Getting Reacquainted with FC Cincinnati, MLS's Maddest Makeover

Picture the "before" house on fire.

Thumbnail History
FC Cincinnati came into MLS like a paper-mache wrecking ball, starting with one of the worst roster builds in MLS history. They invested heavily in No. 8s for that inaugural 2019 roster - not a true No. 6 in sight, never mind a No. 10 - and rounded it out with a thin foundation of center backs, a couple attack-oriented fullbacks, plus a couple random wingers and two or three forwards with a history of needing service to be effective. The first of their three consecutive Wooden Spoons followed surely as night follows day. This year’s absolutely woeful San Jose Earthquakes team just unburdened them of the record for the most goals allowed in a single season, but Cincinnati may never let go of their claim to the all-time worst goal differential. They barely improved over the next two seasons (seriously, see the goals allowed by the 2021 team), and some of that surely followed from the wild game of musical chairs around the coaching seat - Alan Koch gave way to Yoann Damet, gave way to Ron Jans/some casual racism, then came Jaap Stam, there might have been another coach in there, who can say, really, then Yoann Damet again. Rebuilding from that first, fucking terrible roster was always going to take time, but doing it headless was madness. Small wonder the rehabilitation took a lot of time and, at last, some smart hiring. The Organization helped and hurt on the way to that – by throwing money at all the problems here, and (I think mostly one owner-dude) meddling on the wrong (i.e., soccer) side there – but the former translated as a willingness to burn money until the (many) problem(s) was(were) solved. The Organization kept faith through the failures – e.g., the Spoon-spank’d 2021 team had the still-capable Geoff Cameron and Haris Medunjanin, plus Luciano Acosta, Brandon Vazquez and Brenner, if in pre-threatening form – and, more crucially, seemed to genuinely learn from failure. The biggest shift came with two hirings: first, coaxing Chris Albright away from Philadelphia to act as general manager, then betting on Pat Noonan’s potential by anointing him head coach ahead of the 2022 season; second, they signed Nigerian midfielder, Obinna Nwobodo, at the beginning of the same year, a man who chews real estate and wins 75% of the battles he engages. Those two changes alone made some prior investments – e.g., Alvaro Barreal, Vazquez, and, even if it took a minute, Yuya Kubo – look a whole lot smarter. With all that in place, it took just a couple, if big, defensive signings (Matt Miazga and Yerson Mosquera) and the arrival of a budding goalkeeping star (Roman Celentano) to turn Cincinnati into a Supporters’ Shield-winning team by their 2023 season. Cincy made the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs that same season and might have gone farther had (Defender of the Year!) Matt Miazga not lost his whole goddamn mind at the end of a playoff win over the Red Bulls. At any rate, they lost some key players either before (Brenner, gone by April 2023) or during (Vazquez) the 2024 season, but Cincy has a remarkable talent for finding new players when they need them…it’s like they figured out how the rules work or something…

Total Joy Points: -1

Getting Reacquainted with DC United, A Metaphor on the Benefits of Inherited Wealth

Had some great damn songs, but...

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Tempting as it is to see DC United as the team that squandered its legacy as the first best team in MLS, that narrative writes their first (and only) renaissance out of its history – i.e., the 2004-07 seasons, which saw them win another Cup and two more Shields. The echo might have been half as loud, but it did happen. Against that, those first straight-up fucking insane seasons – DC won three MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shields, on top of having a crack at a fourth Cup in 1998 (the Chicago Fire won that one) – created a firewall thick enough for them to hold at sixth place on the all-time Joy Points Scale (methodology below*) despite getting slapped with four (4!) Wooden Spoons and some of the worst seasons in league history. Between them checking out of the post-season a half decade at a time and 10 seasons of Benny-ball (when Ben Olsen was in charge) thrown into the mix, it’s almost impossible to remember that DC United reigned as the undisputed Kings of MLS 1.0. Some of MLS’s first great players starred for DC, not all of them listed below (e.g., Jeff Agoos, Roy Lassiter, and Raul Diaz Arce, to name a few). In fewer words, yeah, the designated-player era passed them by. That doesn’t mean they didn’t try, and that they haven’t had a couple hyped hopes, but they have yet to catch up to a league that seems to get faster with each passing season.

Best Season(s)

I’ll always have a soft spot for MLS Cup I, when DC stepped into the downpour that fell on it as the underdog, but I’d call the 1997 and 1999 seasons the franchise’s high-water marks. I don’t remember 1999 so good, partially because I’d moved on to Boston and rooting for the New England Revolution, but I had a front row seat for 1997 and they ran away with everything that wasn’t nailed down. Special team, special players…also, this is where I picked up my aversion to success…

Long-Term Tendencies

DC built their trophy-winning seasons on reliable, live-wire attacks – sometimes to the point of covering for a shaky defense. The reverse held true as well: they suffered their worst seasons when a stumbling attack became the anchor that drowned them. Defense hurt a little as well, but the offense was always a little worse. And here’s a fun little detail: despite its reputation for playing it safe, the Benny-ball era (2010-2020) didn’t consistently translate into improved defensive performances: DC either hit over or above the average for goals allowed in eight of his 10 seasons coaching the team.

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Columbus Crew SC: The Tragedy of Alvas Powell

From googling "tickle palace."

I don’t know what to call that besides a game that leaves you muttering, “c’mon, not like this.”

Last night, FC Cincinnati ended the best season in its – and I want fans and pundits to linger on this next word – brief history with a devastated and dizzied 2-3 loss at Tickle Palace against its dread rival, Columbus Crew SC.

