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?

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...

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.

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.

Philadelphia Union 4-1 FC Cincinnati: All Kinds of Things Blowing in Their Faces, Plus a Toronto FC Scouting Report!

The wind was a factor, but not an excuse.

“…I can’t imagine a world where Philadelphia pushes Cincinnati around and back like they did against the Lions. Everything I’ve seen from them tells me Cincy will defend not just higher, but more aggressively than Orlando ever did…”

Few things kick a guy’s ego harder than seeing a confident prediction (from here; scroll way down) blow up in his face in just four days’ time. The Philadelphia Union shoved FC Cincinnati into a fucking locker last Saturday, posting a 4-1 home win that left their fans merrily dooping into the night. By the time the ref blew the final whistle, Philly had made off with their lunch money, best friend and first two girlfriends.

About the Game
Both teams came to battle and both looked game for it – even after the Union forced their first goal around Cincy’s right flank a mere six minutes into the game. Related, if mostly in a vibez/spiritual sense, Kai Wagner’s decision to continue his overlapping run contained the seed narrative for the way the entire game played out. Philadelphia’s players read a bounce before Cincy’s time and time again and saw a play develop two beats ahead: whether it was a sixth sense or the sixth day into some shared Groundhog Day, everything a Union player touched turned into something a little better; they played with their wind at their backs, literally, and somehow in both directions. Another thing I noticed: Philly didn’t press, at least not in a greyhound-after-a-mechanical rabbit way; it was more pushing a 4-2-4 to the top of Cincinnati’s defensive third, daring them to play, then getting after anything that moved like a greyhound getting after a mechanical rabbit. The approach proved beyond effective. Cincy struggled to get the ball to the center-stripe and saw it roll back into their defense more times than the Union’s 14 shots (7 on goal!) suggest. Philadelphia would score two more – one at the 30th minute, which included one of those moments when you appreciated VAR for teaching refs some humility (this was an easy call in real time), the second at the 52nd when Tai Baribo wrapped up his hat trick – without Cincy showing any meaningful signs of life. Cincinnati continued to play as if running knee-deep through mud even after Evander scored A Very Evander Goal (i.e., he did it all, start to finish). I’m told Cincinnati fired seven shots somewhere from inside that void and I’m guessing three of those shots and both of the shots on goal came at the end of Alvas Powell’s run from right back to (near) glory just after the 70th minute (this made the full highlights). If this game has a “what might have been,” it was Kevin Denkey tagging his rebound off Andre Blake’s right post instead of into the goal. If that shot goes in, maybe Philly sweats a little instead of making a feast out of another turnover by way of (the impressively effective) Quinn Sullivan feeding Uruguayan striker Bruno Damiani for their fourth. The game was over before it started and Baribo is, however implausibly, the current 2025 Golden Boot leader.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Red Bull New York: Pour One Out for Daniel Edelman...

The Dream, circa June 2025.

To start with a biographical note, for context: I followed FC Cincinnati really closely through the second half of 2018, damn near all of 2019, through the second half of 2020, barely in 2021, through the middle of 2022, and sporadically in 2023. Based on the number of Word docs I have saved in various folders, that came to around 120 games total of attentive viewing, if with the balance coming in seasons when FC Cincy, for lack of a smarter pair of words, fucking sucked…

…a normal fan/person would have been utterly enrapt in the 2023 Supporters' Shield run, but that just meant less to write about for me. I ran out of ways to say, “still killin’ it, full-time and every day.”

After what looked like a complicated 2024 season – i.e., they looked genuinely competitive until the middle of July and/or the defense broke – I decided to reconnect with Cincinnati as my main East Conference squeeze. If nothing else, it felt like a good anchor for keeping an eye on the East, but it came with the added bonus of watching a team that went through at least two ambitious changes in personnel – e.g., the signing of forward Kevin Denkey and swapping Luciano Acosta for recent Portland Timbers transplant, Evander. Both moves speak to the “not-fucking-around” mentality that Cincy’s front office has embraced after those searing, worst seasons.

Part of the work of getting back into the swing with FC Cincy comes with humbly accepting that I’ll need some time to get to know the latest iteration; the first eight-to-ten games of season will be more about learning than dropping judgments from the mountain top (also, not my style). The goal is to be in full, limbs-swinging double-Dutch mode and capable of seeing what's up with clear, perhaps even cold, eyes by mid-summer. We'll see how that goes, but let's start with (the wild guesswork) and...

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Columbus Crew SC: The Tragedy of Alvas Powell

From googling "tickle palace."

I don’t know what to call that besides a game that leaves you muttering, “c’mon, not like this.”

