Preview: DC United at FC Cincinnati
DC carries a one-goal deficit into the second leg of the prestigious Dumped By Lucho Cup
First, some good news. In my review of the New England game, I mentioned that Aaron Herrera got his fifth yellow card and would be suspended for this game. That wasn’t quite right. He did get his fifth yellow and that is the point where suspensions occur, but five straight matches without yellow cards result in a player’s yellow card accumulation number being decremented by one. Before this last game, Herrera had a stretch of eight games without a yellow card, so even though he has five, for the purposes of accumulation he has four. David Schnegg is in a similar situation after his yellow cad against the Red Bulls.
More good news: Dominique Badji is healthy again and should be available for this game. I don’t know if he’s really ready to start, but let’s throw him in there. I’m not sure he’s really that much better than Jacob Murrell, but I’m ready to find out.
The bad news is that Garrison Tubbs got what is hopefully a minor injury in training. Kim Joon Hong’s injury from pregame warmups against New England will hold him out a few weeks as well.
The Lineup
With a full week of rest coming up, I think we’ll see Schnegg and Herrera start together again, although Lesesne will still have to decide what to do about the third centerback. He could also play Matti Peltola or Conner Antley there to put Herrera at wingback, but I think Herrera is probably the safer option and I expect him to try for a 1-0 or a 0-0 type game.
The more important question is what happens now with the offense. Lately, the subs have been looking much more dangerous than the starters. Part of that is way the team has needed to desperately push forward, but Lesesne said in the pre-game press conference he thought they should be playing aggressively like that from the beginning of the game.
In related news, Lesesne also said in that press conference that the day after the New England game, Gabriel Pirani…well, I don’t think Lesesne used the word “apologized”, but he at least said that Pirani ventured some kind of unsolicited conciliatory remarks, saying passion had gotten the better of him. Lesesne also mentioned Pirani is “fully fit”. In that case, at the risk of rewarding some mildly bad behavior, I say: throw him in there instead of Hosei Kijima. Randall Leal is another option, but his injury situation seems shaky, so maybe he remains a sub? Kijima could also return to central midfield. And if Badji isn’t ready to go 90 minutes, maybe Fletcher gets a start instead?
Lots of possibilities here.
Backup goalkeeper: Jordan Farr
Backup defenders: Hosei Kijima, Matti Peltola, Derek Dodson, Rida Zouhir
Backup attackers: Randall Leal, Jared Stroud, Jacob Murrell, Kristian Fletcher
Not selected: Fidel Barajas, Gavin Turner
Now on season-long loan to Loudoun per Steven Goff: Hakim Karamoko
Injured: Garrison Tubbs, Jackson Hopkins, Lukas MacNaughton, Christian Benteke
The Opposition: FC Cincinnati
On paper, Cincinnati is clearly a top team in the league and they should easily win this game. They won the Supporter’s Shield in 2023, they were 3rd in the Eastern Conference in 2024, and presently they’re sitting at 2nd. With 30 points already, they have twice the points that DC has and three times the wins. Oh, and they’re unbeaten at home with 5 wins and 2 draws.
So I was surprised to see that both their offense and their defense are just average in goals scored and goals allowed. Their goal difference is just +2, worse than six other Eastern Conference teams and tied with the New England Revolution despite the Revs being in 9th place by points per game.
Cincinnati’s underlying numbers? Even worse! Their expected goal difference is -4.5, worse than every Eastern Conference team except DC United and Toronto FC, and DC’s -4.8 is only a touch worse.
How is this possible? Basically, FC Cincinnati has gotten where they are this season by winning a ton of close games. 8 of their 9 wins are by a single goal. In four of the 9 wins, including their win over DC at Audi Field, they had less xG than their opponent.
The simplest explanation is that their current exalted position is just a lucky break and that before the season is over, they’ll revert to the mean, hard. Don’t get me wrong, in that scenario they’d still probably finish above DC, but midtable, something like 7th or 8th.
Another possibility is that their stars, Kévin Denkey and Evander, are scoring way over their expected goals because they are really good. This is the “2024 Inter Miami” explanation, since that Miami team hugely outscored its expected goals and I chalked it up to Leo Messi and Luis Suárez being, you know, really good at soccer (admittedly that hypothesis is looking just a bit shaky this season since Suárez has 4 goals on 4.8 xG and even Messi is only slightly outperforming his 6.9 npxG with 8 non-penalty goals).
