FC Cincinnati 2-1 Montreal Impact: Happiness Versus Excitement

Best goddamn scene in the entire DC Extended Universe. (I'll fight you.)

Those not watching on the TV might not have picked up on this, but FC Cincinnati came into today’s (far too early) game with a shot at a record looming. Their long scoreless streak had landed them at the foot of Top 5 (or so) for the longest stretch without a goal. When Allan Cruz scored (very) early, he reset Cincy’s timer on that. Cincinnati even scored a second time at the 62nd minute to make sure the sneaky little shit of a clock didn’t get any ideas. You gotta watch ‘em, man, time’s non-linear, etc.

In the first game of the post-Alan-Koch era, FC Cincinnati wound up beating the Montreal Impact at home by a final score of 2-1. (Is anyone else picturing Koch in some bar in Kentucky getting slowly, yet absolutely shit-faced and telling anyone who will listen that he got fucked over, or do those kinds of trips only happen in my head?) I’m not inclined to read much into that, personally, but I did approve on one thing Cincinnati tried this morning, the decision/dedication to pass the ball out of the back. It got them in a little trouble during the game’s earliest moments, but, once they broke through L’Impact’s weirdly uneven high press (more on that later), it worked pretty well for them. For what it’s worth, I read that choice as an attempt to get the team connected and into a rhythm from which they could dictate the rhythm of the game. More to the point, I think that’s something you can credit to Yoann Damet…there’s also the decision to start (the…experienced) Justin Hoyte at centerback over Nick Hagglund, and that’s another decision with a reasonable rate of return.

I also think people will get into trouble if they treat this result as finding a new leaf, never mind turning one over (is anyone doing that? paging a strawman). It’s just one game, for starters, plus there’s also a couple “paper advantages” to consider – i.e., Cincinnati returned home after playing four of its last five games at home, and they were playing a Montreal team traveling on short rest. The way the game played out stacked Cincinnati’s advantages even higher. I noted the press earlier, but it’s accurate to call it half-hearted, and it gave way to a full retreat into a defensive shell too readily. On the individual level, Montreal’s players didn’t stick into their tackles until around the 55-60 mark and the passing – Jesus Christ, the passing – Cincinnati organized the defense thick and well, but, time and again, Montreal took care of forcing their own errors, and pretty much from every position. (Just note it, I tweeted during the game that I’d be shocked if Montreal went over 80% on passing accuracy; they just cleared that low bar with a B- (81%); that said, Cincy’s 83% accuracy doesn’t give them much room for gloating).

And I haven't even mentioned that Montreal had what I would have counted as a goal called back for offside. I am looser than most on the offside rule (seriously, don't even bother arguing with me), and had Montreal scored at that point, it would have constituted an act of minor violence against the run of play at a minimum.

Vancouver Whitecaps 1-0 Portland Timbers: Plus a Third Hand...

Yaaasss. (Also, is this the right Birdman for the reference. #shit.)

“Just like Birdman, hit you with a left, then a right, plus a third hand.”
- KOOL A.D.

Yeah, I know. That’s just what came to me for the title, so I wanted to at least give the source.

The litmus test for how you feel about the Portland Timbers’ 0-1 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps at BC Place tonight has exactly one question in it: do you feel like the Timbers should have tied that game? If you answered no, yeah, this loss feels like a disaster. If you answer yes, well, that's the fun part: the answer is multiple choice.

I’ll start by borrowing from the Tale of Two Halves cliché (“it was the worst of times, and everyone else lived in London”), and call tonight’s loss A Tale of One-Third and Two-Thirds. Another soccer cliché comes in as well, e.g., playing on the front foot. I don’t think even Timbers fans would dispute that Vancouver outright owned the first 1/3 of the game; going the other way, I don’t think any ‘Caps fan would argue against ceding the final 1/3 of the game to the Timbers. The middle third feels a little more up for grabs, but within a Venn diagram that where the Tale of One-Third and Two-Thirds overlaps with parts of the Tale of Two Halves, and I can’t show you the wedges of each circle, so I’ll stop trying and switch to another line of argument.

