FC Cincinnati takeaways: Emotions swirling down the stretch

The Futbol Club Cincinnati community is a swirl of emotion these days.

FC Cincinnati, now standing tied for seventh place in the United Soccer League Eastern Conference with a 9-9-9 record following Tuesday's 1-1 tie with the Harrisburg City Islanders, is still fighting for its playoff life.

With five games to play, the team is just five points out of fourth place and a coveted home playoff date.

Its buffer from falling out of the eight playoff positions in the East and missing the playoffs altogether is a minuscule two points.

Don't forget that this very same team, just about a month ago, was standing toe to toe with Major League Soccer's New York Red Bulls and was 15 minutes from advancing to the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final.

Add that all up. Throw it in a glass and mix it together. The end product is a muddled confluence of events and circumstances that could leave any fan in the world distraught and seeking answers.

Here are some truths about the situation:

• Now is not the time to panic. It would have been easy to click on the "standings" website on USLSoccer.com before Tuesday's match, observe the "13" next to Harrisburg (as in 13th place) and conclude FC Cincinnati was entitled to victory.

That's simply not how it works in USL in 2017. Parity's reigned this year, just as FC Cincinnati players and coaches forecasted at the season's outset. The margins between the clubs are razor thin compared to 2016 when there were chasms separating teams at the top and bottom of the league.

As a result of the parity and thin margins, it's increasingly likely that FC Cincinnati will decide its playoff fate closer to the end of the regular season.

The pack has been tight all season, and few teams appear poised to pull away for good or distance themselves from Cincinnati permanently.

There are 15 points in the standings still available and FC Cincinnati's unbeaten in three straight games. They aren't exactly nosediving at the moment.

• Don't equate U.S. Open Cup success to league performance. FC Cincinnati has MLS quality and proved as much in downing Columbus Crew SC and the Chicago Fire in the U.S. Open Cup, but that doesn't necessarily mean they should be world beaters in USL, as some fans have suggested. These are different competitions that require different mentalities.

A single-elimination match, such as those offered by the U.S. Open Cup, is an empowering thing when you're the underdog with everything to gain and playing before raucous home crowds as FC Cincinnati was against Columbus, Chicago, and New York.

It took great tactics and execution, and a few advantageous breaks, for Cincinnati to advance as far as it did in the Open Cup.

Where the Open Cup is a blank slate on which Cincinnati could play freely and with abandon once every few weeks from May through August (six total matches), the USL is a daily grind fraught with annoying little injuries and unglamorous pit stops in backwater sports towns.

Along the way in USL play this year, FC Cincinnati's been bogged down by a disputed six-game suspension to leading scorer Djiby Fall, injuries to key players, and MLS affiliate teams stacking their rosters with top talent.

On a given night, these obstacles can be overcome. Over the long haul, dropped points here and there start to accumulate – they more than account for the difference between where fans want FC Cincinnati to be in the standings and where it actually is today.

You can only duck so many bullets over a USL season. The grind is a great equalizer.

• Alan Koch is the man for the FCC job. That hasn't changed. I wrote on Aug. 31 about Alan Koch, and why he's well-suited for the FC Cincinnati head coaching job – and plenty of other jobs, too. While former head coach John Harkes had about seven months prior to the 16-win 2016 season to build FC Cincinnati, Koch had hours and days of preparation after Harkes' unceremonious exit from the club in February.

Since then, Koch has been attempting to ratchet up the playing standards, tweak the roster and improve the team culture on-the-fly. Such change is never achieved easily, and it usually takes place out of sight during the autumn and winter months after the season ends.

A lot of new faces have joined FC Cincinnati under Koch. Several of the team's original players have already exited the club, and more could this offseason. Circumstances have forced Koch's designs to unfurl as a slow-motion, in-season version of what would typically take place at an accelerated rate during a normal offseason. Regardless of what happens down the stretch in 2017, events unfolding on the field now are partly the product of things that happened last offseason, when Koch was newly-arrived from the Vancouver Whitecaps FC organization. Koch's evaluation period starts in 2018 after he's had this coming offseason to fully execute his plans.

• What if FC Cincinnati doesn't make the playoffs? When 53 percent of the teams in the Eastern Conference qualify for the USL playoffs, it's hard to imagine FC Cincinnati not making that cut.

They should make that cut. It would be a certain disappointment for fans if it came to that, and FC Cincinnati supporters would be justified in their frustrations at such a time.

Following FC Cincinnati's Sept. 2 1-1 draw with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, Harrison Delbridge and Andrew Wiedeman were both asked what constituted success for the club over the remaining games.

"Right now, it's honestly, it's making the playoffs. That's our next goal, to be quite honest," Delbridge said. "It's something, like you said, this team should be more than capable of doing."

"Oh, yeah. It'll be a huge disappointment if we don't make the playoffs, I think," Wiedeman said.

FC Cincinnati's sown big-league expectations in its fans and that begets big-league fallout when those expectations aren't realized.

Just keep in mind that we aren't there yet. FC Cincinnati is still alive and kicking. It would be a sucker bet to count the U.S. Open Cup semifinalists out at this stage, after everything they've been through in 2017.