FC Cincinnati 0-1 Philadelphia Union: Is It a Slip When You're Shoved(?) & A Whip Around the East

What Pavel Bucha was up against...

Why don’t you love your home, FC Cincinnati? So much love in the stadium, so little love on the field.

On the plus side, it hurt more coming than it did going – i.e., not all’s lost, even as the Supporters’ Shield looks further away than it did Saturday morning – because, with one nerve-racking exception, a couple results broke Cincy’s way this weekend and, in another lane, one spoiled team’s morale took a vicious shot to the pills. With next weekend off (it’s another damn international break, isn’t it?) and a little time to kill today, I decided to take a broader look at the Eastern Conference as the regular season rounds into the stretch. Sadly, the chances at a photo finish atop the conference dropped a bit, due to…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 Philadelphia Union
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
In a game that moved 15% faster than every other one played this last weekend (made that up, but stick with me), Cincinnati spent too much of it struggling to keep up. The Union ran them over in midfield – Pavel Bucha, in particular, got mobbed like the freakin’ Beatles circa ’64 every time he so much as glanced the ball – and that kept the weight of the game leaning against Cincy’s back four-to-six. Anyone who checked just the score and final stats would walk away with a different impression – for all I know, a majority of Cincinnati fans might agree with them – but, for me, it was the visitors who signed their name on this statement game. If they scored the beautiful game by who won the most 50/50s, Philly took this one walking away.

To their very real credit, Cincinnati’s back four-to-six held firm through it all. They didn’t give up many easy chances – Tai Baribo’s step ahead of Nick Hagglund around the 30th minute might have been the easiest look for either team all night (check the highlights, nominate your candidate) – and thereby held up their end of the game. In a haunting call-back to recent home games past (more below), the Union’s midfield largely limited the Orange and Blue’s attack to hopeful little raids, most of those running into a thicket and harried on all sides. Evander smuggled through most of their chances – at times, with a whiff of tunnel-vision and an arguable failure to contemplate delegating – but both he and Kevin Denkey forced at least one hard save out of Philly’s ‘keeper, Andrew Rick. Dreaming now of what a little more calm and control behind them might have done for the effort…

Portland Timbers 2-3 FC Cincinnati: Going (Too) Deep on What Is Likely a Hiccup

I wish they'd stop too, my dude.

I had a working theory about both the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati going into Saturday’s game, to wit, Cincinnati (generally) starts strong, then throttles back and invites the opposition back in, while the Timbers like to take their sweet-ass time to get going, sometimes to where they dig themselves into a hole they can’t climb out of.

When Saturday’s 2-3 home loss for the Timbers generally supported both sides of the theory – i.e., Cincy rolled to a 3-0 lead and looked like a fair bet to run away with it before Portland clawed back two goals and piled on enough shots for an equalizer or more – and that got me all a-flutter about confirming the theory, so I circled back to mine both teams’ recent schedules (Cincy's, Portland's) for circumstantial evidence. About 40 minutes of working that mine yielded some data to support theory. It also turned up enough Fool’s gold to recommend sealing up the mine, paying off the creditors, and walking away. Still, to lay some of it out there…

I worked with a 20-game sample for both teams, including Leagues Cup results, while excluding those from the U.S. Open Cup (you ask why, I ask why not?). That period extends back to around the beginning of May, over which time both Cincy and Portland have fared well enough, 10-6-4 and 8-7-5, respectively. The difference is there, of course, and grows a bit more once you dig in.

The Timbers conceded first eleven times total: Portland failed to score in five of those games and, naturally, lost them; of the six other games when they conceded first, the Timbers rallied to win two of them (v COL, v STL), came back to draw two (v SEA, v MIN) and lost the other two (@ SJ, v CIN). The sum of that yields a 2-7-2 record when conceding first across all games and, for some, an upset tummy. That leaves Portland with a 6-0-3 record when scoring first (or sometimes not scoring at all, e.g., the goal-free turd at RSL), a vast improvement, of course, but weighing eleven games against nine comes perilously close to a wash, so, moving on...

