I’ve done it. I finally found the culprit for FC Cincinnati’s early-season woes: the Cincinnati Reds. After Sunday’s win over the Twins, the Reds became the fourth team in MLB history—and the first since 1987—to win their first 10 games decided by two or fewer runs. They’re winning close games with defense and pitching, aka run prevention.
FC Cincinnati was MLS’s winningest club from 2023 through 2025. Goal prevention and one-goal victories were the foundation of that success. In 2026, the Orange and Blue are chaotic, inconsistent and … entertaining? A wild 3-3 draw with Chicago on Saturday night featured 41 shots (16 on target), 11 goalkeeper saves, and zero red cards! (We should acknowledge this small step forward in anger management; for the first time in five league matches, no FCC player saw red. A golf clap for self-restraint.)
Unfortunately, a bevy of small mistakes and a single large goof undid a stirring offensive showing. For the fifth match in a row, Cincinnati conceded first. And instead of having a player sent off, Samuel Gidi crashed into Chicago’s Hugo Cuypers in the box, awarding Chicago a penalty kick. Not a red card, but a similarly monumental error. And so, in the end, despite a season-high 10 shots on target and notching 3.1 expected goals, the FCC settled for a second successive draw. Through eight league matches, they’ve allowed 19 goals, tied for third-worst in the East.
The flaws remain evident. The 2025 team’s underlying numbers were not indicative of a No. 2 seed in the East; the Evander Difference was real. Still, this year’s team has far too much talent to be sitting 10th in the East, squeezed between a pair of going-nowhere-fast franchises in D.C United and Montreal. The 2026 team does not possess the hopelessness and dysfunction that defined the Wooden Spoon-winning outfits of 2019, 2020, and 2021. Maybe 2026 is just an inverse of recent seasons, when FC Cincinnati racked up points in the first two-thirds of the season only to struggle down the stretch.
The locals will get another chance to right their wrongs tonight at New York City FC. And maybe playing in the outfield of a baseball stadium will bring some Reds-esque goal prevention to the table.
Yes, despite being owned by a City Football Group, which is a British holding company bankrolled by a United Arab Emirates private equity company that’s run by the Abu Dhabi royal family—soon enough, everything in sports will be owned by private or venture capital—NYCFC still plies its trade in the outfields of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, a pair of baseball parks. What a world. The club’s new soccer-only stadium opens in a little over a year.
After tonight, FC Cincinnati returns home Saturday night against the New York Red Bulls, which dropped FCC 4-2 in New Jersey earlier this month.
Grant Freking is in his eighth year of FC Cincinnati coverage for Cincinnati Magazine.
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