Before I get to their players, it’s worth noting that their defense looked a lot better before centerback Nick Hagglund was gravely injured in a collision with Atlanta forward Emmanuel Latte Lath early in their match two games ago. Since that injury, they’ve given up 7 goals as they lost 2-4 to Atlanta and drew 3-3 to FC Dallas. They have a bunch of well-known centerbacks, so it’s probably just a coincidence, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Anyway, on to their notable players. If you weren’t paying attention to the massive amount of offseason drama, when Lucho Acosta departed in the offseason leaving behind the ashes of the bridge he burned, Cincinnati spent a boatload of cash buying Evander from Portland. I thought this was slightly risky because while Evander has a transcendent 2024 season (15 goals, 15 assists) that was really his only good season, whereas Lucho had a huge track record of success. Well, Evander isn’t quite at his 2024 level but he’s still having a great season with 7 goals and four assists. He’s fourth in the league in non-penalty goals + assists per 90 minutes behind only Philadelphia’s Tai Baribo and…yeah…Luis Suárez and Leo Messi. At the moment, Cincinnati really looks like the winner of all those moves since Evander has been doing better than David da Costa, Portland’s replacement for him, and way, way better than Lucho Acosta has managed so far in Dallas.
Evander by himself makes them more intimidating than DC’s previous opponent, the New England Revolution, since he’s basically a much younger version of Carles Gil. But unlike poor Gil, Evander has the luxury of a good forward to play with: Kévin Denkey. Denkey has 6 non-penalty goals in about 14 games’ worth of minutes, so not quite in the top tier at the moment, but certainly quite good.
Cincinnati’s goalkeeper Roman Celentano was already considered good but it’s worth mentioning he’s having, so far, his best shotstopping season
Then I think we have to mention that Cincinnati’s 20-year-old homegrown Geraldo Valenzuela might be having something of a breakout season. He hasn't played all that much, but he’s scored four goals in just four games worth of minutes. You might remember him from the game at Audi Field, where he scored an extremely good goal that won the game for Cincinnati.
Not everything is quite so rosy. Luca Orellano had a great season last year as a complementary attacker to Acosta (10 goals and 5 assists) but he’s really fallen off this year for some reason (zero goals and just 2 assists).
Most DC fans will remember Brad Smith, a wingback who DC traded for from Seattle going into the first Losada season in 2022. Smith didn’t light the world on fire for DC, but played pretty well until tearing his ACL in July. DC dropped him after the season. After two years playing sub minutes for Houston (10 games worth of minutes in 38 appearances and just 4 starts) he is now getting sub minutes for Cincinnati (2 games worth of minutes in 7 appearances and 2 starts).
If you watch much of the US men’s national team, there will be more familiar faces. DeAndre Yedlin and Miles Robinson have been regular starters in defense. Matt Miazga was injured for the first DC game but now is back in the centerback rotation.
One last notable player is 40-year-old Kei Kamara, who signed earlier this month with Cincinnati and has already gotten a few minutes here and there. He has the second-most goals in league history, the fourth-most appearances, and has played for the most clubs (12). If he gets time in this match, I believe it will be his 500th professional appearance. Kamara got his start in 2006 playing for the Columbus Crew, a season where MLS had 12 teams, DC United won the Supporter's Shield, and Christian Gomez was the league MVP.
What I’m Looking For
I suppose one could argue that Cincinnati has been winning lots of tight, low-scoring games, so why not push and try to score a lot of goals? That would be interesting! But on the road and without Christian Benteke, I think Lesesne will set out to play conservatively. If DC plays well on defense and Cincinnati misses a few chances, this is a fixture where one could imagine grinding out a 0-0 or even stealing three points with a 1-0. It’s been six regular season matches since DC scored two goals, so yeah, that feels unattainable right now.
Still, there’s still no timeline whatsoever for Benteke’s return and—fairly or not—I think continuing to get repeatedly shut out is very bad for Lesesne’s prospects, so I expect more tinkering to try to produce more offense, whether that’s Pirani or Leal starting, or something much more ambitious like playing four in the back from the beginning. Whatever it takes!