Last night, FC Cincinnati ended the best season in its – and I want fans and pundits to linger on this next word – brief history with a devastated and dizzied 2-3 loss at Tickle Palace against its dread rival, Columbus Crew SC.

First and foremost, nothing hit the gut half as hard as the blunt fact that Columbus deserved the win. Outside 15 minutes somewhere during the first part of the second half (sorry, I work real estate law), Columbus ran at a Cincy defense that toggled between adjectives all night: sturdy grew to heroic, before a quick journey through desperate yielded to a word I slipped into the conversation above, i.e., dizzied. One of the twits in the broadcast booth called the Columbus’ first goal a turning point, but I’d argue that the second pointed to where the game would ultimately end up. The only question was whether Columbus could get there before the final whistle turned the game over to soccer’s infamous tiebreaker, aka, the test of wills we all call a coin-flip, aka, the penalty shoot-out.

Columbus beat the whistle, of course, and Cincy didn’t look any better on the third goal they allowed than they did on the second. Or the first, for that matter. They didn’t just get outplayed last night; Cincy got beat. Thinking about what that does for the rivalry is the only positive I can take from the loss…

…going the other way, how dim that fire burns against what could have been had Cincinnati won ugly on the back of Aaron Boupendza putting a little more mustard on his best shot of the night? Back in the real world, Patrick Schulte came good in that moment and, I think most observers would accept that justice was served. However much it hurt to send Timmy upstate…

On a purely personal, slightly petty level, I have a notepad full of tantalizing questions that just went to waste – e.g., do you start Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji in the MLS Cup that will never happen? Or, if Obinna Nwobodo can go, do you start him or do you honor continuity and Yuya Kubo’s (sturdy?) service over the past two, three games? And to what percentage of a Nwobodo does that answer apply.

All those questions just got kicked to 2024.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Philadelphia Union: (Back-Up) Paths of Glory

Again, that's 2 15/16th by one measure.

I wasn’t going to start this post with the question of whether FC Cincinnati’s big, CB-birthed late winner was or was not offside, but then I opened the phone and saw both the image and the measurement at right. Ian Murphy’s nod into the goal-mouth mosh-pit did look half a body offside in real time, but the call survived VAR’s second look and that ushered in Yerson Mosquera’s put-back and Cincy’s 1-0 win over the Philadelphia Union into the history books…

…that said, if that 2 15/16” measurement is accurate, that makes one hell of a statement on the OCD-madness of the post-modern offside rule. That is a fucking fraction, not a cheat-code.

Next thought: bring on Columbus Crew SC and getting the lighting dialed in because TQL Stadium is hosting a goddamn party next Saturday. A body usually has to go to Hollywood to get such perfect plotting.

To acknowledge the obvious, yes, this site fell off the FC Cincinnati beat in August of this season…and then again after the beginning of October. The explanation for that lapse in this boy scout’s duty speaks the thought that will carry this post to its conclusion – i.e., there’s not a lot to say besides, FC Cincinnati good, fire bad, and, whatever else you do, keep on lashing the hounds until they expire or reach the perfect destination, aka, MLS Cup 2023. Just two games stand between Cincy and one of the most thoroughly-redemptive doubles you’ll ever see in this budding whack-job of a league. As others have pointed out – which, here, means MLS’s in-house scribe Matt Doyle in the preview hit for last night’s game – the fact Cincy won anything at all in Year 5 constitutes enough of a miracle. The fact that the trophy in hand is the Supporters’ Shield – i.e., the one that requires consistent, almost grinding success – already gets the story of their 2023 season halfway to Hollywood.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 Red Bull New York: How Many Is Too Many?

Abomination.

Thanks to a 1-2 loss at home against Red Bull New York, FC Cincinnati killed the semi-pointless dream of claiming the single-season record for points in the MLS X.0 era. While I don’t like that anymore than you do, man, does it feel nice to have something to talk about besides, “yeah, still going really well.”

First things first, I wouldn’t freight this loss with a ton of meaning. Pat Noonan didn’t stir the starting XI, he shook it. I was about to digress to the culinary crime of a blended martini (hold on...has anyone...never mind), but he didn’t start any player that Cincinnati fans haven’t seen at some point in 2023. The issue – which assumes it was one – came with starting so many non-regulars. It fell well short of “who the fuck is that guy?” but, outside Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo, only Nick Hagglund and Raymon Gaddis had played more than 1,000 minutes coming in. Most of the rest have logged real minutes – e.g., 998 for Yuya Kubo, 880 for Alvas Powell, 844 (shit, when?) for Dominique Badji – but, again, most of that time came with more regulars in the eleven.

