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| Bad man, tenuous metaphor. |
If you haven’t watched Peacemaker (which I'd call both specific and 2/3 recommended), and want to duck any spoilers, now is a great time to skip to the third (sorry!) fourth paragraph.
For those who have, you’ll recall that Peacemaker has this horrible, actual-Klan bigot of a father who raises his two sons on violence. They get along great, no clear sibling rivalry, etc. (stick with me through this stretch), but he still has them fight to, in the white supremacist tradition, “toughen them up” in service of the terrible idea that motivates such assholes. At any rate, one time he sends them into a pit he dug in his front yard (again, these are not deep thinkers) for another fight and he’s nakedly pulling for one brother over the other and, wouldn’t you know it, his favored child catches a punch wrong and dies...
...that’s less a perfect analogy than the latest pop culture reference I’ve read about obviously favoring one child over another and things going sideways.
First and foremost (and unlike the fight in Peacemaker), FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers put on a better-than-expected show tonight. They traded somewhere around the same number of blows, fought roughly as hard - though, to my surprise, Cincy out-muscled the Timbers – and deviate too wildly on the numbers. While the Timbers had their share, Cincinnati ultimately found the wider openings, held off something of a grabasstic (two “s’s” in that or...?) rally, and ultimately held on for what I’d call a by and large deserved 2-1 win. And, unlike that horrible bigot of a father, I still love and support both of my sons.
I went into the game more worried about the Timbers, naturally, but I’d argue tonight showed them still progressing. They managed to pace more than one portion of the game – the start of both halves, mainly, and then the end after Cincinnati fully committed to the counter to close out the game. Cincy, meanwhile, took over longer stretches – particularly the 20-minute spell of the first half, when they clawed control of the game back from Portland and pressed and pressed until they broke through (hold that thought), and again after stifling the Timbers’ attempted rally at the start of the second – and all that feels like a good shorthand for the state of both teams. Portland’s improving, but Cincinnati has a capacity to stomp its foot on the game in a way the Timbers do not...
...have a mentioned how hard it is to focus on both sides of the ball yet? Which, as implied, goes against the concept of focusing? So, doing my best on the rest, with an assist from the highlights.
Credit to the Timbers for pocketing the self-belief from last weekend’s high-comedy win over the Sounders (see? these teams have things in common!) and playing to win. Unfortunately, that also opened up something of a repeat scenario where Cincy could keep both Sergio Santos and Brandon Vazquez high to where they’d have nothing to run against by Portland’s (sometimes back-pedaling) back three. The most disastrous iteration came when (for some damn reason) both Zac McGraw and Larrys Mabiala pinched high and right to keep Luciano Acosta from breaking in and with, just to highlight it, both center backs way up the field and chasing back (something Larrys no longer does well). The ensuing scramble should have led to Cincy’s first goal, but the way they actually went ahead seems more...well, it felt like a better explanation for why Cincinnati took the lead.
I saw people complain about the defending on the throw-in that sprang Alvaro Barreal into too much space up the left. That’s not unfair by any means – Juan David Mosquera could have been tighter and Diego Chara was lurking - but it took a cross of that tickled the burbling belly of perfection to find Santos in the gap between (the eternally behind the play) Mabiala and McGraw. If anything disturbs me about that play, it’s seeing three Timbers beat by one simple give-and-go and a single cross. And yet, Cincy opened up that space by using the full width of the field...a choice/tactic that ultimately decided the game.
For those who have, you’ll recall that Peacemaker has this horrible, actual-Klan bigot of a father who raises his two sons on violence. They get along great, no clear sibling rivalry, etc. (stick with me through this stretch), but he still has them fight to, in the white supremacist tradition, “toughen them up” in service of the terrible idea that motivates such assholes. At any rate, one time he sends them into a pit he dug in his front yard (again, these are not deep thinkers) for another fight and he’s nakedly pulling for one brother over the other and, wouldn’t you know it, his favored child catches a punch wrong and dies...
...that’s less a perfect analogy than the latest pop culture reference I’ve read about obviously favoring one child over another and things going sideways.
First and foremost (and unlike the fight in Peacemaker), FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers put on a better-than-expected show tonight. They traded somewhere around the same number of blows, fought roughly as hard - though, to my surprise, Cincy out-muscled the Timbers – and deviate too wildly on the numbers. While the Timbers had their share, Cincinnati ultimately found the wider openings, held off something of a grabasstic (two “s’s” in that or...?) rally, and ultimately held on for what I’d call a by and large deserved 2-1 win. And, unlike that horrible bigot of a father, I still love and support both of my sons.
