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| Yeah, she's got a jet ski, but... |
I’ve never been delighted to see so many of the (soft) expectations I had going into a game get up-ended (see twitter, JeffBull5). To start with an easy one, Jorge Villafana has made me nervous for as long as the Portland Timbers have dwelled in the blessed halls of The Magical Kingdom (now with working bathtub faucets and palatable lunches? presumably?), so an afternoon of watching highlights of the Philadelphia Union’s Brenden Aaronson tear up the right side of the field (that’s Portland’s left) made me wonder how much Jorge would have in the tank once Jim Curtin moved Aaronson inside and brought in Ilsinho to run at him. Villafana answered back with plenty, and then some! While I can’t say he locked down Portland’s left flank, he stretched the defensive equivalent of landmines and barbed wire across it and made Union attackers rue coming in there throughout the game.
My larger (largest?) anxiety was that Philly would spend the day absorbing pressure and timing their breakouts, something they’d proved adept at doing in every game through it’s long, and now-ended, journey through the Magical World of Major League Soccer (#MWoMLS). The Timbers rendered that broad strategy something short of requirements when Jeremy Ebobisse nodded home an early go-ahead goal (13th minute). Having watched that again (multiple times), I’m struck by where the Union went wrong: sure, Jack Elliott vacates the space around Ebobisse, but the way he chased Larrys Mabiala suggested, to me at least, that was part of the plan, even if that meant leaving Kai Wagner one-on-one against Ebobisse and Portland’s go-ahead goal says everything about how that went.
Before burying the lead too deep, the final score ended with the Timbers beating Philly 2-1, if by a quarter-man’s-body worth of width (feeling piratic themes; bear with me), the approximate measure by which Kacper Przybylko was legitimately offside when Aaronson squiggled through a clutch of Timbers defenders to set up what looked like the equalizer. Alas (for Philly fans), people interpret the rules by the rules (folly!) and, according to an exact reading of the rules, yes, Przybylko was, in fact, a quarter-man’s body offside, and thus endeth all talk of equalizers. Trust me, I hate it as much as you...
To draw back for a broader view, this game was built from a composite of game-states, and in a way not a lot of what I’ve watched from the MLS Is Back tournament have managed. I’m not saying one team or another hasn’t dominated the proceedings in this game or that (and gods know, I didn’t watch even 1/4 of all the games), so much as I’m saying this game felt tighter and less nakedly opportunistic than most of what I’ve watched so far. The trends/rhythms felt deeper, if nothing else. Then again, that could have been the agonizing process of the Union reorganizing around the concept of not scoring the first goal in a game…which they really had done in every game during this tournament until, oh, just a few hours ago. Back to those game-states…
Maybe the entire question was always which team could get in their comfort-zone fastest and, tonight, that was the Timbers. I questioned the decision to start Valeri in a pre-game tweet, but, so long as you understand that whole “comfort-zone” idea as a guiding premise, the Timbers fielded a team organized around the simple goal of scoring before Philadelphia did. On one level, yes, that happened, and it was good; on another, even with a hydration break in play, I’d argue the Timbers didn’t rearrange its starting game-plan until the start of the second half. The second half feels like the real dividing line, because that’s when the Timbers really set out the stall, daring Philadelphia to break them down. Credit where it’s due (but might not matter), the Union didn’t pile on crosses the same way the Timbers do when they’re grasping at the last straw on the way to a bad idea, but that didn’t mean they found a better, smarter way to goal either. Sure, Andrew Wooten pulled one back at the 85th minute (what? wasn't it earlier?) after a free-kick by, frankly, the only player who always mattered for the Union tonight, Jamiro Monteiro, but the “Przybylko Incident” and…well, a handul of panicked (and, frankly, bracing!) moments aside, the Timbers kept their heads and more or less walked this game home…if thanks to Sergio Santos shanking that penalty kick miles over the crossbar…hey, someone’s gotta do it (for my team to win).