Cincy has scored first over 13 of their past 20 games, four of them wins when they blanked the opposition, nine of them games when they scored first. They held on to win most of those games – only a sociopath sneers at a 6-1-2 record – but it did lead to dropped points (3-3 v Dallas), one searing loss (2-4 home loss to Columbus) and arguably some nervy finishes - e.g., the 3-2 “road” win over Monterrey in Leagues Cup and the nail-gnawing end to Saturday’s game. The rest played out as 2-1 wins over Austin, Orlando and Chicago, hardly the end of the world, but breathing easier feels nice too.

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 2-1 Austin FC: It's All Coming Up Evander

Mistakes can be made, that's all.

Today has been unexpectedly Cincinnati heavy. Before wrapping up FC Cincinnati’s broadly satisfying 2-1 win over a visiting Austin FC, I caught the tail end of an episode of the Partridge Family titled, “I Left My Heart in Cincinnati” that was positively drunk with old footage from Kings Island. Seeing the Blue Racer running against the Red one and The Banana Splits took my back to a world both of and before my time and it did me good (awww) and bad (so, so old).

About the Game
Cincy somewhere between a couple and a few chances to run riot over Austin over the opening 20 minutes. They took an early lead at the 12th minute when Yuya Kubo ran against a retreating Austin back-line that seemed open to giving him whatever option he wanted. After some briefly bobbled connections, the ball found Lukas Engel still farther to Austin’s right, who slipped a one-time pass into Evander loitering around the left side of the 18. I went with the verb “loiter” to capture the easy freedom of Evander’s positioning, but the opening goal showed the danger of leaving him there without an army of angry chaperones. And that puts Chehkov’s gun on the table for future reference.

Luca Orellano had come close two minutes before the opener and Kevin Denkey spurned a good opening with a shot straight at Austin’s Brad Stuver a mere three minutes on the other side of it. Consult the full highlights for some more highlight-reel adjacent moments – e.g., Denkey and Evander danced as well as they have all season Saturday afternoon – including what would have been an easy candidate for Goal of the Week (have that at around the 20th minute) had Evander clipped the curl on his one-time shot from 35+ yards out a degree or two shorter. Despite a bevy of invitations, Cincy’s second goal wouldn’t materialize for some time.

Austin pushed back, of course, and threatened to pull back a goal as early as the 17th minute on a cross that Brandon Vazquez should have put somewhere between on goal and away (which doesn't appear in the highlights due to the enshittification of MLS's video product), but, per the official stats they didn’t create a ton of chances and fired just two of them on Stuver’s goal. I don’t know how all that useless energy translated for Austin fans, but I’m guessing it felt like Purgatory for Cincinnati fans, or worse, the last episode of Lost. If you found this post, I don’t need to explain the perils of 1-0 lead to you, but seeing Cincy come within a desperate lunge or two of coughing up a stupid equalizer for the simple, stupid reason of failing to decisively clear a long ball provided a sobering reminder of said perils. It takes just one mistake, right? Say, an arm left thoughtlessly hanging when covering a cross from Cincy’s left?

New York City FC 1-0 FC Cincinnati: The Many, Grace-Given Misses of Alonso Martinez

Alonso Martinez's afternoon, a visual.

FC Cincinnati has managed to stay one goal ahead of the opposition for the past month or so. That was always going to come to an end, of course – people change, hairstyles change, dog people wake up one day and realize they’re cat people, etc. – but Cincy was damned lucky to not lose in a blow out yesterday. New York City FC gave them a taste of their own medicine with a 1-0 win in the shitbox disgrace of a stadium they call home and I’m sure it tasted just as bitter.

