Five Takes On The Five Stripes

1: Fatigue and frustration was the theme of the day. This was just sluggish ugly football from both sides with a moment of brilliance from Amaya. Clearly the heat and match time played a role. I’m not using either of those factors as an excuse but they are factors. I’m not a fan of these 9am games. I don’t think the conditions lend themselves to entertaining football. There is no clearer example than the fact that you saw a side up a man, and no attack or press came from them.

2: Mulraney’s sloppy foul changed the entire game. He’s a professional and he has to be aware of where he’s at on yellows. That’s not rust, that’s just really poor decision making. Surprisingly enough Cincy did not press us when we went down a man. They continued to sit deep and really not threaten us consistently. If I’m Cincy I would have gone for the knockout blow in the first half, but they eventually got it but it wasn’t from organized play or a high press. It was just a flash of brilliance.

3: We still don’t look organized in our attack, even before the second yellow. I don’t want to believe it but we look lost without Josef. I really thought given the length of time we had to train without him we would have worked out a system to produce goals without el Rey.

4: For me, that was a penalty. I don’t think there was anything conclusive in the video to call that back for offsides. Maybe there’s a camera angle we didn’t get to see but from the angle we saw on ESPN it didn’t look like anything was conclusive to me. It certainly was not clear and obvious.

5: I don’t see this match or even this tournament as a referendum. We’re missing Josef, we had a 3 month stoppage, the time is weird, the weather is stifling, we were down a man. I just don’t see this as indicative of how the rest of the season (if there is one) will go. We just haven’t had a chance to really get anything going so I’m going to refrain from the sky is falling fire FDB #’s.