New York City FC tasted defeat at home against one of the Eastern Conference’s top teams for a second time in four days, falling 3-1 to FC Cincinnati at Yankee Soccer Stadium.
It was a match marred by a controversial performance from referee Armando Villareal, who disallowed a seemingly good goal from Gabriel Pereira that would have given NYCFC a 1-0 lead and a jolt of positive momentum in the 29th minute.
Instead, Villareal blew his whistle for a phantom foul supposedly committed by Gabe Segal, though even the slowest of slow-motion replays of the sequence didn’t show much contact between Segal and Cincinnati defender Yerson Mosquera.
Goals change games, and the lack of one in this instance seemed to drastically change NYCFC’s fortunes. Less than 10 minutes after having that Gabi Pereira goal dubiously disallowed, FC Cincinnati cut through the makeshift NYCFC back line and found their own opener.
Luciano Acosta was left unmarked and in enough space to perfectly curl a shot into the top corner past a frozen Matt Freese, giving Cincinnati a 38th-minute lead they would never relinquish.
While this match featured just the one first-half goal, the vibe at halftime still felt eerily similar to Saturday at Citi Field. That match saw NYCFC lead and outplay the Philadelphia Union for almost the entirety of the first half, only to surrender two Julián Carranza goals moments before halftime. Acosta’s goal for Cincinnati came earlier than Carranza’s brace, yet still had the same effect, deflating the home team and forcing them to scramble to find solutions at halftime.
Those solutions would not be found at halftime. NYCFC came closest to equalizing during a 50th-minute sequence that featured three saves by Cincinnati goalkeeper Roman Celentano, who denied Santiago Rodríguez, Gabriel Pereira, and Maxime Chanot in quick succession to preserve his team’s 1-0 lead.
That lead would grow to 2-0 for Cincinnati when Álvaro Barreal curled in a free kick following a foul called on Tayvon Gray just outside the 18-yard box. NYCFC temporarily clawed back into the match when substitute Alfredo Morales pulled a trivela out of his locker, dropping a nifty pass right onto the head of Braian Cufré, who nodded home his first MLS goal in the 64th minute.
It was only a temporary sign of life for NYCFC, as moments after Cufré’s goal, referee Armando Villareal resumed his place at center stage. A lengthy VAR review of a clash between Tony Alfaro and Yerson Mosquera resulted in Villareal pointing to the spot, with Brandon Vazquez converting the ensuing penalty to effectively settle the match in Cincinnati’s favor.
Game Stats
NYCFC: 12 shots, 6 on goal, 60.3% possession, 522 passes, 85.1% accuracy, 12 fouls
Cincinnati: 11 shots, 5 on goal, 39.7% possession, 359 passes, 78.3% accuracy, 17 fouls
NYCFC’s “let’s get weird” lineup
An already thin NYCFC roster is suffering through an injury crisis at a very inopportune time, right in the middle of one of the team’s toughest stretches of matches. Talles Magno, Thiago Martins, and Mitja Ilenič were all ruled out in advance of the match. Richy Ledezma, removed after only 62 minutes vs. Philadelphia due to lingering discomfort from a challenge he suffered on NYCFC’s goal, was only available as a substitute. Matías Pellegrini and Alfredo Morales have been entirely absent from many of the team’s recent matches, though Morales did return and notch an assist in his first 30 minutes of action since the May 6 loss in Charlotte.
The visit from Cincinnati was also four days after the tough match with Philadelphia, meaning some lineup rotation was always going to be likely. This all added up to a Dr. Frankenstein’s monster of a starting XI, with three players–Matt Freese, Tony Alfaro, and Stephen Turnbull–making their first MLS starts with NYCFC.
Thiago Martins’s absence led to a full reworking of the NYCFC back line, with Nick Cushing opting for a three center back setup that included both Tayvon Gray and Tony Alfaro.
That opened the door for Stephen Turnbull and Braian Cufré to earn starts as wingbacks on the right and left, respectively. Those wingbacks probably fared the best among the new faces in Cushing’s lineup. Cufré scored once and actually came close to two other goals on the night, while Turnbull held his own making a surprise start after mostly seeing action with NYCFC II in MLS NEXT Pro.