First and foremost, nothing hit the gut half as hard as the blunt fact that Columbus deserved the win. Outside 15 minutes somewhere during the first part of the second half (sorry, I work real estate law), Columbus ran at a Cincy defense that toggled between adjectives all night: sturdy grew to heroic, before a quick journey through desperate yielded to a word I slipped into the conversation above, i.e., dizzied. One of the twits in the broadcast booth called the Columbus’ first goal a turning point, but I’d argue that the second pointed to where the game would ultimately end up. The only question was whether Columbus could get there before the final whistle turned the game over to soccer’s infamous tiebreaker, aka, the test of wills we all call a coin-flip, aka, the penalty shoot-out.

Columbus beat the whistle, of course, and Cincy didn’t look any better on the third goal they allowed than they did on the second. Or the first, for that matter. They didn’t just get outplayed last night; Cincy got beat. Thinking about what that does for the rivalry is the only positive I can take from the loss…

…going the other way, how dim that fire burns against what could have been had Cincinnati won ugly on the back of Aaron Boupendza putting a little more mustard on his best shot of the night? Back in the real world, Patrick Schulte came good in that moment and, I think most observers would accept that justice was served. However much it hurt to send Timmy upstate…

On a purely personal, slightly petty level, I have a notepad full of tantalizing questions that just went to waste – e.g., do you start Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji in the MLS Cup that will never happen? Or, if Obinna Nwobodo can go, do you start him or do you honor continuity and Yuya Kubo’s (sturdy?) service over the past two, three games? And to what percentage of a Nwobodo does that answer apply.

All those questions just got kicked to 2024.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 Red Bull New York: How Many Is Too Many?

Abomination.

Thanks to a 1-2 loss at home against Red Bull New York, FC Cincinnati killed the semi-pointless dream of claiming the single-season record for points in the MLS X.0 era. While I don’t like that anymore than you do, man, does it feel nice to have something to talk about besides, “yeah, still going really well.”

First things first, I wouldn’t freight this loss with a ton of meaning. Pat Noonan didn’t stir the starting XI, he shook it. I was about to digress to the culinary crime of a blended martini (hold on...has anyone...never mind), but he didn’t start any player that Cincinnati fans haven’t seen at some point in 2023. The issue – which assumes it was one – came with starting so many non-regulars. It fell well short of “who the fuck is that guy?” but, outside Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo, only Nick Hagglund and Raymon Gaddis had played more than 1,000 minutes coming in. Most of the rest have logged real minutes – e.g., 998 for Yuya Kubo, 880 for Alvas Powell, 844 (shit, when?) for Dominique Badji – but, again, most of that time came with more regulars in the eleven.

That totally showed up on the field – Cincy played most of the game in the wide expanses between in-synch, which they were not, and out-of-synch – but that didn’t hurt them as much and as fatally as the 20 opening minutes. As the Red Bulls demonstrated tonight, a little energy can go a long way and a lot of energy goes even farther. To tie that together, sure, the turnover in the line-up didn’t help, but Cincy dug a two-goal hole by a simple failure to match the energy-drink energy.

If this game has a mystery, or any real source of concern, that’s it: how did FC Cincinnati come into a game that, let’s face it, they could absolutely lose against a team that literally brands itself on high energy with, well, so little energy?

Credit where it’s due, the Red Bulls got hold of the game early. Over those opening 20 minutes, they pressed high enough to alternately frustrate and stuff a Cincinnati team that grew more disoriented and cautious with each misplayed pass out of the back. The defensive shape eventually compacted to where the hosts left all kinds of space in and around the edges of Zone 14. That burned them early when that ever-receding line left original (and impressively respectful) draftee, Frank Amaya, wide-open about 20 yards from goal...and he made it look easy from there. The same thing happened less than 10 minutes later, even if the gap opened in a different space, when the statistically-marginal Elias Manoel finished a John Tolkin cut-back from a pasture around FC Cincy’s penalty spot; this time, the back three had dropped deep while Cincy’s midfield failed to track Manoel or drop deep enough to cover: so, no, things did not go well on the defensive side.

Toronto FC 2-3 FC Cincinnati: And They Threw in a Shield...

This came up in a search for "early onset nostalgia." For real.

Take your hat off to Toronto FC for playing with more ability, and even pride, than they’ve managed through their long, dreary and biting 2023 regular season. Seriously, the only thing that saved them from playing like shit in their win over the Philadelphia Union was Philly playing even worse. Toronto played a strong one last night: their passing was clean, they stayed organized defensively and, for all the (many) shots FC Cincinnati fired, they by and large kept the visitors in front of them. Even the numbers show that the worst team in Major League Soccer played its best one pretty even.

The fact Toronto had to rally out of a two-goal deficit only makes that doubly-impressive. The outlines of another painful rout took shape early, when Cincy fired one shot after another toward TFC’s goal starting around the 20th minute – and too many from inside the box. All that knocking finally opened the door when Brandon Vazquez fired home from a couple steps in from the spot. Cincy doubled its lead eight just eight minutes later when Alvaro Barreal and Aaron Boupendza played in-out-and-back-in Toronto’s right side to create the shot that led to the deflection that (again) Vazquez put away.

Still, Toronto had laid the foundation; they only needed someone to build something on top of it. The sometimes-maligned Federico Bernardeschi set to work on that, taking charge of Toronto’s attack and doing to Cincinnati’s left what Cincy had just done to their right. He took the first ball inside, past first Vazquez then Junior Moreno and drove a shot at Roman Celentano...who, in a moment that probably still haunts the young ‘keeper, let it squirt from out between his legs. Jonathan Osorio spotted the loose ball before anyone else and poked it home to make it a 1-2 game. Bernardeschi struck again minutes later, this time cutting toward the end-line and around Cincy’s defense; his cross left Celentano flapping and Osorio, again, the first player to the ball. And could anything be more fitting than seeing local legend Jonathan Osorio score both of those goals?

