FT. LAUDERDALE - The pregame meetings were good, coach Dominic Kinnear said after the match Saturday night at Chase Stadium. The team went through their normal process, addressed the key points of tactics and strategy, and felt they had a strong understanding of what to expect and how to approach the match. They even highlighted the mentality Inter Miami CF may have heading into this game, and how important it would be to break through that initial wave of pressure and let the game settle into itself.
They highlighted, according to Kinnear, how Miami would likely have bad memories of the 6-1 defeat they suffered at TQL Stadium just over a month ago and would bring a degree of intensity and energy that would challenge The Orange and Blue.
Which, in part, made the opening segment of the match so confusing. And more than anything, so devastating.
“Obviously, the start was not what we want and not what we expect, not for the standards that we have set,” Kinnear said in his opening statement of the post-game press conference from inside the visiting locker room. Kinnear served as the acting Head Coach for FC Cincinnati last night with Pat Noonan serving the second game of his suspension earned for a red card over a month ago. Noonan, unable to be in tactical areas during the match sat at press level of Chase Stadium in a team viewing area and was unable to speak after the match for the same reason.
“To go two goals down, I think in the first (six) minutes was really bad by us, obviously stating the obvious,” Kinnear continued. “We had good meetings at the hotel, talked about the intensity. Talked about, ‘hey, there's going to be possible lingering memories from the last time we played them.’ It was mentioned again before the game. So, you know, they took advantage of our mistakes.”
“So hard to explain, because the game means so much. And the preparation going into the game, I thought was correct with the practices and the intensity of practices. We just came out really flat, and we got punished for it."
Honduran forward Luis Suarez pounced on two misplayed balls in the first six minutes to bag a brace and give Miami the 2-0 lead. The pressure Miami brought right out of the gate staggered FCC and left them looking fragile and confused. It felt like, for a long while even after those two goals, Miami wasn’t just going to get a third, but probably a fourth or fifth before half an hour had passed.
So, when the 20-minute mark on the clock passed it felt like a relief, and it felt like FCC had rediscovered their footing and started to make their mark on the match. In hindsight we can now look back and see that FCC started to take control of the game and the pressure was slowly shifting towards the hosts rather than the visitors.
“We tried to crawl our way out of it, and we didn't do enough,” Kinnear said. “I thought we played well enough after the first two goals, but then saying that, you check yourself, you said, ‘after the first two goals.’ We're down two-nothing after six minutes.”
“Those first six minutes doomed us.”
Six bad minutes in any match can be devastating. FC Cincinnati is no stranger to striking in quick succession, staggering an opponent and knocking them off their plan in a matter of seconds. But when it’s the first six minutes, it sets a tone for the whole match and can change the way you evaluate the rest of the match. For example, if the match started in the seventh minute, FCC would have played Inter Miami CF to a 0-0 draw. If those six minutes came in the final half-dozen minutes, you’d say it was a hard-fought game that was lost at the death and that’s unfortunate. If it happened in minutes 33 to 39…I’m not sure what you’d think but it’s certainly different from kickoff to 5:39 on the running clock.
Kinnear opted not to provide his personal evaluation, as a replacement lead and faithful soldier in Pat Noonan’s platoon of coaches, the long-time former MLS Head Coach didn’t want to speak for the whole staff without consulting the main man first. But did digress that when you start so slow, it can be hard not to get sucked into the negative and have to battle a bad headspace, as well as an opposing team.
“When you don't come out well, you're going to dwell on the negative,” Kinnear explained. “It's not like guys are stepping on the field with the purpose of turning the ball over. I think the (first) one was a misunderstanding, and (second) one was just a bad decision. (Miami) were ready for it, and they punished us."
FC Cincinnati find themselves on a four-game losing streak in MLS play as they exit Miami. Unprecedented territory under the current regime of Cincinnati soccer. Never has FC Cincinnati lost four in a row of any competition under Pat Noonan. And while he was not in the coaching box for either of the previous two losses, that’s just semantics to this group.
It's hard to take solace from how you lose a game. In fact, I don’t think anyone will take solace from this game in any way. The silver lining will only become silver if it sparks the right combination of neurons to fuel a team turnaround down the stretch that helps make this loss a distant memory. FCC not only lost, but its captain, Luciano Acosta, also took an objectionable yellow card and is now unavailable for the team’s next match. Meaning, thanks to the international window, the next time the MVP candidate will play is in at least 21 days. The opposite of ideal considering he was just now building back match fitness. DeAndre Yedlin will similarly be unavailable as he was shown a suspension-earning yellow card just before half for speaking to the officials about a booking to Inter Miami CF. A right afforded to him as captain of the team in Acosta’s stead, but regardless, Yedlin was booked.
There are no “spirit” victories in match 26 of the season. FC Cincinnati needed a victory badly if it were to make a run at repeating Supporters’ Shield titles. But now eight points back of Miami in the table, there was a simple answer, that is perhaps complex to synthesize, as to how to move forward.
FC Cincinnati needs to look within. It needs to find answers to its approach and clear any mental hurdles it may have.
“It's cause for alarms,” Kinnear said of the team conceding early in four of its last six matches. “It's the intensity and the, you know…I think at times, the lack of understanding of how the other team is going to come out.”
“These are some very important games. There's playoff positions and trophies on the line. You know, for me, that was a flat 10 minutes. As flat as I've seen coming out of the locker room. Are we out of shape? No. Is the preparation not there; are they understanding the opponent? I think everything is in line there. Sometimes that's the unknown answer. But you know, I won't disagree…we have come out flat and it's something we need to address for sure."
"It was shocking," goalkeeper Roman Celentano told Pat Brennen of the Cincinnati Enquirer. "It just seemed like we didn't really want it at any point. We just came out flat, got punished right away. Let them have another goal…you wish you could just take it back. You just wish you could start it off the right way."
The solace I, a writer and not a world class soccer coach or deeply experienced coaching staff , will try to provide is that it’s easier to fix your own mistakes rather than fundamentally change your nature as a team.
“I think all their chances in the first half really came from us turning the ball over in our own half,” Kinnear highlighted. “Which makes it easier for them to be dangerous.”
The Orange and Blue, as stated by Kinnear, handed Miami their two goals to open the night. They then played 84 minutes of nil-nil soccer. That’s not perfect, granted, but FC Cincinnati oversaw their fate on this muggy August night south of the Everglades.
The untouched topic thus far was that Inter Miami CF took a red card in the 40 minute and FC Cincinnati was still unable to find even one goal let alone an equalizer.
Again. Not awesome.
But even when FCC is struggling, the peaks of light shine through. On one of their worst nights, FC Cincinnati controlled the game for large stretches and are clearly in a period of struggle rather than this kind of performance being fundamentally who they are.
“I think we created enough chances to get a goal, and who knows if we got a goal, obviously, the momentum, the energy from both benches is completely different,” Kinnear said of a hypothetical turning point in the match.
“Yeah, really disappointing. For a number of reasons.”
FC Cincinnati now have eight matches to solve what ails them. Soul searching may be too dramatic a phrase for what FCC will now have to do, but they will have time to search for it now. Yet as Kinnear said, there’s lots on the line every week. So time is of the essence.
