Drafty... “Timbers fans will never forget the complex emotional rush as he took the Providence Park field as a Timber one last time.”
That’s from The Mothership’s recap and, personally, nothing
about the emotional rush was “complex.” I watched the Portland Timbers’ stressful (please, God, not another draw) 2-1 win over the Houston Dynamo with
only a couple people, and we toasted Adi at least three times last night.
Timbers fans had the fun of watching Adi grow into its first genuinely reliable
forward of the Major League Soccer era, and that means Adi will leave a little
history behind when he goes. Did I tear up when he scored the game winner? No,
shut up…that was…hold on, look over there! (I’ll loop back to this.)
The recap also featured this statement:
“Blanco was in contention for [Man of the Match], given his opening goal and the work he did in breaking down Houston's defense all match. But then Adi stepped on the field, seized the narrative, and made his last one count.”
Nah, it was Blanco, not least because that (frenetic) game-winner
doesn’t happen if he doesn’t rescue the ball from (pretty sure it was) Alfredo
Machado’s sliding tackle. After a whole damn night of seeing Portland shove the
ball forward with the blunt cluelessness of a toddler straining to shove the
square-shaped object into the star-shaped hole, that moment of composure really
stood out. I’ll skip the over-long back-story for what pops into my head every
time I see a team force the ball forward like that* [ed. see note, at the
bottom], but, even when you play into the teeth of a team’s defense, you still
want to hit around the actual goddamn teeth. The Timbers kicked at one tooth after
another more most of last night, and it very nearly cost them two points. And a
serious dent to team/fan morale. So, God bless you, Mr. Blanco, and you too,
Mr. Adi.
It takes a goal with that much narrative and poetry to it stuff
(hold on, 80-12, yeah) 68 minutes of teeth-grating frustration into the place
where I keep my repressed memories (e.g., that short hitch in the KGB). Between
Houston’s (too-soon!) equalizer and the game-winner, an almost tangible gloom
hung over the table where I sat, watching and stewing as Dynamo players seemed
to read every pass Portland played into midfield. I’m looking at the box score
now and I’m calling it what it is - a damned filthy propaganda. Unless the league has
re-defined the word “pass’ to include cases where the player controls it for
less than one second, the Timbers never completed 83% of its passes last night,
and I think they got the numbers backwards on the duels too. (Maybe they used a
random number generator? A rooster pecking corn?)
Or, to float a different theory, maybe whispers of panic
colored my real-time perception of the game. By the time the 55th minute rolled
round, focus had shifted to sifting the math and meaning that would follow from
another home draw. This was the second game in a four-game home-stand, and the
thought of Portland getting just two points of six - and against a second
vulnerable team - would have got the jitters going. Like the last draw against Montreal,
this wasn’t three free points: Houston is not a good road team, haven’t been
for a couple years, but, with Alberth Elis and Romell Quioto running around out
there, they always posed a risk as counter-punchers. That reality, combined
with the way Houston players kept poking the ball off Portland’s players’ toes
and a persistent problem with Timbers players passing to phantom runs, left me feeling
as secure about the game as I feel “dressed” in one of those gowns they give at
hospitals that only tie at the back (behold the world’s longest metaphor for “exposed”).
If you need reminding about how close this game came to flipping, watch Alvas
Powell just…sort of lay down (I guess?) and leave a free header for Quioto. Had
that gone in, y’know? I didn’t, but it could have. And then we’d be having a
very different conversation about all this.
Looking at the box score again, I see that the Timbers had
19 shots last night. When one of the guys I watched with last night noted this
during the game, we all said something like “when?” If you go back through the
highlights, that number holds up a little better. Dairon Asprilla, in
particular, found two great openings - one of them spectacular - but I doubt I’m
alone in thinking that, if Asprilla jumped off a building, he’d miss the ground.
Because he busts enough ass for three men, no one can fault Asprilla for his
effort. At the same time, with Adi moving on, that guy, Mr. Misses, is some part
of the Timbers’ depth at forward. Yeah, yeah, I know there are some T2 forwards
lurking out there, but there’s also the fact that they’re not getting called up
to the first to consider. That is our future, till further notice.
