The reason Miami could party with the Shield immediately after their win in Columbus: A couple of intrepid FCC supporters drove up Interstate 71 to hand off the hardware to its new possessors. That selfless act provided a reminder that 12 months ago, it was Cincy celebrating their delirious capture of the honor, punctuating a hard climb from back-to-back-to-back Wooden Spoons to regular-season champs.
It feels like a lot longer than that because this season has been a slog, peppered with a litany of costly injuries and other frustrations. The Garys have lost twice as many league matches (10) as in 2023, six of them coming in their last 10 games, and looked very much like a team searching for their best selves in the error-prone midweek 3-2 setback at NYCFC.
“Poor performance,” coach Pat Noonan said afterward. “Certainly not a game we deserved to win. We fought enough to make it interesting, but our play isn’t good enough, and I don’t just put that on the players. Over the last two games, my message hasn’t been clear enough or demanding enough for it to look better than it has. So we got some work to do.
“You don’t want it to look like that, where you’re scrambling in the way we are and playing the way we are.”
FCC are seven points ahead of Orlando with two games left, so their hold on third place in the East is safe. But Noonan knows as well as anyone that the playoffs are all about momentum, and the Knifey Lions are badly in need of that. Lucho Acosta still leads MLS in goal contributions (tied with Portland’s Evander on 32), assists (19) and key passes (101), so he remains the linchpin – and maybe, just maybe, a strong run-in can help the Argentine dynamo become the first player in league history to win consecutive Landon Donovan MLS MVP awards.
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