More to the point, Wooten’s goal didn’t matter by the time he scored it, because, in the (a?) grander scheme, Sebastian Blanco had already put the Timbers up 2-0 by the time he did it - significantly, the second rather major, major lapse by the Union defense on a set-piece, and what can a team do but mourn that? Yes, Przybylko’s goal would have changed everything had it counted, but it didn’t and that’s all the writing that needs to be done…metaphorically, because I’ve got more…
Today was opposite day in both the best and worst sense of that idea. On the dark side, this was the worst kind of schadenfreude - e.g., watching a team that isn’t Portland futilely shuttling the ball around the perimeter of a packed defense, until some poor, beaten bastard lashes the ball toward the goal and at the cruel heavens, knowing all the while the (soccer) gods will not be moved. Right or wrong, fair or not, that’s what the Timbers 2019 season looked like to me: the dregs of ambition dry-humping futility in 90-minute intervals. To every Philadelphia Union who finds this post, I’m sympathetic to your team and, holy shit, I know what it feels like watch that frustrating shit, because I’ve lived it over and over and fuckin over. The “good side” of that only exists insofar it starts and ends with watching Portland being the team causing the headaches instead of suffering them. Schadenfreude is a very specific kind of evil, maybe even the worst.
On the other hand, and in their ultimate defense, Portland hardly set out to kill the game; they played opportunistically when they played, but they played nonetheless. The counter-attacks even grew more lethal as the game progressed - and with a sharp uptick with Jaroslaw Niezgoda came on to replace the unquestionably useful Jeremy Ebobisse…and that’s where this post will ultimately end, but I want to say a couple things about the Philadelphia Union before that.
First and foremost, Monteiro looks like a brilliant Plan B for the Union as much as any player I’ve seen with them. Going into this game, I was conscious of four Union players - Andre Blake (Philly’s ‘keeper, for the utterly oblivious or totally new), Ilsinho, Aaronson, and Sergio Santos. Based on what I watched and, without being able to name specific incidents, the Timbers game-planned around the last two worked very well: Santos’ contribution to the night started and ended with some wild shots and the penalty-kick he skied left and way-high over Steve Clark’s crossbar and, apart from flashes here and there, Aaronson ran into one green-shirted wall after another until around the 80th minute when he became the destabilizing nightmare that almost drew this game (aka, the "Przybylko Incident") and sent this game to the Ultimate Crap-Shoot, aka, penalty-kicks, and I’ll praise the offside flag for that, but nothing more…
My point is, Monteiro kept them afloat and that’s a promising sign for Philly, because that guy was omnipresent and effective as anyone on the field through the last 60 minutes of this game. He circulated the ball very effectively, he made good runs, and he kept firing the free-kicks until he forced the bobble out of Steve Clark that ultimately lead to Philly’s one and only goal (see, Wooten shit, above)…
…have I mentioned I throw up a little every time Steve Clark plays the ball with his feet? It’s fucking gut-wrenching in the moment, but I’m confident it’ll fade in time…so long as Clark holds up his end of it. Healing, man. That’s all this is….
There’s a message for the Philadelphia Union in there, as well as a reminder for the Portland Timbers (and isn’t it nice how I use their full names when I’m lecturing them?): you can never count on that first goal, so you better damn well carry a Plan B in your back-pocket and, best case, a Plan C in that place where you used to, and/or still might keep that dime-bag. Just like any person, a team can never have too many options. It’s the agony of being close, the lack of anything or anyone specific to point to that leads to bad seasons.
I…think that’s it for the big picture stuff. As I often do, I’m going to close out on specific talking points on Timbers players/things. Here goes.
- Have I already praised Villafana. Yes? Good. That doesn’t mean I want him to start over and over and over, but that does mean I believe he raised the hell out of his game, and that makes him my man of the match for tonight...which should translate to starts. If you can't reward a night like that...
- I’m really impressed by Niezgoda, maybe even more impressed by the way he followed a later play, than by his nutmeg/serving it on a fucking platter to Diego Valeri for what should have been Portland’s first second goal of the night. Niezgoda’s combination play looks really, really good right now, and in a way that’s giving me ideas…naughty ones...
- …but that 4-2-3-1 makes hella sense, right? (Right?)
- If Ponce de Leon’s still looking, Diego Chara is The Fountain of Youth. Holy shit. But the bigger revelation is/remains Eryk Williamson. Young man is doing shit everywhere on the field, up to and including the impressive lose/win scrap against Monteiro on Portland’s left touch line. If Williamson can provide the dribbling of Nagbe and a better range of passing with a d-mid tenacity…GUYS.
