Luciano Acosta And FC Cincinnati Show MLS They Can Take A Punch

It will be a full-circle moment on Wednesday night when Luciano Acosta captains the MLS All-Stars against Arsenal at Audi Field in the 2023 MLS All-Star Game.

Acosta once plied his club trade there on Potomac Avenue in the nation’s capital for D.C. United, where he regularly showed flashes of the form that has him among the leading contenders for the 2023 MLS MVP award. Yet those outbursts were — save for one season — coupled with inconsistency while donning D.C.’s Black-and-Red, and never quite quieted questions why the product of the famed Boca Juniors academy could never quite achieve the reliable brilliance of other South American MLS playmakers.

All the promise seemed to unspool after his best D.C. campaign in 2018, in which he contributed 10 goals and 19 assists while suiting up along-side now-D.C. and All-Star manager Wayne Rooney.

The following winter, a potentially life-transforming move to Paris St. Germain developed rapidly and then fell apart just as fast. By the following winter, he had fallen out of favor in Washington and was allowed to leave for free in the offseason, making a brief soujourn in Liga MX with Atlas before returning to MLS with FC Cincinnati prior to the 2021 campaign.

In retrospect, Acosta’s failure to launch in D.C. may have been as much about the club’s willingness to trust the Argentine as his ability to repay it. That hesitancy was certainly understandable in some senses — Acosta was till only 25 when he played his final game for United, and he never really strung two vintage seasons together. But what followed his departure was decidedly worse than what occurred while he was with the club.

It began with a miserable 2020 that proved the death knell for Ben Olsen’s decade-long tenure as manager. Hernan Losada’s 2021 side showed promise but fell just shy of the playoffs, and his apparent loss of the locker room contributed to his early exit in 2022. And while other clubs might have felt jilted by Rooney’s exit as a player following the 2019 season — to take a player-coach role at Derby County a year earlier than his MLS contract expired — D.C. were desperate enough to bring Rooney back as manager by the end of another lost campaign last year. (To his credit, Rooney has engineered considerable improvements in his first full season at the helm.)

Meanwhile, Cincy offered what D.C. wouldn’t — hand Acosta the keys and the captaincy. In fact, Wednesday’s All-Star game will be only the fourth time the Argentine has worn the armband at Audi Field, with all of those coming as a visitor.

Eventually — and due in no small part to the appointment of new sporting director Chris Albright and manager Pat Noonan — Acosta has repaid that trust. And Cincy have climbed the ladder from the Eastern Conference basement to playoff contender to their current position as Supporters’ Shield front-runner.

Even then, though, you could credibly claim a reason to doubt the 29-year-old in the toughest moments: that they haven’t shown the ability to rally during adversity.

Until this month.

Cincinnati may have only a win and two draws in their last three matches. Yet that trio of games might be their most impressive in terms of proving those intangibles of resiliency and belief.

With one of Cincinnati’s top forward away on international duty and the other exiting in the summer transfer window, and with the replacement for the latter not yet in the squad, Acosta has helped Cincinnati take points from losing positions on three consecutive occasions. He has two goals and three assists in those games, almost single-handedly propelling his club while it awaits the return of Brandon Vazquez and the activation of Aaron Boupendza.

And it comes immediately following a 3-0 defeat at his former club on July club that could’ve given even oxygen to the idea that Acosta and/or Cincinnati might be good in the regular season but still had a ton to prove come October.

Prior to this recent run of comebacks, Cincy had only trailed on three occasions all season. Two of them finished as blowout defeats, 5-1 at St. Louis City back in mid-April and then the D.C. loss. (Acosta missed the game in St. Louis.) The third was a 3-3 draw in Chicago.

Now, after a strong response to falling behind against another genuine Cup contender in a 2-2 draw against New England, a two-goal fightback in a 2-2 draw at Charlotte FC, and the latest dramatic 2-1 win at the New York Red Bulls, the idea Acosta and his teammates can’t come through in the clutch seems laughable. Especially when Cincy was considerably less than full strength.

There’s no guarantee Acosta will capture his first MLS Cup crown this fall. Cincinnati have played their way into becoming oddsmakers’ favorites, but in Philadelphia, LAFC, Seattle, Nashville, New England and elsewhere, there are plenty of credible and experienced contenders.

But he is unquestionably the most important player on the league’s best team right now, and only rightful choice to wear the armband as he and the best of MLS test themselves against one of the World’s best club sides. And it should be an especially sweet honor to carry that mantle next week, around a stadium and a city where it felt like the locals never quite believed that was possible.