Portland Timbers 2-0 Colorado Rapids: A Good Win with an Inescapable Asterisk

Playing hard, playing safe!

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.