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| Bro. Little help? |
At this point in the season, nothing kicks you in the balls/punches you in the tits quite like the rare moments when the Portland Timbers look like a professional soccer team. By my math, that has happened exactly three times during the 2023 season – the last 25+ minutes against Los Angeles FC and, perhaps more tellingly, the first five minutes of the (seriously) home games against Sporting Kansas City – who, thank gods, suck as bad as they do – and, tonight, St. Louis CITY FC, aka, the team that yells at you!!!
Unlike that one, lonely win at SKC, St. Louis hammered on the Timbers’s fingers until they slipped off the cliff’s edge and that’s the how Portland fell to a 1-2 loss at Providence Park tonight. Gods’ honest truth, St. Louis' second goal slighted the Timbers’ honor slightly less than their first. Set pieces have been Portland’s Achilles heel for almost as long as Achilles sulked in his tent, but the fact not one single Timber tracked Jared Stroud’s late run on the equalizer...well, what is that but bad news? And when you suck at set pieces the way the Timbers do, the cost of allowing any other kind of mistake...well, what can that do but grow and grow until it chokes you like kudzu?
Details aside, the singularly most troublesome thing about the Timbers’ season so far is their collective and apparent inability to control a game in any way whatsoever. They can have moments, they can flash some magic here and there (don’t quote me on that), but I can’t remember the last time I felt like the Timbers had a real handle on any game they’ve played.
And yet, if you’re like me, you still hear the siren’s song, i.e., that soothing sense of calm that seeps into your senses when you see a promising 20 minutes last week, or a promising 20 minutes this week. It’s a seductive trance, of course...and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, especially given the dreary reality of Timbers soccer right now, but, the real story of the 2023 season so far tracks closer to something I tweeted during in my game thread:
“It’s slipping away bit by bit but Portland’s doing all right so far, even if I miss and/or want to see more of the caffeinated [sic] beginning.”
The next tweet mourned St. Louis’ equalizer (woo-hoo!). Worse, I was mourning St. Louis’ winner just six tweets later...look, it’s hard to stretch a twitter thread when you’ve got so little to stretch. Bottom line, Portland seems aimless right now and all over the field. There’s a problem to solve on-field, one that no one, be it player or coach, seems up to solving at the moment. Fortunately, if somewhat depressingly, the Timbers have to beat just five teams for points to make the post-season in 2023. They’ll have to have several more handfuls of their shit together if they want to go anywhere from there, but I’m looking at the teams under the playoff line toward the end of MLS Week 3 – that is, SKC, the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Los Angeles Galaxy, the Colorado Rapids, and Houston Dynamo FC – and I’m feeling equal parts confident and sad about the Timbers keeping ahead of all of those teams...goddamn you, Major League Soccer, goddamn you to hell...
Unlike that one, lonely win at SKC, St. Louis hammered on the Timbers’s fingers until they slipped off the cliff’s edge and that’s the how Portland fell to a 1-2 loss at Providence Park tonight. Gods’ honest truth, St. Louis' second goal slighted the Timbers’ honor slightly less than their first. Set pieces have been Portland’s Achilles heel for almost as long as Achilles sulked in his tent, but the fact not one single Timber tracked Jared Stroud’s late run on the equalizer...well, what is that but bad news? And when you suck at set pieces the way the Timbers do, the cost of allowing any other kind of mistake...well, what can that do but grow and grow until it chokes you like kudzu?
Details aside, the singularly most troublesome thing about the Timbers’ season so far is their collective and apparent inability to control a game in any way whatsoever. They can have moments, they can flash some magic here and there (don’t quote me on that), but I can’t remember the last time I felt like the Timbers had a real handle on any game they’ve played.
And yet, if you’re like me, you still hear the siren’s song, i.e., that soothing sense of calm that seeps into your senses when you see a promising 20 minutes last week, or a promising 20 minutes this week. It’s a seductive trance, of course...and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, especially given the dreary reality of Timbers soccer right now, but, the real story of the 2023 season so far tracks closer to something I tweeted during in my game thread:
“It’s slipping away bit by bit but Portland’s doing all right so far, even if I miss and/or want to see more of the caffeinated [sic] beginning.”
