Atlanta United FC 4-2 FC Cincinnati: Bewitched, Bedazzled & Kinda Weird

Plenty to go around, sadly.

As anyone who has interacted with the MLS Season Pass interface knows, it can still slip in the odd the spoiler. For instance, I caught the fact that Miles Robinson scored a goal out of the corner of my eye before starting the full replay, so I had that at back of mind when Atlanta United FC opened the scoring at the 15th minute. I only got halfway through, "nothing to worry about" when Atlanta scored a second goal. I spent the rest of the game hoping that the caption read “Miles Robinson hat trick.” It did not. Atlanta carried that early lead to the final whistle, and only a little uncomfortably, outrunning Cincinnati to a 4-2 win at home.

About the Game
Atlanta looked a (promising) mess over the opening ten minutes with balls played in behind to phantom runs and a full-field defensive shape that looked doomed to watch Cincinnati pull them apart; the two quality shots the visitors created – one a close solo run by Gerardo Valenzuela, the other a sparkling team effort – had the feeling of heavy knocks rattling a door. Next thing you know, Nick Hagglund went down and off on a hard charge by Emmanuel Latte Lath (“I'll show you soft, Ronny!”; weird injury, too; ribs and lung?) and, mere minutes later, Derrick Williams headed home what might have been Atlanta’s first competent pass of the game on a set piece and it was off to the races. Atlanta scored again, of course, with a tap-in by Ajani Fortune five short minutes later after Saba "Well Janice*" Lobjanidze bewitched and bedazzled Lukas Engel on Cincy’s left (* I get so much free delight from closed captioning). From there, a broadcast booth narrative developed that Atlanta had pounced on a defense still working out its assignments. That argument holds up better in a world where Latte Lath didn’t miss two massive, free-free-free opportunities (more on one of those later), all of which fell outside that crucial window. Atlanta had gilded chances at an even half-dozen goals - a rightly shocking note given Cincinnati's typically tight defense - but all those chances ran against an undercurrent of Cincy playing through them with relative ease. That's to say, this was a weird one.

No one knew the game would end where it did when Robinson’s goal finally came just after halftime, of course, especially with Taylor Twellman treating Atlanta’s woes over the first 15 minutes of every second half as a disaster to count on. That note came against the backdrop of some of the best attacking builds Cincinnati has produced all season; the chances rained and the shots poured until they piled up to nearly 30, with nine on goal. Not all of them made Brad Guzan sweat – I’d say Evander’s 60th minute effort gave his Old Spice the biggest workout – but his every save and the 21 shots off target (some of them more wise than good) meant more time playing catch-up for Cincy and with less time to get there. Another defensive breakdown – and on a set piece, again, and with the ball bouncing all over inside the six, again – restored Atlanta’s two-goal margin at the 66th minute, forcing Cincy back into a sprint. The Orange and Blue pulled within one a mere four minutes later when Valenzuela finally got his prize for a great game, but it wouldn’t take look for them to succumb to the game’s other defining feature, fully-bodied defensive breakdowns by the visitors. That hadn’t happened since the opening weeks of 2025 (e.g., the ass-kicking at Philly), but Jamal Thiare insured the win in stoppage time on what must have been Atlanta’s third clean break behind Cincy’s defense. Everything that could go wrong did, basically, and it was more than enough to erase a good amount of right.

FC Cincinnati 2-2 Atlanta United FC: Heroic Striving and Achilles Heels

This with a couple turds scattered on the floor.

Not what the doctor ordered, obviously, but the prognosis never looked wholly favorable either.

About the Game
Due to the way my day shook out (Mickey 17 was pretty good, fwiw), I watched the first half live but wouldn’t see how the game ended until last night. I did, however, know the final score before wrapping up; as such, I spent the final 15 minutes wondering how the hell Atlanta United FC tied FC Cincinnati at 2-2 by the final whistle. Can’t say I cared for the reveal, but, to start at the beginning…

