Finally, the first of many is here: Nashville SC will host FC Cincinnati in a game that counts. Presumably, FCC fans (and local mainstream media, for some reason?) will finally have something to talk about other than attendance and how mean big, bad NSC is to them.
The essentials
Opponent: FC Cincinnati (10-3-4 USL). 35 GF, 21 GA so far in 2018, 1st in USL East, 1st in USL East Power Ratings and 4th in combined-table Pure Power.
Recent form: FCC (W-D-W-D-W) NSC (W-L-L-W-D)
The Line: Nashville SC +125, FC Cincinnati +181, Draw +221
Time, Location: 7:30 p.m. CDT • Nissan Stadium
Event: USL Regular season
Weather: 81ºF, 18% chance of rain, 64% humidity, 9 MPH ENE winds
Watch: In person! Tickets will be available (with fewer fees, even) walking up to the box office. Locally on MyTV30, stream with a subscription to ESPN+. See the list of soccer bars in Nashville if you want to watch remotely.
Listen: Locally on 94.9 Game2 in English, 96.7 El Jefe FM en Español.
Tailgate: With Nashville supporters’ groups in Lot R (south of the stadium), with Cincinnati supporters’ groups in Lot A (northeast of the stadium).
Follow: @NashvilleSC, @ClubCountryUSA, USL gametracker page, @fccincinnati, #NSHvCIN
Etc.: Gary Smith and players press conference. Q&A with Cincinnati Soccer Talk.
Elsewhere: Nashville SC preview. Official FC Cincinnati site preview. Enquirer FCC mid-season report. USL week ahead. USL preview column-y thing. Game preview from the Cincinnati Enquirer (Nashville is lucky to get postgame coverage from local mainstream media, and doesn’t even get that for away games. Props, Cincy).
FC Cincinnati
This is the best offensive team Nashville SC will have faced this year. Indeed, I have FCC as the best team in all of USL when it comes to finding the opposition net. There are a couple caveats here: when you’re looking at pure averages, the outliers become relevant in dragging that number one way or another: they put four goals on each of North Carolina, Atlanta 2, and Richmond at home, and three on Ottawa and TFCII away. The only good offensive game they’ve had against a team that’s remotely good is a 3-2 win in Indy.
Meanwhile, when facing good defenses, they have a 2-2 draw against Pittsburgh (very good against the best defense in USL by a wide margin), a 1-0 win in their other trip to Indy, and a 1-0 win over Charleston. That’s very much a “get the job done” resume, but there’s something to be said for blasting awful teams and doing just enough against the good teams. Their only two shutouts have both come against Louisville City, and both in Nippert.
With that out of the way, Danni Konig and Manu Ledesma have eight goals apiece, with Ledesma also chipping in eight assists to comfortably top a hypothetical combined list. Two Ledesma goals and one of the assists came against ATL UTD 2, three more assists and another goal came against North Carolina FC… these guys can score, no doubt. They do a lot of it by running up the score on bad opponents (and don’t take that the wrong way – it’s absolutely what a USL team should do to entertain fans and sell a bunch of five-dollar tickets, get some notoriety beyond “second division club,” etc.), so the applicability to higher-level opposition is going to come with scaling back quite a bit.
Nazmi Albadawi is the central attacking mid in a bit of a 4-1-3-2 (or 4-3-1-2) formation. He has seven goals and an assist himself, again with the caveat of most of them coming in just a couple games against poor opposition. Corben Bone and Kenney Walker are the wide midfielders or winger-types depending on how the formation is shaped at a given time.
“I call FCC’s attacking-trio of Manu Ledesma, Danni Konig and midfielder Nazmi Albadawi our ‘big-three,'” Cincinnati Soccer Talk‘s Bryan Weigel told me. “These players have accounted for 23 goals and 10 assists. [Albadawi] came into camp with a knock, but has since found his stride scoring a goal in each of the last four matches.”
Defensively… that’s where they start to struggle. Charlotte Independence has scored four goals just twice all year, in their opener against Ottawa Fury (which was back when the Fury were worse than they are now – and they’re still only OK) and then again by blasting FC Cincinnati. I currently have FCC as the 18th-best defense in the USL. That may not be horrible on an absolute scale, but adjusted to the expectations of “we want to be the best team in USL (and have the second most-expensive roster in the league)” it’s a disappointment paired with their elite offense.
It may struggle even more with a very good defensive midfielder unavailable. Richie Ryan has experience in the Premier League, Scottish Premier League, and most recently plenty in the NASL. He left the 3-3 draw with TFCII in the 64th minute, and the worst team in USL (no exaggeration – probably worst team ever in a second-division league) scored in the 70th and 74th minutes to steal a point.
“Arguably the most important player for FCC, Ryan would play the ball from the back line forward as well as setting the defensive shape of the team,” Weigel said. “The high-profile midfielder will likely not feature Saturday and it could be up to Michael Lahoud to keep the group organized.”
Things settled down with a bit more time to prepare – a 2-0 win over Ottawa Fury followed – but it’s worth noting how important Ryan is to this team.
