Nick Hagglund hospitalized following brutal loss to Atlanta United
Damon Gumbert
“Certainly a disappointing result,” Head Coach Pat Noonan said about the 4-2 loss to Atlanta United on Sunday night. That was a bit of an understatement, as Cincinnati came into the match with a chance to leapfrog Vancouver and Philadelphia in the Supporter’s Shield race and take sole possession of first place. Instead, the team dropped three points to the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference and has lost one of their key defenders for the foreseeable future.
Nick Hagglund, Cincinnati hero, was taken to the hospital and suffered a broken rib and damage to his lung after being crushed by Emannuel Latte Lath. Lath was chasing a ball headed for Matt Miazga when Hagglund stepped in his way to block him. The striker threw his entire weight into hitting Hagglund hard and knocking him to the ground. The referee, who claimed to see the whole action, did not call a foul and only stopped play a few moments later because Hagglund could not get up.
The Cincinnati-born defender was down for almost two full minutes before being helped up and off the field by a trainer. After the game, the referees were asked about the sequence and why a foul was not called. You can see their response below.
After Hagglund left the field there were still 75-minutes left in the match. Teenage Hadebe entered the match for Hagglund, but that meant shifting Miles Robinson to the right side and slotting Hadebe on the left. Atlanta didn’t give the FCC defense any time to settle into their new positions, forcing Robinson to commit a foul just outside the box due to a bad pass from Miazga. Robinson was shown a yellow card immediately, despite not receiving a warning beforehand. Atlanta capitalized on the chaos in the 15’ following the foul by sending the free kick into the box, off the head of center-back Derrick Williams, and into the back of the net.
Atlanta wasn’t done scoring though, as they drove down the pitch five minutes later and Saba Lobjanidze sent a ball past the legs of three Cincinnati defenders and found Jay Fortune for the goal in the 20’. The next bit of controversy in the match came when Dado Valenzuela went up for a header in the Atlanta box. Brad Guzan came out and challenged Dado, missing the ball completely and just colliding with the 20-year-old in mid-air. Dado went down hard to the pitch and Guzan was not called for a foul. VAR took a look at this for a few moments but decided that the decision to not give a foul, and therefore a penalty, was correct. The score would stay at 2-0 going into halftime.
As commentary said about 50 times, Atlanta is the worst team at defending in the 15 minutes following halftime, and FC Cincinnati was able to make a game of it when Robinson soared above all defenders and sent a header into the net off an Evander corner kick. Unfortunately, despite putting a lot of pressure and shot attempts on Guzan, the Orange and Blue were unable to tie things up.
In the 66’ Atlanta would capitalize on another set-piece defending disaster from FC Cincinnati when Bartosz Slisz found the ball at his feet coming off a corner kick from Lobjanidze, catching all of the FCC defenders and Roman Celentano off guard and netting the third goal for Atlanta. This felt like a return to 2024 when The FC were absolutely terrible at defending set pieces. The positioning and ball awareness were not there for the defense in this game.
Dado Valenzuela would try to drag FCC back into the game in the 70’, scoring on a sliding kick that went between the legs of Kevin Denkey and into the back of the net. Denkey’s awareness to not touch the ball was incredible, as he likely would have been called offside if he had. That was the end of the scoring for FCC though, even as they added more and more offensive firepower on the field in the form of Kei Kamara, Sergio Santos, and DeAndre Yedlin for Obinna Nwobodo, Lukas Engel, and Miazga.
Atlanta was not done scoring though, as Jamal Thiare would take the ball and outrun Robinson, who was clearly out of gas at the end of the match, for a one-on-one attempt against Celentano. Thiare would easily beat the keeper and Atlanta would go on to win 4-2. The three points here moved Atlanta up from 14th place to 12th in a tie with DC United. They are still seven points behind the New York Red Bulls for the final playoff play-in spot, but there is plenty of time left in the season. FC Cincinnati remains second in the Eastern Conference and third in the Supporter’s Shield race, but many questions remain about how good this team is.
You can’t talk about this game without talking about the officiating. FC Cincinnati was not only fighting Atlanta for the win, they were contending with the referees. FCC committed 11 fouls in the game, and Atlanta committed 8, but Cincinnati was given three yellow cards and Atlanta none. Atlanta got away with two fouls, the ones on Hagglund and Dado, that could have gotten not only yellow cards but red cards. Robinson was given his yellow card in the 15’ of the match without being warned, and only a few minutes later an Atlanta player committed almost an identical foul on Dado but was not shown a card.
“We conceded four goals and lost the game,” Noonan said in his post-game presser. “There was certainly aspects of that game, I think the Dado challenge in the box, I don’t know how it’s not a penalty. But maybe there’s an angle that we’re not seeing. So those are some of the, two of the bigger moments. But yeah, there’s a lot of emotion on both sides and teams pushing to go win a game. So the official wasn’t why we lost the game, but it certainly... a couple of those moments were handled poorly”
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In my match preview, I stated that Cincinnati had not had much help from their supporting cast, with Evander and Denkey scoring a significant amount of the team’s goals this season. While Dado has emerged as a third option for the team, his three goals still pale in comparison to Denkey’s eight and Evander’s seven. The real question is, where are the other scorers for this team? Luca Orellano has still yet to score, despite taking four shots in this game. Yuya Kubo has been injured off and on for the past two months but has also only scored one goal this season. Last year both men had 10 goals in the regular season. Pavel Bucha added four goals of his own, and this season has been virtually non-existent when attacking the goal on offense.
While both Orellano and Bucha have added assists this season, the offense needs more goal-scorers. Defenses are targeting Evander and Denkey when they have the ball, as few times as that is per game for Denkey, and there needs to be more options on scorers to keep the defense honest. If the entire offensive strategy is to get the ball to one person, as it was in the Lucho days, then your offense becomes one dimensional and stale unless more options are available on offense.
The defense, which has carried this team so far this season and in most of Noonan’s tenure, looked slow and old in this match. Miazga was beaten by defenders multiple times and had probably his worst match since returning from injury earlier this season. Hadebe looks lost during set pieces, with no ability to find the ball after it gets in the air. Robinson, unarguably the best defender on the team, was burned out at the end of the game and couldn’t keep up with Atlanta’s younger replacements. With Robinson about to leave for national team duty and Hagglund out for the foreseeable future, that leaves the team with dwindling numbers on defense. Even while Robinson is here, the team is down to one backup center back if they stick with the back three formations that Noonan loves to enact.
I have called for a formation change for a while, and I will keep that going here. A back four, especially with Miazga not looking like his old self and Hagglund out, is the best option going forward. A 4-4-2 diamond formation, with Nwobodo able to fall back and help the defense, would enable the offense more production. It gets Bucha and Orellano farther up the pitch and more able to help the offense. Nwobodo can fall back if Engel or Yedlin decide to move up the pitch. Obi’s best trait is his defensive production, so putting him in a spot to be able to play more defense and get out of the offense’s way.
The team doesn’t have much time to dwell on the loss to Atlanta. We will see if there are any changes in the formation going into Wednesday’s match against FC Dallas and a returning Lucho Acosta. That match kicks off at TQL Stadium on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Check out the wonderful images below from The Post’s Tim Sears.