Not much to report from that first half besides a lot of running, kicking, and a couple of yellow cards (who knew Yuya Kubo could tackle like that?). Both teams had players missing – Miguel Almiron (mainly) for Atlanta, versus about 90% of the regular starting center backs, plus Kevin Denkey for Cincinnati (thus answering the question of who had more arms tied behind their backs) – and that created more unfinished thoughts than chances on goal through most of the first half. Atlanta found more chances over the opening 45, and probably the best one, but Cincy forced more saves out of Brad Guzan (e.g., Nick Hagglund's header that got his arms flapping). Most of Atlanta’s pressure came with overlapping runs into their right channel, but Cincinnati’s back 3-5 cobbled together a defensive line and held it together well enough, cleaning up whatever Lucas Engel let through, with a likely assist from the 45 minutes Pat Noonan got out of Hagglund. If forced to name the big moment of the first half, I’d go Tristan Muyumba getting stretchered off around the 40th minute after doing an unnatural thing to his ankle. And yet, Cincy tinkered and toiled until they finally got a hold of the game a little before Muyumba's departure - Pavel Bucha gets my man of that moment for all the times he held the ball and kept them moving forward – and they carried that momentum into the second half. It didn't save them from giving up the first goal, sadly. Thanks to some collective switching off and a stolen thrown-in, Atlanta opened the scoring in the middle of all that with a run up (again) their right and a smart finish by Emanuel Latte Lath. The shock of falling behind appeared to hit Evander, in particular, personally, so he took over the game as only he can: tempting defenders into fouls in dangerous places and orchestrating runs up Atlanta’s gut, respectively. Cincy’s equalizer came from a 70th-minute free kick earned and scored by Evander (and assisted by a deflection), while their go-ahead goal came as a bow at the end of a waltz in the space between Atlanta’s midfield and defense. And, for the next 15 minutes, the Brazilian’s clever shot against the grain looked to have settled affairs between the two teams…but then Atlanta got to pillaging up their right again and Alvas Powell couldn’t stretch far enough to keep out yet another cross from Saba Lobjanidze. One own goal, two points lost. C’est la vie and at least Cincy scored three...

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New England Revolution 2-2 FC Cincinnati: Rhymin & Stealin

Remember when they used to smoke after sex in the movies?

And...yep, FC Cincinnati’s 2-2 draw at the New England Revolution lifted them to their personal best for points in a single Major League Soccer season. 25 > 24, people. And still so much time to play.

Before digging into it, I’d like to pause here to appreciate the weirdness of Cincy’s 2022 season.

When the season started, bringing Brenner off the bench, or just leaving him there, made perfect sense. And when he did come in, he just kind of wandered around, looking some pitiful combination of sad, confused and lost. From (weighty) sunk cost to a forward scoring goals worthy of his price tag in just a handful of games. Who saw that coming?

The conversation around Brandon Vazquez talked more about the ceiling hanging over all the good things he does rather than those good things as recently as the end of last season. Today, Vazquez is in the conversation for the U.S. Men’s National Team.

Nick Hagglund has been a regular starter for most of the season. And I don’t mind it one bit.

And, yesterday, Pat Noonan trotted out the kind of defensive midfield – Allan Cruz paired with Yuya Kubo – that had spelled spinning wheels in one direction and getting run over in the other.

I type this while craving, not so much the cigarette it sold, but the branding they used to sell it: you’ve come a long way, baby, aka, FC Cincinnati.

I started with the forest because I don’t have much to say about the trees except, they’re fine. I can’t think of one Cincy player I’d accuse of having a bad game yesterday, even as I imagine Geoff Cameron is still yelling self-affirmations into his bathroom mirror after giving up the second go-ahead goal to the theretofore silent Gustavo Bou’s near-post run. The team as a whole looked a little shaky for the 10+ minutes that followed, but they regained their footing and played their way back into the match.

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?

Chicago Fire FC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: We Come from the Windy City, Bearing Gifts

Chicago, shortly after equalizing.

This post won’t take long and it turns on a single question:

If someone just gives you something, did you really earn it?

Both FC Cincinnati goals came from mistakes by Chicago Fire FC - in a spin on something familiar to the sport, one of them indirect, the other direct as it gets - and those gave them their margin of victory. You can argue - as I would - that, when it came to shots fired, Cincy made up in quality what Chicago offered in quantity. And that concept carries over into the game as a whole - e.g., Cincinnati didn’t move the ball nearly as much, but did it more effectively than the home team.

Still, the timing of the second, indirect gift in Cincinnati’s 2-1 road win over Chicago bears noting. After 65-plus of running and kicking like it was the point of the game, the Fire started to apply real pressure toward the end of the game. And, almost immediately after I mocked their slurry of half-effectual corner kicks on my in-game twitter thread, Chicago tied the game at 1-1 with a glancing headed goal by Jhon Duran on a run to the near-post. For all that amounted to trying the same thing over and over until it works, it finally paid off (or just did) and the broadcast booth started talking about how much a comeback win could help get Chicago’s season back on track.

