On a night FC Cincinnati celebrated one of its first legends, the club couldn’t hold a late lead or find more stoppage-time magic, settling for a 1-1 draw against a depleted Seattle Sounders FC club Aug. 22 in front of a sellout crowd of 25,513 at TQL Stadium.
Cincinnati is 8-6-7 for 31 points. They entered the night in fifth place in the MLS Eastern Conference. Seattle snapped an eight-match losing streak and is now 7-9-4 for 25 points. The Sounders were 12th in the Western Conference going in.
Kalani Kossa-Rienzi’s equalizer in the 83rd minute negated a 1-0 halftime lead on a goal by Evander. Cincinnati couldn’t find a late goal in this game after winning in stoppage time Aug. 19 against New York City FC. Cincinnati has won nine points in second-half
stoppage time during the season.
Cincinnati allowed the tying goal after losing possession in transition at midfield after a corner kick.
“We feel disappointed with the result, obviously, because we're in front of our home fans, and every time we play at home, we're expected to win,” said FCC midfielder Brian Anunga. “But I think the team went about it the right way, and we gave it our all. We played a professional game, and so sometimes maybe it's just a lack of focus at the end. We all together need to do better in concentration for 90 minutes.”
Cincinnati dominates possession against injury-riddled Sounders
Seattle was without nine regulars in their lineup due to injury. Many of the wounded are key players in their attack, including USMNT player Cristian Roldan and former USMNT player and Seattle scoring legend Jordan Morris, who has 72 goals in 10 years with the club.
With a lot of younger players and second-teamers starting, Seattle had trouble generating consistent offense and made some careless turnovers in its defensive end in the first half.
Seattle entered the night second-worst in MLS in goals scored (21), and had been outscored 18-4 in its eight-game losing streak. The Sounders won one game in the Leagues Cup, 3-0 over Queretaro, but lost their other two by scores of 3-0 and 2-1 and were completely dominated in possession and shots in those two games.
In the first half tonight, Cincy did the same things, dominating possession with 72% to 28 for Seattle. Cincy had 10 shots, eight on target to three for the Sounders, zero on target. They also had an expected-goal mark of 2.1 to 0.6 of Seattle.
Cincy continued to control possession in the second half, ending with 71-29 advantage. The Orange and Blue had eight shots in the second half, but only one on target, finishing with 18 and 9 for the game. Cincy ended with 3.9 expected goals to 1.7 for Seattle.
Seattle ended with 11 shots, three on target. Two of those came in the late sequence that gave them the tying goal. A header by Sebastian Gomez was saved by Roman Celentano, who reached up to tip the ball over the crossbar.
That resulted in a corner kick. The ball deflected out of the box to midfield, where Cincy nearly had a transition opportunity but a Seattle player got a foot on the ball at midfield and sent it back the other way.
Albert Rusnak got the ball in wide-open space on the right side and delivered a cross to Kossa-Rienzi, who was open in the middle of the box. He fired the ball underneath a diving Celentano for his third goal of the season.
“It’s unfortunate that one night where we have enough opportunities to get the second goal and put the game away and we don't do it,” said Cincinnati head coach Pat Noonan. “And that's the game. They came back and punished us, and that's the difference.
Cincinnati remains with two clean sheets in MLS play, the last one April 25 in a 2-0 win over Red Bull New York.
“Defensively, the first half was as strong as we've had all year,” Noonan said. “We didn't give up a whole lot. And when we made mistakes we were in good position to get some pressure to the ball and and deal with the direct moments.
Several players chipped in for Cincinnati’s first goal
Evander notched his 13th goal of the MLS season in the 24th minute. He got the end result of a wild sequence which involved several players.
Andrei Chirila fired a long pass from midfield that found Dado Valenzuela running towards the 18. He dribbled into the goal box and tapped a pass back to Bryan Ramirez, who had run into the box near the penalty spot.
Ramirez fired a shot from close range that Andrew Thomas saved. The ball ricocheted to Kenji Mboma Dem who was close to the goal. He got a foot on it but Thomas deflected the ball back to Ramirez, who fired another rocket from the middle of the goal box. Paul Rothrock was back on the line and headed the ball away, but it went to Evander, who immediately fired a shot past Rothrock for the goal.
Evander led MLS in goal contributions with 23 entering the weekend. He notched his 13th goal with 11 assists, tying him for second in the Golden Boot race with several other players. Petar Musa of FC Dallas led the league with 16 entering the weekend.
Cincinnati’s 3.9 XG was one of its highest of the season. Cincinnati was averaging three goals a game at home but couldn’t quite find the finishing moves against Seattle.
“If we're talking about struggling to score goals and that's because we're not scoring three or four, that's just not how it's going to be,” Noonan said. “It's hard to score goals and we had enough chances to, but our goal production has been good and you're not going to win every game with three, four goals. You got to win 1-0 and we were in a position to do that.”
Cincinnati’s rotated lineup got them a lead
Three days after defeating New York City, Cincinnati benched a few of its regular starters. Kevin Denkey, Pavel Bucha, Obinna Nwobodo and Matt Miazga were not in the starting XI. Bucha and Denkey came in midway through the second half. Nwobodo came on in the 89th minute with Alvas Powell. Miazga did not dress for the game to give him a rest.
I feel like we did create chances, and we limited them to very few chances,” Anunga said. “So yeah, we expect more. We expected to win the game. For me, I think the team played well. I think the attacking play was great. The ideas were great. We were just unlucky.”
FC Cincinnati legend pulls the sword
FC Cincinnati honored its history and its first year of existence in its pregame sword-pulling ritual.
Doing the honors was Sean “Ugo” Okoli, was on Cincinnati’s first team in 2016. He scored the first home goal for the club at Nippert Stadium on April 9, 2016 in a 2-1 win over Charlotte. That came six days after he scored the winning goal at Bethlehem in the first win for the franchise.
He also led supporters from The Bailey in the march into TQL Stadium. The crowd gave a loud ovation when he took to the field tin to pull the sword.
Okoli, 33, won the USL Golden Boot in 2016 with 16 goals and was Most Valuable Player. He played for New York City FC in MLS in 2017, and ended his career with multiple USL teams from 2020-23.
Okoli has gone back to school, earned a degree in Computer Science from Wake Forest, and begun his new career as a Software Engineer. He said he loves TQL Stadium.
“You look around at where the club is now, and I only played a small part in it, but it’s a sight to behold,” he said in an interview posted on the FC Cincinnati web site. “It’s something to take pride in. The stadium alone, if you're going to start a project and build something like this – the amount of detail that went into this club, into this stadium – I think it's for a reason. I think the city loves soccer. I think the fans are very passionate about the game and the club. So it's very fitting to see a world-class stadium match that type of energy.”
What’s next for FC Cincinnati?
Cincinnati plays on the road at Nashville SC 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 29. Nashville is the Supporters’ Shield and Eastern Conference leaders with 46 points (14-2-4) entering tonight’s game vs. Columbus.
Anunga played with Nashville from 2020-2024, making 109 appearances. The game will mark the first time Cincinnati has had a week between matches since July 25 to Aug. 1
“I think now that we have a week to be able to prepare to play on the weekend will help,” he said. “Just a little bit of details and actually practice because we've not really had a practice for a month, a full group practice. I think having that week and working on some details will help the group.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: What we learned from FC Cincinnati's draw with Seattle Sounders FC