That totally showed up on the field – Cincy played most of the game in the wide expanses between in-synch, which they were not, and out-of-synch – but that didn’t hurt them as much and as fatally as the 20 opening minutes. As the Red Bulls demonstrated tonight, a little energy can go a long way and a lot of energy goes even farther. To tie that together, sure, the turnover in the line-up didn’t help, but Cincy dug a two-goal hole by a simple failure to match the energy-drink energy.

If this game has a mystery, or any real source of concern, that’s it: how did FC Cincinnati come into a game that, let’s face it, they could absolutely lose against a team that literally brands itself on high energy with, well, so little energy?

Credit where it’s due, the Red Bulls got hold of the game early. Over those opening 20 minutes, they pressed high enough to alternately frustrate and stuff a Cincinnati team that grew more disoriented and cautious with each misplayed pass out of the back. The defensive shape eventually compacted to where the hosts left all kinds of space in and around the edges of Zone 14. That burned them early when that ever-receding line left original (and impressively respectful) draftee, Frank Amaya, wide-open about 20 yards from goal...and he made it look easy from there. The same thing happened less than 10 minutes later, even if the gap opened in a different space, when the statistically-marginal Elias Manoel finished a John Tolkin cut-back from a pasture around FC Cincy’s penalty spot; this time, the back three had dropped deep while Cincy’s midfield failed to track Manoel or drop deep enough to cover: so, no, things did not go well on the defensive side.

FC Cincinnati 3-0 New York City FC: "A Damn Good, Exquisitely Well-Timed Win"

A still from TQL Stadium, August 26. (I kid, I kid.)

First, do an aging gentleman a favor and tell me that you needed to remind yourself FC Cincinnati wasn’t in orange yesterday. Every time the mind went drifting (as it does), I kept thinking Cincy suddenly looked wayward and baffled. It was New York City FC wearing orange, of course....but that wasn’t the weirdest thing I saw yesterday.

After a couple weeks of watching defenses assign either goon or goon squad to suffocate Luciano Acosta, seeing New York City FC opt against the obvious approach? Well, it was a decision. Nick Cushing (probably) directed his charges to go out and keep the shape, which allowed Acosta to do the whole float like a butterfly sting like a bee thing (“Joe Fraser can’t hit what he can’t see”; just read that full quote from Muhammed Ali this week and it really is a thing of beauty). Lucho Unlocked led to two decisive plays that commenced the scrambling of NYC’s defense on Cincy's first goal and that opened the backdoor on for Junior Moreno on their second. That amounts to a death sentence in a game where chances came often as the 25 bus (i.e., not often enough). The only major plot-point from there was NYC opting to defend space instead of players – most notably, Nick Hagglund - on a 58th minute corner kick. With that, FC Cincinnati walked off the field at TQL Stadium last night, 3-0 winners in what looked like a stroll.

And yet that impression was at least mildly illusory. Between wrapping up dinner (a decent tuna casserole, fwiw) and getting about 5 mg ahead of myself, I wasn’t totally locked in for the first 20 minutes of the second half – and that meant missing how close NYC came to either leveling the game, or pulling back one goal, something I saw (among other things) after re-watching the beginnings of the first and second halves this morning. The specific order and timing of it all escapes me, but Monsef Bakrar came within a quarter step of beating Roman Celentano on a near-post run to a deflected cross, (think it was) Julian Fernandez later forced Celentano to lay down to stop a shot from range and Keaton Parks put at least two great shots on goal over the course of the second half – one a five-hole shot, the other a header from just outside the six. That last sentence may very well contain the entirety of NYC’s attacking output for the afternoon, but, if you sprinkle in some dubious set-piece defending on FC Cincy’s part (lots of balls hitting ground, with some “danger! danger!” pinball thrown in), you’re just a couple but-fors away from a game that doesn’t look so comfortable.

If that sounds like a paragraph’s worth of quibbling, fair. Just about every game includes moments like that and all that mischief got managed, so what to do but celebrate? Even with the Philadelphia Union and (impressively) Orlando City SC winning, Cincinnati now holds a ten-point lead in the Supporters’ Shield race and an 11-point lead over the rest of the Eastern Conference thanks to losses by the New England Revolution and St. Louis CITY FC, respectively. They also padded their goal differential by three, something that could break some useful ties when such things come up and that brightens the bigger picture a little. To expand on that...

FC Cincinnati 2022 Season Review/Preview: Competence's Unexpected Dilemmas

The view from 2019-2021. Fucker looks massive.