And then every neutral’s favorite goalkeeper, Gabriel Slonina, mishandled a back-pass and cut off that conversation mid-sentence. Credit to Cincy’s Luciano Acosta for making it count - and that’s after giving real, nerve-addling indications that he wouldn’t (see the "indirect" mistake above) - but after a long, blindfolded walk to nowhere, Chicago had at long last ripped off the blindfold and started walking in a good and useful direction. And then the boy-‘keeper who has the world raving commits the inevitable rookie error. And Cincy wins, Cincy wins.

Once you put all the above together, I don’t know how to get a read out of this game beyond, yep, good enough. A couple Cincinnati players stood out - e.g., Nick Hagglund won an eye-catching number of aerial duels at the heart of the defense and you love to see Junior Moreno clogging the channels inside the 18, as he did more than once - and the Orange and Blue made the result stand up collectively and with a lot of attacking options off the table (with the baseline value of those options - e.g., Brenner, Isaac Atanga, Calvin Harris - left an open question). In the broadest of terms, Cincinnati did its job as a team and cashed the checks Chicago left unsigned in their mailbox.

Minnesota United FC 0-1 FC Cincinnati: A Better View

It's good up here.

“It’s like watching a sunset that no one would bother to comment on.”

“And why does Geoff Cameron always looked so fevered when the camera cuts close, like he just killed somebody or something. Is that some kind of resting face?”

“The question of which Minnesota team shows up matters as much as anything, but, so long as Cincy can settle into the game and keep Minnesota generally in front of them, I feel good about them getting a point out of this one. And, unlike past seasons, they’ve improved enough at picking pockets that three points isn’t crazy (even if it remains, in my mind, crazy unlikely)…”

The first two quotes above are tweets I wrote during the second half of FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 great, because it came late, road win over Minnesota United FC. A scheduling conflict caused me to miss the first half - so maybe I wasn’t…fully invested in the game - but the game really did look like a whole lot of half-frantic nothing by that time - i.e., two teams taking chances, but not too many and none of them very big.

The third quote comes from the preview I posted for this game last Friday. I appreciate that only assholes quote themselves (“And I’m quoting myself here” is a legitimate cause for punching a fella), and the thought itself is vague enough to apply to somewhere around 86% of road games in soccer, but, I’d like to think that Brandon Vazquez’s post-90 winner slots nicely into the space in between “isn’t crazy” and “crazy unlikely.” That said, it followed from a remarkable situation, one that broke the mold of taking chances, because Cincy had committed over half the team into Minnesota’s defensive third - again, after the 90th minute. The move started down the left and the Loons defense choked off that avenue, but it took just two passes to get the ball over to Cincinnati’s right where Luciano Acosta suddenly found himself drunk with options. He went with a good one - Calvin Harris’ run around and against the depth of Minnesota’s defense - and, when Bakaye Dibassy and Oniel Fisher failed to track Vazquez’s run (and in somewhat shocking fashion, honestly), that left Cincy’s leading goal-scorer with something close to a tap-in. I, along with Michael Boxall, couldn’t believe it.

I think every FC Cincinnati fan knows they made history yesterday - i.e., three straight wins for the first time in its MLS history. That doesn’t just feel good - though it very much does - those three wins have put Cincy to within four points of their (fucking) total points for 2021, and at just one-third of the way into the 2022 season. People parsing the subtext of the preview could see I kept my guard pretty high going into this game, but I’m just gonna let myself feel good about not just yesterday’s win, but pretty much everything going on around the Orange and Blue this season.

MLS Weakly, January 15, 2022: The SuperDraft Is a Bright, Shining Lie & Notes on Aging (and Agless) Players

At least Buyer 1205 knows what he's getting...probably.

Welcome to the…next one. Though Major League Soccer’s preseason has officially started for some and will start for others tomorrow, fans remain in that space in between 2021 and 2022. Which explains why The Mothership is running “stories” like “One reason every MLS team should feel optimistic as the 2022 preseason begins” (a slap in the face, frankly, to certain teams) and a pair of half-stale reminders about worries for each team in the Eastern and Western conferences. I get it. You do what you have to do to remind people you’re still pecking at the keyboard…as you can see…

That doesn’t mean the league hasn’t seen some eye-popping moves - e.g., Toronto FC singing Lorenzo Insigne (a move so big one only has to type “toronto fc italian” to find articles), the Seattle Sounders poaching Albert Rusnak from Real Salt Lake, and the mid-week mega-trade that sent Kellyn Acosta from the Colorado Rapids to Los Angeles FC (though didn’t the teams basically just swap defensive midfielders/No. 8s? And who would you rather have: Mark-Anthony Kaye or Acosta?). I acknowledge that’s a damned short list - and, surely, other, smaller trades are percolating as I type, even if some fall within comparatively meaningless reports of teams “showing interest” or “making a bid” - but the 2022 MLS SuperDraft has to count as last week’s biggest story.

