Though things are shifting a bit lately, MLS is traditionally known as a place of measured executive decision-making. In a parity-prone environment in which the margins between playoffs and rebuilds, success and failure, can be slim, coaches and directors are more likely than not to be given time to execute their plans.
Risk aversion has its benefits. But that tendency towards conservatism can be infuriating to supporters who have lost patience with their team’s current leadership or see a season slipping away. When they look closely at a team (or the technical staff that operates it) and see something broken, they want swift action to fix it.
In that light – and on top of the club’s downright decadent spending on the transfer market – FC Cincinnati have made plenty of those bold moves that fed-up fans clamor for. Ownership certainly hasn't been afraid to spend, especially in the buildup to the 2021 season.
But the Orange & Blue served up another head-turner out of the blue on Friday as they suddenly parted ways with general manager Gerard Nijkamp with little warning or fanfare, issuing a 255-word press release and holding the briefest of press conferences, club president Jeff Berding fielding just two questions in all.
This is only Cincy’s sixth season of existence across the USL Championship and MLS, and they’re already on their fifth head coach in Jaap Stam. Though their titles have varied, Nijkamp was preceded in chief soccer officer-type roles by Luke Sassano and Berding himself. The club’s 7-20-10 regular-season record on the Dutchman’s watch is not entirely his doing, but after averaging a hair above 0.70 points per game in their first two MLS seasons, this year's only modest uptick to 0.94 ppg (FCC currently sit 10th in the East, nine points back of the playoff line) did not provide sufficient evidence of a dramatic upturn in trajectory.
While FC Cincinnati have, alas, been woeful underachievers since reaching the top flight, they can’t be accused of inertia. And yet, you won’t find too many fanbases eager to trade places with FCC’s.
As much money as they’ve splashed, as much turnover as they’ve overseen, as incredibly quickly as they moved to establish their brand and make gorgeous TQL Stadium a reality, as demanding as they’ve been – “ambitious” is a popular word among the Cincy brass – it’s all fizzled in competitive terms on the pitch. And now they’re staring at another wave of change.
“Our club pillars since day one are to give back to our community, to be family-friendly and to win, and we've been delivering on two of these three pillars,” said Berding on Friday. “We are not yet delivering on the third pillar – winning. This demands our consistent focus, commitment and investment.”
Unfortunately for Berding & Co., FCC have now reached a point in their history where two out of three is no longer tenable. Cincy haven’t really climbed out of the hole they dug themselves back in their 2019 expansion campaign. They haven’t changed the perception in MLS circles that they’re a soft touch. They haven’t even treated the home faithful to a victory in their first six matches at that pretty new house yet. And hungry fans, to paraphrase a famous singer, are angry fans.
There are rumors of discord between key decision-makers in the run-up to Nijkamp’s departure, which draws unpleasant parallels to the power struggle widely reported to have gone down between John Harkes and Berding early in their USL days. Stam has signaled a desire for squad reinforcements practically since he arrived, and while Nijkamp made upwards of a dozen new acquisitions this year alone, getting just two signings over the line in the just-completed Secondary Transfer Window may have constituted a breaking point.
This only serves to crank up the microscopes on both Berding and Stam, however. At some point, the reality of MLS is that any coach, even one with as glittering a resume as Stam’s, must coax improvement out of his existing assets instead of lamenting their shortcomings and wishing for replacements. And as previously noted, Berding’s sterling work on the business side of things has run up against the need for a compelling product on the field in order to maintain forward progress.
The eye-watering fee paid for Brazilian forward Brenner casts that move in an unflattering light, yet I found lots to like about the transfer deals for attacking midfielder Luciano Acosta and winger Isaac Atanga. Geoff Cameron has done a job on the backline, and next to him, Gustavo Vallecilla looks promising for the long term. Ben Mines and Florian Valot are high-upside flyers worth taking. The design and launch of their promising youth academy, which has a residential component that allows them to recruit nationally, may yet provide a positive legacy for Nijkamp.
But who knows if all of it will be given sufficient time to come good? Change has been a constant at FCC and Nijkamp’s successor – they're “immediately” starting a search – may roll in with their own plan and reboot all over again. Some sensible of stability would go a long way down in the Ohio River Valley. Those legions of expectant fans need something to build some hope around, and right now the squad Nijkamp assembled is probably the only place they'll get it from.
