MLS Tourist Journal, Calender Week 6: Preseason and Varieties of Excitement

This far and no further till the regular season. You know the drill...

The fresh signings keep rolling into Major League Soccer – some flashier, some smarter – and preseason has started for just about every team in the league. Shit’s gettin’ real, but I still wouldn’t mistake anything that happens today for future lived reality, yea, these are the Ponzi schemes of fandom (what?).

Only the preseason portions of the above applies to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati – and I’m directing the late jab at the end toward FC Cincinnati – but, before getting to them, I wanted to start with a wide-lens snapshot of MLS.

Varieties of New Signings

“They're coming off a championship, so those are the things that motivated me to come. ... [The chance to move on to Europe] was a factor, too. You see players leaving [MLS] for Europe, so that played into my decision.”

So said Atlanta United FC’s Pity Martinez, but the broad idea of showing up/off in MLS as a stepping stone to fat European pay-days has gained real currency over the past couple seasons. And not all players are doing this the same way, so do read the fine print in any new arrival’s contract. For instance, it looks like Martinez signed “a long-term contract” with Atlanta, so, even if he (and even Atlanta’s FO) think he’ll be gone in a year or two, they’ll have some control when he leaves and will almost certainly get a kick-back out of it. The San Jose Earthquakes took a different approach in landing Argentine forward(? – thought he was a midfielder) Cristian Espinoza, and used new head coach Matias Almeyda as a sweetener. Espinoza’s signing is almost explicitly rehab, i.e., “[talented] young player that needs minutes moves to a team with playing time available.” The other club involved – Spain’s Villareal – tapped Almeyda to mentor Espinoza and, if things pan out, Villareal reaps the long-term benefits. That business of acting as a finishing school for bigger clubs around the world doesn’t sound like the best deal, but, on the grounds that weirder things have panned out, may as well see where it goes…

Several other eye-catching signings have come together over the past week…just real quick: rumor turned to reality when New York City FC landed their Romanian stud/Replacement David Villa, Alexandru Mitrita (they also added young American defender Keaton Parks, who called rich-people start-up NYCFC “a great club”…based on…?); sticking with defenders, the rich got richer when Atlanta added the well-pedigreed Florentin Pogba at centerback and the Los Angeles Galaxy correctly identified and filled a hole with the signing of Uruguayan centerback, Diego Polenta. Moving to the other side of the pitch, it’s good to see Real Salt Lake sign a forward, and here’s to wishing Liberian international Sam Johnson comes through for them, while further north and east, and promises to “eat people” notwithstanding, I think Toronto FC might have taken a flyer by signing injury-tinged American forward Terence Boyd.

Nashville SC 3-3 FC Cincinnati: Double-Fisted Heartbreak

No actual intention to go political. The rest were about prayer?

The original title for this post was, “The Maddest I’ve Ever Seen Matt Pickens,” so called because FC Cincinnati scored one of those glass-jaw specials that soccer punditry warns you of in every single broadcast immediately after Nashville SC drew the score level at 2-2. Corben Bone got free on Nashville’s right, cut back inside and fired to Pickens’ far side. Shot fired, shit lost, etc. 3-2 to FC Cincy, and in their last road game of 2018.

Cincinnati would feel a similar let-down (and a chink in the armor?) when Bolu Akinboye returned the favor via express service just as regular time drew its last (robust) breath (good game), and this game ended 3-3, and with a world of possibility, good and wish-that-hadn’t-happened for both teams on the field. (See The Match Center for all data.)

On the universal plus-side, both teams will get the chance to do it all over again, only this time in Nippert Stadium/Ohio. With all the points counted and the playoffs set to begin, 1st seed FC Cincy will face 8th seed Nashville in the first round of the USL Eastern Conference Playoffs, the day after tomorrow, effectively, 3 p.m., after school, at the flag-pole and in front of the entire motherfucking school. Place your bets now, and juice-box and orange wedges are your currency, people.

