HARRISON, NJ - At the end of the LAFC match earlier in the week, Head Coach Pat Noonan was concise about his critiques of the team in the wake of a 2-1 losing effort, but was recognized for the final half of the match. He felt they had found more quality and thus competed in a good way.
There was less of that positivity on Wednesday night in the postgame press conference area inside the FC Cincinnati locker room at Red Bull Arena.
Noonan described the match as a poor performance and, thus, a poor result. He said that if they had somehow found a way to level the game in a later game blaze of glory, they would have been "stealing" a point. He said it wasn't a match they deserved to win.
FC Cincinnati fell 3-2 to New York City FC at Red Bull Arena, and despite continuing to fight and score goals until the very end, never truly made a case for a victory. The Orange and Blue went down a goal early in the first half, let NYCFC double their lead in the second half, then had their hopes dashed late in the second when a VAR check awarded NYCFC a penalty kick to give the hosts a third and decisive goal.
"Our play isn't good enough," Noonan said in his opening statement to the media. "I don't just put that on the players. Over the last two games my message hasn't been clear enough or demanding enough for it to look better than it has. So, we have some work to do."
A slow start in this match left FC Cincinnati looking for answers that they never found in the 90+ minutes of gameplay. They did find two goals in the process, which made it an interesting game, but at no point did FCC string together a cohesive, expanded stretch where they dominated play.
"We need to address how we start games. I don't think it's a secret that we need to be better to start games and try to continue to find solutions to make sure the guys have the right approach," Noonan said postgame. "That doesn't always mean you're going to be scoring goals and not conceding goals, but our approach has to be better.”
"We put ourselves in too many holes because it doesn't look like we're ready to start a game."
With the season so close to ending, the attention postgame quickly turned to a solution-oriented conversation rather than one that specifically harrowed on Wednesday night's struggles. That dialogue returned to something that Noonan often notes when the team plays poorly: decision-making.
When FCC is playing its best, it's because the players on the field are making strong, incisive decisions on and off the ball. Noonan rarely, if ever, highlights things like quality or effort in a negative result, and he again did not do that this week. But if things go wrong, the first place to look for a culprit is a one-foot piece of real estate between the players' ears—and almost always in terms of choices made at the moment.
Wednesday night's concern, though, took on a new identity.
"We need to be more of a team on the field. I think we have too many individual moments where we're not doing what is in the best interest of the team," Noonan said Wednesday night. "It's a lot of players at a lot of different times. It's not a singular thing. We're making too many decisions where guys want to be the playmaker, they want to be the goal scorer, they want to be the assist man. We need to do simple things better. We overcomplicate the game right now."
Team cohesion has been a talking point around the team. Wednesday night was FC Cincinnati's 40th match of the season across all competitions, and it was the 40th unique starting lineup Noonan has deployed. That's not because anyone is trying to break a record or feels the need to rotate just for fun; FCC has been routinely required to make alterations because of things outside of their control.
The team refuses to use this as an excuse. As is in their way. Noonan dismissed the idea that the heavy rotation has been the chief issue with cohesion because they have gotten results all season to this point without issue. There is plenty of squad familiarity after 10 months of play together.
But in terms of the game being made over-complicated, it's hard not to see some of those small details not shining through. So often, you saw FCC on Wednesday night try to slip passes into inch-perfect spaces rather than take the space that's given. Too often, you saw build-ups die before they made it across midfield because someone was trying to hit a heroic pass that was easily intercepted and sprung back toward FCC's goal. A one-on-one duel needlessly lost, only for the opponent to drive the other way and score.
In baseball, there's a fun phrase that says, "you can't hit a six-run home run." It felt like FC Cincinnati was trying to do just that.
The solution is not necessarily simple. But it is one that Noonan and FC Cincinnati players feel is still achievable, even with just three weeks to go before the MLS Cup Playoffs begin.
"We just have to continue to push each other and continue to feed off each other's energy," Miles Robinson said of the path forward. "It's just about working together and feeding off each other's energy to try to push each other forward…All you need is one performance to brighten the mood and gain some momentum."
It does no one any good to think of a solution in any other way but positive. FC Cincinnati has faced adversity before and persevered on the strength of their togetherness and cohesion, not tension or locker room dismay.
To that point, Teenage Hadebe, the newest member of The Orange and Blue, mentioned the resolve the FC Cincinnati locker room had after the game. He highlighted how joining a new team this late in the season is hard, but it's made easier when the locker room is united and motivated towards success.
Every touch of gray has a silver lining. FC Cincinnati played very poorly and was, at times, inches away from "stealing" a point. Similarly, the solutions are in the room. Part of what is most frustrating about Wednesday night's performance is you can see the potential.
For flashes and flirts of a moment, you can see just how unbelievably good this team can be. In the blink of an eye, FCC will build from the back with a combination of passes that will result in Luciano Acosta running full steam ahead of the goal. But those moments are just too far and few between.
Fortunately, though, from all that Pat Noonan has said, it seems the answer is more about getting out of their own way and playing to their own ability rather than having to radically improve from a fundamental level. And all that can happen quickly.
"Momentum can shift pretty quickly. If we come out of this poor stretch of the last two games and performances and have a better showing against Orlando, and then you go into an international break, plenty of time to train… But more than enough time to get into a better rhythm," Pat Noonan said of reasons for optimism." We're talking about now till (the playoffs), you've got three weeks. That's a lot of time to get better momentum and better play going into the postseason."
As Pat Noonan said, there is work to be done. And it's getting close to last call. But from all the information available, the answers are in the room. And that's a silver lining in the touch of gray.
Match Stoppage in the 88th minute
In the 88th minute of the match Wednesday night the match official halted the match and brought the teams to the center of the field in line with step one of the Serious Incident Protocol for In-Match Discriminatory Behavior. It was later reported the stoppage was due to a discriminatory chant from the NYCFC supporters directed at an FC Cincinnati player.
In a statement published Wednesday night, the club said “During tonight's match against New York City FC, the match was stopped by the official due to offensive language directed by fans towards one of our players. The club strongly condemns this language and behavior from NYCFC fans, and will always stand behind and support our players. The club commends the actions of the players and officials on the field for taking swift action. Abuse has absolutely no place on or off the field, in our league, or in our communities.”
Major League Soccer also issued a statement saying, “Major League Soccer is aware of an incident at tonight's New York City FC vs. FC Cincinnati match where a spectator directed a homophobic slur toward a player. MLS unequivocally condemns hate speech of any kind and will not tolerate abusive, derogatory, or threatening comments directed at players, clubs, or anyone associated with the league. MLS is working closely with the clubs and stadium personnel to identify any individuals involved. Hate and bigotry have no place in our sport, in our communities, or in society as a whole.”
NYCFC have not yet commented on the matter at the time of publishing.
Wednesday was the fourth time in the last calendar year FC Cincinnati players have been targeted with hate speech or otherwise vitriolic attacks, but this was the first that these acts were done in public and not privately directed on social media.
“I didn't know it was directed, at the time, at one of our players. I've come to find that out,” FC Cincinnati Head Coach Pat Noonan said of the matter postgame. “That's a part of our game that continues to be an issue, and I commend the player, the people on the field for handling a bad situation the right way, because I think everybody went about it the way that we're supposed to, because it's something that we're trying to eliminate from the game.”
