Inter Miami CF 0-0 FC Cincinnati: Patience with the Grind & Exorcised Demons(?)

I hear his screams from beyond...

Does MLS still produce the Instant Replay series, the ones where they take a longer look to decide whether a ref fucked up, or did they retire those along with Simon Borg?

Thinking about that time when DeAndre Yedlin gave himself a cramp by falling into the back of some now-forgotten Inter Miami CF attacker somewhere after the 60th minute. That one quacked like a penalty kick, but Tori Penso didn’t call it and VAR didn’t second-guess her, so what’s the point in picking through the log for that particular piece of corn…

…related, anyone else get the feeling MLS keeps controversial calls/non-calls out of the highlight packages they throw together? Just noticed they didn’t include the late winner they yanked away from Miles Robinson in the full highlights for this one either...guess you bury the bodies where folks can’t find 'em… (To their credit, they did post a whole sidebar video on Robinson's thing.)

Inter Miami CF 0-0 FC Cincinnati
About the Game, Very Briefly
Looked sweaty as balls down in Florida and even Miami’s players looked half-cooked by the 80th minute, but both teams played a lively game in the swamp air. The hosts had the better of the game, but Cincy looked to have the better of the chances – particularly after an unstoned viewing of the highlights – and that captures the way the game played out in as few words as I can manage.

Miami’s high, aggressive defending made it hard for any Cincinnati player ahead of Roman Celentano to play the ball facing forward. Balls into the midfield space went backwards or sideways eight times out of ten and seven balls of ten played forward were long and hopeful. The latter (mostly) kept Miami from turning Cincy over in or around their defensive third (mostly; there were some inevitable miscues), but the Orange and Blue did a lot of defending and passing inside their own half. Miami created more chances – Luis Suarez probably shot and teed up their better ones (e.g., the back-post cross to Fafa Picault, saved by Celentano) – and overlapped around Cincy’s left a couple times, but they had to survive more shots on goal and have decent reason to count themselves a little lucky to escape with a point.

FC Cincinnati 2-4 Columbus Crew: Sizing Pat Noonan for a Hairshirt

Wait'll I get this off, you little shit...

After the Columbus Crew scored their fourth goal, the camera panned to a young woman in the stands who alternated between glaring at the field in disbelief and shooting “what the fuck just happened” glances toward her father. Cincinnati’s staff should have escorted that young woman into the locker room (after all the players were dressed and decent, of course) to have her level that same withering glare at every player who suited up for FC Cincinnati on Saturday. Or maybe send in a six-year-old boy still in tears from watching his idols lose. Time for the autopsy…

FC Cincinnati 2-4 Columbus Crew
About the Game
Before getting my hands into the viscera (don’t worry; I don’t do snuff images), I want to preface the general comments with one quick note: the highlights looked worse and more hopeless than the full 90. The final stats weren't so bad, and Columbus held a slim 3-2 lead from the 60th minute and into second half stoppage and Cincy got…kinda sorta back into it with two…vaguely promising stretches of play in the late 70s and the late 80s. It wouldn’t have erased the 60 lost minutes that saw FC Cincinnati’s original two-goal lead evaporate, but a face-saving draw would have been nice, or at least nicer…

As anyone who turned off the world and turned on this game knows, FC Cincy took a two-goal lead before the Columbus Crew got their pants on (Pavel Bucha's opener; Cincy's second fit better down below). Sadly, once they got them on (about 15 minutes in) they commenced to thrashing the home team with their belts. All without their pants falling down…

Mistakes by Cincy’s defense added the final bricks to Columbus’ comeback – first, the deflection off Tah Anunga’s arm (right?), then the own goal/general clustercuss set off by Miles Robinson’s late defensive lunge – but Columbus laid the foundation with two things: by blowing through Cincy’s midfield going forward and smothering Cincy's outlets/transition. This hardly accounts for everything that happened coming at and going out Cincy’s defensive third, but I spotted two things that details that accounted for some of it:

FC Cincinnati Weekly, Part I: Flooding a Sinking Ship

Thanks, Mary!

What was better: Evander’s snap strike from the right channel to open the scoring, or the ball he clipped through the closing window between Chicago’s Sam Rogers and Jeff Gal to set up Kevin Denkey’s tap-in?