I decided to park on a review of FC Cincinnati’s 2022 season for a variety of reasons – the choice to check out in mid-July among them (it’s possible my middle name, “Anders,” is Norwegian for “erratic”) – but not really knowing how to read their season-ending 0-1 loss to the now-MLS-Cup-bound Philadelphia Union played its part as well. In so many words, I understood Cincy had defied virtually every observer’s expectations, but couldn’t really place them in a league-wide context.

Seeing both Philadelphia and Los Angeles FC kick great lumps out of the opposition in their respective semifinals – though, just to note it, LAFC played a more one-way game – went some distance to filling in that blank. FC Cincinnati didn’t just have their best-ever season, they had a very good one. To lift a line out of Matt Doyle’s year-end review:

“’Everything from June 18 to Decision Day is the highlight’ also has an argument, as over that 20-game stretch, Cincy lost just twice. That’s the best of anybody in MLS.”

The bitter little boy who lives inside my head compels me to point out that 10 of those games ended as draws, a point Doyle concedes sotto voce when he notes that “Cincy dropped more points from leading positions this year than anyone but the Revs” (and is it just me or did five teams drop the most points from leading positions? I’ve read that stat somewhere for at least three teams). That bitter little boy missed a deeper truth that I thought I’d written at some point this season, but, because I can’t find it, here it is again: those ten draws meant that Cincinnati went toe-to-toe against all kinds of teams, six of them future playoff teams (including New York City FC), and gave away very little. Call that a long of saying that all those dropped points didn’t matter after Decision Day: what mattered was that Cincy showed they stood just as high as (literally) half the teams in Major League Soccer. And, when you’ve got that, getting into the playoffs amounts to having a chance in every game going forward. As Red Bull New York learned in the hardest of ways.

All that’s better than laudable. It’s beautiful, especially given the dark slapstick that came before. From there, the question becomes how to get better in 2023.

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Nashville SC: On Forgetting What It's Like to Feel

This, only drooling to stay interested.

I don’t have a lot of say about FC Cincinnati’s 1-1 draw at TQL Stadium against Nashville SC, because what is there to say about more of the same? Cincy has now drawn six of their past eight game, enough to keep them alive, but too little to take them in a direction of any particular interest. The point kept them above the playoff line, and that’s nice, but they owe that somewhat to Charlotte’s surprise/loud choke at Toronto FC. Also, look who’s looming in the rearview (Chicago Fire FC; and to think I wrote them off just last Friday.)

Twenty-four hours passed between the time I half-watched the second half and the time just spent struggling to stay awake/interested and the main thing I want at this point is those 50 minutes back. The more I look at the xG lines the data-nerds traced onto the stats page, the more I wonder whether I’m clear on how those things work...and, I’ll be damned if that isn’t the last interesting thing I have to say.

Several Cincinnati players had good-to-great games – e.g., I continue to marvel at Obinna Nwobodo’s range, movement and soccer intelligence (man has Spider-sense, swear to gods), Ian Murphy should start so long as he’s fit, at least in my mind, and Brandon Vazquez scored another great goal and he’s already three goals above what would have made me happy (what? oh yeah, Nashville scored too...eh). A couple players didn’t do so hot – e.g., I have nothing but respect for Yuya Kubo, but he still holds the ball too damn long; I feel the same about Alvaro Barreal, he got a lucky, yet useful assist, but that doesn’t mean there’s a No. 10 shirt in his future – but that’s the game.

Cincy has...eleven games left (? that can’t be right, but I’ve counted three times and...fuck it; it’ll happen) to find another gear. A tough stretch of the season that started as somewhat inspirational – see the 1-1 draw at the Philadelphia Union and the 4-4 home draw/party versus New York City FC petered out into home draws versus Red Bull New York and (most of) the Vancouver Whitecaps and....pffft. After that, what else do you say? It’s not progress, it’s not failure; it’s stasis.

FC Cincinnati 3-4 Club du Foot Montreal: Look, Maybe Take a Week Off and Come Back After...

I couldn’t put FC Cincinnati’s 4-3 loss to Club du Foot Montreal at the Big Tickle to into words, but I think the image gets to the self-defeating spirit of what some of you poor bastards paid to see live.

Looking at the numbers seems like a waste of time, even though I know I’m gonna do it - also, don’t do it, it just makes it worse - but I think the better exercise comes with marching through the parade of “what the fuck” the led to each of Montreal’s goals.

Goale the Firste: With Luciano Acosta facing upfield, Yuya Kubo peels off Djordje Mihailovic to double-team(?) Kamal Miller on (Cincy’s right touch-line), which leaves Mihailovic isolated against Nick Hagglund, never the best idea. Geoff Cameron then peels off to defend…with Tyler Blackett picking up Kei Kamara, though there are two more Montreal defenders lurking in the area. Mihailovic cuts inside Hagglund and loops the ball around Cameron, who steps forward and opens up Alec Kann’s back-post. Bad.

