Arace: As FC Cincinnati braces for Messi, there's this small matter of Hell being Real
Sunday night at the new Crew Stadium, the Hell is Real rivalry, pitting the Crew vs. Cincinnati FC, will be joined for the 13th time. The game will be broadcast on FS1 and it’s free on Apple TV – which, in-between Lionel Messi streams, has been plugging the Ohio derby with regularity and emphasis. It's almost like Don Garber cares.
Cincinnati was a minor-league team bidding for MLS expansion when it sparked the rivalry on June 14, 2017. That was the day FCC bounced their big brother from the U.S. Open Cup with a 1-0 victory in front of a savage crowd of 20,000-plus at Nippert Stadium. The victory propelled FCC on a run to the USOC semifinals, which helped seal their MLS bid.
The league saw what an Ohio rivalry could look like. So, it let Columbus keep the Crew if they could find new owners who would make the league’s first chartered franchise pay a $150 million expansion fee (think about that for a second) and build a new stadium under a schedule so onerous it should’ve been impossible.
Thanks, Don.
The trite phrase is you “throw out the records” when rivals meet, but that was difficult to in FCC’s first three years in MLS. From 2019-21, FCC ran up a 14-59-18 record and thrice finished in last place in the Eastern Conference. They made Caleb Porter look like Sparky Anderson.
That was a shame because Cincinnati is clearly an outstanding soccer market. No joke. It’s not Seattle, where soccer was invented, or Atlanta, the birthplace of the game, but it’s in the same operating room. Cincy is the Ob-Gyn who delivered the game to the Midwest, let’s say. Fussball!
In the autumn of 2021, Cincinnati’s owners hired Chris Albright to be general manager and he eventually tapped Pat Noonan to be the coach. A once-crazy front office was suddenly smart and a disorganized team was suddenly, well, organized.
Albright trained in the Philadelphia front office. Noonan, who played on the Crew’s 2008 Massive MLS Cup championship team, was tutored by Bruce Arena (with the USMNT) and Philly’s Jim Curtin (the best?). This bodes well for Hell is Real: With Albright/Noonan in Cincy and Tim Bezbatchenko/Wilfried Nancy in Columbus, Ohio has as much MLS brainpower as any state in the union, including the Philadelphia Union. Which is good because Ohio teams can’t cheat the league’s roster rules.
FCC finished fifth in the East last season as the Crew missed out on a postseason bid for the second season in a row. It turns out Porter was only rarely Sparky Anderson – but he loved the rivalry. Give him that. He was 5-1-4, with 22 goals for and 11 against, in his Hell is Real head-to-head. He reveled in his victories and his draws.
On July 9, 2021, in the first Ohio derby-darby in newly built TQL Stadium, a Crew team depleted to half its roster size because of injuries and international callups, down a man in the second half, came back from a 2-0 deficit to salvage a draw. Porter did a shushing thing to the Cincinnati crowd after the final whistle, and projectiles were launched in his direction.
“They have to be devastated over there in that other locker room,” Porter said. “How can you be up 2-0 and up a man and not win the game? Wish we would’ve sent our supporters home with three points but I hope they go home feeling good about the comeback. More than that, I’m glad Cincinnati supporters leave very disappointed.”
On August 27, 2022, again at TQL Stadium, the Crew twice came from behind to salvage a 2-2 tie. Steven Moreira had the equalizer in second-half stoppage time. Once again, Porter did his shushing thing to Cincy fans and, once again the fans launched projectiles at the wizard of pandemic pause. Crew striker Cucho Hernandez caught one of the 24-ounce cans that hurtled his way and chugged it. Afterward, Porter ripped the Cincy fans and the Columbus media and Noonan chirped and whined and carped about the referee.
How delicious.
The sons of Cincinnatus are the best team in the league this year. They’re 15-2-6 and, at this point they’re running away with the Supporters’ Shield. Midfielder Luciano Acosta (12 goals, eight assists) is the front-runner for league MVP – or he was until a couple of weeks ago, when Apple TV began filming Messi documentaries.
The Crew are 10-7-6, in sixth place in the East, and lead the league in goals scored with 45. In a flurry of mid-summer dealing, they lost a chunk of their soul with the departure of attacking midfielder Lucas Zelarayan – their Acosta – but they padded their defense, which was a need, and they added a couple of sharp edges to the point a daunting attack.
The paradigm has shifted. Where once a Cincinnati minor-league team counted a victory over the Crew as a massive achievement, now the team’s website has a countdown clock to Wednesday night, when Messi will be in Cincy for a U.S. Open Cup semifinal. In other words, Hell isn’t that Real for them, not this week. Or, is it?
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Has MLS power in Ohio has shifted from Columbus to Cincinnati?
