BRADENTON, Fla. — Hassan Ndam approached Saturday morning’s preseason match knowing he’d come off the bench and start in the second half — similar to Wednesday night.
That plan altered quickly.
In the 21st minute, Kendall Waston was red carded for a tackle. The consequence was FC Cincinnati playing down a man. Generally, that’d entail the rest of the match. In this preseason match, the club was only outnumbered for nine minutes.
The following nine minutes themselves weren’t significant. While outnumbered, FCC still played well and sustained the momentum it previously produced. But what was significant, however, was Ndam entering the match in the 30th minute and Cincinnati’s response.
“It’s not easy to go in as a defender [abruptly],” Head Coach Alan Koch said. “I said to him at halftime, he played very, very well when he had to go in and was thrown into a live game and had to deal with all the different situations.”
Playing against a Colorado Rapids lineup that featured mostly starters, Ndam, FC Cincinnati’s youngest center back, looked calm and collected in the remaining first-half minutes. In the second half, that continued and ultimately resulted in the club’s first clean sheet this preseason.
“It’s all fine,” Ndam said of entering the game early. “We sign up to be professional soccer players and then anytime it’s like a professional game like an MLS game, you get to play two halves. I was ready to come in as a sub. When Alan called my name, I was ready to for it to go in and adjust and any type of statistic that he wanted me to do.”
Those plans also involved getting forward, primarily on set pieces. And in the 59th minute, Ndam stood in the middle of the goal box and headed Nazmi Albadawi’s cross to Forrest Lasso, who scored the game-winning goal in the eventual 1-0 win.
“I ended up dunking on top of the guy and luckily it went to Lasso as an assist. It’s brilliant for Lasso to get his first goal in preseason MLS. That was very good.”
Koch frequently mentions the importance of managing moments. In this case, the club adjusted to different situations and managed to earn the clean sheet. Ndam, the 20-year-old center back FCC selected in the 2018 MLS Expansion Draft, played well and opponents have been scoreless with him on the field.
“I thought he did a very, very good job at managing situations,” Koch said. “But if anybody can go in and play longer than the rest of the group from a defensive perspective, it’s him. He’s the youngest defender we have by a long shot. We threw him in and he responded.”
In the first half, Ndam played alongside Mathieu Deplagne and Nick Hagglund; In the second, it was Justin Hoyte and Forrest Lasso.
If preseason is the time for trial and error, Ndam’s performance was a trial with success. That it ended with FC Cincinnati winning is even better, he said.
“It means a lot,” he added. “People talk that preseason doesn’t mean anything. For me and the young guys, it means everything. Practice, I go 100 percent every time I step on the field. I don’t mind if it’s an MLS game, preseason game, practice or I play with a youth team.
“Every time I step on the field, it means something. I want to win, I’m going to win. That’s why I’m here, to win. …Defense wins championships.”
