Frustration is barely the word strong enough to describe the atmosphere in the FC Cincinnati locker room after the final whistle. The context surrounding the match – absences, injuries, rotation among starters, anything like that – frankly does not provide solace for anyone.
“We expect to win every game,” DeAndre Yedlin, who served as captain for the night's match, said. “It doesn't matter who we have on the field…the foundation of this club is hard work. It's competing, it’s effort and then the little things sprinkled on top of that.”
“We have to learn from this,” Obinna Nwobodo added. “Just because we are missing guys, missing important pieces from our squad, we have other guys who step up and play. We look to win because we have belief in our squad. So we expect to win…and have to work harder for the next game on Saturday.”
“We're not used to losing…because we expect to win. We’ve just got to step up and grind out results.” Ian Murphy said.
No one around the league is going to take sympathy for FC Cincinnati, so FC Cincinnati isn’t going to pity themselves.
The defeat Wednesday night hurts. In what was a very winnable game, The Orange and Blue squandered an opportunity and found themselves with more questions than answers. The 1-0 defeat coming from an unfortunate defensive lapse that left the otherwise stellar Roman Celentano exposed in net, is more an indictment on its performances rather than its outcomes.
With Luciano Acosta out for the first time this season, opportunity sparked for FC Cincinnati to prove they could perform without him. Stacked on top of the other absences from the FCC Best XI due to injury, suspension and international duty, maybe it was an unfair time for that challenge, but challenges rarely come at opportune times. So, armed with the standards they set for themselves, FC Cincinnati (in fairness) kept Chicago Fire to one goal and (also in fairness) only conceded that one goal off of a self-inflicted error.
The failure to create and finish offensively felt very similar to the opening phases of the 2024 season, but without the defensive anchoring the lack of goal scoring felt more hollow and more concerning. Opportunity presented itself, and for large swaths of time in this match, arguably for most if not all the match, FCC appeared the higher quality side. Cincinnati hemmed Chicago into their own end for extremely long stretches of time, registered 19 shots, over 300 more completed passes, won five more corner kicks and took 10 fewer fouls (more on that later). It stands to reason that if something broke FCC’s way by just even a percent of a degree, the result could have been an imperfect but frankly ‘ok’ outcome given all the surrounding contexts (again getting to that).
But that degree didn’t come and that’s just how the ball rolls. It didn’t come and now Cincy leaves TQL Stadium frustrated and looking for a solution.
“It's a team game. We win as a team, we lose as a team,” Yedlin said. “There's stuff that we all did well, and there's stuff we didn't do well enough and that's why we didn't come away with three points.”
“We know the formula. It’s whether we put it into action. We can say before the game, ‘we know the formula of how to beat these teams,’ but we didn't put it into action. So it didn't really matter. At the end of the night, you know, it's about the action. So, for whatever reason, these last few games, we weren't about it. So we’ve got to, we’ve got to, we’ve got to figure stuff out.”
Life is a game of inches. And so is football, as Al Pachino once so dramatically reminded us.
The margin for error is small. It hasn’t always been, but now it is for FC Cincinnati. Stepping outside the locker room accountability shown, in the vacuum of fact, the depth that challenges The Orange and Blue face can not be ignored.
Six first team members were absent for one reason or another. The bench depth was so shallow that, for the first time this writer could discover, FCC rostered three goalies in its available 20 match day players (11 starters, 9 reserves) because there simply was not another contracted outfield player available to fill that final spot. Of the 31 first team players currently under contract, two are on the season ending injury list (Nick Hagglund and Matt Miazga), two more were unavailable due to injury (Acosta and Malik Pinto), Miles Robinson is suspended and Stiven Jimenez is away with the U18 Mexican national team. Three more are loaned out to other clubs and four more are goalkeepers (sorry guys).
“It's on us. It's on us to look deep within the team and find that competitiveness,” Yedlin said.
