Preseason 2026 has officially come and gone. While the team still trains in Clearwater, Florida, where they have been for the last 26 days, the preseason “element” of that trip has come to an end.
From now on FC Cincinnati are training for competitive action. So, when the team returned to the training pitch on Saturday they began their four-day build-up to game action. The first game on the calendar is a Concacaf Champions Cup duel with O&M FC in the Dominican Republic. But soon after that is MLS regular season action, with the home opener at TQL Stadium against Atlanta United FC three days later.
So, preseason is complete and the full FC Cincinnati picture can now be better assessed. Over a month ago, when preseason kicked off Head Coach Pat Noonan and General Manager Chris Albright both said preseason would give them answers and answers have come. Some in really positive ways, others less so. But answers came. The team now enters the season with a clearer sense of who they are, what they need to improve and what it will take to win.
One of the biggest positive takeaways this preseason according to Noonan, is where the team is at physically.
“From a physical perspective, this is probably the most we've gotten out of any preseason with how many guys got 90-minute games,” Noonan explained last week. “The added Brooklyn FC game was important because typically in our second and third game in previous preseasons, we get to 120 minutes…and that wasn't the case this year. So that game was really beneficial.
“Physically, I'm pleased with how we've progressed throughout this preseason.”
FC Cincinnati once again kicks off with a busy open to the season, likely facing nine games in five weeks. A pathway to success over that time, across competitions and borders, is having a group prepared to compete. Adding a fifth preseason game to the calendar was key to getting to that level.
Each of the final preseason matches gave a full group the chance to get to 90 minutes fit, and both games successfully accomplished that goal. Unfortunately, the respective performances were varied.
“Two different performances,” Noonan explained. “In the Brooklyn game, I think our defensive structure was more consistent. That led to some really good transition moments. I think with the ball and the chance creation it was probably our strongest of any game. I was really pleased with so many things that came out of that game.”
“With the Orlando game, we were inconsistent with our press…how we started the game was really disappointing in allowing them to get into our box too easily on two occasions,” Noonan continued. “I think there were simple, I guess, missed assignments with pressing, and that was disappointing.”
The Orange and Blue opened the week with a 2-0 win over Brooklyn FC, with goals from Gerardo “Dado” Valenzuela and Stefan Chirila. The second game ended with a 3-2 loss to Orlando. Evander opened the scoring in the first half, but a horrific 10 minute stretch gave Orlando three goals. Tom Barlow scored in the final 10 minutes to give FCC a late chance, but it never came. So, the first loss of preseason was recorded, and the final record was set at 2-1-2.
“The start wasn't good, we got into the half in a decent way. We had some really good moments to create and score, but weren't sharp,” Noonan explained of the Orlando match. “But more concerning was just our inability to get the compactness of the group and defend in a better way, so the game was too open.”
Another concern Noonan flagged in the aftermath of the loss was that individual mistakes compounded and affected the rest of the game. At least two of the goals scored by Orlando were directly off of FC Cincinnati individual errors.
The mistakes were reconcilable. “It’s preseason, it was a mistake,” Noonan said. But the larger point he was trying to make was that they spun out, and instead of moving on, they let the mistakes create doubt and make things worse.
“We let them take the momentum and the energy into a few more goals and just didn't have enough personality on the field to overcome it,” Noonan said, adding they will address that in their review of the match.
After that sequence to open the second half, or “as bad a ten minutes as you can see,” in Noonan’s own words, the team pulled it together. They were able to control the tempo of the game better, tighten up the press, and close the game on the attack.
To that end, on the other end of the spectrum, the club's youth stood out strongly in both games. Young players like Dado Valenzuela and Stef Chirila played well in the Brooklyn game; FC Cincinnati 2 players Andrei Chirila and Jack Mize also performed well. Ademar Chávez and William Kuisel (a current FC Cincinnati Academy player) also received praise from Noonan for their performances in the Orlando match.
So where does the club go now?
One place Noonan says the team made progress this preseason — besides the physical element — is the implementation of new ideas (on both sides of the ball) and the greater progress made in implementing new ideas compared to previous years. They also feel they have clarity about the specifics they need to work on, whereas in the past, those specifics were less clear and more vague.
“I'm pleased with the answers we got from the games,” Noonan said when reflecting on the preseason as a whole. “Both good and bad, because there's still some players that are not at the level that they need to be. You know, how they're performing, and that's, I don't want to say it's okay, but it's given us answers of what these minutes are going to look like early on, and what we need to continue to do, to teach and to get guys in a better spot.”
Preseason is the start of the journey; it isn’t the end or the finished project. It is though one of the last times the team can focus exclusively on themselves. In that sense, it seems FC Cincinnati feel this preseason in Clearwater, Florida, yielded overall positive results. But the work is far from finished.
“Even with the progress that I think we've made in this particular stretch of time…it gets real on the 18th and then the quick turnaround on the 21st, so we'll see what it looks like,” Noonan said. “But I know we're not at the level that we expect to be at two months down the road, four months down the road, at the end of the season. We have a long way to go with this group.
“But like I say all the time, the games give you a lot of the answers, and we've gotten that from the preseason games, and we're going to get more answers from meaningful games here in the next two weeks. So while I'm pleased with a lot of the things I've seen, I know there are so many areas where if we want to be a championship caliber team, we're going to have to get even better.”
