FC Cincinnati will close out a frantic week on the road with a trip to the Volunteer State to visit Nashville SC, on Saturday night. After winning on the road earlier this week at Minnesota United FC, The Orange and Blue are looking to sweep the week on the road with another three point performance.
Kickoff is set for 8:30 p.m. ET and fans can watch the game on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV and listen locally in English on ESPN 1530 and 97.7 FM La Mega in Spanish. In the last trip to Nashville, FC Cincinnati earned a victory and a clean sheet. For this trip let's look at some key numbers surrounding this match. All presented by CTI.
100
After a stretch of other milestones have marked recent matches, Obinna Nwobodo and Roman Celentano will each reach their plateaus this week.
The midfielder and goalkeeper will make their 100th appearance for the club on Saturday night in Nashville, making them the eighth and ninth players to reach the plateau across all competitions. Earlier this week Ian Murphy, Yuya Kubo and Alvas Powell each reached milestone marks of their own.
Next to reach 100 for FCC would be Sergio Santos, who made his 74th appearance on Wednesday in Minnesota. Also notable, Luciano Acosta needs seven more appearances to reach the 150 mark. He would, most likely, reach that figure in game two of the MLS Cup Playoffs Round One Best-of-Three series.
16
Under Pat Noonan FC Cincinnati have been excellent when playing on short rest. In games played with three days or fewer between matches FC Cincinnati is 16-4-5, displaying how effective The Orange and Blue can be at turning the page to the next match. While not a perfect record, most of the four losses and five draws have come against teams who FC Cincinnati have faced in the second leg of a double-match week who did not themselves play a midweek or weekend game prior.
38 for 38
FC Cincinnati have had a turbulent season in 2024 and have successfully navigated availability issues to this point to the degree of entering the matchday Wednesday in second place in the Eastern Conference. To this point in 2024, FC Cincinnati have not repeated starting lineups with the same players in the same position or same formation, creating problems with finding rhythms and relationships in some key places where new players are now being integrated into. This means that Pat Noonan has had to deploy 38 unique setups in 38 different games.
Pat Noonan highlighted consistency in player availability as a key to success down the stretch this season. Part of that begins with availability from injury and suspension and entering this Minnesota match, Noonan highlighted this may be the most available the team as a whole has been in a very long time.
Saturday could be the day FCC finally finds a repeat setup, but with the addition of Teenage Hadebe right before the roster freeze, FCC could continue its repeat lineup stretch if Noonan decides this match is the time for Hadebe to debut.
2569
Pavel Bucha is the only FC Cincinnati player to have appeared in and started all 29 MLS games this season for The Orange and Blue. With 2569 minutes played this season, the most on the team, Bucha is sixth among all outfield players in MLS this season in minutes played and second among midfielders.
Should Bucha start each of the next five matches to close out the regular season, he would become the first FCC player to start all 34 matches in a season. In 2023, Alvaro Barreal became the first FCC player to appear in all 34 matches, but only started 32. Roman Celentano appeared and started in 33 of 34 games in 2023 as well.
250/300
With FC Cincinnati's two-goal performance on Wednesday, the club scored its 250th regular-season MLS goal and its 300th goal across all competitions.
Yuya Kubo's opening strike, assisted by Chidozie Awaziem, marked the club's 250th regular season goal since joining MLS in 2019. Kubo also scored the clubs 250th overall goal earlier this season when playing at CF Montréal.
That goal then became the 299th goal across all competitions. Kubo then assisted the 300th goal in club history (regardless of competition, since joining MLS) when he flicked a pass over to Luca Orellano who scored the second goal of the night in Minnesota.
20
Sergio Santos has been the first man off the bench in 2024, leading the club with 20 appearances as a substitute in addition to his five starts. That figure makes him the sixth most-used sub in the league as a whole. All three of Santos' MLS goals have come when being used as a sub in the second half of the match, and four of his five goals scored across all competitions this season have come similarly.
After Santos on FCC, Bret Halsey, Gerardo Valenzuela, Yamil Asad, and Malik Pinto all made double-digit appearances as substitutes.