Goale the Seconde: Acosta drops the ball to Kubo, who has (about) 10 feet of space all around him, and Kubo chooses to dribble forward (instead of, y’know, passing the ball; related, I have a still of Alvas Powell tossing up his hands in frustration right as the turnover happens (about 0:05 in on the clip). He’s gotten away with that all season, but this time his touch carries too close to Montreal’s Victor Wanyama, who steps past Cameron’s challenge and finds Kei Kamara to his left. At this point, at least four Cincy defenders collapse toward Kamara and Wanyama on the (/Cincy’s) right, including Kubo, who was aware of Mihailovic, but lost him in that moment, and Mihailovic passes home from about 13-14 yards out. Bad, but also the beginning of a theme.

Goale the Thirde: Montreal breaks Cincy’s press by spreading the field and, after the home team thwarts Montreal right back, Alistair Johnson’s run, the ball bounces back to Wanyama who has all the freedom in the world to dream of possibilities. He lofts a ball between Blackett and Cameron, both of whom have lost track of Kamara, which sends the grey eminence of Montreal alone on goal with all three center backs chasing. They do not win. Kamara slots in Montreal’s third to Kann’s right/the far post.

Charlotte FC 2-0 FC Cincinnati: Subject/Object

When they come, will you be ready?

This could be me ranting into a vacuum in response to nothing, but I’ve got something to get off my chest, so, here it is.

I see people talking and talking expectations for their team and evaluating results they’ve earned or burned with almost no reference to the quality and, more importantly, the form of the opposing team. It takes its most persistent form in assuming that what works in one game will somehow work in every game; the specific thing could be a tactic or a player, but the basic argument amounts to having a conversation about game as if half the people involved neither participated, nor played a hand in the result. I’m sure some percentage of this gripe follows from me reading a novel in between the lines (often of 280 or fewer characters), and it mostly comes up when I see people bitching about a result that should have surprised them half as much as it did, but this drives me all kinds of fucking crazy - i.e., this has become my king pet peeve in all sports.

Some of soapbox soliloquy pertains to FC Cincinnati’s 0-2 loss at Charlotte FC, though personal application may vary. Related, that hyperlink will be the last time FC Cincy serves as the subject to any thought in this post. Figuratively.

Because I had to wait for the replay on this game, I had an opportunity to absorb the post-game chatter before sitting down to actually watch (most of) the game. [Disclosure: I watched the first 28 minutes, then all the second half, so whatever good shit happened from the 28th to the 46th minute doesn’t exist for me.] As such, I went in knowing things didn’t go well, but without really knowing how or why.

If I had to tell an alien about this game, I’d start by telling Bleep-Borp (for that is its name) that most of the notes I wrote while watching pointed to things Charlotte was doing. To give a couple examples, I couldn’t help but note the energy and overall effectiveness of SuperDraftee, Benjamin Bender, or how Derrick Jones stomped around the middle of Charlotte’s half of the field like an colossus who stood 50% taller than everyone around him (this definitely applied to Luciano Acosta). I’d flag how Christian Fuchs and Joseph Mora’s names came up often enough on defensive actions/stops that I still haven’t been properly introduced to Guzman Corujo and Jaylin Lindsay, even if I’m willing to take it on faith that they actually played yesterday. And, yeah, Kristijan Kahlina made some impressive saves, but the only one that felt like robbery was his save on Acosta’s bright, shining moment at the end of the first half (okeh, yeah, I dipped back in for the last four, five minutes of the first half as well).

FC Cincinnati 3-1 Inter Miami FC: Shit, I Underwrote My Theme...

Junior Moreno, artist's rendering.

Here I’ve been posting twitter threads that double as game summaries since the pandemic started (at least) and I never thought to just link to the fucking things. In fairness, that’s more color commentary than summary - and the notes come at what I consider appropriate intervals (i.e., I’m very much a one-dude-in-the-broadcast-booth man) - but it flags every goal, notes some broader trends and even mentions the shirtless dude in the crowd with the great state of Ohio tattooed on the skin above his beating heart.

Now, to flesh that out a little…or a lot.

