PITTSBURGH – It’s true. You can’t win them all.
Just when it seemed as if FC Cincinnati would prove the old adage wrong, they played a 0-0 draw with Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC in front of 3,205 fans at Highmark Stadium on Saturday night.
By not losing, the Orange and Blue tied the United Soccer League record for longest unbeaten streak at 22. They also recorded their 14th shutout of the season.
By not winning, they snapped a league-record 10-match winning streak with one regular-season match to go next Saturday in Nashville.
Both teams missed point-blank shots and found any shots on goal hard to come by. Pittsburgh (15-4-13, 58 points) managed four and FC Cincinnati just three. Except for goalkeeper Spencer Richey’s clean sheet, it was probably not the kind of performance you want to give two weeks before the playoffs, but all in all, coach Alan Koch didn’t seem disturbed.
“The performance was very up and down,” Koch said in a club release. “There were some very good moments in the game and then some moments where we struggled a little bit. But, if you come play a team like Pittsburgh that are right at the top of the league, at their place, where they very rarely lose, you know it’s going to be challenging.
“We said to the guys all week long, ‘These are the games we want to play now to prepare ourselves for the postseason.’ We don’t want to play easy games, we want to go to tough places and play tough teams. That's the best way to challenge ourselves to get ourselves ready for the postseason.”
Richey stopped all four shots on target for his fifth shutout of the season, while Pittsburgh’s Dan Lynd stopped all three FCC shots on target for his 12th clean sheet.
FC Cincinnati (23-3-7, 76 points) is now 17-0-5 since its last loss - a 2-0 decision to Louisville City FC on May 26. That matches the league-record unbeaten run by the 2012 Richmond Kickers.
They finished with a 2-0-2 record against Pittsburgh SC.
FC Cincinnati, the regular-season league champion, will host the Eastern Conference’s eighth seed (currently New York Red Bulls II) in the playoff opener on Saturday, Oct. 20 at Nippert Stadium.