I went into the game more worried about the Timbers, naturally, but I’d argue tonight showed them still progressing. They managed to pace more than one portion of the game – the start of both halves, mainly, and then the end after Cincinnati fully committed to the counter to close out the game. Cincy, meanwhile, took over longer stretches – particularly the 20-minute spell of the first half, when they clawed control of the game back from Portland and pressed and pressed until they broke through (hold that thought), and again after stifling the Timbers’ attempted rally at the start of the second – and all that feels like a good shorthand for the state of both teams. Portland’s improving, but Cincinnati has a capacity to stomp its foot on the game in a way the Timbers do not...
...have a mentioned how hard it is to focus on both sides of the ball yet? Which, as implied, goes against the concept of focusing? So, doing my best on the rest, with an assist from the highlights.
Credit to the Timbers for pocketing the self-belief from last weekend’s high-comedy win over the Sounders (see? these teams have things in common!) and playing to win. Unfortunately, that also opened up something of a repeat scenario where Cincy could keep both Sergio Santos and Brandon Vazquez high to where they’d have nothing to run against by Portland’s (sometimes back-pedaling) back three. The most disastrous iteration came when (for some damn reason) both Zac McGraw and Larrys Mabiala pinched high and right to keep Luciano Acosta from breaking in and with, just to highlight it, both center backs way up the field and chasing back (something Larrys no longer does well). The ensuing scramble should have led to Cincy’s first goal, but the way they actually went ahead seems more...well, it felt like a better explanation for why Cincinnati took the lead.
I saw people complain about the defending on the throw-in that sprang Alvaro Barreal into too much space up the left. That’s not unfair by any means – Juan David Mosquera could have been tighter and Diego Chara was lurking - but it took a cross of that tickled the burbling belly of perfection to find Santos in the gap between (the eternally behind the play) Mabiala and McGraw. If anything disturbs me about that play, it’s seeing three Timbers beat by one simple give-and-go and a single cross. And yet, Cincy opened up that space by using the full width of the field...a choice/tactic that ultimately decided the game.
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| In a bid to keep the marriage alive.... |
Cincinnati’s second goal followed from a repeat pattern. After getting hold of the top of the bat after the Timbers’ second-half mini rally, they started to work the space behind Justin Rasmussen's side of the Timbers’ high defensive line. Raymon Gaddis broke (buck-naked) through on the first move, while (think it was) Acosta who skipped past a Rasmussen tackle into (again) a patch of field on Cincy’s right wide-open as Iowa, but here’s where I want to direct Timbers’ fans to the back-post, aka, where the action was. This happened more than once – I can count at least four instances in my head – where Cincy had two to three players playing the blindside of a generally oblivious Portland defense. In both breaks noted above, Chara saw the problem before anyone else, but he also saw it too late to keep the wheels on the car. The second scramble did the game-winning damage, one that discombobulated the Timbers defense to where Cincy’s attackers got away with one bad touch and one whiff before Brandon Vazquez slammed home the goal.
The common thread running through all the above was Cincinnati spreading Portland beyond their limits. Whether by planning or in-game adjustment, it worked and credit to the home team for pulling it off. To slip over to Cincy’s side of the equation – aka, something more comfortable – I found tonight generally encouraging. And I mean that just as much in terms as the breakthroughs that created their chances and the chances themselves. A lot of that looked not just effective, but replicable.
For all the above, another good win and all that, Cincy had its share of concerns. Jitters from the St. Louis Steaming (twice in a week; hey-oh!) seemed to carry over into the opening 20 minutes, but the bigger concern comes with how the defense let so many dangerous balls run through, across and undesirably into the area. The Timbers deserve some credit for that, natch – they played those passes after all – but a better coordinated team, HELL, maybe even Portland a month from now, gets players running to the same angles and - pow! - that’s Cincy seeing the numbers go up on the wrong side of the scoreboard.
