For the third year in a row, FC Cincinnati heads into a little break from the regular season and into Leagues Cup in a battle for the Supporters’ Shield. With 49 points, FCC is one point back of Philadelphia Union with nine games to play, but the next time they take on an MLS side won’t be for at least another two weeks as Leagues Cup Phase One begins and pauses MLS action.
FCC will take on CF Monterrey, FC Juarez and Chivas Guadalajara over the next week or so before hosting Charlotte FC at TQL Stadium in league play. This “break” is shorter than it has been in the past, with the 2024 and 2023 iterations of the tournament, featuring Liga MX clubs, delaying things for over a month. This new format will return things to action in about 15 days. Should you advance, you may have to handle playing midweek matches in the tournament and league matches on the weekend, and finding that kind of balance. But either way, the fight for the Supporters’ Shield takes a temporary pause for the next three games FCC play.
This is not an unfamiliar space for The Orange and Blue; each time they’ve entered this tournament, they’ve been in contention for the Supporters’ Shield, and each season has yielded a different result thus far. But the mentality has been, if not entirely, then mostly, the same.
Leagues Cup is not, according to FC Cincinnati Head Coach Pat Noonan, an opportunity to radically change things just for the sake of change. It’s not an invitation to experiment just because these matches don’t count towards the MLS table. That wouldn’t align with FC Cincinnati’s mentality or its regular approach anyway, but given how little time is left in the season, to use this time on something outside of their approach just doesn’t seem to make the most sense.
What it could be, though, is an opportunity to refine things. FC Cincinnati has been one of the strongest teams in MLS lately. Over the last eight games, FCC is 6-1-1, but perhaps more importantly, they have looked like a team that is getting better and better with every match. Leagues Cup, while not your usual matches, may provide the opportunity to continue that trend of development, and do so against some of the top teams in North America.
"I mean, the Leagues Cup doesn't change how we approach the starting group (or) the progress that you're looking to make, it's just a different competition,” Noonan said after their match against Inter Miami CF last weekend, with Leagues Cup now next on their radar. “So it comes at a time where it's really a two-week break, and we know we have three games prior to our Charlotte game, so we'll try to maintain the rhythm.”
“I don't think it's the stage of the season where you're looking for wholesale changes in your group,” Noonan continued. “It's a matter of game to game, how do you get through it, and how can we put out a strong lineup, taking into account where guys are at going into the game, and then we'll see how we get out of that first game. But we're going after these games the same way we've been going at these league games, and that's to continue to progress, to continue to perform well, and we'll take it one game at a time."
The Leagues Cup has become a crucial consideration when planning the season for MLS clubs. In the past, every MLS club and Liga MX club participated in the tournament; however, only a select group of MLS clubs currently participate, while all Liga MX teams continue to do so. But even still, playing in the tournament and not playing in the tournament still requires consideration.
If you’re a team not in the tournament, you have effectively a two-week break from action, so how can you look to avoid any kind of rust or letdown in the work you’ve done over the last seven months? Some teams have chosen to schedule international friendlies, for example. But can a friendly truly replicate intense competition? It’s hard to say.
Teams not like FCC, who enter this tournament with competitive hopes but may not have the Supporters Shield on their mind, given their spot in the table, have challenges but a much clearer goal. This is an opportunity to win a trophy. Plain and simple. The season-long Shield race may be out of reach at this point, but the Leagues Cup is not.
If you are a team like FC Cincinnati, you have to (and want to) figure out ways to win a tournament that begins towards the end of the MLS season. It is also a trophy to win, but now you’re managing two opportunities with no promises of anything. How do you shift your focus from one task to a completely new one? How do you manage the extra minutes or game-related fatigue put on the players when the rest of the season is still on the horizon?
Or, how do you optimize your time in the tournament to continue improving so that if you don’t come away as champions, you’ve still improved as a team and are ready to take on the rest of the season.
In their third time facing this challenge, FC Cincinnati have indicated they will be relying on their experience and their culture to lead the way. It’s worked for them thus far, so why change it now?
“We're in this process together now in this particular year where you can rely on a veteran presence to have the right conversations as we move forward to maintain the position we're in, to understand what the games look like and what the challenges are going to be,” Noonan explained when referring to how previous years success can help guide them this year. “We don't talk too much about the Supporters' Shield. We talk about progress, we talk about week-to-week. What does it look like for us to continue to get better? And we're in a pretty good way right now about understanding how to do that.”
