FC Cincinnati are back on the road this weekend and are headed to the Pacific Time Zone, jetting off to San Diego, California, to close out a three match week. The Orange and Blue will be playing in their third state this week and looking to rebound quickly from a loss on Wednesday night.
Kickoff is set for 9:30p.m. ET on Apple TV at Snapdragon Stadium. Ahead of this game, let’s look at a few key stories to keep in mind as The Orange and Blue look to earn all three points on the road!
The offense is clicking, build on it
The FC Cincinnati defense has struggled of late but one place that Head Coach Pat Noonan has highlighted as being a positive to build on is the offense as The Orange and Blue continue to be goal dangerous at all times. In eight of FC Cincinnati’s last nine games they have scored multiple goals, and in five of those nine matches they have scored three or more times.
That goalscoring output can be attributed to a lot of different things, including some strong individual play by guys like Evander and Kévin Denkey – who have scored 11 of the last 12 goals for FCC. That being said, Noonan says he sees a few other places where growth has occurred, and can see how those developments can help more than just the offense.
“Relationships on the field are improving with the group that we've had out there. I mean, some of the actions I think that we have with the ball going to goal have been strong,” Noonan explained. “So that side of it's been pretty solid, and chance creation has been pretty good.”
“But I think where it goes in the wrong direction is when we make decisions where we don't make the extra pass,” Noonan continued. “There are some that are selfish decisions, in my mind, then there's some where it looks selfish, but it's just a lack of recognition of the right play, and that's part of it, too. I think those moments are where it's the difference between us really having a good stretch of attacking or being in control of the tempo of the game and we get those moments wrong, which is too often.
“Now we're stretched. We're not able to get effective pressure to the ball. We need more solutions to understand how to get behind the ball in those moments, because we can't establish pressure. Then what is compounding those challenging moments is a poor decision or action that leads to the goal, and trying to piece that all together, but that's kind of where I think it's gone south too often.”
Can’t feel sorry for yourself
With a poor result on Wednesday reminding FC Cincinnati of some feelings from earlier in the season, they will have little time to rest on that with a game just three days later. That short turnaround can be seen as an opportunity though, giving The Orange and Blue an opportunity to prove themselves once again and not have time to sit with the disappointment of a midweek loss and seep out confidence.
One thing that both FCC players and coaches highlighted as key to flipping the result over the weekend is not taking any time to feel sorry for themselves and getting right back to work.
“What I said to the guys is, you go through these moments where there are struggles with results…then we went on this long stretch where we weren't losing games. It wasn't perfect, but we were getting better results,” Head Coach Pat Noonan said Thursday before the team departed for San Diego. “We don't have a second to feel sorry for ourselves for what we didn't get right [Wednesday] night.”
The trip to San Diego presents an unorthodox situation as not only does the trip to California create a busy week of matches, the club departed early for the trip and will train on Friday in San Diego rather than their typical road schedule of training in Cincy before departing for their destination.
“We've done this before. Turn it around and be motivated to improve, simple as that,” Noonan continued at his prematch press conference. “Because it'll be another hard game…they're a strong team, and they've been a strong team all the way to last year.”
San Diego FC enter this game with a lot of confidence to build on in addition to their home field advantage. On Wednesday night at Snapdragon Stadium SDFC smashed Austin FC 5-0 to improve their record to 4-5-4.
Find answers before the break
With just two weeks before Major League Soccer pauses for the FIFA World Cup, the month-long break from match action on the league calendar has started to enter the consciousness of how clubs will operate and how they want to enter this break. FC Cincinnati play San Diego FC Saturday, then come home to play Orlando City SC before pausing for 61 days.
With that break looming, FC Cincinnati are looking to go into it strong and find answers they can build on over that stoppage in game action. That starts Saturday night.
“It just has to be (more) consistent in our play, and hopefully we can find it before the break. We don't want to wait,” Noonan said Thursday. “(Defense) is not the identity of our team right now. That's clear. We're not good defensively, and I think the statistics show that there are reasons where you can understand a drop off, but I can't accept the drop off being at the level that it is, and I don't think the guys can either. So hopefully we can make the right marginal gains to improve.”
Things have shown signs of improvement (even with Wednesday night’s result) as FC Cincinnati have taken points in six of their last seven matches and each of their last four road matches. What the coaching staff is looking for going into the break though isn’t even as dramatic as a total turn around and revelation in performance (though that would be welcome), they are looking for more “marginal” improvements to show signs of things moving in the right direction.
“Sometimes you have the complete performance, but if it's not complete, we just need to eliminate some of the things that I mentioned; the mistake that costs us a goal, costs us momentum and doesn't allow us to manage critical moments,” Noonan explained. “If we can get that better, I think you'll see improvements in other areas.
“Then slowly you look to see, ‘okay, this is how we get back to being the defensive team that we've been in the past.’ But we're a ways away from that, and the only way we're going to be a strong defensive team is if it's consistently done – it can't be one game that's strong and we say, ‘okay, it's better.’ It just has to be consistent in our play.”