Done, and with games to spare. Next season has floodlit nights against clubs from other countries in it, and the accounts have a line they did not have last year.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Cincinnati this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brian Anunga was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Alvas Powell trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Bryan Ramírez was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Brian Anunga falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Tom Barlow has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. FC Cincinnati know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Alvas Powell trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
In brief
Loan watchThe goals keep arriving from Samuel Gidi’s exile
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Bryan Ramírez and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. FC Cincinnati know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at FC Cincinnati. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Miles Robinson was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brian Schaefer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Gerardo Valenzuela trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” FC Cincinnati have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at FC Cincinnati has been clear about where Alvas Powell stands, which is more than many ever get.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ender Echenique is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at FC Cincinnati this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
A muscle injury sidelines Brian Anunga for 14 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. FC Cincinnati will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
It needed Kenji Mboma Dem to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Atlanta United FC, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Miles Moore chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Bryan Ramírez was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Something was said to Oswaldo Virgen and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Evan Louro has his answer from FC Cincinnati; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. FC Cincinnati know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Atlanta United FC next, and one man in the FC Cincinnati dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Nobody at FC Cincinnati will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Tom Barlow has written the date down.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brian Anunga was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
9 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Miles Moore was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the FC Cincinnati dressing room was either.
13 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. FC Cincinnati know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Charlotte Football Club defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Bryan Ramírez and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brian Anunga was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad7 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and FC Cincinnati are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at FC Cincinnati, and it is not being withdrawn.
1 for Obinna Nwobodo, marked 7.68, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Obinna Nwobodo. 1‑0 against New York Red Bulls, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Miles Moore could afford to be generous.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Evan Louro: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Kévin Denkey was one of the reasons people came, and $14.2M does not replace that by itself.
A 1‑0 win over Orlando City, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Bryan Ramírez falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
A mark of 7.82, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Miles Moore kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Evander was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bryan Ramírez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at FC Cincinnati can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
FC Cincinnati have made the call to Toluca. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.