The visiting locker room inside Gillette Stadium on Sunday afternoon could have been mistaken as empty after the 6-1 thrashing that had taken place in the 90 minutes prior.
FC Cincinnati players sat there, silent. A thousand yards would be underestimating the distance on most of the stares as players, coaches and staff tried to pick up the pieces of a loss that left Pat Noonan struggling to put his thoughts into words.
“Not a lot of answers for what we saw,” the FC Cincinnati Head Coach said to open his press conference. “Another bad league performance and result. A lot of things done poorly.”
It was already going to be a difficult test of FC Cincinnati’s depth and resilience heading into this match, and the circumstances — some of which were self-inflicted — didn’t make things any easier.
Taking an early lead thanks to a goal from Gerardo “Dado” Valenzuela, a rotated FC Cincinnati squad proceeded to concede three times in the first 45 minutes and three times in the second 45 to fall for the third time in a row in MLS action. While mitigating circumstances could be found if you wanted to look for them, they’d hardly justify the outcome as FC Cincinnati fell 6-1, placing this match as one of the worst losses in the club’s MLS history and in a short list of worst losses in the Pat Noonan era.
To say there was a theme of dysfunction would be perhaps too generous and for sure too broad. The FC Cincinnati offense spun its wheels after opening the match’s scoring, and the defense did itself no favors by conceding dangerous chances that gave the Revs opportunities they may not have earned on their own. It was truly a night and day difference from the proficiency and effectiveness FC Cincinnati put on display just a few days earlier, even with seven rotations in the starting XI.
“Doesn't matter how many changes, it shouldn't justify the way we played and the end result,” Noonan said, eliminating any hypothetical excuse.
Down 4-1 in the 69-minute, things went from worse to irreconcilable as any glimmer of hope for a comeback, or even to just steal a point, was extinguished. After changes were made at halftime in an effort to chase the game, the goalscoring Valenzuela came in heavy (and late) with a charge on Revs defender Ian Feingold – earning a straight red card and leaving his squad down a man for the final 20+ minutes.
FCC limped to fulltime, trying to, in the words of Pat Noonan, end the game with some dignity — yet still they conceded twice to cap off the game and close the 6-1 defeat.
“It's four games so there's plenty of time to get things right, but it doesn't make it okay in the moment,” Noonan explained. “Our league form and play is below the standard. I think that's pretty evident. So it's less about a hole that we're digging because there's more than enough time, it's just about the performances and why we've been so poor.”
Noonan would later go on to describe the loss as “a collaboration of poor performances,” citing a lack of confidence on the ball as a continued problem; it was the one steady element of FC Cincinnati’s season that let them down on Sunday afternoon.
The defense.
The New England Revolution scored the first four of six goals on headed balls inside the box, with two coming on set pieces and a third on a clean cross into the area that was popped home. All four left keeper Roman Celentano on an island as the feed and finish came together just feet off the goal mouth. Celentano did his best to cover the space, and maybe on a different night he gets just big enough to make a save, but on this night he was made a victim to the Revolution offense.
“Set piece defending let us down in the first 45, that was the first and the third (goals). Really just box defending crosses on all three of the goals, so that was poor,” Noonan explained of the match postmatch. “Then in the second half, (we) made a couple changes to try to impact the game based more on the scoreline…but yeah, in the second half, not a lot of that was done well…and after the red card, it's trying to get through the next block of that next stretch with some dignity and some pride.”
Now winless in their last three MLS matches, FC Cincinnati now find themselves at the same crossroads they were at earlier this week. With a Concacaf Champions Cup match on the horizon, The Orange and Blue need to find their courage quickly or be left out in the cold.
Their performance in leg one gave them a cushion to operate within, but another performance like Sunday’s would leave FCC out of the tournament. The challenge in front of them now is to find a way to learn from the performance — the bad and the ugly — without sinking into the muck and losing even more confidence in the days prior to, perhaps, one of the biggest games in club history.
“We'll analyze the things that we need to analyze, because there's plenty (we have to) to take away from it,” Noonan said as to how the team needs to move forward. “As far as the mental component of it, how do you put a bad performance and result past you? Because we have to turn it around quickly for an important game on Thursday.”
If you focus on what’s behind you, you can’t see what lies ahead. What’s ahead is FC Cincinnati travel to Monterrey, Mexico this week to take on Tigres UANL at Estadio Universitsrio…aka El Volcan… on Thursday, March 19. While that game can’t offer answers for this one, it does offer a chance at redemption.