If I had to weigh what Vancouver did against Portland in the first 1/3 of the game against what Portland did to Vancouver in the final 1/3, I see the scale tipping toward the Timbers. And that’s where the sub-title for this post came from (e.g., hitting someone from multiple sides), and why I feel OK about this loss. On the (theoretically) bleak side, I see tonight as a blown opportunity to investigate or, God forbid, seek to expand on the first team’s attacking potential, but that’s only leaving some personal, impractical theories on the table. Giovanni Savarese doesn’t have that luxury, just as no coach ever will, so I don’t remotely blame him for sticking with the Plan A that has brought the Timbers three straight wins. I just hope they can bottle whatever Savarese said or did to get the team geared up for that second half (is it amphetamines or is it Maybelline?), because it worked – and better than any of the time/space warping madness Portland used to beat Real Salt Lake last week.

And yet it gets weirder.

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 10: Mediocrities and Middlings, the Heart of MLS

At root, the essence of sport. Down to the eye contact.

Welcome to the only seemingly-late Form Guide ULTRA, Week 10. I make the case for “seemingly late” below every time I talk about the games coming up (as I do 24 times), as well as the handful of games across the league that played out (according to reasonably predictable plots) tonight.

In a break with past tradition, I posted a narrative recap of Week 10 over on Orange & Blue Press earlier this week (one that I’ve cleaned up three times now, and only feel proud of after this last pass). While some of the conclusions down below filter into that, a lot of them don’t, and that has everything do with needing to stare at this great mound of shit every week and for enough time to figure out some things. (Just to note it, enough of my better hunches in there held up pretty well over here).

Given the tabulated pile of vomit down below (yes, I have the good taste to not use that as an image), I’ll keep the commentary atop this post brief. In no particular order:

FIRST, teams from Ohio are dying, teams from California are thriving. A metaphor for our nation. Now, cry. (At the same time, LAFC has slowed down a bit (see below), and it’s well worth questioning the Galaxy on the road – not least because Columbus Crew SC just did).

FIRST, 1.1, Seattle has also slowed down. Factually.

SECOND, Week 10’s big risers all come from the Eastern Conference: New York City FC, Atlanta United FC, and, to a lesser extent, the Philadelphia Union. All three teams racked up some real points over the past week, to which I can only say....noted.

SECOND, 1.1, the Portland Timbers know what they’re about right now, and that was the same formula for success as last season. Just noting that.

The Portland Timbers Spend Some Money: Preliminary, Speculative Thoughts on Brian Fernandez

That said, some very successful people do it...

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I’d do it in a thread, but I just want to blah, blah, blah about the Portland Timbers signing Brian Fernandez for (reportedly) $10 million (and some as yet unrecorded length of time), and without wrestling my many thoughts into 280-character nuggets – even if it means fewer people will read it. Regardless of how the method of delivery, this signing contains a lot within it.

First, I don’t expect anything from any given player based on a resume – something that’s more significant with Fernandez, who has scored enough, and in enough places to make him look like a good bet to succeed in MLS. Snippets of his finer moments and his resume mean nothing: he’ll set his own bar with how he plays for Portland (Necaxa is over) in MLS.

Just to note it (largely because it’s basically impossible to avoid), Fernandez’s signing gives long-suffering Lucas Melano his first real chance to skulk away from serving as permanent cautionary tale in Timbers history. I wouldn’t count on it, obviously – not given a player who has performed well in more talent-laden leagues – but all kinds of things could trip up Fernandez, e.g., failing to adjust to the travel, or a new country/culture; he could just be a massive asshole that poisons the locker room (and I close with this).