FC Cincinnati started the game as well as Inter Miami CF started it badly. They stopped everything headed toward their goal before it breached their defensive third - if with a massive assist from a globally sloppy Miami team - and piled on pressure with sharp passes and a selection of first touches and shake-‘n’-shimmies that kept the ball rolling toward Miami’s goal. Whether on coach’s orders or from a bout of the jitters, the visitors let Cincy play, only really trying to pressure the ball when it rolled into their defensive third. With the home team more or less camped inside Miami’s half, that proved disastrous: Cincinnati generally only had to go as far back as the impressively effective Yuya Kubo (who added a wrinkle with a shot on goal!) and Cincy’s new stealth-fighter No. 6, Junior Moreno, who would then feed it either to Luciano Acosta, one of the forwards (Brandon Vazquez or Dominique Badji), or Alvas Powell high on the right, or Ronald Matarrita high on the left.

Given how mightily Miami struggles to score - they’ve scored just two goals over four(!?) games, with one coming from the spot (today) - Cincy effectively won the game over the first 25 minutes. Their first goal featured a lot some of the good, good things I noted above - e.g., Badji showing to receive the ball, but instead turning and letting the ball run toward goal, poking it to Acosta, who found a wide-open (this is a theme) Vazquez running up Cincy’s right. With the fullback playing to contain, Vazquez pulled up, stepped inside and scanned for the third pass, who happened to be Matarrita, who passed home the goal from the far post. Miami’s shape was a disaster, both d-mids had stepped to Badji, leaving Acosta free to run with space in front of him and Vazquez all alone.

Cincy’s second goal followed the other half of the script noted above. After making a pinned-in Miami chase around the right for a couple passes, the ball went back to Kubo, who cycled the ball to Tyler Blackett (yeah, yeah, the ball went further back), who found - again, a wide-open Matarrita, who was able to pick out Vazquez as cleanly as the latter had done for the former just six minutes earlier. In short, a low-scoring Inter Miami found themselves down 0-2 by letting too much happen around them. They showed too much respect to one of MLS’s historically bad sides.

Orlando City SC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: With a Nod to a Hero of the Salem Witch Trials

Translated to the modern idiom, "eat shit, prudes."

Had you asked me to pick the game FC Cincinnati would win from its first three, I would have picked away to Orlando City SC last. Had you told me they won it courtesy of a Brandon Vazquez brace, I would have asked for a taste of whatever you were on at the time of asking.

Chase the doubts and disbelief away because, I’ll be damned if FC Cincy didn’t roll into central Florida and win its first game of 2022. The game ended 2-1 and, numbers be damned, I thought they looked all right doing it. That’s to say, forget stats like possession and passing accuracy, look beyond Cincy’s thin passing network with its faintness of some far-off constellation, and scroll all the way to the bottom of The Mothership’s stats page to drink in the one number that gives a fair read of the game as it played out, the xG data.

In terms of timeline, Cincy stunned Orlando a mere 13 minutes into the game when Vazquez, a man not renowned for finishing his chances, buried a tidy li’l chip into the right corner of Pedro Gallese’s net. With the wake-up call duly delivered, Orlando proceeded to pile pressure on every available side of Cincinnati’s 18 yard box. The chiseling finally broke through the walls 30 minutes later when Orlando’s Junior Urso charged buck-naked onto a Facundo Torres cross to Cincy’s back-post at which point, I, like everyone who wishes Cincinnati health and happiness, commenced to listening desperately for the first-half whistle. The game, in short, had threatened to get away from Cincinnati.

After watching the way Orlando had a rich tapestry of ways to threaten the side fringes of Cincinnati’s 18-yard box, Cincy’s newbie head coach, Pat Noonan, made some adjustments to the defensive shape. On came Isaac Atanga to take up the right (left?) side of the three in a 4-2-3-1 and back went…I’d say fullback Ian Murphy (who several faulted to Orlando’s goal) more than Alvas Powell, into the four-man defense to better defend said side fringes. And then, somewhere between out of the pale blue sky and before all that had time to settle, Yuya Kubo sent newly-minted winger Dominique Badji into a foot-race against Orlando’s left back Ruan; Badji shouldered him off the ball (and to the ground), turned the ball inside behind Orlando’s defense and, effectively, ricocheted his cross off Vazquez’s head.

FC Cincinnati 0-1 DC United: That Unfamiliar Familiar Sting

This, but maybe with the left hand.

90 minutes with a hard kick to the balls at the end. That’s my dozen-word description of FC Cincinnati’s slow-death 0-1 loss to DC United at TQL Stadium.

After absorbing an early onslaught - and high-five to Tyler Blackett for nodding out a sure goal - Cincy got hold of the game in a way I either haven’t seen or can’t recall since gods know when. And that’s the real hairy bitch about the whole situation: today’s (comparatively) glorious effort came just one week after a season opener where it looked like just about everything surprised them one way or the other. Today, though, Cincy didn’t just connect the odd pass or three; they built sequences that knocked DC from the front-foot to the back in the blink of an eye. Sweet transition, baby. I’d direct any FC Cincy fan casting about for something to hold onto after a game that felt like a betrayal to the fact that they created actual, full chances in open play. That beats the hell out of trying to squeeze a ball through that familiar, rapidly-closing window Cincinnati fans knows so well. That’s not even the best thing that happened today.