Where to begin? Even getting back to tonight is complicated, and for both teams. On FC Cincy’s side, I was about to say, when was the last time Cincinnati allowed three goals, only to realize that it happened just one month before, and against Toronto FC II. The point is, prior to that, it hadn’t happened since June and…against TFC II. (So, I guess the formula is not playing TFC II?) Another fun fact: that June 3-3 draw against TFC II came only five games into FC Cincinnati’s now-history-making-USL-unbeaten streak and, that lands my point: you’re not used to seeing FC Cincinnati give up three goals in one game because they don’t do it a lot. But they just did it against Nashville, the same team they’ll play in the first round of the playoffs. Sure, that happened in Nashville, but I’m at DEFCON 2, minimum. I mean, dumber things than a first-round flame-out for the regular season champs have happened in the history of sports…

Pittsburgh Riverhounds 0-0 FC Cincinnati: Poop Just Got Real (and Thank God)

I've been conditioned to this FC Cincy a certain way...

I won’t call it a whole lot of nothing (or even a whole lotta nuthin’). I’ve gotten more pleasure out of scores of games, maybe even several hundreds of them (I’ve been around a bit), but Cincinnati FC’s goal-less draw at the Pittsburgh Riverhounds’ (dinky*) stadium wasn’t paint-drying/grass-growing/old-people-fucking level of torture. At the same time, check The Match Center for highlights, and good luck with it!

(* I’ve had the pleasure of watching U.S. domestic soccer live for over two decades, and I can’t remember the last time I sat in a stadium as small as Highmark Stadium. In its defense, it is only the flip-side of the farce of playing professional soccer at, say, Gillette Stadium.)

In an attempt to explain/analogize to this game through a series of moments, I offer the following:

Pittsburgh’s Neco Brett received a nearly perfect cut-back from a player whose name I don’t recall; he wound up losing track of the ball, allowing his right foot to push it past his (so they tell me) preferred left foot. Minutes later, maybe even as few as one, FC Cincy’s Emery Welshman knocked a loose back pass around Pittsburgh ‘keeper Dan Lynd, only to stumble onto his can at the end of trying to run it down. For the record, neither of these moments show up in The Match Center highlights.

The other moment happened in the second half - somewhere in the 70s, if I had to guess (which I do) - when Cincinnati’s rather large Forrest Lasso tried to shepherd a ball over the goal line with Kay Banjo hanging on his back; Banjo whipped his leg around Lasso’s largeness, nearly creating another chance. This also didn't make the highlights, and that's why I chose them.

Not every shot was terrible - Christiano Francois and Romeo Parkes tormented FC Cincy’s defense in a way I’ve never seen (even at 18 games watched, I consider myself a noob), and both Emanuel Ledesma and Fatai Alashe put solid shots on goal (and all those made the highlights) - but that this game didn’t see many good chances. The detail I flagged with Banjo is meant to draw out the idea that Pittsburgh played the better game, thereby surprising FC Cincinnati, thereby perhaps reminding them that things only get harder for the rest of the season and (are you paying attention??) into some indefinite future given the path this young team has chosen.

By way of translating reality to numbers, the best stat I can provide for Pittsburgh’s visible edge in this game would be shots, general: the Riverhounds had 18 to Cincinnati’s four. Credit Pittsburgh for being the team most likely to; credit Cincinnati for making them the team that never did - even if with moments of doubt (e.g., Lasso having to pull Brett’s jersey at 34(ish) or Hoyte flirting with an own-goal when Francois broke through (yet again) down Pittsburgh’s left in the second half). I can’t think of any way in which Pittsburgh wasn’t the better team yesterday, and that runs counter to normal for someone who, like me, still has yet to see FC Cincinnati lose.

Atlanta United 2 1-5 FC Cincinnati: The Etiquette of Mercy

Only picture Stalin.

To continue from the title, this became a real issue when FC Cincinnati took a 4-0 lead over Atlanta United Muppet Babies. Atlanta United 2. No disrespect. It just popped into my head.