Sadly (for them), the universe still works according to certain rules, one of them being that we all wake from our dreams. As everyone knows by now, FC Cincinnati walked off the field as the 2023 Supporters’ Shield winners last night. Toronto threw all the rocks they could into their path and Cincinnati stumbled over a few of them – e.g., momentum killing slop on the left from Barreal throughout the second half, uncharacteristically loose touches from Obinna Nwobodo; Vazequez and Boupendza hitting good clean looks to Toronto ‘keeper Luka Gavran as if the man had a magnet stitched into his chest – but the chances still piled on (most of the cleanest made the highlights), as did the pressure.

FC Cincinnati 3-0 New York City FC: "A Damn Good, Exquisitely Well-Timed Win"

A still from TQL Stadium, August 26. (I kid, I kid.)

First, do an aging gentleman a favor and tell me that you needed to remind yourself FC Cincinnati wasn’t in orange yesterday. Every time the mind went drifting (as it does), I kept thinking Cincy suddenly looked wayward and baffled. It was New York City FC wearing orange, of course....but that wasn’t the weirdest thing I saw yesterday.

After a couple weeks of watching defenses assign either goon or goon squad to suffocate Luciano Acosta, seeing New York City FC opt against the obvious approach? Well, it was a decision. Nick Cushing (probably) directed his charges to go out and keep the shape, which allowed Acosta to do the whole float like a butterfly sting like a bee thing (“Joe Fraser can’t hit what he can’t see”; just read that full quote from Muhammed Ali this week and it really is a thing of beauty). Lucho Unlocked led to two decisive plays that commenced the scrambling of NYC’s defense on Cincy's first goal and that opened the backdoor on for Junior Moreno on their second. That amounts to a death sentence in a game where chances came often as the 25 bus (i.e., not often enough). The only major plot-point from there was NYC opting to defend space instead of players – most notably, Nick Hagglund - on a 58th minute corner kick. With that, FC Cincinnati walked off the field at TQL Stadium last night, 3-0 winners in what looked like a stroll.

And yet that impression was at least mildly illusory. Between wrapping up dinner (a decent tuna casserole, fwiw) and getting about 5 mg ahead of myself, I wasn’t totally locked in for the first 20 minutes of the second half – and that meant missing how close NYC came to either leveling the game, or pulling back one goal, something I saw (among other things) after re-watching the beginnings of the first and second halves this morning. The specific order and timing of it all escapes me, but Monsef Bakrar came within a quarter step of beating Roman Celentano on a near-post run to a deflected cross, (think it was) Julian Fernandez later forced Celentano to lay down to stop a shot from range and Keaton Parks put at least two great shots on goal over the course of the second half – one a five-hole shot, the other a header from just outside the six. That last sentence may very well contain the entirety of NYC’s attacking output for the afternoon, but, if you sprinkle in some dubious set-piece defending on FC Cincy’s part (lots of balls hitting ground, with some “danger! danger!” pinball thrown in), you’re just a couple but-fors away from a game that doesn’t look so comfortable.

If that sounds like a paragraph’s worth of quibbling, fair. Just about every game includes moments like that and all that mischief got managed, so what to do but celebrate? Even with the Philadelphia Union and (impressively) Orlando City SC winning, Cincinnati now holds a ten-point lead in the Supporters’ Shield race and an 11-point lead over the rest of the Eastern Conference thanks to losses by the New England Revolution and St. Louis CITY FC, respectively. They also padded their goal differential by three, something that could break some useful ties when such things come up and that brightens the bigger picture a little. To expand on that...

Columbus Crew SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: The Thing Before the Thing You Worry About

Too much of this, honestly...

It wasn’t the result, or even the final score, so much as the manner of the defeat that made FC Cincinnati’s road to the end of the regular season looks a little longer yesterday...I mean, can we just call this thing, hand them the Supporters’ Shield and start the playoffs? (If not, why not?) Most signs pointed to a Columbus Crew SC win – i.e., they hosted, they're good at it/there, etc. Cincy’s more or less complete inability to affect the game? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe some guy at the back laid down $500 on Columbus’ 3-0 win, but I doubt that particular bet drew much action by the time the opening whistle blew.

Columbus opened the scoring early (15 minutes in) when all the work down the flanks paid off by prying open gaps in the middle. Credit to the Aidan Morris (who I will never underrate again) for the efficient, high-quality finish – seriously, think about how many times you’ve seen that same opening either blown or collapsed, or, more often, the ball sky over the bar – but more credit to the Crew collective for putting in the work that made that opening.

They took even less time to score the second – a (clean) penalty kick called for an Alvaro Barreal handball (justified, if harsh; not clear on how much he planned it and he didn’t gain much by it in any case; also, arrgggh, you'll have to consult the full highlights to see the fucking call) – but not much had changed between Columbus’ first goal and that 23rd minute moment. Columbus stuffed (at least) 75% of Cincinnati’s builds and Cincinnati stopped (approximately) none of Columbus’. The hosts played out of the back at will, not infrequently by having Steven Moreira just carry the ball out of the back and across one line after the other. They passed it out other times, mostly without bother, and that’s the first segue.

Cincinnati defended very, very passively...for most of the game, honestly, offering only a shaking fist’s worth of resistance to Columbus getting into their half. A counter-punching strategy isn’t a wild call against a team that likes to use the ball, but it does absolutely require, y’know, the counter-punch. Apart from a half-desperate foray in the fifth minute built between Luciano Acosta, Aaron Boupendza and Brandon Vazquez one strained individual effort at a time, Cincy struggled to land anything. They scratched out a couple more moments – Boupendza almost poked a wrong-footed shot (hold this thought!) past Columbus’ Patrick Schulte, but he didn’t put anything on it a stiff breeze couldn’t have and the Crew SC defense scrambled admirably, in waves even. Stats, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie.

