Who on FC Cincinnati will stand up and be counted on Saturday? The locals were blown away 4-0 in Sunday night’s Game 2 in Columbus, setting up a winner-take-all Game 3 of this first round series Saturday night at TQL Stadium.
Will Evander present a composed, team-first version of himself? The MVP finalist followed his first “expected goals plus expected assists” Blutarsky in Game 1 with another 0.0 in Game 2. Given his ref chirping and shin-hunting in the second half, it’s a minor miracle he picked up just one yellow card before Head Coach Pat Noonan yanked him from the match in the 77th minute.
Speaking of FCC’s skipper, will Noonan adequately prepare his men for the emotional and physical swings to come on Saturday? Even before Yuya Kubo’s 38th-minute red card, the Orange and Blue’s play was sorry in Game 2. The proverbial kitchen sink was always coming from the Crew, but a 4-0 beatdown without any semblance of hope is a scarlet letter on Noonan’s (mostly) impressive resume.
What about the other team leaders and the rest of the coaching staff? The club has five days to enact a psychological reset after, depending on the weight you place on the MLS playoffs, the most shameful defeat in club history. Cincinnati endured its share of four-goal smashings in its Wooden Spoon MLS years, but considering the Hell Is Real rivalry, stakes, and totality of the failure, Game 2 ranks among the worst.
Consider this array of depressing statistics:
Zero shots on goal and zero expected goals. Even playing down a man for much of a 90-minute match, notching a bagel in the shots on target and expected goals column is perplexing. In fact, FCC’s best chance at goal came when the Crew’s Steven Moreira nearly chipped the ball into his own net during an attempted clearance.
As many red cards (1) as total shots (1). I honestly don’t remember who took the shot or when it happened.
One pass into the opponent’s box after the red card. This stat comes courtesy of MLS, which also noted that the Crew logged 65 passes into the final third after the red card while Cincinnati had eight.
Pre-match, I expected the Crew to be sharp and motivated for three central reasons. The first motive was self-explanatory: Win or go home. The second was that Sunday could have been MLS legend and four-time MLS Cup champion Darlington Nagbe’s final game. The midfield maestro, beloved in Columbus, is retiring at season’s end. No self-respecting teammate would have wanted to submit anything less than 100 percent in a potential Nagbe finale.
The third reason is championship pedigree. Since Head Coach Wilfried Nancy arrived ahead of the 2023 campaign, Nagbe, Diego Rossi, Patrick Schulte, and a number of other Crew regulars have won MLS Cup (2023) and Leagues Cup (2024) and finished as runner-up in 2024 CONCACAF Champions Cup, the toughest cup competition in North America. These are proud champions who also happen to embrace a style of play that can carve up any MLS side when they’re right.
Noonan opted for consistency in his Game 2 lineup, with his only change a forced one since Nick Hagglund was unavailable due to injury. Alvas Powell, who was outstanding as a substitute in Game 1, drew the start. Unfortunately, on a night full of clunker Orange and Blue showings, Powell stood out with a giveaway that led to the Crew’s first goal.
But he wasn’t alone. The lack of physical and emotional preparation was a team-wide affliction. And when you’re a team that relies on talent to carry it rather than technique, playing a man down is the worst situation to be in because you can’t rely on established patterns of play to create chances. Or in FCC’s case, even maintain possession (just 34 percent on Sunday).
Since MLS introduced the best-of-3 first round playoff format in 2023, FC Cincinnati has won all three Game 1 contests but have yet to win a Game 2 outright. In 2023, the Garys knocked off the New York Red Bulls in two matches, the latter a penalty kick triumph. Last season, FCC dropped Game 2 and 3 to New York City FC. At least they’re consistent.
So Game 3 it is. The lone positives for FCC in Columbus were that the injured duo of Lukas Engel and Luca Orellano received long runs as second-half substitutes. I imagine Engel will start either at left wingback or left center back on Saturday, and my gut says Orellano will still come off the bench even with Kubo suspended.
The Game 3 victor moves on to the conference semifinal round to face Inter Miami or Nashville. The great news for FC Cincinnati is that turnaround tends to be fair play in the playoffs, meaning that FCC and Columbus are now on equal levels of desperation. We’ll see if FCC can mimic its play from Game 1, when it rose to the occasion and wasn’t burdened by the moment.
Grant Freking writes FC Cincinnati coverage for Cincinnati Magazine. You can follow him on X at @GrantFreking.
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