"It's a sweet but bitter feeling tonight," Yamil Asad said in the FC Cincinnati locker room. Largely summing up the tone of the team in the aftermath of the 3-1 loss to Orlando City SC on Saturday night.
FC Cincinnati had mostly done what their Head Coach, Pat Noonan, had asked of them in the lead-up to the match. Noonan had said the team needed to up the intensity, and they did just that. He said they needed to play more like a team, check again. He said they needed to simplify the game and do the simple things as effectively as they do the complicated things.
And they did that, too…for the most part.
The Orange and Blue fell 3-1 Saturday night in a game in which Pat Noonan said they did a lot of good things and improved in a way he was pleased with, given the performances earlier in the week. But three critical moments opened the door for Orlando City SC, and in each case, the visiting team did not squander their moment and punished FC Cincinnati to devastating effect.
"Yeah, tough loss because I thought we played a good game," Pat Noonan said to open his press conference. "The ways in which we conceded are pretty obvious and certainly deflated the group. I know the scoreline is going to be the talking point, as it should be, but there were a lot of good things that happened tonight and it's unfortunate that we have this feeling based on the performance."
With only one match remaining in the regular season, FC Cincinnati were looking to build confidence and momentum. They could have gotten that out of tonight. Instead, three mistakes of varying degrees radically changed the tone.
The first was a give-away in the midfield. That give-away wasn't in itself terrible, but the follow-up cross and finish made it stand out as the source of the first goal (even though Noonan did highlight post-game that the actual finish was excellent).
The second was a misread and handled ball by Roman Celentano that squirted by him on what is typically a routine play for the keeper. We have seen Celentano collect that very same ball dozens of times in the last three seasons. But when it rains, it pours, and there was a drizzle tonight.
The third goal came six minutes after that second, confidence-rattling goal from Orlando. Luca Orellano went to play the ball back to the keeper and scuffed his attempt, leading to a slow roller in no man's land that two Orlando City SC players jumped on. Celentano did his best to make a heroic save, but the damage was done.
A mistake. A critical, disastrous mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.
In six minutes, FC Cincinnati went from competing and pushing for a victory to being devastated and searching for answers. The frustration was palpable, and the confidence sapped from the field.
"You see what kind of team you are and what kind of teammates you have around you to pick some guys up that had tough moments," Noonan said of the errors and their longer-term implications. "But, we made a mistake on the first goal. I thought their actual execution of their goal was outstanding–the cross, the finish. Of course, you can do better and we know what led to that. But still got to give the credit for finishing that play.”
"Then the second two are pretty straightforward. We'll see how we pick the guys up that are in need of that. But as a whole, I think, the group will be down, and they should be. If we can put the few mistakes and the result aside, and then analyze the way we played, the guys should be pleased with the improvement from the last couple (of games)."
Character building is important. Team building is important. FC Cincinnati and its players will get something out of this affair in that sense. But it can be forgiven if that seems like it can't be the primary concern this late in the season. The playoffs are rapidly approaching and this, ideally, would be a time for fine-tuning things, not earning spirit wins.
But that's where we're at, and progress is progress.
"This is tough because we are close to the playoffs, this is the third loss in a week," Asad said in the locker room after the match. "But I think it's better to happen now and fix all of these bad things that we did and be focused on and keep doing the right things that I think today we did great."
You can't ignore those two plays, but it certainly doesn't seem helpful to dwell on two complete outlier plays in a collection of hundreds on a night—at least not exclusively. A six-minute segment of the match where your trusted Goalkeeper and breakout young star makes an out-of-character mistake isn't necessarily something you can focus on at the training ground.”
"We stepped to the ball much better," Noonan explained. "I thought about our pressure and how we did it, how connected we were, and it was good.”
"I thought with the ball, where we're lacking is the decision-making in and around the goal. That still is a struggle for us, but better on ball decision-making. I thought we were able to put them in some tough spots, but to their credit they defended the goal very well. But, we improved with our on-the-ball composure and decisions…for the majority of the game we went to the ball the right way."
At times, it can feel like watching this iteration of FC Cincinnati is like watching a team that is locked mentally just outside of its potential, not irreconcilably bad. There is first-hand evidence, this season, this game, this string of games, that FCC is a team that can, does and will compete with anyone. The energy, the commitment, and the drive to compete are still there; it's just about tapping the solution locked just out of reach to capitalize on it.
A ship at sea without a sail or engine is called "Dead in the Water," and a plane flying without the use of propulsion is "Dead Stick." That's very different from being lost at sea or without a GPS. The Orange and Blue are the latter, not the former. There is confidence, not just belief or faith, that FC Cincinnati can position itself for a run at the MLS Cup. The propulsion is still there to push them forward. In short, this isn't a team that has given up.
"I have seen teams coming from nowhere to winning the MLS Cup," Asad said. "We are fighting…and we are going to try to improve. We have enough time, like two weeks to the last to the last game. We have to be better there and then be ready for the playoff games."
Pat Noonan placed his confidence more specifically.
"I do," Noonan said when asked directly if this team can still compete for the MLS Cup. "Because we have good players… We've gotten to this point because we're good enough. We're in a tough moment with the results, but if we play like that and eliminate a couple mistakes, then it's a different discussion."
There is a two-week break now between the penultimate match of the season and Decision Day 2024 when FCC will visit Philadelphia Union at Subaru Park for the final regular-season game of the season. In recent press availability sessions with Noonan and players, the attitude toward that break has shifted. Asad's comments earlier speak to this.
Breaks in the calendar earlier in the season represented, at best, opportunities to get healthy. This break offers the opportunity to get on the same page, to focus on themselves, and, in the words of Pat Noonan, to set the right tone for what can be the final games in the regular season.
"We'll have some missing pieces," Noonan said, referring to some players who will be away due to International duty. "But use it to get a couple guys back in the mix with Chido [Awaziem] and Sergio [Santos].”
"(We will) look to have a plan to push guys in a way where there's motivation going into the Philly game to have a strong ending to the season. However that game plays out, the reality is we're a three seed and we would like to be in better form going into the postseason. But we've had our struggles and we'll try to find the right group of players to go into Philly and then we'll turn it around for the playoffs. But, we have a group that's capable of putting past these struggles and be ready to perform."