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Nashville SC (4-5, Shit!): Operation Fun-Suck

Acosta in green, all day yesterday.

I hopefully type “I’ll keep this short” to start these posts, but I think I’m going to pull it off this time...hey, nailed it....

FC Cincinnati tripped out of the inaugural edition of the Leagues Cup courtesy of a single missed penalty kick by Matt Miazga. If Nashville SC owed that thin crack of a margin to swapping in Elliott Panicco for Joe Willis immediately before the shoot-out, credit head coach Gary Smith for making a smart call. Because Nashville was perfect on their penalty kicks, Cincy only had to miss one. With that, a game that ended 1-1 regulation (still no home losses for Cincy, hyper-technically) tipped to Nashville 5-4 on PKs.

Nashville got one more thing perfect, or nearly so: smothering Luciano Acosta for over 3/4 of the game. While they didn’t man-mark him, Nashville reliably kept at least one player tight on Acosta – a defender when he pushed high, a midfielder when he dropped back – passing him off from one player(s) to the next, often by pointing at him like he never stopped farting throughout the game. That held up any time Acosta drifted into the middle of the field and only let up when the ball moved to the opposite side. Between that and Nashville compacting into a 5-3-2 tight enough to squeeze into their defensive third, Cincinnati struggled to do much of anything the entire game. I would say credit to Nashville if it didn’t make the game so goddamn unwatchable. A game killed, with malice (and great planning) aforethought...

More than anything else, this game provided a glimpse of the kind of soul-sucking bullshit riddles Cincy will need to solve if they want to lift MLS Cup. The odds that the first team or two they face in the MLS playoffs will take a similar approach to Nashville’s, if not bite it directly, are too low for the house to take them – i.e., this will happen. As such, the question for Pat Noonan et al becomes how to keep the attack lively when teams put a shadow or two on Acosta.

Cincinnati’s push for the equalizer suggested a couple approaches: playing with more urgency and begging more questions of the defense. This took the form of pushing more passes into Cincy players posted up against Nashville’s compact line(s), something they only started doing in earnest (by my count) after the 70th minute, with Obinna Nwobodo leading the way. Clearing Acosta out of that space helped, not least because the clutter didn’t accumulate when he wasn’t in the middle. Noonan loosened things up further when he replaced Alvas Powell with Bret Halsey, i.e., a player with at least some attacking upside. (And don’t dismiss Powell’s contribution entirely, because he showed his talent for open-field defending in a one-v-one against Hany Mukhtar.) Add a couple heads to the hydra, basically, or don't always demand the same one do all the biting.

FC Cincinnati 3-3 (4-2) Sporting Kansas City: My Butthole Is Still Puckered

The bar for a bad performance, in green and black.

I doubt any team in Major League Soccer can make as strong a case that they should “save it for league” as FC Cincinnati. When you’ve got a shot at a record-setting season, I mean, why not?

At the risk of overselling the argument, what happens to Cincy’s chances of winning the Shield (which I covet) if, say, both Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo went down?

Cincinnati fans may or may not have got a glimpse of that in yesterday’s freakishly nervy, overtime, skin-of-their-teeth-and-chinny-chin-chins 3-3, plus 4-2 in PKs win over a Sporting Kansas City team that usually slums in every house they visit. SKC came within a minute of winning the game outright, but, per the recent run of results, they self-sabotage often and with alacrity. Now...the tale of the tape.

The conversation about how much squad rotation hurt the cause starts with Nick Hagglund’s nightmare start, which featured two mistakes so glaring and close enough together as to give aid and comfort to the reigning MLS King of Boner performances, Austin’s Kipp Keller. Hagglund bookended his three-minute nightmare with a net-bursting own-goal on the front end and a blown marking assignment on a set-piece on the back end that gifted SKC’s Danny Rosero a point-blank header – the Mullet of Mistakes, if you will (that’s, uh, business in front, par...never mind).

Cincinnati responded on the field before it showed up on the scoreboard. They worked the historically vulnerable right of SKC’s defense with their own historically (very much) preferred left side of their attack like an early-80s pro wrestler struggling to get into the figure-four leg-lock – and do hold that thought because it became a major theme of the night. SKC punched back harder than expected: in keeping with head coach Peter Vermes’ theory of where they are, Kansas City does, in fact, move the ball quite fluidly; they got from their end of the field to Cincinnati’s well throughout the first half, sometimes artfully. One sequence in particular – e.g., the one that ended with Johnny Russell almost breaking in but-for Yerson Mosquera’s trailing leg – had the broadcast declaring this one of SKC’s best games of the 2023 season. “Vintage Sporting Kansas City” they called it...

FC Cincinnati 3-1 Nashville SC: The Hardest Easy Thing

Simplifies where you focus, really.

It starts with a question: did FC Cincinnati’s 3-1 win over Nashville SC look easy as the final score to you?

Answer however the spirit moves you, but, when you do, I’d encourage you to think as broadly as possible. Think of all the questions you want answered, basically, and go from there.

With all that in mind, here’s what I saw:

A Cincinnati team forever on the brink of breaking through versus a Nashville team forever falling short. Sure, Nashville knocked canyon-sized dents into their own chances when two of their players did two very stupid things in as many minutes – I’m talking stuff that someone who paid them to throw the game would tell them not to do, because it would telegraph the con (guys! call me!) – but they also might have had their better moments when they had the fewest players. But even that nods to the flipside of the final result – and the game.

