to MLS soon, FC Cincinnati; because ignorance pains me…

To stick with the subject, the general…mien of FC Cincinnati’s 2-1 win over New York Red Bulls II (“RBII” hereafter) also pained me a little: elegant as an elephant on roller blades, refined as a Salisbury Steak TV dinner, this game played out as pure bumper cars until around the 40th minute (what? I feel like “Salisbury Steak” should be capitalized). It slipped in and out of looking like two teams playing soccer instead of Aussie Rules Football for the rest of the game, but, full credit to them, Cincinnati did look the better team at the sharper ends of the field (i.e., defense and offense). The numbers bear me out on that “slop-fest” theory, btw; I’ve never seen passing accuracy numbers that low, and holy shit, how did anything positive happen out there with that much fuck-uppery going on?

To note something else, RBII was the toughest team (per their record) that FC Cincy has played in a while, and maybe that accounts for all the gore on the field…am I? Yeah, I’m exaggerating that a bit. All I’m saying is the game was physical, and I think Blake Smith could easily have been sent off when he rose from a rough challenge and shoved an RBII player to the dirt. What would have transpired from there is anyone’s guess, but that didn’t happen, and that’s a counter-factual, and I don’t deal in that crap. Back to the factual, RBII came within one wispy whisker of tying the game in stoppage time (and you can see that, and “the numbers” referred to above, via The Match Center). Cincinnati came within one defender’s mid-section of growing their lead one minute later, so the galactic wheels of virtue continue to spin true.

In fewer words, this game was close, but it wasn’t. RBII attacked relentlessly, while FC Cincy attacked ruthlessly, and won the game as a result. The only place Cincinnati came out clearly ahead was the score-line, and that means why is at least one of the questions in play. Having been introduced to RBII just now, I can’t address their side of things - though I will say that Andrew Tinari, Amando Moreno and (especially) Lucas Stauffer showed up for them throughout the game. As for Cincinnati, they flipped a chunk of their line-up in the midst of a busy week and futzed with the formation (not a big fan of that 4-3-3), and part of me blames the inelegance of the close result for that. On the flipside of that, seeing the players who stuck to the roster - e.g., your Manny Ledesmas, your Blake Smiths, your Forrest Lassos - could say something about who FC Cincy views as useful, if not indispensable. (Hold up: I neither watched nor checked on FC Cincinnati’s midweek win over Charlotte Independence; that said, just did and just confirmed the noteworthy rotations.)

FC Cincinnati 2-2 Bethlehem Steel FC: A Brand New Them (Dammit!)

Incredibly, I'm not first to that analogy.

This has to be quick. It’s late, I got all kinds o’ shit ahead in the next two days, etc. etc. etc. [Ed. – Disregard; I passed out in the pasta salad before I could post last night. Still I preserved most of the mess.]

Where to begin, usual caveat applies - e.g., this counts as my second, 90-minute game with FC Cincinnati - only with a twist - e.g., motherfuckers changed the whole damn line-up on me. I come from Portland, Oregon, people. Portland. It takes injury (and inexcusable) jogging to get knocked out of the Portland Timbers starting eleven. I’m used to almost pointless predictability in my line-ups, that’s all I’m getting at. Anyway, moving on…

FC Cincinnati cannot be happy with that game - i.e., the one where they broadly outplayed Bethlehem Steel FC from about the 15th minute, if with major ups and downs between that point and the end. (See here for all the stats and highlights on offer here; I'll try to find other sources going forward.) That game absolutely became Cincy’s for the taking after the 55th minute with the rather stupid sending off of Olivier Mbaizo, a Bethlehem defender(?) who tackled too hard and then couldn’t manage the slew of mini-provocations that followed.

Now, hold that thought, because a whole bunch of crazy crap happened roughly ten minutes after that sending off.

How to keep this short? OK, it took both teams a while to get rolling in the game, but FC Cincinnati generally took over when noted above, but Bethlehem still scored first, the cheeky bastards. That took a piece of raw persistence from Derrick Jones, someone Philadelphia Union fans should recognize (I think) and also definitely in the Top 3 players on the field tonight, but that also kicked the game into “give-a-shit” gear for both teams. Cagey switched to combative, to some extent. And that’s when things turned.

After Mbaizo lost too much of his shit to be ignored (he practically begged to be sent off), Cincinnati took advantage, even if it took 10 minutes to take advantage. Cincinnati’s two goals came within (roughly) one minute of the other, and they also followed from a sort of poetic justice. The guys who scored them - Russell Cicerone and Nazmi Albadawi - had been Cincy’s best players on the night, so seeing that rewarded felt good. Cicerone scored the prettier goal and he scored second, but the after-glow on that fucker got snuffed out under one minute later when Bethlehem’s theretofore invisible Fabian Herbers turned a short feed/burst of speed (relative to Cincinnati’s Jem De Wit) into Bethlehem back in the game. He leveled the score, and that’s where the game ended, 2-2, and with Cincinnati with the bigger disappointment.