The Orange and Blue really needed that.
Fans of The Orange and Blue needed that, but FC Cincinnati really needed that.
FC Cincinnati went into Subaru Park for Decision Day and marched out of Chester, Pennsylvania with not only a 2-1 victory, but a clinched spot in the Concacaf Champions Cup, and (maybe most important) the swagger they needed going into the MLS Cup Playoffs. Never in the club’s history have they played at Philadelphia and earned an outright win. They did so Saturday.
The victory was a well-earned result given the performance put on display. Not everything worked exactly as you would have liked it to from kickoff to final whistle – and really, when does it ever – but despite an early and notable bump to concede a goal in the 2nd minute, FC Cincinnati dominated play from their on out and earned their victory.
“You don't want to go into the playoffs having not won in four. But I said prior to the game, we're looking for a strong performance, and if the result wasn't there…the season's over, it's a reset,” FC Cincinnati Head Coach Pat Noonan said of how important a strong performance was to the team.
“Now you go into the playoffs, and if you're able to win your first game at home, it probably has a similar feeling to what we have now. You can go on a run from there.”
The key points many players, and sometimes Noonan himself, would point to as a cause for the struggles FCC have gone through are the details. Little things. Not doing the easy things well and being punished for it. That, somewhere very close to the surface, was a return to form and it just needed to be ironed out rather than excavated. Saturday night continued to be evidence to that line of thinking.
FCC conceded in the second minute of the match on what can only be described as a defensive misplay where someone was out of position in the box. Quinn Sullivan found himself wide open and onside with a clean shot on target. The FCC defense nearly recovered with Teenage Hadebe trying to scramble back to his spot, but the shot from Sullivan was quality enough to beat Roman Celentano, and suddenly, FCC was playing from behind.
You can’t ignore that. No one from FC Cincinnati did ignore that after the match.
But if you did ignore that, and you did just pretend the match started 120 seconds after it did, what you saw was an outright dominating performance from FCC, a performance that looked far more like the team did in, say, July, than it had in September and October.
“It looked like us," Noonan explained with just a hint of relief but more than a touch of optimism. “Really strong performance. I'm happy for the guys that they get to play some music in (the locker room) and enjoy a good win against a very difficult opponent in a tough place. There's just a lot of good things and it was nice to see them rewarded after what was two really good weeks of training. And I thought that carried over into the game today.”
FC Cincinnati got their equalizing goal in the dying moments of the first half, Yamil Asad lined up a perfect shot from a difficult angle to curl the ball around one of the best keepers in MLS history. It was composure personified. It would have been all too easy for him to wind up and blast a shot as hard he could to try and outpace the keepers’ reactions, but instead he took the measured kick that couldn’t be stopped.
Shortly thereafter (on the other side of the halftime whistle), Philadelphia gifted FCC their second goal when Union defender Jakob Glesnes tried to pass it back to the keeper, but ended up rolling it into his own net instead.
The strangeness of the match when looking at the three goals makes it hard to quantify any specific detail and isolate that. Those actions were so radical that they fundamentally changed the way you read the game if you didn’t watch all 90+ minutes of play.
But the observer saw how well FC Cincinnati connected play through the middle of the field. How Pavel Bucha, Obinna Nwobodo and the center back corps of Chidozie Awaziem, Miles Robinson and Hadebe locked out attackers. How DeAndre Yedlin and Yamil Asad flew up the wings and supported the attack. And how Luciano Acosta, Yuya Kubo, and newly minted striker Luca Orellano worked together to attack the final third.
It seemed clear, FC Cincinnati had solved some of those simple problems and it unlocked the team that helped them get to this point in the table this season. Not the team who had been playing for the recent weeks that couldn’t get out of its own head.
Part of the story of 2024 for The Orange and Blue season had its nexus point on Saturday night that contributed to all this in its own way. For the 42nd time this season in 42 matches across all competitions, FCC used a new/unique lineup to start the game. Often that’s been a matter of necessity. Injury, international duty or suspension keeping the groups options limited.