Badly as they played – and put me in the “very” camp when it comes to a vote – Nashville still came within a penalty call that (rightly) fell apart upon review of tying this game (should be in here somewhere, if not blame them, not me). They produced flurries on either side of that and it all came after Taylor Washington got his second yellow for...he tried to grab the ball, I think(?), and Fafa Picault picked up his second yellow for, honestly, what do you call Picault’s lunge into Santiago Arias (right?)? A protest against uneven refereeing? A you-can’t-fire-me-I-quit cry for attention? Both came so close together that we never had time to figure out how one sending off would affect the game...

...and yet, can you think of a time when Nashville ever really looked in this game? They scored the first goal, but that blew through a vast fucking desert like the last tumbleweed in the world, a singular sign of life in a vast, expansive nothing. Nashville struggled to step into Cincinnati’s defensive third under any kind of control, which means they struggled to find Hany Mukhtar, and that’s how Nashville ends a game with six shots total and just one of them on/in goal. And that’s more or less what I mean by “forever falling short.” 90% of everything Nashville tried fizzled out. Maybe it’s simple as having no Plan B for the Plan A, aka, “Get Hany the Ball,” but, again, Nashville made their best attacking moments during a last-ditch push for the equalizer – i.e., after Mukhtar came off. More than anything else – and this thought is by no means original to me – Nashville ended the night as a team in desperate need of a Big Think...

...so, why did it take FC Cincy so long to put that team away?

Red Bull New York 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Tactics & Strategery

No, I can't explain the W references...

Sometimes I get strategy and tactics confused. It’s less a question of knowing what one word/concept means versus the other, so much as deciding where one meets the other on its way in the other direction.

I had a whole narrative banged out for this game. It had smart little sub-plots, intrigue between the characters, maybe even a touch of hubris. Then FC Cincinnati went and won the damn thing with a late goal by, yeah, I’ll say it, my favorite who likes to match orange & blue, Obinna Nwobodo. [Ed. - The Mothership didn't provide much for individual highlights, so you'll have to dig into the full ones if you want video on, say, the penalty calls.]

Cincy beat a rising(?) Red Bull New York team in its own house, but that’s not the important thing about this game; moreover, just naming Nwobodo opens up a path to talking about what happened in last night’s 2-1 win. [Ed. – Fuck me, man. Just spit out the final score.]

I did some preliminary research on the Red Bulls yesterday, stuff I chose not to post on the grounds that I was looking at it last night, Cincy played them last night, etc. Most of what I learned dealt with characteristics that simultaneously define and limit them as a team. Famously, they press, they play “energy drink soccer,” etc. But it’s also not that – and I have to credit Calen Carr for giving me the right thought process during RBNY’s stomping of Atlanta United FC a few weeks back. They don’t press so much as they try to dictate where on the field the game gets played; to borrow another phrase Carr uses all the time, “they tilt the field.” “Pressing” and “energy drink” soccer conjure mental images of players chasing ball and players like headless ‘roided-up greyhounds and that misses it; if you watch them, the move close to the ball, often at a walk, then they start with the chasing. They mind their Ps and Qs before setting the defensive posture to “MY BALL!”

That strategy (right?) worked very well through the first half. Cincinnati didn’t do much over the first 25 minutes of the game and they couldn't do anything for the next 20. New York (I know it’s New Jersey....just roll with it) got and scored their penalty at the beginning of that period – and, just to note, I wouldn’t have called that, letter of the law be damned; sure, Hagglund’s hand strayed to face, but Kyle Duncan wasn’t gonna make shit out of that, he didn’t really unbalance him, etc. – but they way they controlled the game struck me as more significant. Cincy barely got across the center-line until something like the 46th minute when they (don’t remember who) finally fired a decent shot from a quality chance on goal and, yes, I do think that’s how xG should work. (I’ve got issues all over...)

New England Revolution 1-1 FC Cincinnati: Notes on a Hypothesis

Tirelessly searching for answers to today's vexing questions

When the New England Revolution’s Dylan Borrero went down awkwardly and was stretchered off around the 20th minute, I remember looking at the Revs’ somewhat headless attach (aka, Justin Rennicks) and wondering whether they could keep up with a mostly all-there FC Cincinnati attack. I would have done better to recall a note from my very own preview for the game:

“...unless Cincy fans see Gil’s name on the injury report...Cincy will be facing a solid, talented Revs team regardless of who starts.”

Young homegrown Esmir Bajraktarevic stepped in for Borrero and the Revs’ rhythm section barely missed a beat. Then again, that turned mostly played out to in the big-picture response. Things didn’t look so hot for the Revs in the near-term. And that “solid, talented team” theory could have looked different, maybe even should have.

To finally turn to FC Cincinnati – i.e., the actual subject of the post – they didn’t waste much time in putting that that theory to the test. Taking any kind of lead would do and Rennicks looked to have handed them one when he tagged a ball Alvaro Barreal clipped past him into the area with his right hand. I didn’t like the call – while there was no question Rennicks tagged the ball with his hand, I never got an angle that confirmed he did it in the “no-no zone” (can we make that happen, guys?) – but referee Alex Chilowicz pointed to the penalty spot...which happened to be the very same one from which Luciano Acosta got stuffed by the Revs’ Dorde Petrovic (how is this not a highlight, MLS?). For what it’s worth, I’m reading the miss as God seconding my doubts on the penalty call...

Cincinnati had dropped a couple stones’ worth of pressure on New England to that point – I thought Brandon Vazquez had pinged one off a post somewhere in there (the highlights memory-holed that one too, if he did) – and the corner that followed in less than a minute after the missed PK followed when they dropped on another one. The cross looked innocuous enough when it floated in, but Yerson Mosquera made a masterpiece of it when he slipped away from Andrew Farrell (a rock all afternoon; one of MLS’ best emergency defenders, still doing it) and into Dave Romney’s (also strong yesterday) blind-spot; ah, Mosquera’s li’l, legal bump into Romney’s back, the masterstroke. Once Cincinnati scored the opener, the test was on.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Portland Timbers: That Hurt, but It's Over, Bring It In, Guys

Bad man, tenuous metaphor.

