Austin FC 1-2 Portland Timbers: A Passive-Aggressive Masterpiece

That was exactly the kind of win the Portland Timbers needed. I’ll elaborate below, but, between a late start tonight and a long commute tomorrow, I’ve got to keep this brief.

Big Picture: The Timbers attacks is...what it is this season (again, see below) and, barring a change I can’t see no matter how hard I squint, that makes the Timbers defense the key to whatever success they’ll enjoy. And the defense – writ pretty damn large, too (see below) – did a great, game-winning job tonight.

If the Timbers can follow the same script for the rest of 2022 – and this goes double given some of what’s happening above them (emphasis on “some”) – they could actually do something with a 2022 that looked poised to die out like the fire you stare at on a cold night when the tent seems too far away and the whiskey looks up for outlasting the fire. You know what that means if you’ve been there...

All that’s to say, the Timbers punched three points out of Austin FC tonight on a 2-1 win delivered, as I both see it and want to see it, by the defense. It took surviving, golly, three, four shots in the opening 10 minutes - by my count, Aljaz Ivacic, made three of his four saves three in that stretch – but it also took just one sharp, early punch to the jaw to discomfit Austin for most of the game. Bill Tuiloma delivered the blow shortly after Austin’s better moments, and with a defender’s attacking header on a set-piece that Eryk Williamson sent straight to his head, postage-paid and all. It was simple as you like, not to mention the first positive thing Portland had managed all game that wasn’t a save, but it gave the Timbers a lead and...

My main talking point for the game, or the continuation of it, is complicated. After Tuiloma’s go-ahead goal, the Timbers commenced to defending the lead and, honestly, I don’t know what to call what I saw but not so much pressing as loitering with intent on the edges of a melting line of engagement. I need to tighten up the name of the strategy, obviously, but it boils down to having a defensive player vaguely menace the opposition starting around 2/3 of the field away from goal. Sure, the Timbers had a couple moments where they did the classic press – i.e., players chasing hard at each successive passer (a great strategy when you time the releases right) – but, for the most part, it amounted to being...present as Austin tried to work the ball up the field. Time on the ball, but not enough, making every pass just a little harder, demanding that little bit more precision. Better, just when you thought you broke the line, it retreats and forces you to do it all over again. There’s something quietly brilliant in the concept, like guerilla warfare in soccer form.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Seattle Sounders: Think Happy Thoughts. And That's Mostly Directed at Me

The beeesssttt of both worlds...

The super-big, important thing to keep in mind – and I type those silly words with only a few trifling complaints about tonight in my head – the Seattle Sounders have been as bad as the Portland Timbers lately; worse (for them), they completely pissed away the first 40 minutes of the second half through not knowing what to do and fucking up pretty much everything they attempted. It was the opposite of impressive.

And yet, I am thankful because the Timbers needed tonight’s 2-1 win like a fish needs water and a mammal needs fresh air to fill its lungs. It’s mostly happy stuff from here on out, and I may be speaking for myself here, but I would be very, very cautious about reading a turn-around to a fitful 2022 season into this game. That’s to say, one can can’t talk about how iffy a team has been going into a game only to talk around it when said iffy team spends...let’s see, call it the 20th minute that Seattle started doing nothing, and I’d say that carried to the 80th minute, maybe the 75th at the earliest, so, yeah, by my count, the Sounders checked out for somewhere between 55 and 60 minutes of the game. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t count on any other teams to do that.

But full credit to the Timbers. They had their own period of figuring out which way is up (pssst...it’s up), they even went down a goal on a set-piece that said “HELLO” like a whiff of cat-piss (speaking from experience), but Portland did something tonight that they haven’t done since...I’m going by memory here, but I’d say either the home win over the San Jose Earthquakes or battling road draw at Minnesota United FC – i.e., make the game play out on their terms. Most of that, if not all of it, turned on the defining fundamental in all sports: the art of execution. And, as I often do, I must confess to heresy as an auto-da-fe.

