2025 has now officially come and gone. The fireworks have gone off, the corks popped, and the Skyline Coney was eaten. Celebrate how you will, but with the calendar year officially refreshed, the future looms large and we can all begin to wonder about what 2026 has in store for us.
FC Cincinnati had a 2025 to be proud of, but the end-of-season consensus from players, coaches and technical staff alike was that they didn’t reach the goals they set out for themselves. But that’s in the past now. It’s not to be forgotten, but it is in the past.
“I think there's a lot to be proud of in this building,” Albright said, putting it plainly. “But I think the reality is we all feel like we fell a bit short.”
As the New Year begins, The Orange and Blue will soon begin its year with it. In about a week, the team will return to Cincinnati after their brief, but needed, offseason. Soon after that, they will be headed to Florida for preseason, then all of a sudden they will be in the Dominican Republic for the Concacaf Champions Cup and home to TQL Stadium for the opening of the 2026 MLS Regular season. In all there are 50 days between now and the next time FCC takes the field at home.
There is work to be done, work that has been done, and work being done. When General Manager Christ Albright spoke with the media at the end of December to give a “state of the club” of sorts, he highlighted some of those things. A refresh on their approach, an introspective look into their goals, tactical styles, key markers and analytics for success. A coaching staff change was one of the first big moves of the offseason, as the club and Dom Kinnear parted ways, marking the first significant staff change since Albright and Head Coach Pat Noonan arrived in Cincinnati.
But one key area FC Cincinnati feels they can improve in 2026 comes from within. It comes from getting more out of their stars and aligning those stars more for their second seasons together.
Evander and Kévin Denkey were the key additions not just to FC Cincinnati in 2025, but also the talk of the Winter Window across MLS. Individually, both had excellent debut campaigns with The Orange and Blue. Evander was an MLS MVP finalist for the second year in a row and set scoring records for the club, and Denkey nearly matched him with 18 goals of his own.
But all year long, there was just something off. The two were individually excellent, but like the rest of the team, struggled to click. They struggled to look the part of a dynamic duo that the stats suggested they were. The coaches, the technical staff, the media, and the fans could all see it.
It’s not the worst problem to have, two stars individually being brilliant and helping carry you to 65 points. But if you're looking for more, if you’re looking to further improve your team from within, that is a ripe tree to pick from.
And a place Chris Albright has said is a key strategic goal for 2026.
“There are pieces we can put in place around Kévin (Denkey) and Evander that get the most out of them and actually get more production out of them…and that's a lot of what we're attacking this offseason,” Albright said last month of the Denkey/Evander relationship. “That's another one of our strategic priorities going into 2026. The fans are right, and we have the same conversations.”
How that actualizes on the field is yet to be seen, and really won’t be something we get a full view of until sometime early in the 2026 season, but there are positives in place to consider for how they can achieve this goal.
One way is simply having both present for the entire preseason. Evander didn’t join the team until literally one day before the squad left for Honduras to play FC Motagua in the Concacaf Champions Cup last year. This season, they hope that fix solves some issues.
But more so, they are confident the two can get more on the same page in 2026 because the two do have a positive relationship, and the connectivity is more of a problem on the field, not in the locker room. Which at least seems like an easier problem to solve for.
“Sometimes you're dealing with that (disconnection) because you have two players that don't like each other. We've maybe had that in the past. The good thing is we don't have that (now),” Albright assured. “These guys like each other. They enjoy each other's company. I mean, credit to Evander, he gets along with everyone. And it's tough for a new player to show up, and to even have the level of success that Kevin did, so we'll maybe give him a pass that he had a bunch of success but didn't connect with the number 10 in year one.
“But it's something that we're very keen on improving, because we think if their production, their relationship, can grow, their production can compound.”
Albright said one way they can contribute to aiding that connection is their next staff hire. Bringing in an assistant coach who can aid in their on-field element. Another is player personnel. Albright highlighted how a player like Ayoub Jabbari, who the club added on a permanent deal at the end of his loan from France, is one with the skill set to maximize what the other two do best. But in all, they feel that many of the solutions are in the building, and that developing out from around them is a strong way forward.
“I think we have the pieces in place with Kévin and Evander as sort of the centerpieces, to then go supplement them and be really analytical and identify staff that's ready to sort of dig into that side of it,” Albright continued. “We’re lucky to have a wealth of leadership…there's a group of leaders that we lean on and when your most talented players are also leaders that's when it's, I think, when you find the most successful. So, we keep pushing Kevin and Evander to continue to do so.”
On the player side, both Denkey and Evander see an improved relationship on the field as a place to grow.
“We need to play together,” Denkey said during his exit interview. “I feel like we're not using me at 100 percent. I will be like 30 or 40 percent. I want to be 100 percent. But, yeah, the team is good…I think we are all trying, we just need to find the right way together to get there.”
“I think it's gonna be different now, because when I arrived, the club was in the last part of the preseason. So now we start in the full preseason and be with the team,” Evander said of where 2026 can be different from 2025. “Try to motivate the guys from the first, literally, the first second is gonna be different. I think we (himself and Denkey) can be more impactful with the players and with the team being here from the first minute, from the first day, and try to build something different than we did this year.”
That very first second is close at hand, and there is reason for excitement. The stars FC Cincinnati need for success are already in the building and already know what they need to do.