Orlando City SC 3-2 Portland Timbers: For 70+ Glorious Minutes...

Suggested...without malice.

If you understand what just happened, congratulations. Personally, I couldn’t explain how the Portland Timbers threw away what, until 20 minutes before the final whistle, looked like a sleepwalking win over Orlando City SC, even with a perfect understanding of system dynamics and a limitless array of visual aids.

Before going further, I’ll start with the refereeing, which was comic. Baldomero Toledo should absolutely be sent to the facility where they make you watch video Clockwork-Orange-style until he sees his own blindness and without the benefit of his natural tears, because he blew two calls today badly enough to warrant such re-education. That both plays went against Portland stokes local grievances with the power of twenty bellows pumped by well-lubed bodybuilders (still pissed this never happened, because it would have made America at least a little better), but that still doesn’t explain the more central question of what the hell actually happened out there. Does anyone else feel like Portland fans collectively linger at the end of the first act of a sci-fi/horror movie, where the hero drives off in a car to what looks like freedom, only to discover the monster is in the backseat, no seriously look it's right there!!? I ask because, this makes two games now - and in a row - where Portland looked for the world as if they’d solved the riddle, only to have things unravel (this is how I experience Sudoku, by the way. I always find out on the very last number that I’d fucked the whole thing up.)

The whole thing feels doubly bewildering over here at Conifers & Citrus HQ (remodeled just this weekend, by the way, with smaller, tighter, and hotter furnishings. The den looks swanky, like the Playboy Mansion, only with IKEA in charge of interior design - i.e., less shag, more Sweden), because, given my writing timeline/expectations (short), I spent 70 minutes of that game outlining a tale of triumph - i.e,. how the Timbers’ 4-3 (of the 4-3-2-1) flummoxed Orlando’s attack to the point of impotence, and reveling in the possibility that the Timbers really could find enough goals against the rest of MLS using what I’ve just decided to dub “The Groupon Attack” (e.g., attack with the power of 5 players using only 3 of them!). That made sense in a game when Orlando consistently stalled at the top of the Timbers’ defensive third and that saw Sebastian Blanco (especially) break through Orlando’s line with nothing but the goal ahead of him and the sound of Mohamed El-Munir’s feet pounding the ground behind him. (El-Munir’s recovery speed deserves its own entry, as does Dairon’s Asprilla’s all-but eternal wind-up on any given shot).

To pull Asprilla out of that parenthetical, he could have tied the game at or near the death had he dove that header from Diego Chara’s flawless cross on goal. He didn’t, of course, because, for all his strengths (lung-busting endurance, mostly), Asprilla’s other talents include missing the goal from more angles than mere mortals thought possible. I think the larger thing to draw from that moment was Chara’s visible understanding that someone needed to put the team on his back and carry it - and Chara did that in a truly commanding manner in that moment. There was a heartening injection of urgency at the end - not just with Asprilla’s near-miss, but with (the much wrong’d) Alvas Powell (on the penalty call) charging forward and almost getting a chance - and those details communicate a little about how Portland’s luck broke toward the end - e.g. in the least likely direction(s). The one thing we can all agree on: Timbers fans didn’t get our TV-movie comeback, and there’s nothing to do but move on.

But I’m still really hung-up on the same large phenomenon: how did Portland go from something like cruise control to totally ceding the game, and across every relevant dimension? I can’t answer that. I’m not sure anyone can, not even Giovanni Savarese, the architect of it all. The camera gave him a tight pan toward the end of the game, a moment that saw him sharply acknowledge something to some unseen person off-camera. Part of me likes to think, someone gave him a look that said, “How the Hell did this happen?” Savarese’s nod said, “I don’t know, but I know it’s a thing.”

It’s here where I’m going to start subverting the top-surface script. Things didn’t end well, obviously, but the Timbers started off grand. However this game ended, Portland put themselves in a position to win the game in which I thought they had, 1) no chance of winning, and 2) even less chance of scoring multiple goals. And #2 deserves a little drawing out in that Portland put a thoroughly healthy number of shots on frame (Orlando shot a lot more, and more wastefully): what does this game look like if Blanco’s shot early in the second half hits the crossbar just two inches further inside, or if Diego Valeri’s plant-foot holds on his shot that went off the outside of the post? Portland had more chances besides, at least two of them clean breakaways; they didn’t bury those, on the one hand, but, on the other, some part of me feels like the defense would have collapsed enough to let Orlando come back from a deficit of any size. This loss felt written in the stars, and for both teams, but Portland accomplished something in this game that they haven’t so far this season: they looked threatening for most of the game. That’s a positive, right?