All the way up to the exact second Eryk Williamson ran into Yeimar Gomez Andrade’s legs (and blow it out yer ass, Kasey Keller), I couldn’t see a path to the Timbers first goal. A very large part of that actually went back to Williamson, a player who, at least tonight showed a lack of mobility that I’ve not seen since OG MLS-legend, Carlos Valderrama. God’s honest, I watched Eryk all night and the man barely moved. With the game winding down and everything (which, here, means another fucking draw) on the table, I saw Williamson occupy a space in the channel two-three yards above the top of the 18...and that’s it. He literally stood there and directed traffic. The ball came in and out of that space a couple times, Eryk stepped vaguely toward, but, again, that’s it.

Sporting Kansas City 4-1 Portland Timbers: Are My Psychological Preparations Paying Off

Denmark smells like something crawled up its ass and died and brought a yeast infection along for laughs. Things smelled rotten three, four games ago.

Proof!

Here I was all primed to throw out a “I’ve written them off before” lifeline, one that included water‑wings that read, “if they put together a run, not only would that get them into the playoffs, it’d get ‘em there running” (they’re big water‑wings), and then I remembered that, in this season of fetid evil (aka, World Cup year, Qatar edition), the Portland Timbers have only seven games left to go. Between tonight’s result and the most basic math, a “run” would amount to them winning, say, five games of seven down the stretch. By any count, that means starting with a W next week...I mean, with the way the Sounders are playing...

About that result, the Timbers 0-3 road loss at the quite lowly Sporting Kansas City. Yeah, yeah, 1-4 road loss, but when the official webpage can’t get it right (see right/caught you, MFs!!), I feel all right calling the second half a 1-1 draw. Sebastian Blanco’s late consolation came four score minutes and four goals too late, sure, but had Portland played the first half like they played the second, well...we’d have something better to talk about, now wouldn’t we? The stats page backs me up on that too, especially the progress of the xG. Meanwhile, back in reality...

Because I was finishing off a really killer pork chile verde (nailed it), I couldn’t really drink in the details of each of the goals Portland’s allowed. Having just put my eyes and heart through them all again, I’d rank them as follows, the most egregious to the most forgivable: 3rd (all that standing?!), 1st (at least everyone pitched in on the fail!), 2nd (SKC got a bit lucky, but I’m giving an assist to the positively drugged defensive reaction), and 4th (shit happens when your pants go down). The simple story of this game goes something like this: after doing very little for 30 minutes, the Timbers fell apart for fifteen minutes. If I were the coach, I’d make the defense sit through the first and third goals 20 times between now and Friday night. I started the review tonight and I’d add on five more viewings any time the team complained.

Would to gods I had more than a couple positive things to say about Portland’s offense. To their very real credit, it took only a minute or two after the halftime whistle for the Timbers to create good chances; to his very real credit, SKC’s ‘keeper, John Pulskamp, stopped all the good ones. Portland added two more quality shots before the clock ran out – Dairon Asprilla got one, Blanco (who had a decent night after mo’ better support came on) got one more – but that still adds up to one slim shot more than SKC had goals.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 25: Keeping Up with the Joneses, Working the Room

My wheels of steel in the 70s.

Teams across Major League Soccer scored plenty of goals over MLS Week (probably) 25. And, as with last week, all those goals didn’t do much besides throttle a couple of dreams. With one exception - a rather pathetic one too - the rich teams got three points richer, the poorest teams saw what little credit they had run out, and, again, with a couple exceptions, the Joneses fought tooth-and-tong to keep up with one another in the middle.

