Portland Timbers 0-2 New York Red Bulls: Short (Pfft!), Sharp and Disappointed

Happy Halloween, motherfuckers!! (aka, how crosses work).

I want to start with one thought, something I feel escapes fans from time to time.

If your accountant fucks up your taxes, you complain, yes? If the kitchen sent you something you didn’t order and it’s cold, you send that wrecked fucking garbage back to the kitchen and demand an apology, right?

When a ref calls a bad game, you lose your whole goddamn mind and tell him you wish he would die in a fiery crash tomorrow with his whole worthless, myopic family, don’t you?

Professional athletes are not sacred spirit creatures. They are people who are hired to do a job. When they fail at the job, there is nothing wrong with pointing it out.

When you insult them personally, or, for example, wish them bodily harm (as in the refereeing example above; i.e., neither say nor think such things), yes, you have crossed the line and, as MLS says, don’t cross the line.

The point is, there’s nothing wrong with saying this player or that hasn’t done well for some time or, to borrow a point from someone else (@isaacfharris), that a coach isn’t making the proper adjustments. Now, to tonight’s game. Bullet-point style.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Real Salt Lake: Recalibrating Expectations

Did we expect too much too soon from Fernandez...?

To briefly walk through my stages of doubt and faith, real questions about what would happen started bubbling up around the 40th minute. By the 60th, I’d more or less resigned myself to the result going sideways and started preparing the proper language for recovery during times of struggle.

Curiously, it was around the 85th minute when I drafted the tweet I tapped into the ether at the fizzling middle of the 96th minute. Verbatim too. I believed the Portland Timbers would hold on around the 80th minute, and I was all but certain of it by the 85th. As such, this little flurry – as well as the red card that proceeded it (not the dumbest of the day, fwiw) – registered as glitches in the matrix, signs of danger from an alternate reality, as opposed to the one in which the Timbers beat Real Salt Lake 1-0 in Portland, because that was how the game was always going to end.

The thought came from a place beyond knowledge, like the future breaking the fourth wall and whispering, “it’s gonna be fine” in my ear. To be clear, this has nothing to do with clairvoyance; point in fact, I didn’t send that tweet in the 85th minute precisely because I worried about tickling the cosmos and jinxing the result. Still, the Timbers just seemed like they had it tonight – or maybe it’s that RSL didn’t – and, ugly and hairy as it was, they did. That’s three points, an edge over the (actually) surging Sporting Kansas City next weekend…and now we’re at the “real talk” place in this post.

First, this was a great goddamn win. I appreciate that might be hard to swallow for anyone who just watched…I mean, of course, I saw all the “what the fuck is happening tweets” around the 88th minute, not least because I floated one of them. All the same, the relentlessness of RSL’s press/attack was on full display tonight. They won every attacking category tonight and Deimar Kreilach alone must have had as many clear shots as Portland as a team; moreover, they had Portland pinned through the first 30 minutes of the second half, at a minimum, and they still had Joao Plata (basically effective) and Sam Johnson to bring on as substitutes; moreover again, they had a clear chance at the death.

New York City FC 0-1 Portland Timbers: The Ballad of Andres Flores

There was this guy named Andres Flores, WHOA-oh-oh!

I mean, I get the thought process behind the way that New York City FC lined up on this game’s decisive set-piece – i.e., set the offside line as far away from your goal as possible, because why wouldn’t you? – but that doesn’t mean I understand how that madness made it from the training ground to a game with points on the line. With all that space between that flat, high line and the goal (again, that was by design), it would take nothing more than a good ball over the top, one player slipping, and that’s an attacking player in clear en route to your goal. By my count, a coaching staff should only have to line that up one time before saying, “Oh, shit. Right. What was I thinking?”

That stupidly soft goal provided the separation, but the Portland Timbers owe their 1-0 road win in the Rumble at the Rhombus (ht: @iamseanspencer) to everything that happened around it. Certain players deserve a little more credit/love for delivering a, frankly, contextually massive win: Sebastian Blanco tops the list, and for reasons both obvious and less than, but the players who deserve the most credit are the people who filled in for the players that even most fans agree Portland can’t do without. If I had to choose between them, I’d give Andres Flores the more vigorous nod, but Renzo Zambrano keeps erasing whatever doubts I have about him one start at a time. Those guys, along with Claude Dielna, got thrown into the deep end, with “show us you can win a tough game” ringing in their ears. The stakes were lower for Dairon Asprilla, and on the grounds that he had less responsibility for proving that Portland can win without Diego Chara on the field. And, unless I misheard, winning without Chara is something that hadn’t happened since July 5,…2015 (wha?).

I’ll be damned if Flores, especially, didn’t do his best Chara impression out there tonight. To carry over a thought from last weekend, just about every player channeled their inner Chara tonight, few more so than Dielna and Larrys Mabiala. Stressful as it was to see both of those players as high and wide as I saw them tonight, the Timbers have found real success pushing against the other team’s attack lately.

