In the 37th minute of FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 win against Chicago Fire FC, Alvaro Barreal, Luciano Acosta and Isaac Atanga stood in potential scoring position at Soldier Field. The trio each had a different angle against Chicago goaltender Bobby Shuttleworth, but the shot, which was ultimately taken by Atanga, didn’t make it through.
That narrative carried through the entire first half for FC Cincinnati on Wednesday. In fact, it's the same one the team has wrestled with since their last win against Montreal. Opportunities lead to misses. Shots lead to saves. FCC entered halftime in Chicago scoreless on 14 total shots.
But the team avoided panic.
Head coach Jaap Stam said the teams' talk at halftime didn’t consist of a remapped game plan or finger-pointing frustration, it was actually quite simple.
“If you play a half like this then you don’t need to say that much, you’re touching on very small things,” Stam said. “Up until then we were defending, not giving it away, big chances we were creating for ourselves by pressing and moving very well.”
Cincinnati's first-half defense held Chicago to just six shots, none of which were put on target.
Geoff Cameron said the team was careful not to fall into a pool the pool of frustration which has been brewing in recent matches.
“We said we’re going to still create chances and we just have to be a little bit more focused and the opportunities will come,” Cameron said. “It was just more of a positive note that we’re creating chances, we need to finish them and saying that just keep doing what we’ve been doing and hopefully we’ll put the ball in the back of the net."
And finally, the mantra worked.
Five minutes out of the gates in the second half, Barreal scored the first FC Cincinnati goal since May 22 on a picturesque free-kick that just curved its way inside the post.
As Chicago began to play more aggressive in an effort to equalize, FC Cincinnati held them off and goalkeeper Kenneth Vermeer tallied his first clean sheet with the orange and blue.
“Everyone was happy, celebrating. It was such a relief,” Vermeer said of the locker room after the win. “We’ve been creating a lot of chances but we haven’t scored on them. In an away game, against a team that has the same amount of points that we have, it’s important to win and that was our main goal. To win this game.”
Barreal's goal was the only one of the match and it by no means solved all of FC Cincinnati's problems. As Cameron said, the team got away with a little bit of luck tonight, keeping their margin of victory to just one goal when opportunities came to spread it larger.
“We could have made it a little bit easier on ourselves but luck was on our side tonight,” Cameron said. “Happy to get three points.”
FC Cincinnati will travel to Orlando for a match against Toronto on Saturday.
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