Now, that feels like a good segue to what the Timbers did right tonight. Plenty! No, seriously. I can point to “areas of concern” – which, honestly, could just be a circle around most of the team – and the puzzle only fits together in the spirit of a parent saying “good enough” to his child’s first attempt at a 100-piece puzzle, but the passing has tightened up for the third week in a row while the overall posture feels less like the deer-in-the-headlights half-panic of the five weeks prior to those three. One specific area of promise comes from what looks like a budding understanding between Evander, Santiago Moreno, and Franck Boli. At least twice tonight, the three of them stripped the pants right off Cincy’s defense; sure, one of them ended with a half-hearted, wrong-footed softie by Moreno, but the other ended with Portland’s dignity goal. Dairon Asprilla wound up on the end of it and, 1) he deserved it for his hard (if sometimes clumsy) work all night, and 2) I both hope and expect to see him on the end of that combination often as not. It took Cincy’s Roman Celentano bobbling the ball into Asprilla’s path, sure, but that play/goal still has enough but/for the count as good work. Keep cookin'...
Those gears, as well as the ones around them, work just well enough to keep the machine running, but the teeth don’t mesh cleanly yet and it’s gonna take a lot more lube...oil, I mean oil, than Evander back-heels and drop passes. That’s less about not liking them – the guy played a number of slip passes that at least momentarily rescued attacks from outright/immediate failure – than wanting to see him leaven those with some more simple and better. All in all, tonight looked like another stop in the Evander Get-In-Where-He-Fits-In World Tour, which no doubt keeps the frustration bubbling at a $10-million price tag. Going the other way, how much will Portland’s starting eleven evolve between tonight and the end of the season? Maybe there’s nothing else to do right now besides have him operate in a space shaped like a big trapezoid with the wide end just in front of the Timbers’ backline and the narrow one ending a few yards inside the attacking third. So far, he doesn’t present as a player who gets on the end of other player’s passes. With that, the question becomes how to work around that. Or, better, get the most out of it? Keep cookin'...
The common thread running through all the above was Cincinnati spreading Portland beyond their limits. Whether by planning or in-game adjustment, it worked and credit to the home team for pulling it off. To slip over to Cincy’s side of the equation – aka, something more comfortable – I found tonight generally encouraging. And I mean that just as much in terms as the breakthroughs that created their chances and the chances themselves. A lot of that looked not just effective, but replicable.
For all the above, another good win and all that, Cincy had its share of concerns. Jitters from the St. Louis Steaming (twice in a week; hey-oh!) seemed to carry over into the opening 20 minutes, but the bigger concern comes with how the defense let so many dangerous balls run through, across and undesirably into the area. The Timbers deserve some credit for that, natch – they played those passes after all – but a better coordinated team, HELL, maybe even Portland a month from now, gets players running to the same angles and - pow! - that’s Cincy seeing the numbers go up on the wrong side of the scoreboard.
Now, that feels like a good segue to what the Timbers did right tonight. Plenty! No, seriously. I can point to “areas of concern” – which, honestly, could just be a circle around most of the team – and the puzzle only fits together in the spirit of a parent saying “good enough” to his child’s first attempt at a 100-piece puzzle, but the passing has tightened up for the third week in a row while the overall posture feels less like the deer-in-the-headlights half-panic of the five weeks prior to those three. One specific area of promise comes from what looks like a budding understanding between Evander, Santiago Moreno, and Franck Boli. At least twice tonight, the three of them stripped the pants right off Cincy’s defense; sure, one of them ended with a half-hearted, wrong-footed softie by Moreno, but the other ended with Portland’s dignity goal. Dairon Asprilla wound up on the end of it and, 1) he deserved it for his hard (if sometimes clumsy) work all night, and 2) I both hope and expect to see him on the end of that combination often as not. It took Cincy’s Roman Celentano bobbling the ball into Asprilla’s path, sure, but that play/goal still has enough but/for the count as good work. Keep cookin'...
Those gears, as well as the ones around them, work just well enough to keep the machine running, but the teeth don’t mesh cleanly yet and it’s gonna take a lot more lube...oil, I mean oil, than Evander back-heels and drop passes. That’s less about not liking them – the guy played a number of slip passes that at least momentarily rescued attacks from outright/immediate failure – than wanting to see him leaven those with some more simple and better. All in all, tonight looked like another stop in the Evander Get-In-Where-He-Fits-In World Tour, which no doubt keeps the frustration bubbling at a $10-million price tag. Going the other way, how much will Portland’s starting eleven evolve between tonight and the end of the season? Maybe there’s nothing else to do right now besides have him operate in a space shaped like a big trapezoid with the wide end just in front of the Timbers’ backline and the narrow one ending a few yards inside the attacking third. So far, he doesn’t present as a player who gets on the end of other player’s passes. With that, the question becomes how to work around that. Or, better, get the most out of it? Keep cookin'...