This time, going into the final match of the 2024 regular season, Noonan pulled the trigger on a radical change for a tactical reason that best served the team.
“If you're looking at our goal threats, as far as personnel and who's contributed pretty consistently, it's been the three that were up top today, with Lucho and Yuya and Luca,” Noonan explained postgame.
For the first time this season, Pat Noonan started Luca Orellano at the striker position. FC Cincinnati has been looking for answers at the striker position and Orellano presented some unique skill sets as an option for this match. Noonan highlighted speed, 1-on-1 ability and Orellano’s ability to create isolation moments for himself to beat defenders.
Orellano said postgame he hasn’t ever played striker before, but he really enjoyed it. Noonan gave his new striker solid marks for his performance, but pointed out some places for improvement. What stood out the most was how by moving the Argentine winger to the number nine position, it unlocked another aspect of the team.
"It was a combination of things,” Noonan continued in explaining the move. “Yamil's been playing really well. Fitness has improved, decision making has improved, going all the way back to, I think it was the Nashville game. He's also somebody that we think can make plays out of that position. DeAndre, his leadership, you know, the fitness getting up and down. So those are some of the things that factored into it.”
Orellano has been one of the most goal dangerous players in MLS this season and immediately looked like a threat anytime he was on the ball. He’d run the back line and used his shifty agility to torment defenders and connect with Kubo and Acosta when they’d hold possession inside the opponents box. Noonan said the moments he saw Orellano struggle were when he’d come too shallow and take up space away from Acosta, or not stay high and stretch the field for the wingbacks.
Nuisances. Important ones that strikers work to learn and have an instinct for. But Noonan made sure to make clear, this was a strong performance. It even nearly featured one of Orellano’s signature goals, but Andre Blake was able to track back to it.
“I saw the keeper was playing high. So, you know, I thought that I needed to at least try,” Orellano said. So, he’s certainly not lacking in the confidence department of a striker.
FC Cincinnati now head into the playoffs with a win and some momentum. That’s all FC Cincinnati could have asked for from this week of training. They put the work in, and despite having several absences, put in a highly competitive and quality performance. Noonan highlighted after the match that the weaker part of the team effort, in his opinion, was that the center back group at times wasn’t as connected as it needed to be and Philly was able to challenge them.
He also highlighted how during that two week break, the three players who were absent from training were the three starting center backs as Miles Robinson and Teenage Hadebe represented their countries, and Chidozie Awaziem recovered from injury. So it stands to reason now that they are back, that group can improve in the same ways the other groups improve.
Saturday night was a defacto playoff game. It had the feeling of one, and it had the intensity of one. For Philadelphia Union, it was one. They needed a win, lost, and now their season is over. The Union threw the kitchen sink at FC Cincinnati and FC Cincinnati stood through it strong. That’s a solid tune up for what may await them next.
FCC are now confirmed to face off against NYCFC in Round One of the playoffs. This tease of what’s to come can be a helpful warning sign of what to work on, and it can be a confidence booster to show ‘we can do this when it matters most.’
“I was not here last season, but I know this team is really great in that time, playing those kind of games, they like to play in those games,” Yamil Asad said post-game. “The first goal for them is something we need to take care about it. That kind of mistake cannot happen in the playoffs. You know today because it was the last game of the season with an opponent, you’re ok with the result. But in the playoff, one mistake can send you home. So, we need to be ready now.”
The structure of the MLS Cup Playoffs makes it so the next game FCC play is not a winner take all game. When they take on NYCFC, they’ll have to win two games in the Best of 3 series to advance. But in 2023, the first season under this format, every team who won game one went on to win their series. So taking care of business in game one is as important as anything.
“I believe we all know that we are not going to stop now,” Obinna Nwobodo said postgame. “We’re going to try to take it all the way through the playoffs….we know that we have to continue going. So it doesn't matter who we’re playing next. What matters is that we have to continue with this energy, with this intensity and with this attitude, going to the playoffs.”
