After work tonight, we went to a special FC Cincinnati Season Ticket holder Meet the Team event at Taft’s Brewpourium. And it was awesome. Doors opened at 5:00pm. I think we got to the Brewpourium at 5:02…

We got a selfie with FC|C President Jeff Berding…

There was some sharp looking merch…

New got new FC Cincinnati MLS scarves. But I didn’t think to take a photo of them. There were a bunch of different tables set-up for autographs…

And there was this impressive sculpture work-in-progress of the Cincinnati boxing legend, the Cincinnati Cobra Ezzard Charles, When it’s completed, this larger than life statue will live outside of FC Cincinnati’s new soccer-specific stadium in Cincinnati’s West End on the street named after the boxer…

 

I couldn’t help but notice there are a fair number of players from Michigan on FC|C’s MLS squad including Eric Alexander, who is from Portage right next to Kalamazoo…

And there are a bunch of new guys who are not from anywhere near Michigan…

We saw FC|C’s very first MLS designated player, Fanendo Adi…

There are a bunch of new faces to learn…

And there was one of my favorite FC|C players ex-Arsenal defender Justin Hoyte…

And contrary to #HoyteIsOpen from last season, he wasn’t open for very long tonight…

He was definitely one of the more popular players at this event.

And then it was about time for the main event…

After Jeff Berding’s opening comments, every player came up on stage to be introduced and say a few words to all of us fans. There were a lot of new faces to learn…

And Manu Ledesma…

And Polish goalkeeper Przemysław “Titi” Tytoń…

That’s Eric Alexander from Portage, Michigan. He went to Portage Central High School…

Emery Welshman was one of my favorite players from last season…

After this event was over, he got sent out on loan to Canadian Premier League side, Forge FC for the season. Also, there’s a Canadian Premier League? Asking for a friend. Next was one of our favorites, the aforementioned Fanendo Adi…

And Corben Bone who lives in Northside and who we met at Higher Gravity…

And Justin Hoyte, who was still not open despite his hashtag claiming otherwise…

After USMNT midfielder Kenny Saief who just joined FC|C in the last couple of days from Belgian giants Anderlecht…

And there was defender Forest Lasso…

And there were a bunch of other guys but the above photos were the best photos. A lot of them were kind of fuzzy or blurry. I probably should have used a camera other than my Samsung Galaxy Note9 with my Moment 60mm lens…

But oh well. Then the entire team came back up on stage for a group photo…

Can you hear me in the back?

It was a pretty neat event. It was much more intimate than I thought it was going to be…

And there was a roundtable discussion with Jeff Berding, Coach Koch and the guy in charge of international recruiting…

There were autograph sessions and then all the players got pizza slices…

It was a pretty awesome night with FC Cincinnati. Click to see all the photos I took at the FC Cincinnati Meet the Team season ticket holder event. 😀⚽️❤️