Or is it nothing but a bright, shining lie?

With a nod to the hyped phrasing, I’m willing to let the reader decide. As for methodology, I reviewed all the MLS SuperDrafts since 2013 (and here are the rest of the links: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, and I wound up on nine years, because I can't count so good), looked at the total number of players picked or passed on, and weighed that against the number of players who have: 1) become reliable starters in MLS (or who later moved overseas), and 2) been able to secure reliable minutes, if fewer of them, aka, journeymen. Also, and because I might have noticed it for the first time, I looked at all the players signed as homegrown players since then to make a similar comparison. Two minor caveats on that: that sample did not include players who were eligible for one draft or another, but who signed elsewhere (e.g., Andrew Gutman for Scotland's Celtic), and who knew that the New England Revolution’s Matt Turner came into the league under “other notable player” in 2016, whatever that means.

Next, some definitions: “reliable starter” means a regular on one or more starting rosters since joining MLS, a definition that grows more flexible with the more recent SuperDrafts, e.g., I doubt anyone would quibble with calling Andrew Farrell or Walker Zimmerman a “reliable starter,” but that’s a tougher call with players like, say, DeJuan Jones, Chris Mueller, or even Richie Laryea. And yet I counted them all. Moreover, I drew a blurry line on either side of the players I dubbed “journeymen,” which group includes some now and former useful players, e.g., Kekuta Manneh, Dominique Badji, Tsubasa Endoh, Jonathan Lewis, Jacori Hayes, or even Danny Musovski. At any rate, I made the choices I did and if you want to look at the same source material and make your own calls, the links are above. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ll wind up on wildly different numbers if you do, but I also freely acknowledge that I no less about every team in MLS with each team they add.

Club de Foot Montreal 5-4 FC Cincinnati: ................You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding Me

Another weakness: terrible box office numbers...

When I saw who Club de Foot Montreal had avaiable in defense, I had a sense they’d struggle at the back. When I saw who FC Cincinnati started in defense, the stench of trouble wafted into my nostrils.

Even with all those tells, I don’t believe a single human being who thinks and exists could have called the final 5-4(!) win for Montreal. “Hows” gave way to “whys” gave way to “what the fucks”: there’s almost no point in asking what went wrong when it’s that close to everything. Montreal gave up goals through sleepwalking nonchalance - if with an assist from Cincy’s press - but Cincinnati gave out both shots and goals like candy. For as many times as one could argue Cincinnati got robbed on this or that play - and I count three - Montreal found a shot and missed it by inches as many times. About those three times:

1) yes, play should have been stopped on Montreal’s first goal because the ref impeded Joe Gyau;

2) Montreal’s dude (think it was Victor Wanyama) fell into Yuya Kubo and that could have easily been called; and

3) it probably would have helped Kenneth Vermeer’s case that Mason Toye took a dive had he not got a cut on his forehead that clearly signaled some form of contact…and he came out too hot.

I’ll get to five thoughts on FC Cincinnati - and I’m gonna squeeze all the happiness I can out of them - but to start with Montreal.

They play soccer the same way one wears an ill-fitting sweater in general, but Montreal surprised me yesterday. The midfield spine (Wanyama and Emanuel Maciel) labored more than I thought it would against Cincy’s, but the defense…I mean, sure, Cincinnati pressed but their play was casual to the point of outright nudity back there - e.g, this should never happen anywhere outside pee-wee soccer. Going the other way, Montreal clearly have some decent pieces - new kid Joaquin Torres looks like one to watch (or Cincy’s bumbles made him so) - but, after watching them for a second full 90 minutes in 2021, my main question is....that [gestures toward Montreal] fourth in the Eastern Conference again? I get that I’m seeing them at their worst - maybe orange and blue hits them the same way the color yellow hits the Green Lantern? - but they’ve looked just as ragged every time I’ve taken 15 minutes to watch them. I’m not expecting them to stay fourth, basically.