Answers may vary according to taste, but both moments mattered in a game that turned on little moments of quality. (And the answer is the assist.) To quickly kick around what happened…

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Chicago Fire FC
Cincy had the Fire pinned into their half for the opening 10+ minutes. The weight of the siege didn’t translate to any great chances and Chicago ultimately broke out, first by a couple long balls, then by getting on the ball and playing out. The snap strike flagged above came in the 19th minute, a mere five minutes into the Fire’s revival, which left them chasing the game on top of finding the beat. The rest of the first half reflected those opening 10+ minutes like an elongated mirror: the Fire found more of the chances, with Hugo Cuypers running down a ball over the top and forcing a sprawling save out of Roman Celentano probably giving them their best, and things settled into a spirted, if controlled back and forth until the halftime whistle. Cincinnati put another length between them and the Fire with Denkey’s goal at the 50th minute – again, just an incredible pass by Evander (and didn’t this look a lot like one of the goals versus Orlando? Yep!) – which obliged Chicago to take another deep breath and kick a little harder. Philip Zinckernagel did pull one back at the 58th minute – decent goal, too – and with plenty of time left and the Fire dutifully fired away to the end. A lot of those came from range – maybe talk to Mauricio Pineda about patience – and those forced some further saves from Celentano. Set pieces, corner kicks in particular, caused their share of chaos, the ball touched the ground too many times, etc., but Cincy’s make-shift back three scrambled it away every time and various Fire players nodded the ball over the net every time they didn’t.

It wasn’t a dominant performance from Cincinnati, by any means, but still one I’m confident most fans will bless; with an “Ave Maria” thrown in for getting ahead in the Supporters’ Shield race. And I’m also sure Chicago wonders what might have been had anyone stepped to Evander at the 19th minute, but the final numbers tell a tale of a reasonably-balanced game between two teams separated by eight places and fourteen points in the Eastern Conference standings – which begs the question, what to make of Chicago?

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.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 New England Revolution: Notes on Transitory State

"Dude, my balls were swimming by the 10th."

Don’t expect any co-workers to excitedly ask whether you caught the big FC Cincinnati game yesterday, never mind brag about seeing live and in persona at the Big Tickle. None of that means the 1-0 win they picked up over the New England Revolution wasn’t a good thing, so much as questions about whether it means anything beyond three useful points.

About the Game
The two teams played a slippery bastard, what with the rain pouring from the skies, so you’d get slapstick like Carles Gil flopping to his ass midway through one of his defender-twisting turns. The same affliction plagued any dribbler – e.g., Luca Orellano – but the teams still managed to create a respectable haul of chances between them. Cincy had the better chances early – some of the best they’d get in the first half, in fact - but New England got a hold of the game, little by little. The loose theory/dream of midfield dominance from my Scouting Report didn’t hold up so good – the Revs’ Matt Polster probably had the best two-way game of any player, and my personal honorable mention goes to Cincy’s Tah Anunga – which saw Cincinnati’s shots come from further and further away until the halftime whistle. Peak anxiety for the hosts undoubtedly came in the stretch between a New England header off the post (didn’t see who tagged it (well), but leaning toward Mamadou Fofana?) and Ignatius Ganago’s deflected shot squicking between Roman Celentano’s fingers, but that covers the “what might have beens” more or less (Luca Langoni fired a couple from range, etc.). Cincinnati came out of the locker room with a little fire under them (angry Pat Noonan!) and they probably had their best 15 minutes of the day between the 45th and 60th minute and that best period had slipped halfway out the door when Cincy finally got the go-ahead. Shots to the back-post had been popular all day, and for both teams, but the Orange and Blue finally worked a ball into the 18 that had Kevin Denkey dancing in front of two defenders; his short outlet teed up Corey Baird, who forced a bobble out of (a solid) Aljaz Ivacic, who pushed the ball to Pavel Bucha, who squared it for Sergio Santos to tap home: it took a village, in other words, which isn’t so surprising given some absences. That left 25+ minutes of running around, plus a couple more shots – the last one noted came from a deflected shot around the 80th by Jackson Yueill – and Cincinnati came within an offside flag of marching in an insurance goal (most of these made the full highlights), but the process of putting the game to bed started with Santos’ goal.

Nashville SC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: To the Hungrier Hippo Go the Spoils

The scene from Geodis Park.

When your local team gets a game that demands about a half dozen gut-checks and they pass the majority of them. FC Cincinnati’s 2-1 road win at Nashville SC was a big one – probably the biggest of 2025 so far.