In other news, I can’t explain the games I chose for longer review, so I won’t. It is what it is, aka, less than what it could be, but....never mind. The original impulse came from a good place, for what it’s worth. When I looked at a couple results, a thought came to me, one inspired, perhaps, by the/my Portland Timbers’ 1-3 (bad, as in neither close nor good) road loss to Toronto FC: which teams are shaping up the ones who will trip-up some other team’s last, desperate grasp at the playoff line? I’ll round up results/thoughts from the little-long-playing video review sessions below, but first, I wanted to mention the games I didn’t watch and why (I linked to the game summary in the score).

Philadelphia Union 4-1 Chicago Fire FC
A) The game summary never got the full highlights posted, B) the only thing that surprised me was the magnitude, C) I should have done the little-long-playing thing with this one, because this result took a hard shot at Chicago’s moment, and D) I have no excuse, this one even fit the fucking profile, sorry, and E) I’ll do better. Maybe.

New England Revolution 1-0 DC United
“The Revs took care of business at home, riding an early Carles Gil goal to a 1-0 win over visiting D.C. United, who never truly threatened.”

From Matt Doyle’s weekly round-up. Felt sufficient.

Red Bull New York 0-1 Orlando City SC
My understanding of both teams boils down to they can beat or lose to anyone, case in point. Also, heard Pato went down. Also, this (Doyle, again):

“But there is no Bradley Wright-Phillips on this team, and there is no Sacha Kljestan on this team, and I’m not even sure if there’s a Daniel Royer on this team.”

Toronto FC 3-1 Portland Timbers: Unbalanced, Undone

Jaroslaw Niezgoda says "Hi."

I’ll start with a confession: I didn’t get the usual granular [ed. - what? listen to yourself, man!] read on the Portland Timbers in their 1-3 loss at Toronto FC because I was catching up with an old friend (#WorthIt). Still, I think I saw enough to state that things did not go well, and with some confidence. Anyone who disagrees may speak now or forever hold your........no takers, eh? Small surprise. The box score reduces that reality into numerical values, none of them good; I remember seeing the shots distributed at 7 shots to 0 sometime during the first half and hoping that improved in some way...but nope. Jaroslaw Niezgoda sends his regards from the remote desert island you can see on Portland’s passing map....

As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...

I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.

Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.

MLS Weakly, Week 24, aka, the Week Animal Spirits Went Wild (for the Most Part)

Hear ye! Hear ye! Don't sleep on the shitty teams!

MLS Week 24 was a fun little fucker. That said, the following teams failed to have fun: DC United and Red Bull New York (tied 0-0), the Portland Timbers and FC Dallas (tied 1-1), with dishonorable mention going to Club du Foot Montreal and Inter Miami CF (tied 2-2; though credit to Miami for stealing two points and earning one). So little followed from all those results - i.e., the present fate of all concerned remains unchanged - that they're hardly worth commenting on.

That said, the last game doesn’t entirely belong with the two former – in his (far more thorough) weekly round-up, Matt Doyle took a dim view of DC v RBNY (“...it’s more interesting to talk about all that than to talk about this game, which was… not great. Yeesh”), and can confirm Portland v Dallas flirted with barely-watchable – but, commentary confirmed what I got out of a glimpse of Montreal v Miami, e.g., that Montreal owed the draw to a late (but apparently) rare brain-fart by their ‘keeper, James Pantemis. Moreover, even if they fell asleep this Saturday, Montreal have kept a playoff-worthy 5-3-2 record over their past 10 and they looked 10 points better than Miami; the same can't be said for the other five teams in the discussion. If anything, that draw trumpets a message to the rest of the league – which, some of them did not get: take no game for granted.

Turning, now, to the bright, shiny, record-breaking results and words I never thought I’d type....

