It was a frustrating night, one where the whistle seemed to
blow on Diego Chara’s every third step and when the officiating team took
a…stringently legalistic view of the offside rule (by which I mean
butt-puckered sadism, only with footnotes for authority (e.g,. VAR)). The
Timbers had two goals called back that anyone but a Puritan would allow. That got Drew Fischer on my bad side, but he acted as a general irritant - e.g., how far he indulged Johan Blomberg’s serial, tacky
fouling. Blomberg’s first yellow came four fouls too late,
and the red should have come too.
Yeah, were I on the field, and without whatever was up
Fischer’s ass not up my ass, I would have allowed both Jeremy Ebobisse’s (hereafter,
“Ebo”) and Diego Valeri’s (hereafter “Tango”) goals that were called offside - even
after VAR (hmm...looks like you'll have to sit through the full highlights to see them; hide your shame, MLS, hide your shame). As every hep fan of the Portland Timbers knows it didn’t matter in
the end because the Timbers beat the Colorado Rapids 2-0 at home, and Ebo and
Tango scored those two goals (justice, motherfuckers!).
All this bitching about the referee points at the
frustrating side of last night’s win, but, to flip things over to the sunny
side, that also means Portland created two more quality chances at a minimum (they created plenty, and good ones).
That’s a hopeful sign, especially with Ebo starting. I’ll get to that below,
but it’s also important to keep one fact firmly in mind: playing this limping Colorado
team at home made this team in must-in - that’s in the sense of, a team that
wants to go anywhere at all after the regular season must win games like these.
Overall, Portland did two things tonight that I see as
unmitigated “goods.” First, they started Ebo - or just any player at forward -
something I believe is as necessary to the team’s short-term success as every
player in the game-day 18 remembering to bring his cleats to the game. So long
as Portland fields only one forward, they need at least one option at forward
that is not Dairon Asprilla, because…well, Dairon Asprilla. I know there’s a
camp that has been pushing to get Ebo into the first team for a while now and, I’ve
been on that team throughout (if tucked into the back of rally). To underline a
point already made, if this team is going to “rock” the soccer equivalent of
elbow- and knee-pads of formations (that’s the Christmas tree; safety first!), they
need to be able to hit teams with something besides Valeri, Sebastian Blanco
and Samuel Armenteros, and them alone, from one game to the next.
The second “good” I liked was seeing Portland come out in a
clear 4-player back-line. So far as I’m concerned, this team has shown they
don’t have center backs who can play in the fullback-esque isolation that comes
with playing the one of the outside defensive players in a 3-5-2. With a
four-player back line, I not only think this team is solid, I’d argue that its
depth pieces make more sense. Again, most the questions about the Timbers
circle aimlessly around Portland’s attack. Speaking of circling aimlessly…
I don’t think many people will point to this win as either
exemplary or pivotal, and that has a lot to do with how…feebly Rapids attacked
tonight. I think creating overloads was
their goal - often down Zarek Valentin’s unfamiliar right (more later) - but,
because their attacking players couldn’t work out their spacing and movement,
they just sort of led themselves into a succession of bottlenecks and blind
alleys. Colorado would stack as many as six players on side and the whole thing
would peter out into a game Simon Says, only with a silent Simon; they’d get
things arranged and effectively freeze, with no more sure where to go, who
should move first, etc. Before long, they would stop and stare at the guy on
the ball, as if mesmerized.
I’m happy for the win, basically, but don’t think it cleared
that high of a bar. As (very) close followers of this site know, I’ve started to
carefully track results for all the teams in MLS, and on a loose theory that it
strips a lot of clutter out of a team’s trajectory and/or narrative. By that I
mean, if the Rapids have been winless on the road over their last 10 games and
on the wrong side of strong in the attack, and they’re playing a generally sound
home team (e.g., Portland), one that, barring an anomalous loss or two, has had
a good defense: what do you think is going to happen? The Rapids already slim chances
to win last night got even slimmer when they lost Niki Jackson and Nana Boateng
to red-card suspension in 0-6 home humiliation to RSL the week before. Add
Kellyn Acosta’s absence through international “duty” (c’mon, fuck friendlies; I
used to love these things, but the way they schedule them tells me everything
about how much they care), and a loss in this one would have hurt the Timbers
more than it ever could’ve hurt Colorado. (Sure, they probably just lost what
they had left to lose, but it wasn’t much.)
That said, wherever the bar is, the important thing is to
clear it. And Portland did that, on both sides of the ball, and comfortably.