“Everybody knows where we're at, I don't need to tell them. So if we're constantly talking about it, I think it's just the wrong message to what we need to achieve at the moment. So the moment right now is: how do we prepare for tomorrow in a good way to go and try to get a good performance and a good result? Then we move on and it's that simple. So the guys have done that in a good way, and the players that have been here in the last three years and been in this position before, I don't need to tell them too much. They know, because we've done it well, and we've done it where we haven't come out on top. This is a new year with new opportunities and a new group of players, so we'll continue to take that approach."
FC Cincinnati has advanced out of the group stage in each of their previous two entries and has progressed further in the tournament each time. This season, given the new format, FC Cincinnati will have to be one of the top 4 MLS teams in Phase One to advance to the knockout stages/quarter-finals, meaning that every match will be vital and the challenge of advancing couldn’t be harder.
Ender Arrives
With the secondary transfer window opening for MLS last week, FC Cincinnati was able to officially welcome their newest player, Ender Echenique, to the fold. The 21-year-old Venezuelan national joins The Orange and Blue from Caracas FC on a U-22 initiative deal, and has been earning professional minutes since he was 16.
While it’s unclear exactly how he will factor into the team immediately, he has now joined his new squad and trained with the team the day before they departed for their match with Inter Miami last week. The build-up to Leagues Cup will be his first full week of training with the team, and he would be eligible to be selected for the tournament.
“That depends on how Ender comes in and integrates himself with the group. He's here because we think he can help us go and perform now,” FCC Head Coach Pat Noonan said last week when Ender first arrived. “So it'll just be a transition period where, how quickly can he adapt and get comfortable, and how quickly can we give him the right information to go and perform and be at his best?”
“We're excited to have him,” Noonan continued, “and we anticipate, in time, that he will help our group."
Echenique will not be the only newcomer to the Leagues Cup roster for the first team. Given the tournament format, teams can roster players in their organization as eligible to participate with them, making them eligible for selection. Echenique, as a first-team signee, would obviously be a part of this. FC Cincinnati 2 players, Nathan Crockford and Yair Ramos, were also added to that roster.
Crockford, a goalkeeper, has been reliable for FCC2 this season, and with Paul Walters currently out injured, the former Wisconsin Badger could be stepping in to fill his spot in an emergency.
Ramos, a defensive midfielder, has been a standout for FCC 2 in the past, though he has been injured until very recently. Through some serendipity, though, Ramos has a deep connection with his new teammate Echenique. Now in his second season with FC Cincinnati 2, Ramos joined the club from Caracas FC, the same team from which Echenique arrived. And while the FCC2 midfielder is two years younger than the new wingback, the two played together for the Caracas FC U20 team.
While on the roster, Ramos is coming back from an injury that (until very recently) kept him out of action. The midfielder made his first appearance of 2025 last Sunday at Inter Miami CF II, where he came on for 20 minutes at the end of the match to help see out a win.
The Window Continues
With the window opening, allowing FCC to register transfers from other clubs and effectively add to the squad for the final stretch run of the season, we are now nearing the end of the season in a more formal manner. Over this period, which runs from July 24 to August 21, the leadership of The Orange and Blue will have to evaluate the team and decide how they want to proceed into the end of the season and beyond.
The transfer window, of which there are two every year, is the only time you can add players from other clubs to your team. While free agent signings are always permitted, the importance of each window is such that there are only two and getting them right can be vital to success.
FC Cincinnati got some of their business done early in signing Echenique, but until the opportunity is closed, leaders at FCC say they will continue to work to improve the team in ways that make sense for them.
"Every window is important as far as how you make decisions to help what the current group is in need of, and long term. So those conversations, at this period of time are always ongoing, and it's no different than the winter window, it's no different than as the season is unfolding, what do we need? What are we looking for? We're trying to compete for trophies so how can we improve our group,” Pat Noonan said on July 24, the day of the window opening. “There could be help on the way, we have to take into account the Obi situation to see if we need another piece in the midfield. So we'll see how that plays out. But I know Chris [Albright] and his guys and the coaches are always in communication about what are we in need of and how do we make a strong push here at the end of the season."
“We'll always figure out a way to add players – whether it's salary cap moves or trades or, you know — but we like this group a lot. And obviously this group's put us at the top of the table currently,” FC Cincinnati General Manager Chris Albright said on July 8 to a group of gathered media, days after confirming the signing of Echenique. “So it's a great group, but we've talked about our kind of ‘win now’ mentality, and we'll continue to try to add pieces that can help us win now. If some of those are like Ender, that we think can help us win the future, great. But we're certainly going to look at adding pieces.”