Miracle of miracles, Cincinnati fielded a fully-functional midfield today, one that, as I saw it, actually controlled the midfield space. Credit newcomer Junior Moreno and Yuya “Mr. Plug-‘n’-Play” Kubo for putting in a pair of damn good shifts (and hold that thought), and (probably) Pat Noonan (or his shadow-master, Dominic Kinnear) for sorting out a better set-up, I only know it was refreshing to see an adjustment - any adjustment - pan out into anything besides fresh disaster. Kubo, in particular, looked like an entirely new player; he kept his work-rate dizzyingly high, but he looked totally different going forward, as if he understood where to find space and where to find, whether by turning into it on the dribble (the man got away with a scandalous number of spins today) or passing usefully out of it. All in all, Kubo did a helluva job getting the ball out of defense and into the attack - and I think that was the reason why Cincy’s transition game worked today…not that it mattered.

The passing improved all over and, better, just about every man dressed in orange looked like a full, dues-paying professional soccer player out there today. And yet, it wasn't enough. Cincy's best stuff came during the game’s first 50 minutes or so (dammit), all the way down to the butter-slick goal they scored just after the 20th minute, even if it got (rightly) called back for offside…ah, Brandon Vazquez, he does it wrong even when he does it right. My best guess is that DC worked out where or how to stall Cincy’s transition game at half-time, a shift that allowed them to shift the action toward the middle of the field and away from their own goal. Prior to…whatever happened around the 50th minute, other new arrival, Dominique Badji, either got or found some real quality looks at goal - just by smart runs, too, and he should have scored one of the two truly good ones he had - while fellow-frontrunner Vazquez chipped in with a handful of half-/quarter-chances. Now, brace yourself, because things get darker from here on out…

Austin FC 5-0 FC Cincinnati: A Comedy of Errors Without the Comedy

See? Already not laughing.

I’ll start with the confessions: I switched the game off from around the 62nd minute to the 70th and I checked out again before Austin FC scored its fifth goal (I’ve seen it now), but it’s also fair to say I switched off after Austin’s third goal. None of those choice make me feel bad or guilty and, on the plus side, yesterday I learned that I’d rather watch FC Cincinnati play the soccer equivalent of climbing a muddy hill with plastic bags on their feet than FOX’s pregame show. Lord, the fucking “Onside/Offside” segment…

And, to finally put the headline in lights, Cincy lost in Austin 0-5 yesterday. If you want to feel better, stare at The Mothership’s box score for the game for as long as takes for all those numbers and charts to meet closer to the middle. Hell, the MLS in 15 highlights might even cheer you up - e.g., Nicholas Markanich had a couple looks after Austin’s second goal (and hold that thought) and Brandon Vazquez almost made something out of nothing when he chopped the ball across his defender to line up a shot, etc. To get catty about it, the way Vazquez sliced that shot went a little way to explaining how he whiffed on the clearance on the Zan Kolmanic set-piece that led to Austin’s first, second minute goal.

That mishit feels like the right place to start the narrative because, when that first goal went in, chalking it up to some combination of nerves and a bad moment felt like a fair thought to hold, if only for morale’s sake. The happy talk felt a little desperate when yet another defensive blunder left Alex Ring all alone and on-side at the back-post for Austin's second goal, but you could pull it off so long as you smiled till the tears started. Whatever reasonable optimism held the average Cincy fans faith together surely collapsed with the timing and manner of Austin’s third goal, a smooth waltz through an overload that had Cincy’s Tyler Blackett (hold that thought) attempting an unfortunate eenie-meenie-minie-mo and from a step behind throughout the sequence.

From that point forward, the only question that remained was how many more goals Austin would score. Cincy fired a few shots from range early in the second half - a better one by Yuya Kubo (hold that thought) and a worse by Vazquez - but all that filed under keeping up appearances and, if we’re being frank here, that did not happen. Not only did Cincinnati not keep up, it’s not entirely clear that they’ve started moving.

A fourth goal came, crushing in its simplicity, and a fifth, the latter helped along by an over-eager lunge by Zico Bailey that Austin’s Moussa Djitte side-stepped with cartoonish ease. Call the whole thing a comedy of errors, only without the comedy.

FC Cincinnati, in the Ass Crack Between '21 and '22

FC Cincinnati, the stuff of mythology.

