Kévin Denkey’s 90+1 equalizer rescues FC Cincinnati in a 3-3 draw with Charlotte FC

A fast start, then a chase

Cincinnati barely needed a settling-in period. Pavel Bucha put the hosts ahead in the 2nd minute, arriving for Tom Barlow’s cross and finishing with his right foot into the bottom-left corner. Whatever calm that might have created disappeared almost immediately. Liel Abada answered in the 7th minute, striking from the center of the box to bring Charlotte level at 1-1 and turn the evening into something far less orderly than Cincinnati’s possession would later suggest.

Charlotte then made the game even stranger in the 17th minute, when Pep Biel converted a penalty to the center of the goal for a 2-1 lead. That sequence mattered because it established the match’s basic tension: Cincinnati would spend most of the night pressing the issue, while Charlotte kept finding scoreboard leverage without needing much of the ball.

The numbers around the rest of the match tell that story clearly enough. Cincinnati finished with 68.9 percent possession, completed 585 of 649 passes, produced 29 shots and 24 shot assists, and won 12 corners. Charlotte had 31.1 percent possession, just eight shots and three corners, yet remained in front for long stretches because Kristijan Kahlina stopped seven shots and the visitors survived wave after wave with 26 clearances and eight interceptions. This was not a quiet defensive evening for Charlotte; it was a stubborn one.

Denkey keeps arriving, and Charlotte keeps answering

Cincinnati’s best route back into the match was the one it kept returning to all night: service, second balls and pressure around the box. The equalizer at 51 minutes fit that pattern. Denkey made it 2-2 with a left-footed finish from the center of the area, with Andrei Chirila providing the assist after a set-piece situation. In a match where Cincinnati piled up 12 corners and 26 crosses, that goal felt less like a surprise than the continuation of a theme.

But the level score lasted only four minutes. In the 55th, Charlotte went back in front when Idan Toklomati headed in from very close range after Rodolfo Aloko’s cross. It was a reminder that Charlotte did not need volume to be dangerous. Cincinnati could own the ball and still be one clean delivery away from trouble, and that is exactly what happened there.

The individual stat lines sharpen the picture. Denkey finished with two goals on five shots, putting three on target, and he was the constant thread in Cincinnati’s recovery. Bucha added the early goal and put two of his four shots on frame. Chirila contributed the assist on the second Cincinnati goal, while Barlow and Bryan Ramírez each supplied a cross that became an assist. For Charlotte, Abada, Biel and Toklomati each scored once, giving the visitors a different scorer for every lead they built. Kahlina’s seven saves belonged in the same company as the goals; Charlotte needed them.

Our take: Cincinnati had control, not command

The equalizer finally arrived at 90+1, and it came from the kind of persistence Cincinnati had been advertising all evening. Ramírez delivered a cross following a corner, Denkey finished from very close range into the bottom-right corner, and the scoreboard finally caught up with the pressure. When a team records 10 shots on target, 15 accurate crosses and 12 corners, a late goal can look inevitable even if it never feels guaranteed.

Our take: for Cincinnati, this draw reads as both rescue and warning. The rescue is obvious, because Denkey spared them a loss. The warning is there in the gap between control and comfort. A side that holds 68.9 percent of the ball and outshoots an opponent 29-8 should not have to wait until stoppage time to get even, and a side that creates that much should still come away asking how Charlotte turned four shots on target into three goals. The attacking platform was real. So was the looseness in the moments that mattered most.

Our take: Charlotte should leave with mixed feelings of its own. There is real value in scoring three times with limited possession and surviving long enough to stay ahead into stoppage time. But there is also an obvious strain in asking a back line to absorb 29 shots, 12 corners and 26 crosses while the goalkeeper makes seven saves and the team completes only 239 accurate passes. If Charlotte can turn some of those defensive stretches into longer spells on the ball, a match like this becomes easier to finish. Instead, Cincinnati kept reopening the door until Denkey finally walked through it. In the end, 3-3 was fair to the noise of the game: Cincinnati had too much pressure to be shut out of a result, and Charlotte had done too much scoring to deserve none of it.

Scoring moments

1. Period 1 · 2'

   Pavel Bucha scored for FC Cincinnati in minute 2. The assist went to Tom Barlow.

2. Period 1 · 7'

   Liel Abada scored for Charlotte FC in minute 7.

3. Period 1 · 17'

   Pep Biel scored for Charlotte FC in minute 17.

4. Period 2 · 51'

   Kévin Denkey scored for FC Cincinnati in minute 51. The assist went to Andrei Chirila.

5. Period 2 · 55'

   Idan Toklomati scored for Charlotte FC in minute 55. The assist went to Rodolfo Aloko.

6. Period 2 · 90'+1'

   Kévin Denkey scored for FC Cincinnati in minute 90'+1. The assist went to Bryan Ramírez.