Whatever kind of player the Timbers got, paying that much for a player says plenty about the front office’s perception of what it takes to compete in Major League Soccer – and probably starting in 2018. On that level, Fernandez’s signing stands out on two levels for me. First – and this was why I obsessed so much on the length of his contract – his age (24) suggests they didn’t buy him to flip him; unlike what, say, Atlanta did with Miguel Almiron, Fernandez doesn’t look like an investment signing, a young, promising buck the team would play, fatten up a little (metaphorically), and sell to a richer club in a bigger league. To be clear, my relentless “just the results, ma’am” approach leaves me close to functionally ignorant of the international transfer market, but, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me it’s too late to develop a player…well, I’d probably still be doing this shit for free, only with a lot more money in my bank account. Second, and on the most basic level, this signing still strikes me as a significant sunk cost, a kind of all-in gamble on Fernandez being “the guy” who has to produce real numbers. Even though they have delivered like beautiful motherfuckers, I’d argue that not even Diego Valeri nor Sebastian Blanco came in with that much expectation.

Real Salt Lake 1-2 Portland Timbers: "Much More Cleaner With That Finishing Product"

Jon Payne is the only one-armed bandit you should run towards.

That subtitle quotes Brian Dunseth from the broadcast booth, and fairly late in the game. It is a clunky masterpiece. Due to the editing on the condensed game, it came context-free, but I can only assume he’s crediting Portland for superior finishing. If so, I don’t think he got it quite right, because things got weirder than that.

Diego Valeri’s game-winning goal contains within itself the sheer improbability of the Portland Timbers' 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake down in sunny Sandy, Utah. The wicked beauty of the shot notwithstanding, Diego had to slice that between two sets of legs, each oriented along a different axis, to knock that past Andrew “Who?” Putna. The Timbers did plenty of things right yesterday evening, but there’s not much point avoiding how much good fortune gave an assist on both Timbers goals. When you’re blessed, you’re blessed. What are you gonna do?

With the way it warped physics, Valeri’s goal rendered an unspoken final judgment on the game, one that lingered in the air after Steve Clark’s save on Albert Rusnak’s (deserved) 23rd-minute penalty kick. It said, no, Real Salt Lake will not win this game. Not for anything they have done wrong – though they certainly had (see below) – and not for anything they would do wrong after Valeri's shot rolled around inside the net, but, in that precise moment, it became manifest where the good Lord chose to shine his favor. The result feels a little Calvinistic, predestination meets soccer, and so on, but there's that old saying about God and mysterious ways.

To turn now to the “works” part of the “faith v. works” argument, Portland didn’t do much to earn the win. For too much of the game, they played as if they could only complete a pass if the ball hit an RSL player on the way to the next Timber. Sloppy doesn’t begin describe it – “a fucking mess” comes closer – but, in the end, their sins against the sport end there. When called upon to defend, the Timbers back four either defended well (Bill Tuiloma, especially, put in a strong emergency shift; e.g., “Tuiloma, right place” at the end of this clip) or well enough to convince RSL that their best chances could come from range. To borrow/adapt a phrase from my earlier post on FC Cincinnati’s loss (hurt), while I can’t call this a good game for Portland, I can call it a good result, maybe even a great one. In a lot of ways, the Timbers are running out of ways to fuck up this long road trip.

San Jose Earthquakes 1-0 FC Cincinnati: A Hopeless Hat Looking for a Hook

Not always productive...

Several key numbers express what happened in FC Cincinnati’s 0-1 loss to the San Jose Earthquakes last night. Among them?

When Major League Soccer’s tech/video stooges condense games, they typically find 20 minutes’ worth of worthwhile footage. The condensed game for San Jose v. Cincinnati ran under 15 minutes.

The ‘Quakes’ Cristian Espinoza got sent off for a (soft) second yellow card (on his part; make it worth the time, son) at the 51st minute. That left FC Cincinnati 40 minutes’ with a man up.

FC Cincinnati put three shots on goal, two of ‘em after Espinoza’s sending off (and both by Fatai Alashe, I believe), so maybe the solution for Cincinnati involves somehow arranging to always play a man up? I’m just saying, have they tried it? Just asking questions over here, people.