After a ho-hum first half, FC Cincinnati straight-up took over the game against the Philadelphia Union coming out deserved 3-1 winners over the East’s (still) top team. Their big players (e.g., Brandon Vazquez, who got a freakin’ ode in Doyle’s column, and Luciano Acosta (see set up on 2nd goal)) delivered and an increasingly strong supporting cast (e.g., Brenner (see Lucho’s link) and Alvaro Barreal combined on goals that flayed Philadelphia’s league (again, still) league-best defense. I only tuned in for the best bits (aka, the 45th minute to the 80th), but FC Cincinnati 4.0 will score goals on your defense: if you pull the goal-less road game at Columbus Crew SC from the sample, Cincy hasn’t been shut out since mid(-fucking-)April. Philly stirred to life after Cincy’s second –i.e., pressing, forcing mistakes, creating chances, etc. - but the Orange and Blue managed it well enough. Cincinnati needed the win, obviously, and it shouldn’t blot out questions about all the draws that preceded it, but they’re over the playoff line and with one of the biggest obstacles to their first-ever post-season cleared. And Philly’s fine, of course. Every team has an off day...

Portland Timbers 1-1 FC Dallas: The Limitations and Blessings of "Eh, Good Enough"

Explain that entire civilization and make it POP.

Had FC Dallas’ Paul Arriola not flubbed on one-and-a-half breakaways, had Jesus Ferreira not been called offside on Dallas’ best team attack, had Aljaz Ivacic failed to see the same player’s shot curl around Larrys Mabiala at the tail-end of their best chunk of the game, and had the Timbers not worked the ball smartly from right to left – and for once – to set up their best chance from open play, I could have started watching that game around the 85th minute and walked away without feeling I'd wasted 85 minutes of my life.

MLS Week 24 featured all kinds of good, compelling games, many of them with scores ending in results positively begging for a longer look. This was not one of them.

On a weekend when chaos reigned, the Portland Timbers served up another plate of the same-ol’-shit, a ho-hum motherfucker of a 1-1 draw at home against a team that, say it with me, “is above them in the standings, but not playing their best at the moment.” I’m at the point where the words “unbeaten run” have become a triggering event. If you want to find something to feel good about in this one, you’ll have to sift through a ton of dirt. And archaeology feels like a good metaphor for this one: sometimes you have to look at a potsherd and expand on it to explain a whole goddamn forgotten civilization. Or maybe you just chuck the potsherd and figure it was worth forgetting.

Tthat’s my cue to admit to missing just about everything besides Dallas’ still-later equalizer. As noted in the game thread, I thought Matt Hedges nodded home the equalizer; in reality, it came off Diego Chara’s head, and I can’t think of a louder way to whisper, “maybe you’re cursed” than that. Unlike many a Timber, Chara had a decent night, i.e., leading a defensive line that had, comedic fuck-ups notwithstanding (see Arriola’s two spurned chances), managed Dallas’ feeble attack well enough. I touched on Dallas’ salad days above – the first 20 minutes of the second half, give or take – but, again, it took Portland’s worst moments to give them their good ones.

Going the other way, at least they had them. If you take the chance flagged in the mess of a run-on sentence that started this post and maybe the chance that teed up Portland’s late, yet not late enough penalty kick, the Timbers didn’t do collectively much all night, 16 shots and five shots on goal be damned. The few things that happened for either team came in individual moments – again, see the above run-on sentence. With only a few exceptions – e.g., Santiago “Wee Wrecking Ball” Moreno on the attacking side, Dario “Hack the Bone” Zuparic on the defensive side, a couple bail-outs from Ivacic and Marvin Loria finding the rare openings – everyone in green and flat yellow fell somewhere between good enough (e.g., Bill Tuiloma, David Ayala), undistinguished (e.g., Yimmi Chara) and invisible (e.g., Jaroslaw Niezgoda, but also look at that passing map).

Timbers v FC Dallas Preview: Don't Stop...Believin' (Hold on to That FEE-eee-ling!)

Don't fuck with the Jesus...

With the Portland Timbers approaching the now-or-never moment of the season – and they just let a moment go last night – they’ve got FC Dallas coming to visit on Saturday. On the plus side, Dallas has by and large followed the same script – i.e., start strong, then.....fade away - that has dogged their entire history.