In the backline, centerbacks Dekel Keinan and Forrest Lasso each have one USL Team of the Week selection (it’s worth noting that Nashville, which has the second-most clean sheets in the USL against the most difficult schedule played has one for a defender all year! And zero for Matt Pickens! Watch the games, USL staffers!). Keeper Evan Newton has the majority of time between the pipes, and a very solid .717 save percentage… which means the reason Cincinnati’s defense is poor has more to do with 1) facing a lot of rubber, and 2) backup keeper Spencer Richey accounting for 38% of goals allowed in only 23.5% of minutes played.
The Boys in Gold
Part of the perception – particularly among FCC fans (thanks to their SOP of “care about attendance and maybe literally nothing else) – that Nashville SC isn’t any good is based upon the preseason, when NSC was only OK. That was particularly true in a 2-2 draw with FCC, but look at this squad: Pickens, James-Davis-Doyle-Woodberry-Kimura, Reed-LaGrassa-Moloto, Hume-Cox. It’s first worth noting that this formation was scrapped for being offensively impotent (yet still scored twice on the road against FCC), two of its key players have basically not seen the field during the regular season (Hume and Cox), and a handful of others are either squad regulars but not starters, or playing a completely different position now than they did at that time.
It’s just a different Nashville squad. That’s one with all sorts of new scoring punch in the form of strikers Brandon Allen (who wasn’t on the team at that point) and Ropapa Mensah (who joined the team later in preseason and was getting up to speed), Moloto moving to the front line, a new formation, etc. Just not the same team, even if some of the players are the same.
We’re likely to see what Gary Smith considers his first-choice lineup from the jump in this game, with the subs designed to get the most out of the team, not build depth in the preseason. If FCC partisans are expecting to see the same sort of Nashville team they did back in early March, they’ll be surprised (as is likely the case on the other touchline as well, to be fair).
Projected lineups
Not too much controversial from either side here:
Fairly obvious from FCC: they have a pure starting lineup established, and maybe not with a ton of depth, but some good players ready to step in… a hair below the quality of the first unit.
I could see Nashville going a couple different ways at a few positions (the same ones I talk about each week), but as long as Bradley Bourgeois is healthy, I see him in the starting lineup – London Woodberry available as a sub. Wou could see Kimura, Woodberry, or Ryan James at right back. I like Jome to start on the left because of his chemistry with Davis, then you have the added benefit of Taylor Washington’s speed coming on against tired legs – and you have your first-half speed on the right with Alan Winn. Up top has been a consistent pairing, but hopefully the Ropapa Mensah-for-Allen swap is made a little earlier in this one to let the sub make a bigger impact (and get Allen off before he’s gassed).
Predictions
Before we get directly into the preview here, a few things to clear up: Cincinnati fans are allowed to march. Yes, it was extremely irresponsible of the local newspaper to assert otherwise when nobody ever said it. They can’t bring in flagpoles, which is a freakin’ Department of Homeland Security rule, nothing to do with a choice made by Nashville SC or Nissan Stadium. The same rule also applies to Nashville fans.
Secondly, this will not be Nippert South, as I’ve seen asserted a lot by FCC fans on Twitter in recent days (and yes, I know that you’re going to get a lot of lowest-common-denominator opinions on Twitter). FCC supporters groups only requested 100-400 visitors tickets from NSC, and didn’t hit even those numbers. If you’re one of the people complaining that your seat moved from section 102 to sections 103-104, it’s because your fans didn’t buy enough tickets, and Nashville SC would rather have two mostly-full sections than four mostly-empty ones.
- Nashville’s subs are Taylor Washington replacing Ish Jome (55), Ropapa Mensah replacing Brandon Allen (60), and either London Woodberry or Matt LaGrassa replacing one of Alan Winn or Bolu Akinyode (depending on game situation).
- FC Cincinnati opens the scoring. For my fellow NSC-heads, you know that’s a bad thing: this club has never gotten a result when it’s been scored upon first.
- HOWEVA: Ish Jome assists Alan Winn, Brandon Allen assists Lebo Moloto, and Nashville goes into halftime with a 2-1 lead.
- The teams trade goals after the half, with Ropapa Mensah putting the capper on it in the 78th minute.
- This isn’t a prediction per se, but I’m not a big fan of the diamond midfield: it can make it pretty difficult to advance through central midfield to have two guys stacked one on top of the other. The wide midfielders need to tuck in to compensate… and then your offensive structure has no width. A pure holding mid who isn’t your No. 1 guy at that position makes it even riskier. That means FCC has to get the fullbacks high to provide width, and well, it’s easy to start seeing why they have to choose between offense and defense (fortunately, they’re making the more fun of the two choices) with that formation.
- Attendance comes in at over 22k.
Nashville SC wins, 3-2. Cincinnati is a good team, but for the love of God, can any of the narrative this week please be about how Nashville is pretty darn good, too? And at home? And this ludicrous “we’re going to fill your stadium when we’ve actually never sold out ours” thing has already proven to not be false. NSC knows it has something to prove – especially after struggling last mid-week – and wants to get the job done against a team that has weaknesses.
Club and Country 