For all concerned, it felt like neither progress nor regression, but, by ball that’s holy, ‘twas hideous. My short read goes something like this: when Espinoza left the field, the game went from one team having some capacity to make something happen out there (San Jose) to two teams flailing hopefully forward till the final whistle put fans and observers alike out of their shared misery. To clear up any potential confusion and/or inaccuracies, the ‘Quakes didn’t dictate the match by putting under pressure on or shots up against Cincinnati; they did, however, dominate possession for as long as they had 11 players on the field, and to an extent that made it impossible for the Orange and Blue to do anything with the ball, precisely because they never had the ball.

All it took for the ‘Quakes to collect these three fragile points was Nick Lima’s set-piece precision strike at the 22nd minute. Jackson Yueill’s two “shots” give a fair taste of San Jose’s attacking puissance (Kitten-Level, Unlocked!), and that says something about converting possession into chances or maybe less pathetic shots. All the same, I’ve seen Earthquakes teams look effective and smart with the ball, but I’ve never seen one look that comfortable playing eternal keep-away. It took a lot of movement to make it work – enough to make me wonder whether they’d fade – and it did work, and maybe that's Matias Almeyda's system in action. From the second Cincinnati lost control or turned over the ball, San Jose would take hold and shuttle it around for a few, often as if they had no particular destination in mind (much like drivers in Hillsboro, Oregon, who I hate with the heat of 1,000 suns.)

Philadelphia Union 2-0 FC Cincinnati: Line-Breaking Passes Break Teams

At last! I have whipped a metaphor to stiffness!

If you’re looking for good news, FC Cincinnati lost 0-2 to the Philadelphia Union Wednesday night, and the result didn’t really flatter anyone. Going the other way, if you’re going to call a lot of what FC Cincy put up "shots," you are the patron saint of generosity. Too many of them looked about as threatening as Darren Mattocks’ 29th minute attempt. It was fairly early in the game when “PHI really good at blocking shots” went into my notes, and that didn’t really change till late in the game. I’ll get to that later, but the big takeaway for this game is that Philly deserved the win. Now, the details…

FC Cincinnati fans had all of – what? – five minutes to ask whether it would have mattered or not had Kacper “Sh-Bilko” Przybylko was offside on the go-head goal (wha…? 7 minutes? No shit?). I don’t know how psychic recovery time works, for a variety of reasons, but I hope no one treats the question of whether “Sh-Bilko” (yes, I’ll stop; it just helps me remember the pronunciation) was offside on the Union’s opening goal as the whole damn problem tonight, because it mattered to the same rough extent that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand “caused” World War I – i.e., it was merely the first act in a particularly painful drama (only scaled to 1 versus, oh, 30,000,000 or so, not counting the Spanish Flu, as in, and the "1" is spectator sports suffering, which isn't actual suffering).

FC Cincinnati had a low-block as dense as plywood, one that alternated from suffocation (4-1-4-1) to outright strangulation (5-4-1; rare sightings on that one). The Philadelphia Union had more talent in every position, familiarity, tactical understanding, etc. etc. etc. It took them an entire half, plus a halftime of (presumably) planning and/or screaming to figure out how to breakdown that low-block, but they did it. And once the tide turned, low-tide didn’t return until late in the game, when Cincy substitute, Fatai Alashe, lined up the most unobstructed shot of the game for Cincinnati. They came too late, obviously, but I want to linger on that idea of unobstructed shots, because it’s a biggie.

From what I saw, Cincinnati’s low-block only kicked in when it’s press failed – and that press discombobulated the holy shit out of Philly for the first 45 minutes of the game. Throw the possession stats all the way out the door, because a lot of Philly’s involved pushing the ball across the backline until something actually easy opened up. The Union alternated between isolating players on farthest fringes of the low-block, or trying to play a ball over the top to Fafa Picault, or to Kacper Przybylko. None of that worked: FC Cincy kept Philly’s players too far away from one another to do any damage, and that threatened to spell a decidedly uninspiring phrasing of “success,” but I also think most FC Cincy fans would have eaten 20 crickets in exchange for a draw tonight. If that doesn’t make sense, I’m arguing that just about any draw would have worked for me tonight – and I’m guessing that applies to most fans of FC Cincinnati.