In a fun twist, they’ve turned that grand narrative into micro-narratives for their games lately. I’ll get to that below, but let’s start with the basics:

FC Dallas
Record/Basics: 9-7-9, 36 points, 6-3-3- home, 3-4-6 away; 33 gf, 26 ga, +7 goal differential
Last 10: LTLTTLTWWL (2-4-4, 1-2-2 home, 1-2-2 away; high side of middling)
Oppo: v VAN, @ ATX, @ LAFC, v MIA, @ HOU, v NYC, v ATX, @ RSL, v LAG, @ SEA

What We Know About Them
They’re perennial contenders for MLS’s most effective development/selling team – a model that has consequences for their consistency, obviously – but Dallas also serves as the stomping grounds for MLS 2022 MVP candidate, Jesus Ferreira, as well as another USMNT-bubble player, the indefatigable Paul Arriola. Matt Hedges, one of MLS most reliable long-term CBs, anchors a backline that, as evidenced by the numbers, doesn’t allow a ton of goals. The who’s who gets a little thin from there, but still includes Paxton Pomykal, the eternal Comeback-Player-of-Next Year (though he has had a decent run this season), and Timbers fans will recognize at least one right back, assuming the start him (Marco Farfan.

Notes on Recent Form
As repped in numerical form above, pretty shaky – and regardless of venue. Their schedule hasn’t been easy by any means – and the wins they posted (0-1 at Real Salt Lake, and a 2-1 home win over the Los Angeles Galaxy) had the added bonus of taking all the points from rivals – but a frisky, upwardly-mobile team gets more than a third of the points out of that stretch. That said, both wins came recently and the way Dallas rotated their starting XI at Seattle (pretty thoroughly) floats a plausible theory that they rested starters for the Timbers because they felt better about getting points against them (or, alternately, they saw Seattle as vulnerable (fairly, given their recent record) and gambled). In other words, they might have shaken off a bout of midsummer doldrums just in time to ruin a Rose City Saturday afternoon.

Portland Timbers 1-1 Nashville SC: That One, Necessary Step

Go on, ya little shit. Those stairs ain't gonna climb themselves.

I have more a string of notes than I do a coherent thought about that the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 home draw against Nashville SC.

First, Nashville scored – and the Timbers really do need to clean-up the set-piece defending; swear to God I saw Larrys Mabiala lean in for a power-header and miss it clean – then, the Timbers came back, and on the same kind of goal I picture when you hear someone use the word “patient” when describing an attacking build-up. Turns out the line between forcing it and dicking around is a thin one.

And, as much as anything else, the Timbers have gotten better about getting on the right side of that line lately – and the numbers back this up; Portland has averaged 2.0 goals/game over their past ten games, and haven’t been shut out once – aka, the same period that has me feeling better about their chances.

Again, there’s not a lot to analyze about this game. Both teams did a lot better over a first half that happily coincided with a time when both teams played with some combination of thinking they could win the game and knowing they have to start getting wins. It wasn’t until 70 minutes into the game that I realized I had nothing to say about how either midfield defended, and it wasn’t until the 75th that I realized that had everything to do with the fact that both teams focused more on attacking than stopping the other team from doing the same.

The sub-text that runs over the paragraph above is that Nashville started stepping to the ball and higher up the field. Portland hadn’t been great on the ball all game (a concern!), but Nashville forced a succession of turnovers early in the second half and that knocked Portland on their heels, and I don’t think the Timbers got back on the front foot at any point thereafter. Actually, take that back: they found it twice in the game’s dying minutes, first with Jaroslaw Niezgoda hitting a ball a mere 5 km below needed velocity, and then Nathan Fogaca (more on him later) not quite getting around his breakaway just a couple minutes later.

The Timbers had two late, great shots at a winner, but they only had those shots because Aljaz Ivacic made at least “that’s my guy,” saves (plus at least one weird one). You can sum up the game a couple ways.