It’s in the title, folks. Every week during the MLS season, Backheeled is here to dive into the biggest Winners and Losers from around the league. Let’s get right to it.
Winner: Evander and new-look FC Cincinnati
Pat Noonan has done a lot of tinkering with FC Cincinnati this year — a whole lot.
After a poor start to the MLS season that saw them win just two of their first nine games while hemorrhaging goals, Noonan was right to tinker. Injuries and red cards created on-field lapses. A lack of ball progression ability across most of the roster created stagnant play. And so, we’ve seen defensive midfielders at center back, central midfielders at wing back, attackers in central midfield, and even more wildcards still. As Noonan has tinkered and, crucially, as the team has inched closer to fitness, they’ve started to pick up results again to the tune of 3W-2D-1L in their last six.
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is a simple fact about FC Cincinnati: Evander is the team’s most important player.
Entering the weekend, only five players in MLS registered a greater share of their team’s final third touches than the Brazilian. That list? Lionel Messi, Facundo Torres, Carles Gil, and Guilherme. Evander runs the show in the attack, whether he’s positioned as a No. 10 behind a pair of strikers or in the halfspace like he did in Cincinnati’s 6-2 win over Orlando City.
Goals per game are up in MLS from last year to this year, by the way, by about a quarter of a goal per game. Between Cincinnati's win and Inter Miami's 6-4 win over the Philadelphia Union, two teams hit a half-dozen goals this weekend alone. Miami (and Argentina) would've traded a goal or two in exchange for Lionel Messi not subbing himself off with a potential injury concern in the second half. C'est la vie. The year's been crazy, y'all.
Beyond the feeling that abnormal scorelines have become decidedly normal for Cincy, Evander’s five goal contribution performance was the story of the evening.