In fact, that point brings in the most complicated question of all: how the fuck did Orlando come back into this one? They looked iffy (or just bad) even when they looked good - see Dom Dwyer falling on his face while (yes) beating both of Portland’s central defenders for the winner. (There’s a question, and one I’ll tweet with this post: what tactical positioning would have kept out Dwyer’s shot? What should either Larrys Mabiala or Bill Tuiloma have done differently against Dwyer on the winner?) Their first goal was ugly/fortunate, their second came from a bad call, etc. But the central mystery to me comes with how Orlando rescued this game while never looking particularly good or coherent. As ESPN’s Taylor Twellman couldn’t stop noting, Orlando wasted 70 minutes of this game on low-percentage crosses. Moreover, take away their (again, somewhat fluky) opening goal off the corner, both Orlando’s goals have that low-replicability whiff of luck about them.

Call it home-game magic, call it road-game curses, I think Portland played well enough today that it took bad-luck breaks to do them in. By that I mean, sure, the team softened in crucial moments of the game, but that kind of softening doesn’t inevitably lead to goals in every other game. I’ll admit, the box score (and Orlando’s 24 whopping shots) announces a certain vulnerability, but there was a wildness to Orlando’s shooting that, in my opinion, overstates what Portland gave up in terms of shots, and overstates what Orlando put on goal. Bottom line, the Timbers could have won this game; if you take away what I shall from here and forever after call “Toledo’s Gift,” Portland basically drew it. And yet, the Timbers dominated…well, implications of the title aside, I’d argue they dominated 40 minutes of this game, and outright. And that’s a really good sign - potentially, at least - that kind of dominance has a fairly good chance of ending differently at home.

All in all, I’d argue Portland ended their 5-game season-opening road-trip on a high, playing more coherent, therefore better, soccer with each passing game. In spite of the loss, the Timbers don’t look like the grabass-tic mess that started the season, and I draw comfort from that. Had they won, I might have been open to Portland as a Supporters’ Shield-winning team. Honestly, I think they have too much left to figure out to seriously compete at that level (Side Note: Have I mentioned how bad I am at predictions? The way that, with some frequency, me asserting something often ends with the opposite becoming reality? I should figure out how to use his power for good), but I think this team could have some juice in it with the current personnel. Seriously.

Before wrapping up, I want to talk about today’s two key starts, Samuel Armenteros and Andy Polo. To knock down the easy one, I didn’t really notice Polo. Some of that files under the defender/defensive midfielder rule of, if you didn’t see him, he must have done all right (first, I’m not sure I’ve ever bought that cliché, and on the grounds that doing nothing visible in a game could also mean you didn’t contribute positively), but I read that more to mean that he didn’t matter on either side of the ball. I only bring this up to suggest that, at least on the (theoretical - more later) defensive side, Portland has a scheme figured out. Whatever you think of it (and its arguable breakdown today), I don’t think that formation has evolved to the point where the team can fine-tune its attacking strengths, but I’d argue that it’s fairly plug-‘n’-play on the defensive end - as in, you can start Polo in it, and it’ll hold up all right. (Unless, that is, on further review, we see goal-scoring attacks coming from places Polo is supposed to stop up.) In other words, and against a grand total of (GULP!) five goals against to the contrary, I think Portland has a system that reasonably fits the personnel it has on hand.

To be clear, this is a very tough argument to make, and on multiple levels. First, it has no faith in the defense - by which I mean the back four; second, and again, it has conceded five goals in two games, so…I’m advocating for what now? Hope and faith that this defensive arrangement will stop leaking goals? (JEFF?! You hate hope and fai….never mind. Just…keep going...)

As for Armenteros, I think he fits a 3-4 player attack with Blanco and Valeri as the key elements, and probably better than Fanendo Adi. Adi works better for a hold-up play system, but I suspect (barring changes) that Portland’s attack will feature open-field inter-play between Blanco and Valeri, one step behind the defense (see: the play that led to the PK), which will give greater value to a player who runs against the line (Armenteros) against a guy who backs into it (Adi). In fairness, though, I think Adi can run channels well enough, but Armenteros just looks more like he can run further faster and longer into those channels, and that his mobility will match better with Valeri and Blanco at their most fluid, and best.

The deeper point is that, no matter which forward fronts it, Portland has looked convincing in the attack over the past couple weeks; two goals per game is a respectable rate…if only when your defense holds. More to the point, Portland enjoyed 15-20 minutes of pulling Orlando apart in this game’s middle passage. No goals came from it, but it looked dangerous. The problem is, the defense didn't hold. In fact, it let in one more goal than the team scored. That’s reality, dirty, stinking, inescapable reality. And yet I’m optimistic. Portland looks coherent, now, and on both sides of the ball. I think there’s a lot of fine-tuning to do, but I believe the team has systems in place on both sides of the game that have real potential to work out. The problems in this system are real; the question is whether or not they go away.