Anyway, Cincinnati took a 4-0 lead over The Stripes (see, FC Cincy? a quick, catchy nickname) at the 55th minute and, that crystalized the scenario: Atlanta 2, The Prophecy (last one). OK, for real.

When Cincinnati took a 4-0 lead over Atlanta 2, two realities were clear: Atlanta 2 would never stop making just egregious mistakes in defense - the stuff of nightmares - and, if Cincinnati kept playing with the same intensity, the game would end with a score high enough to break wills, maybe even cause some of those young scamps to consider going back to school for a highly-fungible philosophy degree. Cincinnati had already killed the game, basically, but with 35 minutes left on the clock. And all those people watching.

So, what to do? How do you sell that to the fans? Since they can’t throw in the towel to end a game (think of the power of that as a motivational tool for a coach!), can professional soccer teams land on a kind of soccer/pro-wrestling hybrid that lets the right team walk out with the win, while still keeping the fans entertained?

A comeback is out of the question, obviously, and what team can’t benefit from working another muscle out there - say, playing “live-fire keep-away” (aka, keeping possession in a competitive game) to kill a game without the game even knowing it (ninja) - something FC Cincy started doing around the 76th minute (and, full disclosure, I started fast-forwarding the archived feed from that point forward). This game could only end with a scenario that played out once in my own backyard, only with Cincinnati as the cat, and Atlanta 2 as the bird she was too stupid to kill. (That brings me back to the mascot issue: FC Cincy didn’t think of biting the whole “Bearcat” thing? Just for another nickname?) So, no universe existed in which this game is competitive and, how does a team play 35 minutes of back-foot soccer without bleeding even a couple unmerited goal-differential-eating goals?

Short answer: the Orange and Blue (see? too long) managed the game by absorbing pressure when they had to and, whenever Atlanta 2 started pressing against the unspoken rules of live-fire keep-away, Cincinnati would send players forward. And, after a period when that détente seemed to get a little fuzzy for Atlanta 2, Cincinnati turned the…post-fatal screw and raised the score to its final 5-1 score line (for highlights, box scores, and more, see the match center!).

Look, the game was comically unclose. Atlanta 2 held possession with, honestly, remarkable poise and, sometimes, elegance for a team that, by the looks of them, are two years into legal drinking on average (per the Match Center, which has all the stats and video I can offer). They have some sincerely talented players out there: Jon Gallagher, Jack Metcalf, George Bello, and, personal favorite, Laurent Kissiedou. After a lot of thought - and he’s hard to place - I wound up equating him to Eddie Gaven. Regardless, Kissiedou had the entire, “make-shit-happen” minute somewhere in the early 60s, and that was genuinely impressive, even if it only threatened to reverse the tides. Also, Devon Sandoval could have dropped the ball to Kissiedou, instead of spinning and taking that shot around the 32nd minute – though, in Sandoval’s defense, that turn nearly came off (and credit to Spencer Richey for stuffing it). They’re not a terrible team, Atlanta United 2…and Shawn Nicklaw fired an absolute cruise missile to give them their lone goal.

But, Jesus Christ, if they don’t give more assists to the opposition than all the opposition’s midfielders combined? Like a change machine you only need to whistle at, I tell you…

FC Cincinnati 3-0 Charleston Battery: Wire to Wire, and Beyond

It's greased lightning!

It’s rare to see a 2-0 win as dominant as the one FC Cincinnati dropped on the visiting Charleston Battery (and, yes, I realize the game actually ended 3-0 - and FC Cincy deserved all of that third goal - but it goes against a premise, so…ssshhhh, bear with me). The orange and blue (that’s FC Cincy, who needs a snappier nickname) controlled every aspect of the game, but without looking likely to run up the score. They thoroughly contained the Battery, sometimes in their own half for soccer’s equivalent of eternity, and, with one exception (Ataulla Guerra pinging a bomb off Spencer Richey’s crossbar), Cincinnati’s defenders never gave the visitors more than a glimpse of daylight (e.g., Forrest Lasso rotating/sliding to snuff Patrick Okonwko’s and/or Charleston's best second-half chance).

