All good things must come to an end, and on a lovely fall day in St. Paul, CITY's MLS record 21-match unbeaten streak across all competitions came to an end, courtesy of a blown 2-0 lead from a rotated side that fell apart defensively in the second half against a struggling Minnesota United side that has its' playoff hopes on life support. Let's take a look at all five goals in what was a disappointing, but perhaps not totally unexpected, loss.
Rafael Navarro - Goal (4')
As we discussed in the LA Galaxy match, CITY has had a trend of scoring early in matches, and it happened again here. As Dante Polvara (playing in the midfield for Chris Durkin, out on concussion protocol) brings the ball upfield, he's got options in Navarro and Becher in front of him and Totland out wide to his left.
As he goes to make a pass (seemingly towards Navarro), Minnesota's Bongokuhle Hlongwane (#21) gets a deflection on it, causing the ball to spin inside and beyond Navarro, but also beyond Jefferson Díaz (#28), who had stepped towards Navarro but was then caught out of position.
Totland, making a run centrally, beats Cherrion Valerius (#52) to the ball and makes a really nice first touch to put himself in a scoring position, but as he's closed down on by Morris Duggan (#23), Totland makes a slick backwards flick to Becher sliding into the space behind him.
Becher's left-footed shot is well-saved by Minnesota's Drake Callender, but the deflection squirts out to his right and into empty space where only Navarro stood. Navarro looked up, got his body turned, and hammered home a beautiful first-time shot past Callender to give CITY an early lead.
Totland paid the price here, getting crunched to the ground between the two Minnesota defenders, but his really deft back pass to Becher created an excellent scoring opportunity, and Navarro was in the right place at the right time to bury the rebound.
Jeong Sang-Bin - Goal (10')
Another Navarro contribution on CITY's second goal about six minutes later, as he wins a footrace up the left side against Jefferson Díaz, who decides to leave his feet for a slide tackle. Navarro pokes the ball beyond Díaz, and then turns into the box for a 3 on 2 with Becher and Sang-bin.
Minnesota's Valerius angles himself to defend Navarro without closing him down (the correct decision), but he's really in an impossible spot, and Becher wisely makes a near post run, forcing Duggan to go with him to defend and clearing out the space behind in the box for Sang-bin to run into.
Navarro lays off a perfectly weighted pass to Sang-bin, all alone ahead of a who late-arriving Will Trapp who was desperately trying to get back to help defensively. Sang-bin opens his hips and hits a one-touch shot back across the box to his right - this is a very difficult piece of skill that he executed perfectly, and it put CITY up 2 within 10 minutes.
This was a goal was created by Navarro's hustle and decision-making, Becher knowing how to manipulate defenders, and Sang-bin showing excellent skill in making a tricky shot look relatively easy.
Aziel Jackson - Goal (49')
As well as the match started, the opposite could be said in the second half, as multiple defensive breakdowns led to Minnesota climbing back into the match. Here, Minnesota's Kelvin Yeboah has the ball out on the wing, defended by CITY CB Fallou Fall.
Yeboah shows quality here, making a quick move to his right that Fall is slow to react to, then whips in a sharp cross into the center of the box that gets beyond Miguel Perez and onto the foot of ex-CITY man Aziel Jackson. Perez defended poorly, and unlike Mykhi Joyner and Jaziel Orozco, he wasn't between his man and the goal but in front of him, shaded toward the ball side.
Perez's terrible positioning left him in a spot where he couldn't get to the cross or interfere with Jackson's run, and AZ made a nice deflection with the outside of his right foot to bang the ball past a helpless Roman Bürki.
Two issues here: first, Fall was completely beaten by the move Yeboah put on him, but more crucially, Perez's poor defensive alignment left too much space for Jackson to run into and claw back a goal for the Loons.
Kelvin Yeboah - Goal (68')
A turnover along the right side starts this sequence, with Mauricio Gonzalez collecting the ball and moving it up the left, defended by Orozco. As Gonzalez goes to make his crossing attempt, Fallou Fall (for reasons unknown) moves away from his marked man, Minnesota's Kelvin Yeboah. Fall was already giving the Minnesota striker too much space, but his inexplicable move towards the ball compounded the problem.
As Gonzalez's cross came into the box, Fall was completely out of position to defend Yeboah, who simply had to settle the ball and slide it past a (justifiably) pissed-off Bürki from point-blank range. Fall's defending here was criminal - he gave Yeboah too much space initially, then made a move towards the ball for no reason, gifting the talented Loon attacker time and space to make a very simple shot to tie the game.
Fall can have moments of brilliance with the ball, but his defending, pitch awareness, and decision-making remain inconsistent at best. Here, all three let CITY down and allowed Minnesota to draw level. Definitely a concern headed into a final on Wednesday and then the looming playoffs, where one mistake can cost you a title or end your season.
Marcus Caldeira - Goal (86')
CITY had stabilized the match at this point, and had even had some offensive opportunities, but Minnesota found their game-winner after a corner attempt, made possible by terrible read and decision and even worse execution from Jaziel Orozco.
Rafael Santos' initial corner kick was headed away by Díaz, which Santos collected and played to Tomáš Ostrák, making a run to the end line. Ostrák loses the ball pretty easily to Kelvin Yeboah (a striker forced to defend) and the ball is played ahead to Joaquín Pereyra by Valerius. As Valerius makes this pass, Orozco decides to step forward to contest it- an absolutely horrendous decision that, as Pereyra makes a move to beat him, left CITY completely exposed to a counterattack.
Pereyra's long pass towards the center of the pitch finds Minnesota's Marcus Caldeira, who heads upfield with only Daniel Edelman defending. Credit to Fall's hustle, as he was able to beat Yeboah down the field to take away that passing option to the right, but no one was able to give help to Edelman, who got completely turned around by an inside-out move from Caldeira.
Caldeira, having left Edelman chasing shadows, simply puts the ball on his left foot and takes the shot, which Bürki seemed to be in a decent position to have a chance to save, but it deflects off the foot of a sliding Fall and goes up over the CITY keeper to give Minnesota the eventual winner.
The decision by Orozco to try to step to the ball was one that I'm sure the CITY coaching staff will discuss with the player - at that point of the match, in that position, it was a totally unnecessary risk. At best, CITY gets the ball back in a 3v3 situation out on the left wing, and at worst, CITY is left scrambling and out of position to defend a Loon counter - exactly what happened. Orozco has to be smarter there.