To loop back to Adi, I’ve seen a handful of tweets this
morning asking why the team has to move him. Even as I think I know the real answer
(he asked), I asked the same question last night, and on a fundamental level:
can any team in MLS hold onto two forwards on Adi’s and Armenteros’ level? That
assumes the scenario the Timbers faced - e.g., having no apparent way to play
both forwards at the same time. It looks like the team could afford it, because…well,
haven’t they been doing so all season? With that, the answer seems to be, sure,
the team could hold onto two league-elite forwards, but that depends on buy-in
from both players, and that’s what the team couldn’t manage.
This is what wraps up the thought about the “complexity” of
whatever emotions I feel about Adi moving on. My one and only thought on this
is, good for him. A soccer player’s career isn’t just short, it’s one that requires
players to create and maintain your maximum personal value by way of being good,
productive and reliable, first, but also visible. A player has only one setting
in which to prove “good, productive and reliable” and that’s in competitive games
- where he becomes visible. Even if Adi’s not a competitive psychopath (which I
assume he is), he loses value with every game he doesn’t make the field; even a
“super-sub” role probably dents a player’s value. Moreover, the clock never
stops ticking, a player never stops getting older, and so on. So, yeah, best of luck to Adi, but here’s to hoping he doesn’t
go to a Western Conference team. (Except maybe Colorado. Those poor fans need
something better to watch…)
The story doesn’t end there, obviously, not least because
there’s the question of what Portland gets for Adi. I’ve not seen that answered
as yet and, obviously, I hope Timbers fans get some kind of Christmas-Birthday-sized
payoff out of this deal, because that’ll go some way to answering the real
question in play here: how Portland will cope with the post-Adi lifestyle?
The short answer: they already have been, and that wraps up
my thought about Blanco and the MVP question. Adi has been a great player for this
team, and Samuel Armenteros has stepped into the forward role around the level
of “just fine,” and better than fine some days. And there’s no question
Portland misses a good forward as often as they’re absent (see, Asprilla,
Dairon), but I’d still argue that the team will continue to live or die by
whatever Blanco and The Two Diegos (Valeri and Chara) do on any given day. And that’s
where I get antsy.
I doubted the Christmas Tree formation at first, but it didn’t
take long for it to shut me up. Sure, it put the balance of Portland’s players
behind the ball, but, in the early days, that just seemed to free up room for
Blanco and The Two Diegos to run riot through the other team. These were the glory
days of 2018, when the team built its (ongoing) unbeaten streak on Ws. The
thing I marveled at during that time was how fluidly Portland played, the way
each player just…knew where to find the others, and some sixth-sense awareness
of where the runs would wind up. I’ve floated the “they’re not getting enough
players forward” complaint as much as anybody who talks about this, but the ball movement that built that
dazzling counter-attack meant they never had to; it rendered that worry
inoperative.
It’s that freakin’ magic that feels like it’s dried up in
recent games. Worst case, teams have figured out the Timbers’ outlets from the
back and where their runs go further up the field, thereby choking off the
paths to glory. Houston definitely had a bead on this, but so have the last
few teams. In general, though, Portland hasn’t moved the ball nearly as well
lately, and that probably explains some of the tactical weirdness last night. I
saw some talk about a 3-5-2 for Portland last night, but I didn’t really
believe it until I saw Julio Cascante way the hell to the right side a couple
times too many. The official line-up (e.g., on The Mothership) shows the ol’
familiar Christmas Tree, but, on the theory that they’ve been figured out, the
idea of the Timbers trying to flood the midfield would make sense or at least
it wouldn’t surprise me. Assuming this is what the team did try, it’s only
successful to the extent that it did just enough, and in a favorable scenario.
Best case, the Timbers players are going through an uptight
patch, one that’ll loosen up as the weather cools off and the battles for the
playoffs heat up. Given the alternative (e.g., another draw/existential dread),
I’m thrilled with the three points. That said, there’s something about the way
the team is playing - that hospital gown sensation described above - that won’t
go away till something chases it out of there.
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