Orlando City SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: Training Wheels Forever

Sometimes it takes a while...

I watched as much of FC Cincinnati’s latest loss as felt worthwhile - a little more than I should have, honestly, and, yes, “latest loss” is the phrasing I’m going with. Orlando City SC only beat them 3-0 in the end, a final score that felt like mercy after Cincy went down by two goals inside the first 20 minutes.

I’m not going to spend much time to picking through the entrails of this one, and on the grounds that, 1) the beast is well-dead and there’s not much mystery as to the cause of death, and 2) I don’t think it has much to tell Cincinnati fans about the future that they don’t already know. I do, however, have one thought to impart to a justifiable restless fan-base: what about this match up would make you expect anything but the result that happened? To put that another way, why would you expect a team that has most of its shit together - that’s Orlando - give away anything at home to a team that has yet to figure out even some of its shit?

Look, Orlando is a well-coached team with good players - e.g., Nani (who had time to thoroughly embarrass Yuya Kubo when scoring Orlando’s second goal), Mauricio Pereyra, Chris Mueller, Junior Urso, Pedro Gallese, Ruan, and, mind, that list is incomplete - that is both strong at home (heard some stat about one loss at home in their last 11 from the broadcast booth) and damned hard to score against (one goal allowed in three games this season and, again, I heard something about less than 1.0 goals per game allowed during the Oscar Pareja era). There’s nothing wrong with feeling (constant, borderline existential) disappointment with a result, or even rage, but there is something very unhealthy about, to torture an example, expecting to get a unicorn pony for Christmas when absolutely nothing in your prior experience points to ever getting one. Basically, keep a little perspective as you watch Cincinnati struggle out of the quicksand.

Given all the above, yeah, the game probably was over by the 35th second, when a clumsy back-pass by Nick Hagglund teed up the game-winner for Orlando’s Tesho Akindele. Cincinnati tried to settle down after and recover, naturally, but anyone who saw this game saw what I saw - a lot of tentative passes forward chased backwards by a middling Orlando press, a lot of kicking the ball around Cincinnati’s back-line, a lot of errant passes upfield, a number of desperate dribbles, and far too many instances of Orlando catching a Cincinnati player in possession (Kubo, often as not) and rushing a counter toward Pzremyslaw Tyton’s goal…and why the hell doesn’t MLSSoccer.com show saves as a stat anymore?

New York City FC 5-0 FC Cincinnati: The Neverending Roster Build

All due respect to TQL Stadium, this is Cincy's home.

This game was (much) more and (a lot) less of a projection of what I saw in FC Cincinnati’s 2021 season opener: Cincy doesn’t know how to move the ball forward fer shit and, once they lose control of a game, they’re looking at [X minutes] of emergency defending. They failed very, very badly to contain the damage this week, and went all the way down 5-0 on the road against New York City FC. And, with the way NYC played through, over and around them over the last half hour of the game, it could have ended 7-0.

I’m not going to futz around much with the stats or the box score - what does it matter with that final score, for one? - but instead will talk about some obvious, present realities.

Cincinnati Failed to Address Its Greatest Need (…even if it wasn’t obvious)
I’m not talking about the central defense here, though that obviously remains an issue; a starting tandem of Nick Hagglund and Tom Pettersson will only carry them so far - and Maikel van Der Werff and a 21-year-old kid from Ecuador don’t look like saviors to me.

It is still what remains in front of them that most worries me, i.e., an incoherent midfield scheme made WTFAYFKM (that’s “what the fuck are you fucking kidding me”) worse by way of just baffling personnel decisions. I’ll expand on Kamohelo Mokotjo below, but can Jaap Stam kindly pull the fucking plug on the Yuya Kubo central midfielder experiment and light that plug on fire, please? An idea that looked fucking stupid turned out to be fucking stupid: just about anyone should have seen that coming. Kubo is not a central midfielder; on the evidence, he’s barely a forward or a winger. Next…

I’ve sat on judging Mokotjo to see what he could do and the current returns ain’t good. They absolutely suck, in fact, and to flag just one thing in the stats section, please see the passing map around No. 15 and those thin, short forward lines. For my money, the root of Cincy’s problem with moving the ball forward follows from playing Kubo and Mokotjo together; neither has shown they know how to do it - or even how to get to the ball to other players who can (more later). Worse, neither shows any capacity to stop traffic from running back toward Cincinnati’s (again) sub-standard defense. With the ball rolling the wrong direction for the (overwhelming?) majority of both games, it’s a miracle humping a miracle that Cincinnati didn’t start 2021 with two losses.