Ultimately this lineup was not good enough to earn a result against the hottest team in MLS. The absences and limited availabilities of some of NYCFC’s key players made it a big hill to climb to match or beat Cincinnati, and that hill was made even bigger by a certain other controversial figure in the middle of things…
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The Armando Villareal Show
The announced Yankee Soccer Stadium crowd of 14,806 might not have known it when they bought their tickets, but they weren’t paying to watch NYCFC play Cincinnati. No, tickets for this match actually got attendees an up-close view of a referee who simply could not stop blowing his whistle.
Armando Villareal called 29 fouls and handed out a combined 12 yellow cards, with eight assessed to NYCFC. His decision to chalk off Gabriel Pereira’s goal for a “foul” that no one could make a convincing case for was mind-boggling in real time, and remains so after watching replay after replay of the incident.
Nick Cushing did not hold back when discussing Villareal’s performance and the effect it had on the game, calling the ref “embarrassing” and a “disaster” while also saying “all I ask is for the referee to understand the game of football.” Cushing will likely get fined by MLS for being this outspoken, but it’s a bill he may feel comfortable paying given what transpired in this loss.
That the referee’s performance was this big of a talking point post-match underscores just how badly Villareal managed things in the Bronx. The team is still responsible for its performance on the pitch and still had plenty of chances to alter the final result, but it’s hard to swallow having a match be so altered by the influence of the one person out there not actually playing the game.
When will the pain end?
One point separates NYCFC from being dead last in the Eastern Conference table after this second straight home defeat. Only a Red Bulls victory on the road to Inter Miami spared NYCFC from the indignity of being 15th out of 15 Eastern teams after 15 games played.
It’s now been seven matches since NYCFC last earned a victory. That last victory was all the way back on April 22, and since then, NYCFC have earned exactly one point out of a possible 18 available to them in MLS play. It’s relegation form if that were a thing here in America.
While this stretch is bad, it’s still not the worst run in club history, an “honor” still held by the inaugural 2015 squad that mustered four points across 11 games played.
The bigger current concern is: Where is the turnaround coming from? The roster has been depleted by offseason departures and a lack of comparable reinvestment, and is now being further thinned out through injuries.
The loss to Cincinnati was a good example of a game in which everything that could go wrong for NYCFC, did in fact go wrong. The negativity has started to compound for NYCFC, and it might take something unexpected to break the vicious cycle the team currently finds itself trapped in.
Goals:
Cincinnati, Acosta, 38′
Cincinnati, Barreal, 59′
NYCFC, Cufré, 64′
Cincinnati, Vazquez (PK), 70′
Discipline:
NYCFC, NYCFC bench, yellow card, dissent 37′
NYCFC, Cufré, yellow card, foul 41′
Cincinnati, Mosquera, yellow card, foul 43′
Cincinnati, Vazquez, yellow card, foul 45’+5′
Cincinnati, Acosta, yellow card, foul 50′
NYCFC, Chanot, yellow card, foul 53′
NYCFC, Sands, yellow card, foul 56′
NYCFC, Gray, yellow card, foul 58′
NYCFC, Pereira, yellow card, dissent 66′
NYCFC, Alfaro, yellow card, foul 82′
NYCFC, Morales, yellow card, foul 88′
Cincinnati, Gaddis, yellow card, other 90’+1′
Attendance: 14,806
Referee: Armando Villareal
Assistant Referees: Corey Parker, Diego Blas
Fourth Official: Thomas Snyder
VAR: Victor Rivas
Assistant VAR: Jeff Muschik
The team has been dreadful when you consider the level that we’ve come to expect from NYCFC over the years. The terrible officiating in no way excuses our defensive mistakes and our cluelessness on the offensive end. However, the officiating is becoming an albatross that has me legitimately wondering about the integrity of PRO. I mean, we are no stranger to inept officiating…..I seem to recall at least twice in the past several season where PRO has had to admit mistakes that would have altered the outcome of our games. Yet this season is taking it to a new level. And my worry is that because we are not playing well this year, it allows the league to ignore the officiating as merely an excuse for our losses. For several years I’ve had to defend MLS to fans of other leagues in trying to convince them that the talent in MLS is getting really quite good, and the parity of the teams leads to a better product on the filed for neutral observers. But even in games that I watch in MLS as a neutral I am appalled by the officiating. It’s infuriating, and even more so because MLS wants to pretend there isn’t a problem at all.
We’ve had three games this year where we’ve been on the wrong end of absolutely horrible refereeing, whether the refereeing was bad for both sides (DC) or completely one-sided (PHI, CIN). Somehow we managed to win the DC game.
Again and again it needs to be said. REFS RUIN SPORTS