Both teams came in boasting unbeaten streaks that I can’t stop visualizing as cars rumbling up for an evening of street racing (see The Fast & the Furious, Grease, and maybe Rebel Without a Cause; haven’t seen that one): 15 for Cincinnati and 11 for Charleston. The home team ended the visitor’s streak with confidence-eating finality. The Battery kept their shape by and large, and I think I’d find that distressing - i.e., falling 3-0 when you didn’t shit the proverbial bed (that’s probably not a proverb). Think failing a test when you actually prepared for the thing.

Box scores don’t always put the details in proper relief, but I’d hold up two, maybe two and a half stats (in the match center, where you’ll find highlights too) that capture what decided this game: FC Cincy’s 2-of-3 advantage in duels and their huge advantage in shooting accuracy (75% to 16.7%) - and the latter goes back to another number, e.g., the slim margin in the total number of shots. Those numbers underline two things: 1) how well the Battery held its shape for nearly the full 90*, and 2) how little that mattered, thanks to how well Cincinnati threw around its weight.

* The few honest breakdowns Charleston did suffer produced the result - more specifically, the final score. The third goal - of which, yes, it did happen - concluded the only period of pressure that saw the Battery tremble on the verge of cracking. That came late - around the 85th, and lasted till the final whistle - when Fanendo Adi and Justin Hoyte put at least three clean shots on goal, and Nazmi Albadawi played the dangerous ball that led to Skylar Thomas’ soul-bruising stoppage time own-goal. The other goal came in first-half stoppage time when Albadawi chased down a loose trap by a Charleston player (who, incidentally, had just intercepted a Cincinnati pass), and then combined with Emory Welshman, and Corben Bone, who would finish off Albadawi’s assist, to score.

FC Cincinnati 2-0 Ottawa Furr...shit, Fury: Good Ruler, Terrible Context

Another layer of meaning? Are you fucking kidding?!

Watching the replay of FC Cincinnati’s 2-0 win over the visiting Ottawa Furry…crap, Fury, begged more questions than it answered. Again, knowing as little as I do about the USL Mark 4.0 (maybe?) makes this project a little like staring at a ruler, only with no idea what it’s measuring. That said, based on the replay, and a growing body of FC Cincy games, I feel confident with the following statements:

Cincinnati clearly looked the better team, but not a dominant one; I described their first half as “a game of fitful probing.” That had everything to do with Ottawa’s defense, a compact organized bolus that tangled up just about everything anyone tried to move through it. That’s their M.O., according to the booth - playing compact and countering down Route One - but, with a losing score-line and a half-time pep-talk blowing a breeze up their backsides (maybe), Ottawa tried to play a little in the second half. That step improved the game more than Ottawa’s chances, with their best chance (from eight shots? when??) coming when team captain/avatar, Carl Haworth, nearly walked in a goal early in the second half. Ottawa is a goal-a-game kind of team - one of those pertinent details one can only find by piercing a layer of mysterious veils on the USL's official website (gateway to Ottawa/hell) - and it showed. Still, I upgraded them from “just no fucking idea what they’re doing” to…well, this, I suppose:

“Who is Cincy? When have I seen them on their game? When off? No sense that Cincy will seize the game and run away with it.”

Even if I barely remember what that meant, it feels pretty fair. That said, one thing I have noticed about Cincinnati is that they tend to find the game all at once - i.e., after 15-20 minutes of half-hopeless dicking around, they sneak in a half-chance, then, two, three minutes later, they put a better-than-hopeful shot in goal. They score more often than not too, nearly two goals a game. Hold on, need to back-track a bit for another note…

Not every player on the field plays this way, but USL Soccer feels closer to rugby, aka, soccer’s twice-removed cousin, because more of the passing looks more territorial than planned. Getting the ball nearer the opponent’s goal holds a thin, yet permanent edge over how it gets there, and that means half-blind, mostly aspirational headed passes and the balance of balls out of the back look like thinly-veiled clearances (wow, second veil reference…whatever have I been watching?) show up all over the field, and attacking means chasing forward passes into space more often than it means deliberate, defense-unlocking interplay.

