Yesterday we learned FC Cincinnati has parted ways with long time head coach Alan Koch. It felt like a somber day, almost an ominous day for the club. It wasn’t. In fact, I’d argue it's the opposite. Understandably, the coach being fired is a weird feeling for the fan base. There are a number of unknowns now. Who will the next head coach be? How will the players respond on the field? How will this impact the tactics on the field? While there are questions that will need to be answered over the next few months, I would argue that there is a great deal to look forward to.

This blog post isn't a retrospective on Koch, you know his story. Taking over for John Harkes on the day the team left for preseason training in 2017. The Open Cup run. The unbeaten run. The goalless run. You know it, I know it. It was glorious. Well, it was glorious if Koch wasn’t your boss from the sounds of it.

This blog post is about the future. Where we go from here, both as a fan base and a club. I want to look at the micro and the macro with this, because I think this is a moment for the club to take the next step towards greatness.

Micro

I'll start off small and work my towards the macro view. The micro view is what the team does now on the field. We have a roster, we have an interim manager, and we have games to win right now.

If you weren't paying attention to former players celebrate Koch's firing, you might have seen what current players were saying. Fanendo Adi stepping up to say,

"Obviously, you know, I’m a character that can speak out but you just have to support the coaches as well and try to do what is right. He knows why he plays guys out of position but I think we just need to realize that guys can be played out of position and that affects the team. The identity is missing” [Source].

Earlier, this excerpt caught a lot of people's eye,

"Saief is, however, not a natural central playmaker. He prefers to play out wide — “I’m a winger. That’s my best position. Right, left, I’m a winger.” — because he feels more comfortable attacking from there. FC Cincinnati head coach Alan Koch has used Saief largely in the hole, though, tasking the 5-foot-11 veteran with pulling the strings in the middle of the park" [Source].

It’s clear these players don’t like being played out of their natural positions. Imagine being hired for a job and then suddenly finding yourself in a different role with different responsibilities. You too would likely build resentment.

So who is being played out of position? Well Saief points out he’s a winger, not a central play maker. Allan Cruz has been deployed as a right winger despite being a box-to-box midfielder his whole career. Leo Bertone is also a central midfielder who has been playing exclusively defensive midfield. Mathieu Deplange has been covering for the injured Greg Garza by playing left back, a position Deplange had never played before coming to Cincinnati. Eric Alexander, hilariously, started as a winger in the season opener despite being a lifelong defensive midfielder.

That’s a lot of guys out of position. And not the only ones.

One thing is true about our roster, if you don’t play people out of position, we don’t have a central play maker. That key number 10. Saief was forced into that role, and well, it didn’t work. It did whatever the opposite of “work” is. But all is not lost. It turns out, you don’t need a number 10 to win a soccer game. Here’s how: