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| A lie, I tell you. A damned, dirty lie. Either way. |
It’s rare that you have to wait that long for at least one
person to fuck up during a penalty kick shoot-out, but that was in keeping with
the game: tighter than a duck’s ass and, don’t worry, I won’t use that for the
image. FC Cincinnati slammed the first decisive kick over the line, and they left tonight with their first playoff win in team history (seriously?). (Also, here's the Match Center for all of the details you want and more!)
Nothing should be taken away from Nashville SC, because they
played a hell of a game. They even came damn near to fluking to victory by way
of a looping oddball of a goal by Anthony Bourgeois. That erased Corben Bone’s
far more attractive (can I call it sexy?) extra-time goal, the one that let me
think - no, dream - that this game would end within the time allotted by The
Founders (aka, 90 minutes). When the game reached the penalty kick shoot-out
and Nashville couldn’t stop scoring…I don’t know. I’d prepared various parts of
my body for some kind of inevitable, even if I can’t remember what parts
guarded against which event. As one ball followed another into the back of the
net and the inevitable drifted into the unimaginable…look, I’m glass half-empty
as a motherfucker. I wasn’t expecting the best.
Curiously - or not, honestly - the glass filled over that
invisible halfway mark when Kenney Walker stepped to the spot after Nashville’s
Justin Davis skied his missed penalty kick into history. I trust Walker to piss
ice water, and he did. Moreover, Cincinnati had just survived Forrest Lasso stepping to the
spot just one kick before and - won’t lie - that worried me. I can’t explain
why, especially when I rate Lasso’s foot-work higher than your average defender’s.
Maybe it’s simple as a life-long bias against central defenders in attacking
roles that don’t involve their heads. Whatever, I held my breath all the way
through his wind-up, hands and arms wrapped around my head to keep…I dunno,
something in. The doubts from spreading, maybe?
Seeing a man of technique like Walker stride forward, and a
team leader to boot? I’d prepped for him missing but mostly out of respect for
The Fates. Of course Kenney Walker buried it, and FC Cincy won the shoot-out,
its first playoff win in team history, and the chance to keep dreaming of
arriving in Major League Soccer with a trophy in the trunk.