If you haven’t watched Peacemaker (which I'd call both specific and 2/3 recommended), and want to duck any spoilers, now is a great time to skip to the third (sorry!) fourth paragraph.

For those who have, you’ll recall that Peacemaker has this horrible, actual-Klan bigot of a father who raises his two sons on violence. They get along great, no clear sibling rivalry, etc. (stick with me through this stretch), but he still has them fight to, in the white supremacist tradition, “toughen them up” in service of the terrible idea that motivates such assholes. At any rate, one time he sends them into a pit he dug in his front yard (again, these are not deep thinkers) for another fight and he’s nakedly pulling for one brother over the other and, wouldn’t you know it, his favored child catches a punch wrong and dies...

...that’s less a perfect analogy than the latest pop culture reference I’ve read about obviously favoring one child over another and things going sideways.

First and foremost (and unlike the fight in Peacemaker), FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers put on a better-than-expected show tonight. They traded somewhere around the same number of blows, fought roughly as hard - though, to my surprise, Cincy out-muscled the Timbers – and deviate too wildly on the numbers. While the Timbers had their share, Cincinnati ultimately found the wider openings, held off something of a grabasstic (two “s’s” in that or...?) rally, and ultimately held on for what I’d call a by and large deserved 2-1 win. And, unlike that horrible bigot of a father, I still love and support both of my sons.

I went into the game more worried about the Timbers, naturally, but I’d argue tonight showed them still progressing. They managed to pace more than one portion of the game – the start of both halves, mainly, and then the end after Cincinnati fully committed to the counter to close out the game. Cincy, meanwhile, took over longer stretches – particularly the 20-minute spell of the first half, when they clawed control of the game back from Portland and pressed and pressed until they broke through (hold that thought), and again after stifling the Timbers’ attempted rally at the start of the second – and all that feels like a good shorthand for the state of both teams. Portland’s improving, but Cincinnati has a capacity to stomp its foot on the game in a way the Timbers do not...

...have a mentioned how hard it is to focus on both sides of the ball yet? Which, as implied, goes against the concept of focusing? So, doing my best on the rest, with an assist from the highlights.

FC Cincinnati 2022 Season Review/Preview: Competence's Unexpected Dilemmas

The view from 2019-2021. Fucker looks massive.

I decided to park on a review of FC Cincinnati’s 2022 season for a variety of reasons – the choice to check out in mid-July among them (it’s possible my middle name, “Anders,” is Norwegian for “erratic”) – but not really knowing how to read their season-ending 0-1 loss to the now-MLS-Cup-bound Philadelphia Union played its part as well. In so many words, I understood Cincy had defied virtually every observer’s expectations, but couldn’t really place them in a league-wide context.

Seeing both Philadelphia and Los Angeles FC kick great lumps out of the opposition in their respective semifinals – though, just to note it, LAFC played a more one-way game – went some distance to filling in that blank. FC Cincinnati didn’t just have their best-ever season, they had a very good one. To lift a line out of Matt Doyle’s year-end review:

“’Everything from June 18 to Decision Day is the highlight’ also has an argument, as over that 20-game stretch, Cincy lost just twice. That’s the best of anybody in MLS.”

The bitter little boy who lives inside my head compels me to point out that 10 of those games ended as draws, a point Doyle concedes sotto voce when he notes that “Cincy dropped more points from leading positions this year than anyone but the Revs” (and is it just me or did five teams drop the most points from leading positions? I’ve read that stat somewhere for at least three teams). That bitter little boy missed a deeper truth that I thought I’d written at some point this season, but, because I can’t find it, here it is again: those ten draws meant that Cincinnati went toe-to-toe against all kinds of teams, six of them future playoff teams (including New York City FC), and gave away very little. Call that a long of saying that all those dropped points didn’t matter after Decision Day: what mattered was that Cincy showed they stood just as high as (literally) half the teams in Major League Soccer. And, when you’ve got that, getting into the playoffs amounts to having a chance in every game going forward. As Red Bull New York learned in the hardest of ways.

All that’s better than laudable. It’s beautiful, especially given the dark slapstick that came before. From there, the question becomes how to get better in 2023.

Red Bull New York 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Can I Make This a Tale of Good Versus Evil? Yes, Yes, I Can

Earlier today, I saw a tweet celebrating the fact Red Bull New York crashed out of the playoffs. If I had to write a concurring opinion, I’d mourn how far they’ve fallen since the Thierry Henry/Tim Cahill/Sacha Kljestan/Dax McCarty days. Like watching 11 drunken men trying to climb a goddamn greased poll, I tell you.

I don’t have a headcount of how many neutral Major League Soccer fans wanted FC Cincinnati to come out of the...is it a play-in, or a conference quarterfinal (does it matter)? At any rate, on a day when Cincinnati managed the more controlled approaches to goal, while the Red Bulls flailed in some fortunate something from distance, Cincy left Red Bull Arena with the ticket to the next round of the 2022 MLS Playoffs. And there was much rejoicing (yaayyyyyy).

I haven’t written about FC Cincinnati since...shit, July, but I’ve dipped in here and there to stay current. Between the opposition and the plethora of draws they played in the second half of the season, I fully braced to see today’s game slump into penalties. Instead, and with the housekeeping crew at McMenamin’s Kalama Lodge impatiently tapping at the door, I had the good luck to see Brandon Vazquez’s game-winner and to miss the overstuffed stoppage time minutes tacked on to the end of the game. I doubt anyone quibbled with the final score (have I mentioned it was 2-1 to Cincy yet?), I only know I found it satisfying.