About the Game
It played out as a test of wills, honestly, an occasion where either team could have walked away with three points or both could have left with one. The momentum went back and forth throughout – e.g., I thought Nashville held the advantage from the 15th minute to the upper-mid 20s, before Cincy yanked it back over the next 5-10 minutes – and, when the goals came, it didn’t have much to do with which house was ascendant. Cincinnati had the better opening shots (one each for Evander and Luca Orellano) and a nose ahead in the game state, only to see Nashville push them back with counter-raids over the following minutes (I think Hany Mukhtar's near-miss was the first in the full highlights). That threw a wobble into Cincy’s step for a while – for what it’s worth, I don’t think Obinna Nwobodo and Pavel Bucha ever got a firm handle in the middle – but they managed to settle and clamp things down…until Nashville broke the deadlock in the late 30s. Even after Edvard “Eddi” Tagseth got behind Cincy’s (over-committed) left, the set up didn’t look like much. Nick Hagglund (literally) threw himself at the cross (sacrifice the body!), but could only lean it out of danger and accidentally teed up Jack Bauer for a short-range blast from the right side of the area. With the dread prickling up – what would a third winless game mean for Cincy, never mind a defeat? – Evander stepped in to tamp it down as only he can – i.e., getting fouled within the same ZIP Code as the opposition goal and scoring saucily on the ensuing free kick. That sent the teams in the halftime locker room tied and raring to get back to it. Nashville came out the sharper and had multiple, early opportunities to get back on top. The first – and biggest – came when Kevin Denkey did the right thing – i.e., keep tabs on Walker Zimmerman in the area on a set piece – the wrong way – i.e., by wrapping him up not once, but twice. The ref called the penalty, rightly, before Roman Celentano smacked away the penalty kick, righteously. Celentano barely had the time to roll out of that headstand before he had to get back into position for a crazy sequence of saves that included 1) punching out the original cross, 2) kicking away a point-blank shot from the weak side, and 3 (maybe 4)) slapping away one or two follow-ups from still-closer range (maybe all those saves made the official snapshort? nope; MLS doesn't do justice by saves anymore). After that little heroic miracle, the second half settled into the game I expected: long periods of the ball getting tangled among flailing legs and rushing players all over the middle of the field - think Hungry Hungry Hippos where the ball keeps bouncing off the front of the snapping mouths. Here and there throughout that period, Cincinnati exposed themselves with nervous giveaways to Nashville players (more later). They contained most of them (again, more later), just as Nashville contained most of Cincy’s escapes from the midfield scrum. Given that frenzy in the middle, seeing Nwobodo limp off early felt like a potential game-breaker, but the gravity of that battling chaos sucked everything back into itself. To make what could track as a “homer” read, I thought Cincinnati got over Nashville a little over the last 15-20 minutes of the game. Orellano pinged the crossbar off a deflection in the middle of all that, but it was a semi-hopeful ball over the top to (substitute) Corey Baird that handed Cincinnati a golden opportunity to take all three points. After playing a damn near perfect game – it was his man-bunned head that knocked Orellano’s shot to the crossbar – Zimmerman flapped the ball away with his left arm and sent Denkey to the spot. I hate the stutter-step approach, to the extent I believe it should be banned (goalkeepers have enough disadvantages on penalty kicks), but I loved the goal: Denkey beat Joe Willis on the kick and Cincy beat Nashville on the day, the end.

FC Cincinnati 2-0 Toronto FC: A Walk in the Park on Rotated Legs

Blue leg for Saturday, yellow for Tuesday.

It took a while, even a couple of shots at and physically-on goal (i.e., the ball hit the post), before FC Cincinnati finally took the lead in yesterday’s 2-0 home win over Toronto FC. The visitors only had a chance in the way a broken watch shows the right time twice a day – accidentally, and with a massive assist from the gods and circumstance.

About the Game
Yuya Kubo put a messy opening 30 minutes to rest when he kicked his own rebound off the post into the net behind TFC’s Sean Johnson. The goal didn’t stand – a foul before his first shot erased it – but the moment seemed to settle the nerves of a somewhat-rotated Cincy starting XI and steady them for the push. Toronto effectively pinned themselves into their own half for most of the game with wayward passes, naked giveaways, and a kind of pervasive disconnection that must keep Robin Fraser awake at night as he toys with novel ways to say, “this is not who we are.” The Reds had one shot better than jack-shit to show for (almost exactly) 45 minutes’ worth of soccer (the ref couldn’t watch anymore either), but Cincinnati didn’t have much more. Toronto showed some signs of life early in the second half, with a goal-mouth scramble just after the 50th minute counting as highwater mark (was their one shot on goal somewhere in there?), but “their identity” of hitting passes short ‘n’ wild continued. With their last line of defense keeping them in it, Pat Noonan decided to throw in some fresh ammo – most notably, Evander for Luca Orellano (more later) and DeAndre Yedlin coming in for young balding man, Lukas Engel – and the push resumed. Even if it took the ref four minutes and a trip to the VAR monitor to see, Cincy finally got the break they needed when Evander’s attempted cross quite visibly hit, then ran down the length of Tyrese Spicer’s left arm (see the highlights, somewhere; really wish they'd do pull-out highlights for a penalty call). When, at some length, the penalty was given, Kevin Denkey stepped up and made it look easy. While this can’t be proven conclusively (because what would it even look like?), Toronto was probably pushing for the equalizer when Evander picked the ball off of the try-harding feet of Federico Bernardeschi, dropped the ball to Yedlin, who found Sergio Santos, who found Pavel Bucha, who found Evander loitering wide on Cincy’s left, who clipped the ball to Kubo with nothing immediately between him and Sean Johnson’s goal. The game was over but for the time left after Kubo beat Johnson to the far post.