FC Cincinnati made DC United pay for a sluggish first half, with Evander breaking the deadlock in the 35th minute after good work from Pavel Bucha down the left. The visitors doubled their advantage early in the second half when Barlow finished off another Evander creation in the 52nd minute, leaving DC with a mountain to climb they never attempted. Cincinnati's efficiency was the story—two clinical finishes, two different scorers working off Evander's movement, and DC's porous defence couldn't find a way back into it. Our model leant toward a Cincinnati win at 39% with a 1-2 scoreline, so we got the result direction right but missed the specifics. DC managed to keep it tighter than expected, holding Cincinnati to just two goals where our pre-match read suggested a higher-scoring affair.

Before kickoff, form painted DC as fragile—poor recent results and a concerning concession rate—while Cincinnati looked more threatening going forward despite their own inconsistency. The head-to-head record heavily favoured the visitors, and those factors pointed toward a Cincinnati road win. The match largely confirmed the pre-match lean: Cincinnati were sharper when it counted, and DC couldn't generate enough to trouble them. That said, a goalless first half from United and no second-half response meant Cincy's control was more emphatic than we'd modelled for. Sometimes the cleaner wins are the ones nobody predicts, and this was one of them.