“I'm with them every day. we're practicing and maybe it's not the same group that people are used to seeing out there. But we're training all the time together…so none of that, I think, that's really not an excuse,” Ian Murphy added, referring to the challenges of a rotating group of starters and needing to build chemistry with different combinations.
The standard is clear. The men in the room don’t cower and lick their wounds because of their misfortune. They expect to win. Admirable, in my opinion, given the circumstances.
What perhaps soured the mood most though was how the match ended.
An instigated and perhaps unjust double-yellow card to Alvas Powell ejected him from the match and suspended him for the next match. An instance that clearly showed Powell looking to de-escalate a situation left him out of the match. Shortly thereafter, in the 96 minute, Pat Noonan took a second yellow card for dissent and was sent off. Meaning he too will be unavailable Saturday against the Red Bulls. The yellow card shown to DeAndre Yedlin for looking for clarification and making his teammates' case was the cherry on top of the bookings.
The frustration of the match was mounting and this was the fever pitch. Of all the fouls Wednesday night, Powell’s was hardly worthy of the eventual red card he received and when Chicago out fouled FCC by more than double with several additional occurrences of confusing applications of game management yet received fewer bookings than The Orange and Blue, it’s easy to empathize with Noonan’s frustration.
“(Noonan) is always fighting for us. He believes in us. I’ve never doubted that,” Yedlin said of his coach's support and advocacy. “We're going through a tough moment. I'm sure he's frustrated as well.”
The Head Coach did not speak in the post-game presser, as the club canceled the presser due to the red card, but his advocacy was obvious on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.
So the path forward is one with more challenges than they had when they started their Wednesday. There is no further clarity on the status of Luciano Acosta or Malik Pinto. Miles Robinson, having now served his suspension, will depart for the 2024 Summer Olympics with Team USA, so he will not be available for FCC. Stiven Jiminez also continues to be on international duty with Mexico 18U’s. Now you add Alvas Powell to that unavailable list and the 2023 MLS Coach of the Year will not be on the touchline to give instructions.
The challenges mount but the return back to success is very clearly known by FC Cincinnati players.
“It's frustrating for everybody. But, you know, I’ve never been in a situation like this where negativity is the thing that gets you out of it,” Yedlin said. “So we’ve got to stay positive, and we’ve got to keep looking forward and keep looking to the next game.”
“We've gone through so many different things as a group since we've got to where we are that I know we'll be able to get through this,” Murphy added. “We've all felt that feeling of everyone (externally) feeling like the world's kind of ending at some point, but we know we can work through this…we continue to work as a team.”
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The immediate thought after a night like tonight, with the understanding that many of the struggles come from a lack of healthy and available players available for selection. So solace can be taken in the fact that help can officially be on the way. At the time of writing this, the Secondary Transfer Window in MLS for USA based clubs officially opened, meaning organizations can now sign and register new players and have them available for selection.
Noonan has been clear (in the past) about how the injuries to important role players has changed the approach to this transfer window. So some kind of action or addition can hopefully be expected.
That’s great for the larger ideology, but for those in the room, even if a new player does come in to augment the squad, there is larger work to be done.
“We have to work and fight together,” Nwobodo added. “This is not what we wanted. We couldn’t get it right today…we’ve had so many guys step up in so many ways though. We have to learn and go again and go together.”
“It's competing, it’s effort, and, for whatever reason, it seems like the last few games that's just been a little bit off and there's nobody from the outside that can fix that,” Yedlin claimed. “It's on us. It's on us to look deep within the team and to find that competitiveness.”
“We've been unfortunate in the last couple weeks or a month. We’ve lost a lot of leaders. But it's up to other guys to step up and be leaders. That's how great teams are born. That's how you know a great team can stay consistent and do this. You know, everybody's a leader on the team, you know, whether it be through play or whether it be through the voice. So, now, we all have to step up and be leaders.”
The work may have been started last night thouhg in the locker room. A typcially quiet and private
