Louisville City FC routs FC Cincinnati in front of sellout Louisville Slugger Field crowd

In a match with so many opportunities to celebrate, Louisville City FC coach James O'Connor waited until the very end to do so.

As the final whistle blew in Louisville City's rout of rival FC Cincinnati, O'Connor allowed himself a subtle fist pump to punctuate an exhilarating match full of firsts.

Louisville City FC (11-4-5) earned three points against a 10-man FC Cincinnati (8-8-7) side Saturday, cheered to victory by a first-ever sellout crowd of 13,812 fans at Louisville Slugger Field.

Goals by Niall McCabe, Luke Spencer, Mark-Anthony Kaye, Richard Ballard and Sean Reynolds secured Louisville City a 5-0 win, the club's first over FC Cincinnati this season. The five goals were the most Louisville City has scored, and the most FC Cincinnati has allowed, in United Soccer League play this season.

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"That's how you draw it up, really," said Spencer, a former FC Cincinnati player who contributed two assists on top of his goal. "All in all, if you would have told our coach that's how the game was going to go I think he would have been pretty happy."

"All in all, a very good night for us," O'Connor agreed. "It was satisfying. It was nice to win that, for sure."

Louisville City reset its club attendance record for the second time in four weeks, cramming nearly 3,000 more fans into Louisville Slugger Field than the previous record. The result was an atmosphere Spencer described as "unreal."

The feeling is slowly becoming less foreign to Louisville City players as public interest in the club continues to tick upwards – especially when playing against FC Cincinnati.

"To be honest, I didn't really feel too different," McCabe said. "We know how good they are. They've got some really good players that can hurt you if you give them the time or the space. We just really focused on what we could do to hurt them, just like we would do with any other team."

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The first plumes of purple and yellow smoke unfurled when Louisville City opened the scoring in the 16th minute. Sean Totsch curled a cross from the right wing across the face of the goal, finding McCabe's head on the far side of the box. McCabe elevated above a defender and directed the ball into the near post corner.

"It was a really good ball and there was a big gap there that I thought I should probably get into before (O'Connor) has a word at me," McCabe said. "It's probably the first time I headed the ball in about seven years so thankfully it went in."

Twenty minutes into the match, Louisville City was outshooting FC Cincinnati 6-0. The visitors were held without a shot for the rest of the first half.

Louisville City had a bittersweet chance nine minutes before halftime when Spencer, on a breakaway, was taken down by Sem de Wit 5 yards outside the penalty area. The resulting free kick sailed over the crossbar, but Louisville City gained a man advantage as de Wit was issued a red card for his challenge on Spencer.

It was Spencer who added a second goal for Louisville City in first-half stoppage time, rising from the back of the box to get a head on Jimenez's corner kick.

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FC Cincinnati got its first shot of the night in the 56th minute. One minute later, Kaye pounced on Spencer's deflected shot and found the back of the net to give Louisville City a 3-0 lead.

Running the touchline after his goal, Kaye cupped his right hand to his ear, daring the crowd to cheer louder.

Three minutes after entering the match in the 69th minute, substitute Ballard delivered a left-footed shot across his body and past goalkeeper Mitch Hildebrandt's outstretched arm into the upper corner of the net.

With seven minutes left in regulation, Reynolds ran onto a long ball from Paco Craig and headed it home to put the nail in FC Cincinnati's coffin.

Louisville City put 15 of its 30 shots on target and maintained 55 percent possession in what was perhaps the club's most dominant offensive performance this season.

According to Spencer, it was only a matter of time.

"We had talked about it before this, that we were going to have a performance like this because we have a lot of talented players on the team," he said. "We were one game away from everybody gelling and everybody clicking, and I think that happened tonight."

Sports enterprise reporter Danielle Lerner can be reached at dlerner@courier-journal.com or 502-582-4042.