I went back and forth about sending this before FC Cincinnati played NYCFC tonight, but ultimately concluded I didn't want to have to update the stats below. So here's a deep dive on the state of FCC's goalkeeping at this point in 2026.

I'm still working on some bigger, more general, things about the Orange and Blue that should be in your inbox next week. A teaser: I hope you like reading about Evander shooting from outside the box.

Assessing Roman

At this point, writing about Roman Celentano is pretty much a right of passage for every season. This isn't the first time I've taken stock of the Orange and Blue's number one option in goal, or the second, or who preceded Celentano in goal. Things have felt worse so far in 2026, however, as FCC's defense was on a record pace towards worst in league history. Culpability for the defensive ineptitude likely extends across the field, but the team's center backs were under the microscope last week, so it's the Orange and Blue's primary shot stopper's turn this week.

Shot Stopping

The most important thing a goalkeeper can do to help their team win is to keep the ball out of the net. It may be obvious, but unpacking it in the correct context can still be tricky, even when we have pretty good data to understand what's going on.

Through this point in the season, Roman Celentano's shot stopping numbers are fine, not terribly good or bad, even if they are a little worse than might be expected they're not terribly off from his career norms. If the season were to end today, it'd rank right in the middle of his five MLS seasons in terms of shot stopping. Again, not excellent, but also not terrible. For league wide context, Celentano's 1.02 G/xG ranks 19th among the 32 MLS goalkeepers who have played at least 800 minutes.

The more pressing issue is that he's been under considerably more pressure so far in 2026. To this point, Celentano has faced the most shots on target per game in his career in Orange and Blue (5.76 shots/game), and they have been of the highest quality he's faced (0.36 PSxG/Shot). Put another way, through just 17 league games, Celentano has faced nearly the same amount of danger as he did in the entirety of every other season as a professional. That's a defensive issue, not a goalkeeping one.

A couple games with outsized impacts in 2026 heavily impact Celentano's shot stopping numbers for the season, too. After a solid start to the season, Celentano conceded six goals with a total post-shot expected goals value of 3.12. That's the big jump you can see in the above chart early in the season. Overcoming that, or any single game, takes time.

Distribution

The unfortunate demise of advanced data on Football Reference makes assessing Celentano's distribution a little more difficult than in years past. These passing sonars from Cata Bush's ASA Viz Hub do a good job illustrating the progression of Celentano's passing across the seasons.

So far in 2026, Celentano is playing a little more directly than in previous years, with his passes traveling the highest average distance and highest average vertical since 2023. There probably isn't much more to come from Celentano with the ball at his feet, he is who he is, but leaning back into playing the ball up the field more often seems to be a better use of his passing skill set.

Claiming

Now to something that's been top of mind for FCC fans: Celentano's ability to claim crosses. Measuring a keeper's ability to claim crosses is really difficult for many of the reasons you can think of. There are so many factors that contribute to whether a goalkeeper should, or shouldn't try to claim a cross. Where is the cross coming from? How many attackers are in the box looking to attack it? How many

However, we have a different tool available now. My friend Kieran Doyle-Davis recently built a really cool model for goalkeeper claims at American Soccer Analysis.

Scream and Shout: an xClaim Model for Goalkeeper Cross Collection — American Soccer Analysis

By Kieran Doyle Ever since we built goals added (g+) oh so many years ago, I’ve largely been unhappy with how we’ve treated goalkeepers here at ASA. ASA, the masterful puppeteer in the shadows crafting the rise of Matt Turner and Djordje Petrovic to the Premier League, letting them down!

American Soccer AnalysisKieran Doyle-Davis

You should absolutely read the full study, but the relevant TLDR here is that Celentano has not had a very good season claiming the ball on crosses.

In fact, Celentano's 2026 season is the second worst season in the database containing seasons between 2013 and 2026 among MLS players who faced at least 200 crosses. Claiming crosses has never been a particular strong suit of Celentano's, at least compared to other MLS goalkeepers, but before this season, he'd been in the green, albeit slightly.

It's relatively early, however, and there's time for Celentano to get closer to where he was. Bouncing back from a catastrophic error (or two) takes time and if prior seasons are any example, Celentano will have upwards of 300 more crosses to face before the season ends, so there's plenty of time for his claiming to creep closer to his career averages.

Celentano's claiming issues and slightly worse-than-previous shot stopping haven't been able to make FCC's defense look better than it was. Does he share in the blame for FCC's defensive struggles? Yes, almost certainly. But he's probably not very high on the list. In 2025, Celentano had his best shot stopping season and it papered over some serious cracks in FCC's defensive record (in combination with a lot of luck).

Both of those things have swung the other way this season. Celentano has played closer to league average as a shot stopper and whatever force field surrounding FCC's goal in 2025 to deal with opponents' other chances dissipated.

Depth

Celentano isn't the only member of FCC's goalkeepers' union. We've seen Evan Louro get some run in goal in a couple league games as well as in Leagues Cup. Liverpool loanee Fabian Mrozek has played nearly 1,200 minutes for FCC2 in MLS NextPro.

American Soccer Analysis' data only includes MLS play, unfortunately, so we've only got 212 minutes of coverage for Louro. So right from the jump, we've got an extremely small sample of minutes to analyze. Louro's shot stopping in those limited games has been worse than Celenatano's (1.51 G/xG) as has his claiming (-4.44 claims above expected/100). His distribution has been more direct, and includes one of the passes of the season, and, regardless of whether it's included in the data, it's worth watching one more time.

Mrozek's shot stopping in MLSNP hasn't been superlative (1.08 G/xG) under a similar amount of pressure to Celentano (5.59 shots faced/game). Unless something goes seriously wrong, Mrozek should continue to get minutes in NextPro, but what his future with the team is, if there is one, will be an interesting story in the offseason.