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| It's still a gift. |
It takes a game where the gap between good things for FC
Cincinnati extended for over 90 minutes to return one’s focus to present
concerns. Those two things were, 1) the penalty kick that FC Cincy drew in the
first minute and scored in the second, and 2) the team’s first coherent
approach to goal around the 94th minute. And maybe the “one” in the first
sentence refers only to me, but Cincinnati bumbling, terrible outing didn’t
deserved one point, never mind all three. And yet through the good graces and
terrible eyesight of referee Kevin Broadley*, they left Florida with a 2-1 win over
the Tampa Bay Rowdies…
…maybe those heavy rains were the Soccer Gods’ tears at the
injustice of it all?
Careful readers might have noticed the two-stop time-line
above skipped over Cincinnati’s second goal. I excluded it on the grounds that it
was some bullshit. Ref Broadley had been unusually solicitous about the health
and welfare of FC Cincy players throughout the game - he fell easily for flops
by Fanendo Adi, Patrick Barrett and Emanuel Ledesma - but I can’t begin to imagine
how the word “foul” came to him when replacement left back Pa Konate went down late
in Tampa Bay’s penalty area. Konate lost track of the ball, ran into Pape
Diakate’s feet and fell down. When Ref Broadley blew the whistle for the foul, at
least two Rowdies hit the turf in unbelieving despair, as if struck low in the
Biblical sense?
Can you blame them? The Rowdies had Cincinnati pinned
against its (fortunately) sturdy back four for nearly the entire game. You can
see all the bad calls for Cincy and all Tampa Bay’s boned shots through the Match Center (looking so at Georgi Hristov, in the event they don't show him missing two he shouldn’t have), as
well as (the notably itinerant) Kwadwo Poku’s lone goal for Tampa. Short as
they are, the highlights can’t possibly show each of Tampa’s steady succession of forays toward
Cincinnati’s goal, and how hard players like Poku and Junior Flemmings pushed to
break that steady line; Flemmings, in particular, gave Cincy’s left back, Blake
Smith, more trouble than any other player I’ve seen this season. When I saw
Cincinnati’s midfielders, it was Michael Lahoud and Fatai Alashe shuttling a ball
to nowhere terribly useful more often than not, and from inside their defensive
third. Stats don’t always work in soccer (though I am coming around on this),
but sometimes they translate a game fairly well - e.g., by the time Smith got
sent off for Cincinnati (62nd minute), Tampa Bay had 25 shots, with 5 on goal,
to Cincy’s 4 shots, with 1 on goal.