- Beyond shitting a little any time a ball rolls near Steve Clark’s feet, something about Portland’s defense tonight gave me the heebie-jeebies. I think both fullbacks did well (Chris Duvall*) and/or excelled (Villafana), so that falls on something between Mabiala and Zuparic. It’s a little ragged and a little unidentifiable at the same time. Just…watching for it…
My larger (largest?) anxiety was that Philly would spend the day absorbing pressure and timing their breakouts, something they’d proved adept at doing in every game through it’s long, and now-ended, journey through the Magical World of Major League Soccer (#MWoMLS). The Timbers rendered that broad strategy something short of requirements when Jeremy Ebobisse nodded home an early go-ahead goal (13th minute). Having watched that again (multiple times), I’m struck by where the Union went wrong: sure, Jack Elliott vacates the space around Ebobisse, but the way he chased Larrys Mabiala suggested, to me at least, that was part of the plan, even if that meant leaving Kai Wagner one-on-one against Ebobisse and Portland’s go-ahead goal says everything about how that went.
Before burying the lead too deep, the final score ended with the Timbers beating Philly 2-1, if by a quarter-man’s-body worth of width (feeling piratic themes; bear with me), the approximate measure by which Kacper Przybylko was legitimately offside when Aaronson squiggled through a clutch of Timbers defenders to set up what looked like the equalizer. Alas (for Philly fans), people interpret the rules by the rules (folly!) and, according to an exact reading of the rules, yes, Przybylko was, in fact, a quarter-man’s body offside, and thus endeth all talk of equalizers. Trust me, I hate it as much as you...
To draw back for a broader view, this game was built from a composite of game-states, and in a way not a lot of what I’ve watched from the MLS Is Back tournament have managed. I’m not saying one team or another hasn’t dominated the proceedings in this game or that (and gods know, I didn’t watch even 1/4 of all the games), so much as I’m saying this game felt tighter and less nakedly opportunistic than most of what I’ve watched so far. The trends/rhythms felt deeper, if nothing else. Then again, that could have been the agonizing process of the Union reorganizing around the concept of not scoring the first goal in a game…which they really had done in every game during this tournament until, oh, just a few hours ago. Back to those game-states…
Maybe the entire question was always which team could get in their comfort-zone fastest and, tonight, that was the Timbers. I questioned the decision to start Valeri in a pre-game tweet, but, so long as you understand that whole “comfort-zone” idea as a guiding premise, the Timbers fielded a team organized around the simple goal of scoring before Philadelphia did. On one level, yes, that happened, and it was good; on another, even with a hydration break in play, I’d argue the Timbers didn’t rearrange its starting game-plan until the start of the second half. The second half feels like the real dividing line, because that’s when the Timbers really set out the stall, daring Philadelphia to break them down. Credit where it’s due (but might not matter), the Union didn’t pile on crosses the same way the Timbers do when they’re grasping at the last straw on the way to a bad idea, but that didn’t mean they found a better, smarter way to goal either. Sure, Andrew Wooten pulled one back at the 85th minute (what? wasn't it earlier?) after a free-kick by, frankly, the only player who always mattered for the Union tonight, Jamiro Monteiro, but the “Przybylko Incident” and…well, a handul of panicked (and, frankly, bracing!) moments aside, the Timbers kept their heads and more or less walked this game home…if thanks to Sergio Santos shanking that penalty kick miles over the crossbar…hey, someone’s gotta do it (for my team to win).
More to the point, Wooten’s goal didn’t matter by the time he scored it, because, in the (a?) grander scheme, Sebastian Blanco had already put the Timbers up 2-0 by the time he did it - significantly, the second rather major, major lapse by the Union defense on a set-piece, and what can a team do but mourn that? Yes, Przybylko’s goal would have changed everything had it counted, but it didn’t and that’s all the writing that needs to be done…metaphorically, because I’ve got more…
Today was opposite day in both the best and worst sense of that idea. On the dark side, this was the worst kind of schadenfreude - e.g., watching a team that isn’t Portland futilely shuttling the ball around the perimeter of a packed defense, until some poor, beaten bastard lashes the ball toward the goal and at the cruel heavens, knowing all the while the (soccer) gods will not be moved. Right or wrong, fair or not, that’s what the Timbers 2019 season looked like to me: the dregs of ambition dry-humping futility in 90-minute intervals. To every Philadelphia Union who finds this post, I’m sympathetic to your team and, holy shit, I know what it feels like watch that frustrating shit, because I’ve lived it over and over and fuckin over. The “good side” of that only exists insofar it starts and ends with watching Portland being the team causing the headaches instead of suffering them. Schadenfreude is a very specific kind of evil, maybe even the worst.
On the other hand, and in their ultimate defense, Portland hardly set out to kill the game; they played opportunistically when they played, but they played nonetheless. The counter-attacks even grew more lethal as the game progressed - and with a sharp uptick with Jaroslaw Niezgoda came on to replace the unquestionably useful Jeremy Ebobisse…and that’s where this post will ultimately end, but I want to say a couple things about the Philadelphia Union before that.