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| The first, unexpected, "master builder" |
It's not just those players, obviously. For one, David Ayala has finally sketched the outlines of a good player/possible solution. In a better world, he lunges home that header at the end of the first half (dream, Timbers fans), but Ayala has done as much to improve the Timbers passing in recent weeks as any player on the roster; whether distribution from deep-ish midfield, opening the field (something Portland doesn’t do nearly enough; think the passing map gets it largely right), or pushing into the attacking third, he’s improved game-over-game...then again, 1) how much do he and Evander operate in the same space, and 2) does that leave Portland’s “playmakers” too deep? Both Moreno and Asprilla mitigate that a bit, because both do enough to stretch the game and beat that first defender and, to finally bring Boli into the conversation, I’m really liking his mobility, braininess, and technique on the ball. Keep cookin'....
To distill the three paragraphs above into an argument, I believe the architects of the Timbers attack have enough pieces to build a decent one. It’s just waiting on a master-builder to bring it all together and seal it up with the Craggle. They may want to hold off on the latter until Felipe Mora, Yimmi Chara and Sebastian Blanco come all the way back, but, again, I see real potential in the Lego pieces. My bigger concern comes with everything behind it. What the hell? Why not end with a little sacrilege?
Now that I’ve typed through everything above, I’m more inclined to say Chara got left with a lot to do. Both Evander and Ayala played forward quite a bit and that was probably one of several factors that blended the Timbers’ defense 6-8 times tonight. At the same time, I think we all see that the Timbers haven’t been able to take control of the middle as a given all season long. Granted, he won’t square off against Cincinnati’s Junior Moreno and Obinna Nwobodo (who, 1) lived up to my billing (he’s rangy and strong), and 2) came out on the wrong end of two second-half, mano a mano duels with Evander; again, encouraged), but this wasn’t the first game Portland came out on the wrong side of the midfield duel; forcing him to put out fires all over (see the back-post stuff cited above) only made it worse. Chara has doubled as Portland’s Clark Kent and Superman for round about a decade by now, but he’s not the plug-‘n’-play solution he used to be. As such, this becomes another area of the field in need of balancing, or otherwise sorting out.
I could draw this out with talking points for both teams, but what would that end with the Academy playing music off with beautiful music? The substance of my half-thoughts lurk between the lines in all the above. And best of luck to both teams going forward. Looking forward to pulling for both my kids next weekend and for every weekend after, the end.
To distill the three paragraphs above into an argument, I believe the architects of the Timbers attack have enough pieces to build a decent one. It’s just waiting on a master-builder to bring it all together and seal it up with the Craggle. They may want to hold off on the latter until Felipe Mora, Yimmi Chara and Sebastian Blanco come all the way back, but, again, I see real potential in the Lego pieces. My bigger concern comes with everything behind it. What the hell? Why not end with a little sacrilege?
Now that I’ve typed through everything above, I’m more inclined to say Chara got left with a lot to do. Both Evander and Ayala played forward quite a bit and that was probably one of several factors that blended the Timbers’ defense 6-8 times tonight. At the same time, I think we all see that the Timbers haven’t been able to take control of the middle as a given all season long. Granted, he won’t square off against Cincinnati’s Junior Moreno and Obinna Nwobodo (who, 1) lived up to my billing (he’s rangy and strong), and 2) came out on the wrong end of two second-half, mano a mano duels with Evander; again, encouraged), but this wasn’t the first game Portland came out on the wrong side of the midfield duel; forcing him to put out fires all over (see the back-post stuff cited above) only made it worse. Chara has doubled as Portland’s Clark Kent and Superman for round about a decade by now, but he’s not the plug-‘n’-play solution he used to be. As such, this becomes another area of the field in need of balancing, or otherwise sorting out.
I could draw this out with talking points for both teams, but what would that end with the Academy playing music off with beautiful music? The substance of my half-thoughts lurk between the lines in all the above. And best of luck to both teams going forward. Looking forward to pulling for both my kids next weekend and for every weekend after, the end.
I guess you'd be right if you responded that "both teams missed chances to score", but the more galling to me were (naturally) those of the Timbers. Of course, they only irked me because there were several good 1st-half Timber build-ups that led to comically bad shooting efforts.
ReplyDeleteTo damn with faint praise- Some quality players can just, through force of will, pull a so-so squad up to a higher level. Other high skill players have subtle talents that are only appreciated when quality teammates surround them. So far, Evander falls into the second group.
The big problem (due to multiple causes) is that the Timbers are a pastiche team, cobbled together from whatever is left in the parts bin on any given Friday. Cincinnati, much less so.