In preparing this post, I tried to sort out the rules around the 2021 Re-Entry Draft, but lost interest in just a couple minutes. One third of that impulse came from boredom with over-technical bullshit, but the list of FC Cincinnati players who are either out of contract, or who did not have their contract options picked up another third:

Options Declined (for now, I think?)
Edgar Castillo
Chris Duvall
Jonas Fjeldberg
Avionne Flanagan
Joseph-Claude Gyau
Nick Hagglund
Ben Lundt
Caleb Stanko
Przemyslaw Tyton

Out of Contract
Haris Medunjanin
Florian Valot
Maikel van der Werff

The other third of me checking out follows from essential fatalism - i.e., accepting things over which I have no control, e.g., rosters of the teams I love and follow - but, to the point at hand, the word “irreplaceable” does not cross my mind when I review that list. Moreover, I don’t even know who Fjeldberg or Flanagan are, the latter sounds made up to the point I’m not even sure he really exists, and, turning to more existential questions, can one miss something that one has never seen? Bottom line - and I say this with zero malice toward anyone on that list, and affection for a couple - all those players file under too old, too injured, or somewhere south of what’s needed for the heavy, seemingly-eternal lift of getting FC Cincy out of its three-year wallow in the gutter.

Ideally, though, some or all those players going will make room for new players to come in. A review of what’s left of Cincinnati’s roster as of today’s speaks to the need, but, call me lazy (ignore the post/thoughts, etc.), I’m not inclined to sort out options beyond bare, non-financial numbers, and here are those: at time of writing, Cincinnati has six senior roster spots open, one spot for Supplemental Slots 21-14, two for 25-28, and one more for 29-30. So, if I’m understanding the rules right, that’s grand total of 11 potential new players. Only, it’s not: the return of Alvas Powell makes it ten and it could be as few as nine if the twitter rumors around Dominique Badji translate into him signing. Based on the numbers from the MLS Players’ Association 2021 MLS Player Salaries data-dump, it looks like Powell can come in as a Supplemental Slot 21-24 player, while Badji, assuming he does come in, will occupy a senior spot. Alec Kann already shows up on Cincy’s roster as a senior player, so, assuming I have all of that right (or will be shortly), that leaves Cincinnati with:

Nashville SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: Problems Versus Solutions

Because no one wants to look at piles of shit.

Is there anything more to say than FC Cincinnati got beat comprehensively by a better team? Even with some surprises in the numbers - e.g., Cincinnati nearly tied Nashville SC for total shots (…when?) - but the real-time action and the balance of the numbers (0.3 xG for Cincy) all bear out the final verdict: an easy-breezy 3-0 win for Nashville.

The game started (very) poorly, and with a soft goal, and the only “but for” Cincinnati fans can point to is that time Brenner spun a Nashville defender near the center stripe and ran in alone on Joe Willis…only to see Taylor Washington take it off his toes at the decisive moment. Cincy was just one goal down at that point, so who knows what might have been? Back in the real-world, and outside that, I counted one good attacking move for Cincinnati - Brenner combining with Edgar Castillo and Luciano Acosta somewhere around the 50th minute - but that was the most they troubled Nashville’s defense, aka, certainly more than Joe Gyau’s spazzing raid up the middle or Haris Medunjanin’s free-kick from deep-left in Nashville’s defensive third.

The craziest numbers I see are possession/number of passes, the only area where one can argue Cincinnati ran up the numbers. Literally nothing came of that because Cincinnati struggled mightily to play through what I’d call “in-fill” by Nashville, a spin on the concept of pressing. The basics of the tactic (and it’s something I see against the Portland Timbers a fair amount) seek to clog the passing lanes inside your opponent’s half; it gets pressure to the ball, but without chasing it all over, and it mostly works by getting in the way. For all…wow, 653 passes made (again….when?), Cincinnati couldn’t get much of anywhere, at least not up the field. Nashville reined in the line sometime in the 2nd half, but that only translated to Cincinnati dicking around with the ball in a different part of the field.

To wrap up Nashville, I’ll start by thanking C. J. Sapong for backing up my prediction that he’d factor into the result - though I can’t say I saw a two goal, three assist game when I typed that into twitter….golly, last Wednesday. All in all, this was a pretty straightforward case of a team having a couple more piles of its shit together going against one with their piles a little more scattered and disconnected; Nashville hasn’t lost in seven games for a reason and they’re playing even against some of the best in the Eastern Conference (e.g., a 1-0 home win over the Philadelphia Union and a goal-less road draw at Columbus Crew SC). FC Cincinnati, meanwhile, is not.