As for Portland, the biggest remaining question is how to make
something mighty out of that midfield when it counts - e.g., in the playoffs,
when you can’t rely on Colorado coming to town to hand you a morale-boosting
win. The line-up Portland played tonight - the four-man backline under a three
person “midfield” with Chara and Andy Polo flanking Lawrence Olum and,
sometimes, playing high - is a variation on what has kept the Timbers
competitive all season. Even when the team maybe went away from it (and got
whacked hard for daring to dream), head coach Giovanni Savarese has reliably
built around a three-man midfield, whether it was Polo, Chara, and Cristhian Paredes, or Polo, David Guzman, and Chara, or, just last week, Paredes, Lawrence Olum, and Guzman. I italicized that “maybe” because that (alleged) 3-5-2
could flatten into a 5-3-2, and probably did that more often than intended. My
point is the three seems like the constant. And it is solid.
It also feels like a limitation. I enjoyed that long period
when the original Christmas Tree over-performed as much as the next guy, but I’m
also convinced that it has since found its natural level. For what it's worth, I wonder whether having Guzman at the middle of
that three doesn't do more to promote the attack; the question is what
the team gives away. Regardless, last night’s line-up
held up fine (again, the opposition), but it also put Chara in a weird spot, one
that mutes the best of his game (covering ground, which he can only do on part of the field)
while also playing to his weakness (he’s neither a great crosser nor a wizard
at combination play). Polo played the same role on the opposite side, and I’d
argue that suits him decently, but that still balances out to 4 to 4 1/2
players in the attack, with the rest generally defending. Even then, I’m trying
to picture the mechanics of playing Polo on the same side of Jorge Villafana,
and wonder if that still doesn’t pencil out to having either Polo OR Villafana
helping the attack, and adding width on Portland’s left....
Yes, I’m rambling. I think I’ll spend the week staring at
Portland’s roster and trying to imagine it as something swashbuckling and
ruthless. And I’m going to put special emphasis on trying to envision a
formation that doesn’t have three dudes at the center of it. Maybe that’s
impossible, I don’t know. Maybe Gio is doing all he can…not sure how many
people buy that…
I’ll close on a grateful note. Ebobisse did well enough last
night; even if he struggled with some of the back-to-goal work, his runs were
good (even the ones that didn’t make sense to me until they did) and he took
both of his clearest chances like, well, a pro. Valeri found plenty of space last
night and looked fresher than he had for a while…or that could just be
confirmation bias whispering appealing to my obsession with resting him. And that’s
all good. The team coasted to three points, and at the right time of the season…
…but I can’t stop thinking, “yeah, but against Colorado”
after each happy thought. I don’t keep going back to that to take anything away
from the win. It’s more about seeing the game with clearest, coldest eyes
possible - that is, with the Rapids as a permanent, reality-checking asterisk
hanging over it. Portland has another winnable game ahead, fortunately, and
with a full week to prepare for it (that’s Houston away). They’ll host Columbus
Crew SC the Wednesday after, and I think that’ll give us a better sense of
Portland’s level late in this 2018 season.
In no particular order of response:
ReplyDeleteValeri DID look fresher last night. My benchmark for him is, in a game how many of his attack-intentioned passes go awry or intercepted. Last night it was a very low number. His feet were doing what he wanted them to do - unlike some other recent games.
Polo had a pretty nice game. I do think that it's gotten in his head that he's not scoring. In the last 10-15 minutes of regular time, he went towards goal beautifully, then forced a low percentage shot on goal when he had the easy pass to an open Armenteros. I think it happened because he had shots blocked earlier in the game and it was bugging him, and he was determined to get HIS goal.
I appreciate your midfield ruminations about our setup, but don't discount how Blanco is allowed an unconstrained role where he can pop up almost anywhere on the pitch he feels like. Last night against the Rapids he did a bunch of midfield work when he wasn't shooting on goal and he was my man of the match.
That's the kind of game where I appreciate that the Rapids are a clean-playing team. A more cynical team would had replied to our fluid give-and-go play with disruptive, ugly, ankle-crunching fouls. I like it when a team decides that, no matter the outcome, they're there to play soccer.
Thanks, as always, for chiming in. And it's funny, because I was just thinking about Blanco driving back from the store (that's like two minutes ago), his defensive upside in particular. I credit both Blanco and Valeri for the defensive work they put in - and do rate Blanco as the better player in that regard. All in all, though, I don't see how a left side of Polo and Villafana works functions, at least in a way that gets the most out of both players' attacking upside. I'm not saying it's something they can't figure out, so much as I'm admitting I can't figure out how to make it work.
ReplyDeleteGood insights on Polo, too.