And on a more selfish note, the Columbus move opens the door for FC Cincinnati to join the league, even if Detroit is a possibility as well. Talk about mixed emotions. I despise the idea that teams can be relocated. I understand moving a team from one neighborhood to the next, sure. But to uproot an integral part of the community to make a little more money is despicable. And yet there is a tiny part of me that sees this as an opportunity for my team to make it to the first division with fewer obstacles. And I can even understand some FC Cincinnati fans who are more excited about this news than sad. But for me, it really kills the allure of MLS. To lose our most obvious rival, a team a lot of Cincinnati soccer fans grew up watching and rooting for from a distance, is now on its deathbed. I mentioned before that soccer was always something more to me and this move of the Crew, well, it smashes that idea. It destroys the ideal I had of soccer. I, naïvely apparently, hoped soccer might be the sport to change the American sporting landscape for the better, that rejected moving teams and billionaire owners happy to let their teams wallow in mediocrity while telling fans to “trust the process”. And now, that hope is gone.

Which finally brings this blog about FC Cincinnati to FC Cincinnati. I have written in previous blog posts that FCC is the first Cincinnati team that has given me hope. That they were not going to settle for what the world gave them and they would fight to be the best. And now FCC is in the playoffs. Having only lost two games since the Open Cup run ended, the team appears ready to make some noise in the playoffs. The only question is, which FCC is going to show up tomorrow? Is it the tournament FCC, the one that knows how to play with its back against the wall and being an underest of dogs? Or is it going to be the team that can’t be bothered with road game. Will we have Open Cup Mitch and Djiby? Will we have a constantly rotating lineup that can’t seem to find chemistry? So many questions to be answered tomorrow in Tampa. And weirdly, it all seems, I don’t know, less important than what is going on off the field?