FC Cincinnati fight playoff ghosts in Game 3 vs. Columbus Crew

Everyone around FC Cincinnati – players, coaches, staff and supporters – is wary of the ghosts this week.

We on the outside can’t hear them. But they’ll be familiar to anyone who’s ever felt heartbreaking disappointment and gotten up to fight again: That nagging little voice in your head reminding you of past setbacks, and the inevitable possibility it could happen all over again.

“I think it’s on people’s minds,” acknowledged Zach Blandford, a day-one FCC fan who serves as president of The Pride supporters’ group, to MLSsoccer.com this week ahead of Sunday’s Game 3 in the club’s Round One Best-of-3 Series against the Columbus Crew (6 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV).

“We all felt that, remember it. But every fan of a team, every supporter of a club, has a game that lives in their memory forever. Right now, that’s ours until we push it out.”

Win or go home

“It” would be the 2023 Eastern Conference Final, a riveting duel between Cincy and their Hell is Real rivals, widely hailed as one of the greatest games in MLS history.

The Knifey Lions surged out to a 2-0 halftime lead in front of their raucous home crowd at TQL Stadium, only to be pegged back by a ferocious Crew rally that leveled the score at 2-2 before a 115th-minute Christian Ramírez winner broke the deadlock in extra time, a delirious wind in Columbus’ sails that powered them to MLS Cup glory over LAFC in Ohio’s capital city a week later.

Thanks to the Crew’s emphatic 4-0 rout of the Knifey Lions at Lower.com Field last weekend, FCC now welcome the Crew back for a win-or-else Game 3 in the Audi 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs. It’s forced the Orange & Blue to face that history and prevent it from repeating.

“Going and losing 4-0 on Sunday, I think the fans are starting to feel that déjà vu of, ‘Oh no, we’re going to get knocked out by Columbus again, aren’t we?’” said journalist Laurel Pfahler, one of the leading members of the local press pack that covers the Garys.

“They cannot lose to Columbus, again, at home, in the first round. This is supposed to be a team that people are predicting to win an MLS Cup. You cannot lose in the first round to your rivals at home.”

Pat Noonan called it “a crushing defeat, and the worst certainly of my tenure as a head coach” as he replayed the occasion in his mind during a recent conversation with MLSsoccer.com.

“What I learned in that moment was game management, because we didn’t have the legs at the end of the game,” he recalled, thinking back on his decisions to leave tiring star attackers Lucho Acosta and Álvaro Barreal on the pitch as Columbus hunted for an equalizer. “So those were lessons for me as a manager, where I think I came up short.

“All of a sudden, the momentum shifted. And you could feel it, that energy, and knowing how strong Columbus was, and then they get the leveler, and eventually we just didn’t have the legs and energy. … You try to learn from it, so that you don’t put yourself in that situation again.”

It’s the most prominent triumph of a young yet vibrant in-state derby in which the Crew have thus far held the high ground. The MLS originals are 9W-5L-6D all-time in Hell is Real, and have a 2W-2L-3D record at TQL Stadium, a loud, tight venue where Cincy have otherwise enjoyed a marked home-field advantage.

Narrow wins

There are valid reasons to limit the scale of the comparisons here, however. Only four FCC players who appeared in that 2023 Eastern Conference Final are still with the club. And with the league’s fourth-stingiest defense backstopping a phalanx of game-changing talent in attack, the Garys have grown highly familiar with banking narrow wins. No. 2-seeded FCC notched an incredible 18 victories by a one-goal margin across all competitions this season, including a 1-0 victory at TQL to open this series.

How much that can truly calm supporters’ nerves on gameday remains to be seen.

“This team’s definitely different,” said Pfahler. “There are a lot of reasons for the fans to actually believe this will be different. But I think that there’s just concern because the margins are so slim. FC Cincinnati plays this style of like, we just need to win by one goal. And sometimes it just ends up not looking good.”

There’s a quirky blend of ‘long-suffering’ and ‘highly-demanding’ among the FCC faithful. Many remember all too well the dark days of finishing dead last in their first three years in MLS, and it’s worth noting the wider tendency towards sports suffering; baseball’s Reds haven’t won an MLB playoff game (or series) since 1995, and the NFL’s Bengals did not win a single playoff game between 1990 and 2021.

“We know what it’s like to be in the absolute depths, and we know what it’s like with our other teams here to take up residence in the absolute depths,” said Blandford. “We also know that FC Cincinnati is different. They have a different kind of ambition, a different kind of player. They care about winning.”

New chapters

Fans are quite conscious that Cincy rank among MLS’s biggest spenders, which tends to raise expectations. Some point to Noonan’s difficulties in knockout situations, not just in that 2023 playoff game but also in that year’s US Open Cup semifinal against Inter Miami, and last season’s Round One playoffs upset against New York City FC, where FCC won Game 1, then lost away before tasting heartbreak in a penalty shootout loss in the decider at TQL.

“There’s a lot of pressure, I think, on this game,” said Pfahler.

Noted Blandford: “Pat has earned, through his work with this team, a little bit more patience. I think a lot of people agree with that, but I do think that we put it to bed by winning this weekend.”

It all adds up to a gut-check moment for the Knifey Lions, as well as their fans, whose spirit and collective commitment are palpable on big nights at TQL. Noonan says at times he’s been taken aback by his players’ resolve in tense situations this year – “when I talk to some of the individuals, some of them thrive in those moments. They’re OK suffering,” he shared – even if he’d prefer they all have less of that to endure.

To frame things more optimistically, this Game 3 has given Cincy a chance to write a new chapter together. And what better opponents for that than the smack-talking old guard from up the road?

“People took Sunday, drove home afterwards, were mad Sunday and Monday, and now we’re ready to come out and win the series,” said Blandford, “and fill the stadium and pop the smoke and do the march and cheer and sing and support and do all those things, and move on to the next round.

“I’ve lived in Cincinnati my whole life, and this is not the first time that we have faced sports disappointment, dusted ourselves off and shown back up. This city knows how to do that. They’re going to do it this weekend.”