Union’s season ends with 1-0 loss at FC Cincinnati in Eastern Conference semifinal

CINCINNATI — The Union’s season ended Saturday night with a 1-0 loss to Cincinnati that didn’t have much drama for most of the night, but ended with a sufficiently dramatic play.

Yerson Mosquera’s goal out of a free kick sequence in the 94th minute was the only score of the night, sending Cincinnati on to the Eastern Conference final and keeping the Union out of it for the first time since 2020.

In both of the Union’s regular-season games against Cincinnati this year, manager Jim Curtin deployed a 3-5-2 setup to counter the 3-5-2 Cincinnati usually uses. That couldn’t happen with Jakob Glesnes injured and Kai Wagner suspended, so Curtin stuck with a surprise-free 4-4-2 diamond.

It meant Nathan Harriel at left back and Jack McGlynn in midfield. Up top, Julián Carranza was as healthy as promised to partner with Mikael Uhre.

The real lineup news was on Cincinnati’s side of the field. Not only was the home team down centerbacks Matt Miazga (suspended) and Nick Hagglund (injured), but right back Santiago Arias and central midfielder Obinna Nwobodo also were out injured.

Those absences brought two former Union players into Cincinnati’s starting lineup: Ray Gaddis at right wingback and Alvas Powell at right centerback.

The referee was one of MLS’s most serious veterans, Ismail Elfath. He wasn’t going to put up with any shenanigans amid the hothouse atmosphere, with Cincinnati-born U.S. women’s star Rose Lavelle as the guest of honor.

Elfath showed his chops by halting a few early corner kicks to tell everyone to calm down. In the 11th minute, he booked the Union’s Damion Lowe for fouling Luciano Acosta; and in the 30th, he booked Gaddis for fouling Harriel.

» READ MORE: Julián Carranza healed from a hamstring injury in time for the game

Cincinnati commanded the possession and scoring chances early, with three shots in the first 20 minutes. The only time the Union came close to an opportunity was a 17th-minute McGlynn free kick from around 30 yards out that Cincinnati’s defense blocked easily.

From then until halftime, the Union’s best scoring chance came in the 39th minute, when McGlynn zipped a cross to an onrushing Uhre, who met it but couldn’t get under the bounce properly. As the ball sailed a mile over the crossbar, Uhre promptly put his head in his hands.

Four minutes later, Olivier Mbaizo made a terrific run up the right flank and put a cross on a plate for Uhre, but he was too far back and couldn’t get to it.

The Union know how to suffer for long stretches, as soccer demands of so many teams in the world. They are built for it philosophically, and their many years of playoff experience is extra fortification.

At halftime, they’d had just 40% of the possession and were outpassed 194-126. But the shots were 6-6, though 3-1 to Cincinnati in shots on target, and the Union’s expected goals sum was 0.62 to the home team’s 0.41.

» READ MORE: Before stepping back into the playoffs, Dániel Gazdag hosted Union teammates for Thanksgiving

The second half dragged on much as the first did, save for a moment of theatrics in the 62nd minute when Mosquera tried to bait Carranza into his second yellow of the night. (The first came in the 51st for tripping Mosquera, and it was valid.)

As the clock ticked well past the 70th minute, Curtin had Quinn Sullivan, Joaquín Torres, Chris Donovan, Tai Baribo, and Jeremy Rafanello as potential attacking substitutes. Cincinnati manager Pat Noonan, Curtin’s former top assistant who won this year’s MLS coach of the year award, also hadn’t made any subs yet.

If they were waiting for a breakthrough moment in the game to react to, the game didn’t provide one. Cincinnati kept coming forward, and the Union kept denying them and launching counterattacks that came to nothing.

There was finally a change in the 80th minute, and it was forced by an injury to José Andrés Martínez. He and Cincinnati’s Aaron Boupendza got tangled up, and Martínez stayed down for a long time. He eventually was assisted off the field and replaced by Jesús Bueno, but it took but it took a long time, and Elfath booked Union head athletic trainer Paul Rushing for dissent on his way off the field.

That wasn’t Rushing’s first time in a referee’s notebook. Last year, he was famously ejected and suspended an extra game for his role in a brawl in a Union-New York City FC game.

Noonan finally made his first move in the 88th minute, sending in Dominique Badji for Boupendza.

» READ MORE: Jim Curtin knew the game could get ugly

Just short of halfway through six minutes of second-half stoppage time, Lowe fouled Badji at midfield. Acosta played the ensuing free kick square across the field to Álvaro Barreal on the left flank, who fired in a cross that Ian Murphy knocked down to a wide open Mosquera. He turned and shot easily past Andre Blake.

There was a VAR review to see if Murphy was offside when Barreal hit his cross, and, from the TV broadcast, it looked like he might have been. But the goal stood, and not long afterward, the game ended.