The next tweet mourned St. Louis’ equalizer (woo-hoo!). Worse, I was mourning St. Louis’ winner just six tweets later...look, it’s hard to stretch a twitter thread when you’ve got so little to stretch. Bottom line, Portland seems aimless right now and all over the field. There’s a problem to solve on-field, one that no one, be it player or coach, seems up to solving at the moment. Fortunately, if somewhat depressingly, the Timbers have to beat just five teams for points to make the post-season in 2023. They’ll have to have several more handfuls of their shit together if they want to go anywhere from there, but I’m looking at the teams under the playoff line toward the end of MLS Week 3 – that is, SKC, the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Los Angeles Galaxy, the Colorado Rapids, and Houston Dynamo FC – and I’m feeling equal parts confident and sad about the Timbers keeping ahead of all of those teams...goddamn you, Major League Soccer, goddamn you to hell...
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| Sorry. Slough of Despond. |
With apologies for anyone who wants a clearer tick-tock on this game, I can’t offer anything more than apologies and, for what’s it worth, the actual story wasn’t more complicated than the Timbers scoring an early (and, factually), quality goal and then white-knuckling the rest of the 90 from somewhere around the 30th minute until the inevitable. If you want me to walk you through the Slough of Discontent I can, just don’t blame me if you don’t enjoy it.
As if keeping time and harmony with the Timbers’ early season woes, most of the notes I scratched out early in the game stumbled to irrelevancy by the end of it – e.g., Juan David Mosquera looked like a solution (until he didn’t) and I fucking loved to see the Timbers out-work St. Louis over the first 15 minutes of the game until, again, they didn't. The real mystery of this game is why Portland didn’t try to keep that going. About that, here’s another tweet from the game thread:
“Low key, I’m looking at the current line up and dreaming new dreams.”
Losing Cristhian Paredes to whatever non-contact injury he had didn’t help, obviously, but even after Evander stepped onto the field, I noticed the relatively small size and, ideally, improved speed and mobility Portland had with tonight’s starting XI. Because I don’t know him so well yet, I don’t know how well or poorly Evander fits into this equation, but I see the outlines of a Timbers line up that has the legs and youth to become a pressing team. You’ll have to pull Diego Chara out of that equation – and I’ve got more of that later (brace yourself) – but I’m not sure there’s a better here-and-now model where Portland finds success but through becoming one of those bee-in-the-bonnet teams that shakes the ball loose somewhere inside the opposition’s half and tees up a good shot within a pass or three. Or, to put that another way, I don’t see the Timbers having the same devastating back-to-front transition game they had back when, so maybe put the energy into having the “back” of that transition start a little higher up the field. That means playing through fewer bodies if nothing else.
Unfortunately, the youth that makes a press (allegedly) possible cuts in the other direction – i.e., can the current state of the team be described as pupils learning sans mentor?
Bottom Line, Part II: if you take Diego Chara out of the equation, Eryk Williamson becomes the elder statesman of the front 5-7 players on the field (counting the fullbacks as wingbacks) at age 25. And as much as the Timbers will get players back like Sebastian Blanco, Felipe Mora and Dairon Asprilla, the first two of those players feel whole lot like one foot out the door one way or the other. With that, let’s take a turn into the real darkness...
That Diego Chara has controlled the midfield in the majority of games in which he has played is nothing less than fact; the size of that majority is the only real question. I can’t say the same for the first three games of 2023 and, no matter how much it breaks my heart to acknowledge it, I’m not sure I’ll be able to say I’ll be able to say it again until Chara hangs up his boots. Before anyone gets ahead of themselves, I’m not arguing that Chara has no role on the team. In the here and now, I see the question of where and how to play Chara as just one more piece in the transition that has been more or less inevitable since Diego Valeri left the team. And, on a still deeper level, I’d call that one of three or four open questions about this Portland Timbers team going forward.
In closing, I get it: it’s March, the Timbers rarely start their seasons strong, they’ve got all kinds of injuries, etc. Faithless man that I am, I have no doubt that I’ve started seven of the ten seasons I’ve been on twitter (and running this site) wailing about how the Timbers are doomed for one reason or the other. Wrong as I’ve been, and for as many years as I’ve been wrong, there will come a time when one Timbers coach or another – be it Gio or the person who succeeds him – has to figure out some way to play that isn’t Giovanni Savarese’s...stubbornly present style of soccer.
I have thoughts about every player who started tonight – e.g., Nathan Fogaca is the best Portland can do right now at forward and what else is it but a goddamn shame to see Paredes get carried off 10 minutes into the game – but I’m equally convinced that any thing anyone can say about this team, no matter how deeply data-driven, matters more than to the Timbers’ immediate future more than how they navigate...well, frankly, what I’m calling their new reality. To cut through the gibberish in that last sentence...I think the transition’s finally here, people.
...and I think Williamson is the near-term lynchpin for making it work. Yes, more than Evander. Also, give him time...