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Sporting Kansas City: The Car Is Running All Right, But Where Is It Going?

I mean, what does this dog actually look like?

Just to mention it, ESPN’s broadcast of the game played roughly two minutes behind real-time. That allowed me to catch wind of two of FC Cincinnati’s bigger moments – the penalty call that gave them their first goal, and Nick Hagglund’s late offside goal (um, how is that not in the goddamn highlights? Are you motherfuckers Billy Barring me?) – and now I know that knowing events two minutes in the future would improve nothing in my life. It washes out as existing in a state of suspended animation, really, which I don’t recommend.

As it happens, that’s a pretty good short-hand for the state of FC Cincinnati as a team. Every game they’ve played so far bore some kind of wrinkle. When they played both of 2018’s MLS Cup finalists, they faced shadows of last year’s editions – something that’s only become more apparent since. When they hosted the Philadelphia Union, the rain pouring on the field seemed to weigh on their shoulders just as much. Today’s 1-1 draw against Sporting Kansas City, meanwhile, was lousy with wrinkles. To begin, SKC started a clear second choice team, ignoring general, well-intentioned advice to “focus on the league” after eating five fist-fulls of shit in Mexico mid-week. (Watching SKC’s Johnny Russell at the end of the game, who went the full 90 in Monterrey, makes a solid case that Peter Vermes took the correct approach; poor bastard was gassed.)

The real wrinkles broke into the skin with the unfolding of the match itself; by the end, the oldest, saggiest human being on Earth would have looked at that and thought, “goddamn, get some Oil of Olay up in this thing, stat!”

Where to begin? Players for both teams pissed away perfect chances – Kelyn Rowe for SKC, Kekuta Manneh for Cincy – and on opposite ends of the game. Just….terrible goalkeeping gaffes led to both goals – a bout of confusion by Adrian Zendejas early in the first half (link above), then Spencer Richey reprised something terrifyingly similar early in the second (also, I’m not sure that Greg Garza didn’t poke the ball past Richey when he fell down). With the exception of FC Cincinnati’s first goal – which, as I saw it, came during a time when SKC had recovered from Cincinnati’s strong opening - game-states generally loosely tracked those events. The same goes for Hagglund’s unfortunately offside winner, which capped a late (again, you must release the video), ultimately futile rally by FC Cincy, and that leaves what might have been gasping for life on this game’s cutting room floor.

MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 4: The Freighted Meaning of U.S. v. Panama and Pity Martinez

Why do they call me Pity, you ask?

Yeah, yeah, I won’t get to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati until the end. But a little something significant takes place tomorrow evening, tomorrow night for the east coast audience, and things will just flow better if I bury that. Won’t blame anyone who spot-reads these things, ever. Moving on.

Professional soccer players (as opposed the Kombine Kids) will kick a ball around for the first time in 2019 tomorrow night. It’ll be a competitive experience, even if it isn’t a competitive event. When the U.S. Men’s National Team plays formerly lowly Panama tomorrow night – formerly, because who made the 2018 World Cup? – I can’t say how many eyes will be on them, but I expect fairly intense interest among the eyeballs they do draw. Here’s why:

“Hire the wrong coaches? Yes. Cut the wrong players? Yes. Pick the wrong teams? Yes. Fail to develop or integrate a half-decade's worth of young talent? Yes. Show gaps in the regional armor with losses to teams we should dominate like Guatemala, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago? Yes. Miss the Olympics twice? Yes. Miss the World Cup?”

That commentary, lifted from Matt Doyle’s 48-hour preview, covers just about every ingredient that led to the bad taste that’s lingered in your mouth since the U.S. Men last played. I can’t even say when the U.S. played last for the same reason you don’t go to a substitute teacher for parent-teacher conferences. Everyone understood that Dave Sarachan wouldn’t be guiding the team to 2022, so it made sense to wait until the guy who will stepped up. And, hello, Gregg Berhalter!