Happily, both of Cincinnati’s goals worked against that generality - and the reality that Cincinnati has that in them makes as good a comment on the team as I’ve got. Both attacks came down Cincy’s left and both involved Corben Bone, an MLS journeyman who might have backed into becoming a USL journeyman courtesy of Cincinnati’s (so far) steady squad rotation. His career aside, Bone paired with Blake Smith, Cincy’s left-back, nicely as steak pairs with red wine. They combined for the first goal (with Smith providing the final ball), while Bone delivered the assist for the second, a cracking beauty fired back against the grain from just outside the area by Nazmi Albadawi. Between delivering the pin-point cross that let Albadawi kill off the game and pinging the pass that freed Blake for the cross, Bone played a decisive role in the win. And that opens up a couple discussions.

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.

North Carolina 0-2 FC Cincinnati: Mostly Groping Toward Understanding

Hell adjacent, but also a start.

First of all, I’m gonna fuck up some names. Second, I don’t really know this team, FC Cincinnati, either, because this was my first 90 minutes with them. A speed date, if you will. That said, I think I picked up a reasonable sense as to who does what on FC Cincinnati, or at least this specific version of their roster. Or against this specific opponent. Again, this is the first step to me knowing what I’m talking about, and give it a month or two.

Hold on, backing up: FC Cincinnati beat North Carolina FC 2-0 in the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees, North Carolina (that’s Cary, NC). They looked reasonable for the win, but North Carolina gave them plenty of breathing room by taking…just terrible shots, more around than on goal. And that “around” was very general. As noted in my catch-up post on FC Cincy, they have a decent knack for creating wide-open chances, and tonight was no exception. There, I’m thinking their second, more than their first: when Nazmi Albadawi found Emery Welshman in that much space on Cincy’s right, it isolated the (surprisingly nimble) forward against (I’m guessing) Carolina’s left-sided centerback, and Welshman sat him right on his can with a cut inside, fired the shot, and, boom, FC Cincinnati bags their insurance goal in the 87(-ish) minute, game very much over, and Cincinnati three points clear on top of the United Soccer League’s Eastern Conference. (Just five points behind Western Conference leaders Real Monarch SLC; also this puts Cincy level on points with Timbers 2, but with a game in hand.)

To step back still further, it’s sort of a trip starting with this team where I did - i.e., tonight - but I don’t think my personal experience differs so much from an “O.G.” Cincinnati fan. (Again) This team is two years old and counting, for fuck’s sake, and, at time of writing, I’m not sure how new or old any of these twits are to the team. For instance, Emanuel Ledesma, team points leader, came over from the New York Cosmos just this season. Russell Cicerone, the player who stood out most tonight, turns out he’s a rookie, an at least one-time MAC player of the year award, and, no, I’m not looking that up, because who cares what you did in college, kid, but damn good game tonight. You made that first goal, but, wow, didn’t Danni Konig literally wrestle that fucker home? And that was Cincinnati’s first goal. Also, when did Konig sign? Ah, just May 2017.

My point is, players can’t have deep roots with this team, because this team does not have deep roots. There is no “street cred” with this bunch. We’re all fucking newbies at this rodeo.

Now, to the game itself and what it told me about who does what, I absolutely insist on beginning with the statement that you can’t possibly know the tip of shit about a team by watching one game. There are too many variables involved - starting with the quality of the opposition (wait for it) - to allow any reasonable person to think he (or she) can make any kind of firm statement about any player, the tactics, or just anything about a team after just one viewing. With that firmly in mind, dig this…