As if keeping time and harmony with the Timbers’ early season woes, most of the notes I scratched out early in the game stumbled to irrelevancy by the end of it – e.g., Juan David Mosquera looked like a solution (until he didn’t) and I fucking loved to see the Timbers out-work St. Louis over the first 15 minutes of the game until, again, they didn't. The real mystery of this game is why Portland didn’t try to keep that going. About that, here’s another tweet from the game thread:
“Low key, I’m looking at the current line up and dreaming new dreams.”
Losing Cristhian Paredes to whatever non-contact injury he had didn’t help, obviously, but even after Evander stepped onto the field, I noticed the relatively small size and, ideally, improved speed and mobility Portland had with tonight’s starting XI. Because I don’t know him so well yet, I don’t know how well or poorly Evander fits into this equation, but I see the outlines of a Timbers line up that has the legs and youth to become a pressing team. You’ll have to pull Diego Chara out of that equation – and I’ve got more of that later (brace yourself) – but I’m not sure there’s a better here-and-now model where Portland finds success but through becoming one of those bee-in-the-bonnet teams that shakes the ball loose somewhere inside the opposition’s half and tees up a good shot within a pass or three. Or, to put that another way, I don’t see the Timbers having the same devastating back-to-front transition game they had back when, so maybe put the energy into having the “back” of that transition start a little higher up the field. That means playing through fewer bodies if nothing else.
Unfortunately, the youth that makes a press (allegedly) possible cuts in the other direction – i.e., can the current state of the team be described as pupils learning sans mentor?
Bottom Line, Part II: if you take Diego Chara out of the equation, Eryk Williamson becomes the elder statesman of the front 5-7 players on the field (counting the fullbacks as wingbacks) at age 25. And as much as the Timbers will get players back like Sebastian Blanco, Felipe Mora and Dairon Asprilla, the first two of those players feel whole lot like one foot out the door one way or the other. With that, let’s take a turn into the real darkness...
That Diego Chara has controlled the midfield in the majority of games in which he has played is nothing less than fact; the size of that majority is the only real question. I can’t say the same for the first three games of 2023 and, no matter how much it breaks my heart to acknowledge it, I’m not sure I’ll be able to say I’ll be able to say it again until Chara hangs up his boots. Before anyone gets ahead of themselves, I’m not arguing that Chara has no role on the team. In the here and now, I see the question of where and how to play Chara as just one more piece in the transition that has been more or less inevitable since Diego Valeri left the team. And, on a still deeper level, I’d call that one of three or four open questions about this Portland Timbers team going forward.
In closing, I get it: it’s March, the Timbers rarely start their seasons strong, they’ve got all kinds of injuries, etc. Faithless man that I am, I have no doubt that I’ve started seven of the ten seasons I’ve been on twitter (and running this site) wailing about how the Timbers are doomed for one reason or the other. Wrong as I’ve been, and for as many years as I’ve been wrong, there will come a time when one Timbers coach or another – be it Gio or the person who succeeds him – has to figure out some way to play that isn’t Giovanni Savarese’s...stubbornly present style of soccer.
I have thoughts about every player who started tonight – e.g., Nathan Fogaca is the best Portland can do right now at forward and what else is it but a goddamn shame to see Paredes get carried off 10 minutes into the game – but I’m equally convinced that any thing anyone can say about this team, no matter how deeply data-driven, matters more than to the Timbers’ immediate future more than how they navigate...well, frankly, what I’m calling their new reality. To cut through the gibberish in that last sentence...I think the transition’s finally here, people.
...and I think Williamson is the near-term lynchpin for making it work. Yes, more than Evander. Also, give him time...
Till further editions and, Lord knows, we’ve got plenty.
It's easy to call for scrapping Gio. I did in a unsent comment to this article yesterday. And rare is the coach who has great value after five years. They've tried their fav schemes and formations; the team can recite all the pregame speeches; their pet players are obvious to all, and their influence over the GM's decisions has run its course. Reasons for keeping a coach beyond this timeframe soon get into their onerous contracts or the fatigue factor in taking on a coach search on top of everything else.
ReplyDeleteGio is one part of our defacto management tripod. There's also the GM's version of reality and the owner's. If Grabavoy's vision is flawed (his overriding virtue currently being that he's not GW), or the owner has no enthusiasm to pay for winning with a painful business outlook, then..?
Replacing Gio would mean that the Timbers think the current players will play better with anybody new in the coach's office. With our stunning injury list, a different team will be on the pitch in mid summer anyway, to confound the issue.