I read the usual handful of sources (so, so lazy) to get myself prepared for tomorrow’s game, both mentally and emotionally, but, with this being Berhalter’s first game out, no one really knows what to expect. Jurgen Klinsmann (one of my obsessions) changed my understanding of U.S. Soccer, in that he expanded the range of what is possible. In so many words, I’d grown up on steady progress, I’d internalized the idea that the team would improve, maybe without much in the way of style or excitement, and certainly with a couple set-backs, but steadily. Jurgen undermined all that in such an insidious way that one has to wonder whether he wasn’t some kind of Manchurian candidate. I remember watching Klinsmann’s first game in charge. It wasn’t pretty, but that also didn’t seem important given that Klinsmann would slowly make the U.S. his team…I don’t know that that ever happened. I’m not sure anyone knows whether that happened…

The Late Tackle, 12 08 2016: Still More MLS Cup Crap, Players Moving, Players Departing, and an Understudy Rising?

Looks like he's been crying. Or he's just drunk.

You know the drill: MLS Cup dominates, while the 18 (or 20) other Major League Soccer teams quietly start figuring out how they’ll knock the eventual champion off its pedestal. Circle of life, etc.

More MLS Cup Crap

For all that it might not come through, I’m actually pretty excited about this year’s MLS Cup. I’ve got a clear, strong voter interest (which, my luck, spells a Seattle Sounders win, goddammit). Whatever happened with them all season long (e.g. Seattle sucking for 2/3 of it), both teams hit the final playing well and, on top of that, each team’s stars are shining. That goes for the attacking players as much as anybody, which could explain why Goal.com’s predictions post sees goals, goals, goals in MLS fans’ future (to be fair, one prediction only gets to “goal, goal” and, also of interest, gives both to Seattle). A related article, this one a compare/contrast between Jozy Altidore and Jordan Morris, sticks with a similar focus.

I’ll put up more thorough personal theories tomorrow (good lord willing), but part of me wonders how much faith in high scoring grows from a form of recency bias. Some articles talk about loosely about how either team attacks (great!) and defends, but without much discussion/acknowledgement of particular circumstances. For instance, how much of the “vulnerability” in Toronto FC’s defense grew from the Montreal Impact series alone? Isn’t it just as important, if not more important, to note that they shut out New York City FC in their first round series, while also allowing 19 fewer goals through the length of the regular season, as was noted in a write-up on Drew Moor’s move to/upgrading of Toronto’s “rugged” defense. (Alternately, is it rugged and vulnerable, y’know, like how Daniel Craig played James Bond in the last Bond flick?) The point could be right or wrong, but the basic assumption tracks a logic similar to writing up a “what happened to Lodeiro” piece based on Seattle’s series against the Colorado Rapids (related: Have you watched that tape, Toronto? Can you watch that? Please?).

Or, to crawl out of the other side of the rabbit hole, maybe Nick Hagglund will give away a cheap goal, as noted in a “young players to watch” post I read (Hagglund made the cut and, in fairness, he is genuinely of interest). By the same token, maybe he scores a goal and gets an assist, too. (Or maybe Montreal didn’t game-plan Hagglund fer shit?)

At any rate, yeah, looking forward to MLS Cup Saturday. Now, looking elsewhere…

The Late Tackle, 12 07 2016: More MLS Cup Crap, Portland and Expansion, Plus Expansion (and Sad Mix)

No, please. Throw away my shit for me.

For anyone who cares about such things, I’m trying to choose how many items to cover in these daily things. I’m hung up between three topics and five. Split the difference today. But one of ‘em feels weak. Shit. Anyway…

More MLS Cup Crap

The work of hyping a cup final takes many shapes and runs from good to bad (not to pick on that last one but it's only of interest to someone who hasn’t paid attention at all for the last month). As for the good stuff, I bumped into a couple today: one a tactical preview (but with a shitty title, at least on mobile: “Jordan Morris Poses Problems for TFC,” which really sells it short), which dives decently deep into things (personally, I found the Armando Cooper stuff enlightening); the other, which also didn’t promise much by title, looks at how the MLS contestants, (again) Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC, built their rosters. It’s more of a how-to than it looks, especially the stuff about both club’s academies. If I had to give a long-term edge of any kind between the two teams, it’d go to Toronto. Take away Jordan Morris (please!), and I’d rate Toronto’s pool higher.

On a note that relates only because these two teams are in the Cup, I read somewhere that Nick Hagglund has “become a force” on set-pieces. I’m hung up on “maybe” for now, because I don’t think TFC can count on the absolute shit marking that Montreal put on Hagglund in the first leg.

One more on MLS Cup, and those participating in it. It’s cool to see TFC’s Jozy Altidore pick up a littlehype, because he’s playing out of his goddamn mind right now. I’m thinking back, specifically, to a back-heel that he used to set up one of Toronto’s goals against Montreal. Next-level shit, kid. and from a guy I still call the smartest man in MLS.

