FC Cincinnati rally late again to draw Fire

FC Cincinnati 3-3 Chicago Fire

CINCINNATI, OH–Despite their slow start to the season, FC Cincinnati has shown a penchant for rallying late to get results. Saturday night at TQL Stadium was no exception as FCC rallied from two goals down to get a 3-3 draw with Chicago Fire FC.

The Fire opened the scoring in the 26th minute as a pitch perfect long ball from Phillip Zinckernagel found Hugo Cuypers in space the Cuypers just got the ball past Roman Celentano for the opening score. It was Cuypers’s first match back after suffering a concussion.

The hosts equalized on 42 minutes as Bryan Ramierez’s shot was initially saved by Chris Brady, but left an empty net for ex-Fire player Tom Barlow to tap in. Before halftime though, Samuel Gidi knocked down Cuypers in the box and Zinckernagel converted the ensuing spot kick to give the Fire the advantage again.

Cuypers made it 3-1 in the 49th minute after an Andrew Gutman cross was headed in the air by Miles Robinson and straight to the feet of Cuypers who curled it past Celentano. The Fire looked to be in control until the 79th minute. Mbekezeli Mbokazi tripped up Gerardo Valenzuela on a free kick in the area and Evander netted his first of the season from the spot. Four minutes from the 90, another free kick resulted in a Dje D’Avilla own goal to make it 3-3. FCC pressed for a winner late, but had to settle for a draw.

The Fire defense came into the night allowing just five goals in seven league matches, but tonight, it was one of problems according to Fire coach Gregg Berhalter.

“I think there’s two ways we can look at this game,” said Berhalter. “The first way is to say that the side is much improved from last year in terms of coming to a difficult atmosphere and having the ambition to control the game, to win the game and to play, to score goals. So, happy with that. We see a difference between this year and
that year in that sense.

“But on the other side, the defending was not nearly good enough to win the game. And if it wasn’t for us
scoring three goals, we would have lost the game because defensively we were very poor tonight. And
we have to learn from that. We have to improve that and we have to have much more compactness,
shape and pressure on the ball.”

The Fire will look to put things right next Saturday when they face Sporting Kansas City at Soldier Field (7:30pm CT, Apple TV). FCC will travel to New York City FC on Wednesday night (7:30pm ET, Apple TV).