Because Pat Noonan has trotted out something like the same line-up for as far back as I’ve noticed, there’s not a lot to say about the roster beyond, I think he’s on to something. Not every part of the set-up clicked – e.g., the Red Bull Collective did a great job of keeping the ball away from Vazquez and Brenner for something like 86 minutes (Brenner’s point-blank header, saved by Carlos Coronel notwithstanding), but an in-form player needs only a chance and a (again) collective breakdown on Red Bull’s right side gave Vazquez the one clear look he needed.

How You (And I) Should Have Known the Timbers Would Miss the 2022 Playoffs

This was how I told them apart. Now?

It becomes rarer with each passing season, but I still see people argue it’s impossible to support two teams at the same time. My rebuttal: it’s as easy as wanting one of those teams win every game and wanting the other to win every game except the ones where they play that first team. And that’s how I feel about the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, respectively, and I’ll never understand how that’s complicated.

Going the other way, and unlike past three seasons, watching the Timbers play all season while I watched/tracked Cincy had more value than it did in the past – i.e., most of the past three seasons saw the Timbers wake up sometime in late summer and roll into the playoffs, while Cincy typically started wilting somewhere around late may and continued to the end like some overwrought Shakespearian actor counting his wounds until he rather loudly expired. There has always been a whiff of ne’er the twain shall meet about the experience, in other words, but that changed with Major League Soccer’s 2022 season.

To start with the full disclosures, yes, I really did believe that both Cincinnati and Portland would make the 2022 playoffs. That bet panned out for one team – FC Cincinnati – but not the other...whose name shall go unmentioned. Both teams needed to get something out of their final game of the season - Real Salt Lake away for Portland and DC United away for Cincy. I read both of those games as winnable, hence the whole thing about both teams making the 2022 playoffs, but I also overlooked something, arguably out of habit. The thing that makes that remarkable was how obvious it should have been in retrospect. And that goes back to something I would never expected going into 2022 – i.e., how similar Cincy and Portland would be by season’s end.

First and foremost, Portland and Cincinnati tied a lot - 13 games per team, i.e., tied for second under 2022’s undisputed masters of sharing points, Columbus Crew SC (who had 16 draws and who also missed the playoffs). Another fun fact (and unless I miscounted): Cincy and Portland had only six clean sheets all season, a detail that points to something else that’s obvious - i.e., both teams gave up goals with very real reliability. By the final tally, Cincinnati actually gave up three more goals than Portland did, 56 to 53. Moreover, just four points separated the two teams. And yet Cincy’s in while Portland’s out. And yet, that’s not even the weird part.

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Red Bull New York: When Constellations Are Just Random, Useless Dots

Having the technology doesn't make using it right...

This won’t take long. I’m trying to get two of these things in tonight...

If I had to choose one way to explain FC Cincinnati’s 1-1 home draw to Red Bull New York, I’d go with the passing accuracy and total passes numbers, plus a pair of passing maps that look like constellations. The Red Bulls do best when they can force the opposition to play their game – particularly the part about forever pushing the ball forward, and with all the frustrated constipation of trying to make a turducken out of a set of badly-matched birds. Cincinnati had all of....I’m calling it about 25 minutes’ worth of impetus in that game in total; the rest of it was just 10 mammals reacting to stimuli. Solid game by Roman Celentano, by the way....

To lay my cards on the table, I’m a little pissy about this draw and mostly because I’m fairly convinced it didn’t have to be this way.

J. R. R. Tolkein getting the penalty call in the 28th-minute didn’t hurt, obviously, and, I don’t care how lonely this hill is, I would never have called that as a penalty. Raymon Gaddis clearly played the ball, one that hung in the air like a slow-pitched softball and, if he kicked J. R. R. in mid-flight, I mean, haven’t we all wanted to do that, if only for the terrible dialogue and dwarf songs alone?

Call that a long, digressive way of saying, I wouldn’t have called that penalty, but that doesn’t erase the fact it 1) wasn’t crazy and 2) was called, and that’s how the Red Bulls turned a whole lot of mostly nothing into one more point on the road. Celentano made all of two saves tonight (and came close on the PK), one of them that asked no more of him than catching a placement shot at head level from range, and that gives a good measure of New Jersey’s “dominance” tonight, and the limits of their present approach to the game. They succeeded in stifling everything Cincy thought to do, as soon as they tried it – boiling over Luciano Acosta’s frustration in the process – but the return they got was almost entirely negative. RBNY only managed one good shot on goal that stuck with me (Morgan, from range, circa the 63rd), but the rest topped out at their trademark frenetic aimlessness. They’re the soccer equivalent of someone who can win the fight for the knife in a street fight, but don’t know what to do with it from there.

Now, to pick up the mail from the complaints department...

New England v FC Cincy Preview: New Sensation (and I Did the INXS Song Just Get Stuck in Your Head?)

First image for "a bright shiny future." Wow.

I tune in with anticipation for FC Cincinnati games in 2022. Not dread. Beautiful. Starting with some numbers...

New England Revolution
Record/Basics: 6-5-6, 24 points, 4-2-3 home; 2-3-3 away; 27 gf, 26 ga, +1 goal differential
Last 10: LWTTWTWTWT* (2-0-3 at home; more favorable than not, tho shit’s done changed)
Oppo: @ DC, v MIA, v CLB, @ ATL, @ CIN, v PHI, @ SKC, v ORL, v MIN, @ VAN

What We Know About Them
First, there have changes since the last time Cincy played New England – e.g., no more Matt Turner, no more Adam Buksa (ergo, no more this) – but something else changed as well: the Revs haven’t lost since the last day of April (30 days in April, right?). Still, hey have plenty of talent – your Bous, your Gils, your...rest of the team – and, after starting slower than an 80-year-old getting out of a low-slung sedan, they’re presently breathing down the back of Cincinnati’s collective necks. And the Orange and Blue play this one on the road.