About the Game, Briefly
It’s not often I find the lineup presented at the top of the broadcast – half of ‘em feel like misdirection from the head coach, honestly – but NYCFC’s attacking shape looked closer to the 3-2-4-1 than it did to the 4-3-3 shown in the official match report. Keeping all those players high served the familiar purpose of stifling Cincy’s build-out – which was huge – and having players closer to their goal to exploit any turnovers. One direct effect, aka, the huge one, was pinning both DeAndre Yedlin and Lukas Engel against their respective sidelines and cut off their outlets into the middle (hold this thought*). It took Cincy 20-25 minutes to sort out playing through it – they had their first coordinated break-out around the 30th minute (Luca Orellano missed) – or the loosening of NYC’s noose simply coincided with Keaton Parks limping off, but it proved too little, too late. The hosts had already found two quality looks within the first six minutes and it didn’t even take them 10 minutes to open the scoring. The pervasive role luck plays in goal-scoring is one of the more under-appreciated aspects of the game – e.g., it took (think it was) Miles Robinson’s feeble toe-picked “clearance” to steer the ball into the path of Julian Fernandez, who tucked the ball into the lower right corner of Roman Celetano’s – but the first half of the game saw New York make enough of its own luck to export it to abroad. The final stats erase that a bit, but it took (at least) 20 minutes for Cincy’s defense to get a handle on Andres Perea’s back-post runs and Alonso Martinez’ missed penalty kick at the 12th minute was the first of, gods, three(? four?) clear-cut-to-the-point-of-gilded opportunities he got. (To see the overstuffed catalog, kindly reference the full highlights.) If I had to guess at how NYCFC got that many trips to the same well, I’d put money on Pascal Jansen keeping Martinez close to Matt Miazga and putting them in as many foot races as he could; that led to the penalty call, if nothing else.

Charlotte FC 2--0 FC Cincinnati: On Keeping the Powder Dry and, Oh, Well!

DC has a character called "Everyman." Huh.

While this constitutes extreme (literal) Tuesday Morning Quarterbacking, I do stand by the argument I made for resting players in my Charlotte FC Scouting Report. That’s less to say that Pat Noonan got it wrong than to suggest that giving key starters time to process the CONCACAF Champions League might have been better than immediately throwing them back in the deep end and yelling “SWIM” at them…

…then again, I saw the “Hell Is Real” episode of The On Side and now have no doubt as to which of the above options came naturally to Pat (would not want to golf with him, not as a youngster). With that, let’s talk…

About the Game
Pretty much what one should expect from Charlotte v Cincy in these dark days of the middle 2020s: a game decided by a combination of mistakes, saves, and chances yanked out of ye olde magician’s hat. About 20 minutes passed before the “real” game got started and, for a while, it featured two teams setting up, from wherever their first touch happened, and then sending a more or less successful attack at the opposition’s defense. A good, competent battle between two capable teams, in other words, and that dynamic held until Cincinnati made its first fatal mistake. The game didn’t necessarily end when Pavel Bucha’s ill-advised header gave Liel Abada and Patrick Agyemang(?) a head-start in the foot race toward Roman Celentano’s goal, but Charlotte's first goal did shrink Cincinnati’s odds of getting back into it to a 1:1 ratio with the reputation of Charlotte’s defense – more on that later. With Cincy in Democratic levels of disarray, Charlotte raised the pressure. It took all of three minutes – which, for the record, included time for celebrating the prior goal and the usual amount of milling about – for that to pay off with Charlotte’s second goal of the night and that's where things ended, 2-0 to the home team. Credit to Charlotte – and to Brandt “Every Guy” Bronico for the simple, yet slick assist on the insurance goal – for making all that work against one of MLS’s better defenses (the 2nd half of 2024 excepted), but the likely winner of this game was always going to be the team that scored first. The highlights reminded me that Cincy fired more good shots than I remembered and, on some level, I find that encouraging, even as I continue to have questions about the packaging*. I’ll dig into those details some more below, but I’m still hung up on why Noonan didn’t take 90% of the sting out of any loss out of this game by starting a rotated starting XI. Maybe plausible deniability means more to me than it does to Noonan, maybe he quietly committed to winning the Supporters’ Shield until the possibility evaporates, but the odds of Cincinnati winning this game sucked from the jump, and I thought the mental space of “sure, we lost to Charlotte in March, but we were missing a lot of guys” feels like a good psychological wild card to have later in the season. If nothing else, it beats dragging the regulars through 90 minutes of, again, likely futility. I suspect Cincinnati got their first glimpse of the real tendencies of a new player, but I’ll hold that thought till the talking points.