First and foremost, Monteiro looks like a brilliant Plan B for the Union as much as any player I’ve seen with them. Going into this game, I was conscious of four Union players - Andre Blake (Philly’s ‘keeper, for the utterly oblivious or totally new), Ilsinho, Aaronson, and Sergio Santos. Based on what I watched and, without being able to name specific incidents, the Timbers game-planned around the last two worked very well: Santos’ contribution to the night started and ended with some wild shots and the penalty-kick he skied left and way-high over Steve Clark’s crossbar and, apart from flashes here and there, Aaronson ran into one green-shirted wall after another until around the 80th minute when he became the destabilizing nightmare that almost drew this game (aka, the "Przybylko Incident") and sent this game to the Ultimate Crap-Shoot, aka, penalty-kicks, and I’ll praise the offside flag for that, but nothing more…
My point is, Monteiro kept them afloat and that’s a promising sign for Philly, because that guy was omnipresent and effective as anyone on the field through the last 60 minutes of this game. He circulated the ball very effectively, he made good runs, and he kept firing the free-kicks until he forced the bobble out of Steve Clark that ultimately lead to Philly’s one and only goal (see, Wooten shit, above)…
…have I mentioned I throw up a little every time Steve Clark plays the ball with his feet? It’s fucking gut-wrenching in the moment, but I’m confident it’ll fade in time…so long as Clark holds up his end of it. Healing, man. That’s all this is….
There’s a message for the Philadelphia Union in there, as well as a reminder for the Portland Timbers (and isn’t it nice how I use their full names when I’m lecturing them?): you can never count on that first goal, so you better damn well carry a Plan B in your back-pocket and, best case, a Plan C in that place where you used to, and/or still might keep that dime-bag. Just like any person, a team can never have too many options. It’s the agony of being close, the lack of anything or anyone specific to point to that leads to bad seasons.
I…think that’s it for the big picture stuff. As I often do, I’m going to close out on specific talking points on Timbers players/things. Here goes.
- Have I already praised Villafana. Yes? Good. That doesn’t mean I want him to start over and over and over, but that does mean I believe he raised the hell out of his game, and that makes him my man of the match for tonight...which should translate to starts. If you can't reward a night like that...
- I’m really impressed by Niezgoda, maybe even more impressed by the way he followed a later play, than by his nutmeg/serving it on a fucking platter to Diego Valeri for what should have been Portland’s first second goal of the night. Niezgoda’s combination play looks really, really good right now, and in a way that’s giving me ideas…naughty ones...
- …but that 4-2-3-1 makes hella sense, right? (Right?)
- If Ponce de Leon’s still looking, Diego Chara is The Fountain of Youth. Holy shit. But the bigger revelation is/remains Eryk Williamson. Young man is doing shit everywhere on the field, up to and including the impressive lose/win scrap against Monteiro on Portland’s left touch line. If Williamson can provide the dribbling of Nagbe and a better range of passing with a d-mid tenacity…GUYS.
- Beyond shitting a little any time a ball rolls near Steve Clark’s feet, something about Portland’s defense tonight gave me the heebie-jeebies. I think both fullbacks did well (Chris Duvall*) and/or excelled (Villafana), so that falls on something between Mabiala and Zuparic. It’s a little ragged and a little unidentifiable at the same time. Just…watching for it…
- * Chris Duvall is only bad if you want more out of him than he can give you. You can do better, you can do worse, but he'll give you a steady right back game in and out, relatively mistake free, and with some attacking upside. If Portland can upgrade here, great. I'm all for it. Till then, I feel safer with Duvall than I do with Bonilla. In a regular season, yes, give Bonilla multiple starts...and keep Duvall fresh...
All in all, color me fucking delighted in pastel with how the Portland Timbers (I also use full names in moments of pride/crush, as I think a lot of people do) have done in the MLS Is Back tournament. They look good in a way that makes me wonder whether, 1) the new additions aren’t better than many of us expected, and, 2) Brian Fernandez wasn’t a bigger distraction than I, at least, understood. (Because the way I’m wired, I don’t have a huge understanding of team dynamics.) To expand a smaller, earlier argument into a grand one, if it takes a decent team 50+ minutes to adjust to falling behind a goal, how long does it take for a team to re-orient around signing and losing a designated player you’re team may or may not have presented as the future
Answer that how you like, all I know is, PORTLAND’S IN A FUCKING FINAL!!
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