CINCINNATI — FC Cincinnati has spent most of this season looking like a team capable of making the playoffs without ever quite convincing anyone that it belongs there.
Now the Orange and Blue have eight matches to change that.
Cincinnati enters the final stretch of the MLS regular season with 33 points through 26 matches, sitting 10th in the Eastern Conference. That sounds worse than the actual situation. FCC is tied on points with Red Bull New York and New York City FC, the two teams currently occupying the final Wild Card spots, and sits only one point behind seventh-place Orlando City.
The playoffs are still very much within reach, but the excuses for the defensive lapses, and road record, are running out.
FC Cincinnati has been inconsistent for most of the season, particularly away from TQL Stadium. The Orange and Blue are 7-2-3 at home but just 1-7-6 on the road, a split that helps explain why a team capable of beating good opponents has spent so much of the year hovering around the postseason line.
The most recent example came in Montréal. Cincinnati went north needing points against a team near the bottom of the Eastern Conference and instead came home with a 3-1 loss. Tom Barlow equalized in the second half, but Montréal scored twice in a three-minute span and turned another important road opportunity into another missed chance.
There is still time to correct all of that. There just is not enough time to keep repeating it.
The remaining schedule begins Saturday at Atlanta United, another club sitting below Cincinnati in the standings. Four days later, FCC finally returns to TQL Stadium to face New England before hosting Columbus in Hell is Real on Oct. 18.
The postponed home match against D.C. United will be played Oct. 21, followed three days later by a road match against D.C. again. Cincinnati then travels to Inter Miami before closing the regular season with home matches against Philadelphia and Nashville.
That is eight games with almost every kind of challenge imaginable. There are matches against teams Cincinnati should expect to beat, games against direct competitors in the Eastern Conference, a rivalry match against Columbus, a difficult trip to Miami, and a Decision Day finale against Nashville.
If Cincinnati wants to play beyond Nov. 7, this is where the season will be decided.
The encouraging part is that FCC does not need some miraculous turnaround. Cincinnati is tied on points with the two teams currently holding the final playoff spots and sits only one point behind seventh place. The Orange and Blue are not trying to erase a massive deficit or hoping half the conference collapses around them.
And if anyone is keeping track, they are still in a better position than the Crew are right now.
The fact remains that they need to start turning opportunities into points.
That sounds obvious, but it has been the problem all season. Cincinnati has shown enough talent to compete with good teams and enough inconsistency to give points away against teams it should beat. The road record is the clearest example, but it has hardly been the only one.
There is no longer enough schedule left to shrug off another poor performance and assume there will be time to fix it later.
Later is now.
Evander has been one of the league’s most productive attacking players, and the roster has enough talent around him to reach the postseason. What Cincinnati has not shown often enough is the ability to put together complete performances week after week. That must change.
That said, FCC still controls its destiny. Beat the teams around it, take advantage of the remaining home matches, and find a way to stop giving away points on the road, and the postseason remains very realistic.
Fail to do those things, and a season that never quite found its footing will end exactly where it spent much of the year — just outside where Cincinnati expected to be.
Eight games remain. That is plenty of time to save the season, but it is not enough time to keep wasting it.