Notes on Recent Form
[* Fucking Form Guide and its shifting dates...]

After watching, oh, 2/3 of last Wednesday’s 0-0 draw at the Vancouver Whitecaps and poking around some box scores, I noted some commonalities. New England generally likes possession, whether at home or on the road (they got ~60/40 in three of their last five, but had a 6% margin at lowest), but they no longer run up the chances (as I recall them doing). The 1-1 draw at the Union aside (danger, Will Robinson, danger!), they’ve generally gone shot-for-shot against the opposition; perhaps more tellingly (or hopeful), they’ve posted modest xG lately – e.g., from a low of 0.5 against Minnesota, but the rest (again, Philly excepted) fell in the just over 1.0 line.

Some details run between the numbers – e.g., they got an assist in the win over Sporting Kansas City with an Uri Rossell red card around half time, and they played up the gut (and got a little lucky) against the Loons, but they showed some tendency to play toward their left – i.e., toward newbie Dylan Borrero’s – in a couple other games. One more thing to flag, they’ve run over their season-average goal differential and/or pattern lately, but not by much. You can see who they played over their past five games, and where, I’m just providing some context for the results.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Orlando City SC: Yes, They Were Dazed, but Hear Me Out...

Arguably, the true margin of victory.

Due to a series of random accidents, I sat through FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 home win over Orlando City SC a day late. Absent a total media blackout going in – which, in light of recent events and anger re, I didn’t even attempt – you can’t help but see the game through the lens of whatever information fell in your lap. It was mostly jokes about Cincinnati owning Orlando – e.g., aka Wikipedia page shenanigans – dazed musing over whether Cincy should perhaps look for a taller target for the 2022 season.

After dipping into the highlights, I clicked over the game stats, which showed an efficient game for Cincy – i.e., a high percentage of their 14 shots on goal – and a stunning 0.3 xG for Orlando. All I could think was, “how the hell was Nick Hagglund more dangerous than the entire Orlando roster?” Again, that's Nick Hagglund.

You know the “but” is coming, but I am not going to shit on this win. I can’t think of one stretch of the game that gave Cincy cause to fret, never mind worry. Orlando had a little more of the ball, but Cincinnati did twice as much with their time; movement off the ball and movement around it tended toward clean and high-percentage, player had little trouble playing out of pressure or playing forward. Cincy’s defensive posture was sharp ‘n’ solid, they played high, but not reckless, closed quickly and did an impressive job of keeping Orlando in front of them...

...but (there it is) Orlando helped a lot with all that. Patient to the point of being idle, too quick to play the ball backward, indecisive in movement and trying to do too much with too few: all that gave Cincinnati’s defense time to organize over and a consistent advantage in the numbers. I saw both of Orlando’s shots on goal and only one gave Roman Celentano a time to shine; their arguable best shot came in a play called back for offside, but Celentano got even that. And that’s how a team ends on an xG of 0.3.

That kept Orlando from winning the game...or doing much of anything, but the general malaise the defense mirrored back to its offense, with like for like clarity (not since Narcissus has a reflection been so fair and true), and that caused them to lose it. Tweets about “that Brenner goal” (or something to that effect) freckled my time-line and those got me dreaming of possibilities...instead I got a tap-in from the rough location of where the generally steady Pedro Gallase’s lap would have been. The kid needed to break his duck, obviously, but wouldn’t it have been nice to see that broken duck come from something Brenner did, as opposed to drifting half-asleep to the right place?

FC Cincinnati 2-3 New England Revolution: High from the Highest Tree-EEEE!

A little nod for all you Roger Miller fans.

“…put all that together, and it seems like the main thing Cincinnati will need to do on Saturday is keep up.”

So close, and yet so far. Hurts a little, honestly, but the sting of FC Cincinnati’s 2-3 home loss to the New England Revolution beats the holy hell out of the unholy hell of what past seasons have felt like - e.g., feeling one blow after another from a fetal position. I hate to do this, but, this one sentence from the (admittedly choppy) game thread on this game (I was cooking over the first 50 minutes), feels relevant to the discussion:

“Does #FCCincy go for broke at this point? Can they go for broke? And isn’t it nice to say that?”

To tie those two thoughts together, Cincy largely did keep up and with a visibly talented (yet still wobbly) New England team. Sure, the Revs won, but I’d put money on Tommy McNamara missing that shot nine times out of ten and not getting it at all more often still. Cincinnati’s defense dropped too deep, no question, and maybe they had run their legs out, but the Revs game-winner - all three of their goals, really - weren’t unlike rolling three straight, clean sevens in craps (and the lazy shits at MLS HQ didn't do pull-out highlights for this one, so the full four-minute reel is the only point of reference). Only they made each goal happen and credit to them. As loud as their Achilles heel screams (de-fense, de-fense), New England still moves the ball as well as any team in the league, Wilfrid Kaptoum and McNamara did well enough that they didn’t miss Matt Polster, Brandon Bye played a ridiculously effective game, etc. etc. etc.

But push a fair chunk of the credit to FC Cincy in this game for coming back into it twice - and they climbed the psychological equivalent of a mountain to do it. The broadcast booth called Sebastian Lletget’s opening goal against the run of play, but I’d call that valuing possession over effective use of it; New England had the better of the game to that point and they pulled Cincy like well-simmered pork on the goal. Good as Lletget’s movement was on that, Brandon Vazquez matched it on Cincy’s first equalizer, drifting back-post then, crucially, taking a step back allowed the other players to drift across his run and gave him a wee run-up to the ball to boot.