The Late Tackle, 12 01 2016 - MLS Cup Finalists Finalized (Plus Everyone Else's Crappy Consolation Prize)

Like that, only with a couple consolation goals...

MLS Cup: Conference Champions...Revealed!

I never heard what Greg Vanney had to say just after halftime.

The 20-minute mini-game cut off the highlights right as Vanney, Toronto FC’s coach, was about to reveal his secrets – e.g. maybe that they’d channeled demons into Jozy Altidore (for he did play possessed), or that someone finally explained to Nick Hagglund, at long last, that he enjoys the freedom to score goals, as well as keep them out (or maybe that he was much bigger and faster than the Montreal Impact’s Marco Donadel). Vanney’s words could have explained everything, or nothing. What was clear from the start, though, was that Toronto hit the field turned up to 11 (shit, used a cliché). Nothing made that apparent quite like Michael Bradley’s slashing/manically-determined run into Montreal’s penalty area inside the first minute. (NOTE: Due to where and when I post, I only have the capacity to link to the match highlights; sorry for the inconvenience!)

Toronto simply never let up; if they ran over the Impact, they did it slowly. Or, rather than ran them over during the game, then backed over them in extra time. Count me among those shocked by Montreal’s set-piece defending (assuming such population exists). Hagglund got crazy-free twice (at least) and those lapses led to a panic/assist on (was it?) Toronto’s first, cleaned up by Armando Cooper (if memory serves), and the goal that forced extra time. At least Montreal had an excuse when it came to Hagglund – no one saw him coming – but, because they were warned about Altidore (see?), one has to ask just what the goofy fuck Montreal was thinking by letting Altidore run completely unmarked right before half; that was one hell of a tricky goal, but Jozy was good for it (again, possibly due to possession; there was no other word for how he approached the game all day, other than “surging”).

Montreal didn’t so much lie down, as protect its vitals for as long as it could while slipping in a couple pokes with a shiv. Dominic Oduro – who quietly put in a very credible year, as well as a rock-solid playoff run, which breaks his famous every-other-year pattern (congrats, kid!) – set himself up for the goal that could have won the series (against anything but a freight train) with the kind of touch he pulls off once every cycle of the moon. Piatti stuck in another one when he wrestled Montreal’s second goal over the goal-line. It was a brave performance, but Toronto was in what some folks call “a mood.”

Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers: A Clash of Fine China

Next-level Red Rover....

To shorten these preview posts a bit, I’m going listicle on the Portland Timbers’ previews and, when looking ahead to other games, I’ll stick to talking up (or down) only those with a good hook/angle. And, yes, this Wednesday game business is driving me goddamn nuts, because Sporting Kansas City v. New England Revolution? That there was a quality match-up, friends. It looked just as good on the menu as it did when it arrived on the table. (A missed penalty, a dubious penalty, big soccer players making big soccer plays; had it all, I tell ya!)

On to the main attraction: Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers. First, let’s set the stage...

Toronto FC. The buzz-boys of 2015. Major League Soccer’s big spenders. As Twitter announced yesterday, they spent over three times what the Timbers did to create their roster (just north of $20 million versus just short of $6 million). And what has all that scratch bought them? Three points fewer than Portland – though they can go even on points by winning this weekend and a keep a game in hand to boot.

Will they do it? The trends read better than the results, at least some of them. TFC started 2015 on a seven-game road-trip. Said trip started great and ended well, but a chasm yawned between in the form of five straight losses that surely reminded every Torontonian of a deeply-cursed former life (shudder to think of the atrocities committed by the former selves of every player who has ever pulled TFC’s red jersey over his shoulder). But two wins in their final road games (cough, Orlando, cough, in the bad days, cough, cough, Philly!) sent TFC rolling back to an embiggened BMO Field confident and hungry. The schedule handed TFC an opponent that looked entirely beatable, too, in the Houston Dynamo. A clear day broke. Toronto fans provided the theater, chanting and marching their way to the field. Promise swelled like the biggest, ripest fruit the club had ever seen...only to burst into a rancid puddle when Houston cut into the skin.

Toronto didn’t do so great against the New England Revolution last weekend, either; most reports I read said the draw flattered them, so there’s that, too. So, will Toronto make that big, beautiful stadium bounce when the Timbers come to town?