FC Cincinnati 0-0 Chicago Fire FC: 25% Game, 75% State of the Union

I'm guessing it wasn't as obnoxious, but who knows?

With FC Cincinnati posting another scoreless draw, I decided to do a little spelunking into what something like that looks like on the numbers side. Over the past five games - and this counts Wednesday night’s double-donuts result hosting Chicago - Cincy posted a total of 43 shots, with just 13 on frame. They hit their highwater mark against the Portland Timbers down in Orlando - twelve shots, five on goal - and their lowest against Columbus Crew SC, when they fired five shots, two of them on goal. Watching all those minutes has been...meds?

My much-abused memory tells me they attacked better than usual against Chicago last Wednesday night, forcing three big saves out of the Fire’s Robert “Mrs.” Shuttleworth, with Jurgen Locadia’s standing out as the nearest miss of the bunch. (There’s no select highlight for the shot Siem de Jong wailed over the crossbar, but I count that as Cincinnati’s most tactically-replicable chance created in the run of play.) According to the box score, they managed eight shots in all against Chicago, with three on frame, numbers that put them just under their five-game average for shots (8.6) and just over their five-game average for shots on goal (2.6).

While it’s no state secret that Cincinnati doesn’t create much for offense, those numbers are some combination of manifest and ever-so-slightly-fucking depressing. Off-season renovations to the roster made some kind of learning curve inevitable, but those numbers leave an obvious question hanging in the air: how does this get better?

To continue on a high note, I was delighted to see Cincy come and get after the visitors from Chicago - that goes double given the maddeningly passive approach they took when they visited Chicago (since I checked, they posted eight shots, just one on goal in that one). And, maybe had Maikel van de Werff nodded home Haris Medunjanin’s beautiful set piece (see above for link, first one; also, what the hell were the Fire defenders thinking on that one?), that would have forced Chicago to open up a little bit more…on the evidence above, however, I don’t have much faith that they would…

…also of note, Cincinnati has scored just one goal over the past five games and that was back in Orlando…which I miss in this weird way I can’t quite explain…maybe the “bubble energy” better matched the ambient, brittle weirdness of 2020, but who knows?

Chicago Fire FC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: The Folly of Turtling

Shit, that looks stupid...

I always expected that FC Cincinnati would weather another blow-out, just not like this. Objectively(?), the team needs to sort out how to come out and play and, had they lost 0-3 to Chicago Fire FC - yes, the undisputed kings of Major League Soccer rebranding and league’s most popular management across two decades by league-wide fan polls, that Chicago - making some attempt to do that, you could write that off getting singed by the learning curve. But to lose like that because you’re down two goals and you’ve got no present style of play outside a compact low-block? I’d call that cause for concern.

First, I’d dismiss any chatter that calls this a home game for Chicago; till further notice, MLS 2020 is a season without home-field advantage. Second - and this is more for me than you - don’t throw away the good from the last…four games. More to the point, it’s like Cincinnati players didn’t have any moments: Yuya Kubo did well to create his own shot after some decent inter-play up the Cincy’s right with Joe Gyau, Kendall Waston remains a solid (if screamingly obvious) threat on set-pieces, and Frankie Amaya looks more willing to put a team on his back every game; for what it’s worth, I liked Siem de Jong playing deeper and more centrally…yes, I know what I just typed and, yes, that only compounds a very persistent problem, but resolving The Midfield Situation (explained herein) will necessarily involve figuring out who fits where best and why. While that’s something that, ideally, the FC Cincy brain-trust will sort out on the training ground, it’s also something that will inevitably bleed onto the playing field until that happy day when The Midfield Situation meets The Midfield Solution and they move to a beautiful and well-appointed ranch-style home behind a white picket fence, amen, and let it come soon…

…but there’s no looking past the reality that tonight’s loss did not have game states, it had a game state - i.e., around 80 non-sequential minutes of Chicago figuring out how to get through Cincinnati’s turtle-on-its-back low-block. The only time I felt even a flicker of hope that Cincinnati would make them game a fight, never mind turn it around, came at the start of the second half. I figured Jaap Stam had gamed out some alternatives as that dreadful first half wound down, some fresh stage direction and inspiration that would give his team a chance to claw back a goal, maybe even make Chicago sweat a little. Instead, Cincinnati played the game they should have - i.e., hunting the ball, if just to force one issue - only during stoppage time of the first half and, fitfully, in the first five minutes of the second. They collapsed back into their defensive shape and treated the midfield stripe as some time-honored Rubicon they could only cross when a Cincinnati player had possession on either side of that, and got the result they deserved out of it.

Basically, I was able to cling to the hope that Cincinnati defaulted to a crouch over the last 15 minutes of the first half because they lacked instruction. The second half suggested a troubling counter-argument - e.g., it happened because they straight-up don't have a Plan B they trust on the defensive side. The deeper, deeply-inter-related issue is the reason why Cincinnati can’t go down a goal: they suck at goal scoring and chance creation generally, so…