At the same time, I think the box score gives a truer read on this game than what you’ll see in the super-condensed highlights. Portland had a pair of great chances – and, holy shit, does Diego Valeri still have it (which he proved on multiple occasions tonight) – but NYCFC had more chances and better ones too. The best ones fell to Valentin Castellanos (here’s one), but Portland by and large succeeded in keeping them away from danger zones. And that’s where the box score goes wrong: the Timbers rarely broke a sweat in this game; whatever the numbers say (ungood things), the Timbers never looked uncomfortable tonight.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Seattle Sounders: Getting Results, Managing Expectations

The rosters may have affected expectations.... 

A mash-up of the Portland Timbers beat an even more deconstructed version of the Seattle Sounders down in Tucson, AZ last night. The final score was 2-1, and, no, the result doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting, or some unlikely collision of optimism and pessimism. I don’t really know how pre-season works – is there something in a players’ contracts regarding how hard you “go in”? does the coach send them onto the field with something like, “play, but not really, but I’m also watching, so play” for motivation? - I only know it’s different. Not just because of that, but due to the literal throw-shit-at-the-wall line-ups you see, and probably should see, up until the game right before the start of the season…

…if I were a coach, I’d tinker even in that game. Experiments are how we learn, and these are cheap.

Portland Timbers coach Giovanni Savarese did something noteworthy with his 2/3, 1/3 line-up: he fielded two competitive, and reasonably-balanced units. To save you from clicking through a link, here were Portland’s line-ups for the 60/30 shifts, respectively:

First 60: Attinella, Valentin, Mabiala, Cascante, Villafaña, Guzmán, Paredes, Polo, Valeri, Blanco, Melano

Second 30: Clark, Farfan, Tuiloma, Dielna, Miller*, Flores, Chara, Asprilla, Loría, Conechny, Ebobisse

Both units showed good faces and bad ones – also, I don’t think either of those specific line-ups will ever see the light of day in regular season. “Team First 60” had a little more attacking “pop,” while “Team Second 30” had mostly effort/promise mixed with stabilizing influences all ‘round (went with the buddy system, usually a good call), but, regardless of whether the world will see either specific line-up, both sets could manage a game if it had to. I don’t think they’d hold up through a season, but Portland has emergency arrangements, and that’s my happy thought for today.

The bad news is complicated. Both units, isolated parts of them, and individual players all looked good at some point tonight; there was a blessed minimum of stinking up the joint. At the same time, neither Team First 60 nor Team Second 30 faced the Sounders’ best at any point last night. The Sounders played a decent, reasonably experienced line-up for the first 75 minutes – e.g., players like Will Bruin (who had a couple chances, even a PK shout), Harry Shipp, but it was Handwalla Bwana who stood out, and for more than scoring Seattle’s goal – but that team featured…maybe three, four marginal starters for Seattle? They played a passel of toddlers for the game’s final 15 minutes – aka The Seattle Super Junior Sounders! - and that’s who Dairon Asprilla bullied to create the game winner. As far as that goes...

MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 4: The Freighted Meaning of U.S. v. Panama and Pity Martinez

Why do they call me Pity, you ask?

Yeah, yeah, I won’t get to the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati until the end. But a little something significant takes place tomorrow evening, tomorrow night for the east coast audience, and things will just flow better if I bury that. Won’t blame anyone who spot-reads these things, ever. Moving on.

Professional soccer players (as opposed the Kombine Kids) will kick a ball around for the first time in 2019 tomorrow night. It’ll be a competitive experience, even if it isn’t a competitive event. When the U.S. Men’s National Team plays formerly lowly Panama tomorrow night – formerly, because who made the 2018 World Cup? – I can’t say how many eyes will be on them, but I expect fairly intense interest among the eyeballs they do draw. Here’s why:

“Hire the wrong coaches? Yes. Cut the wrong players? Yes. Pick the wrong teams? Yes. Fail to develop or integrate a half-decade's worth of young talent? Yes. Show gaps in the regional armor with losses to teams we should dominate like Guatemala, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago? Yes. Miss the Olympics twice? Yes. Miss the World Cup?”

That commentary, lifted from Matt Doyle’s 48-hour preview, covers just about every ingredient that led to the bad taste that’s lingered in your mouth since the U.S. Men last played. I can’t even say when the U.S. played last for the same reason you don’t go to a substitute teacher for parent-teacher conferences. Everyone understood that Dave Sarachan wouldn’t be guiding the team to 2022, so it made sense to wait until the guy who will stepped up. And, hello, Gregg Berhalter!

I read the usual handful of sources (so, so lazy) to get myself prepared for tomorrow’s game, both mentally and emotionally, but, with this being Berhalter’s first game out, no one really knows what to expect. Jurgen Klinsmann (one of my obsessions) changed my understanding of U.S. Soccer, in that he expanded the range of what is possible. In so many words, I’d grown up on steady progress, I’d internalized the idea that the team would improve, maybe without much in the way of style or excitement, and certainly with a couple set-backs, but steadily. Jurgen undermined all that in such an insidious way that one has to wonder whether he wasn’t some kind of Manchurian candidate. I remember watching Klinsmann’s first game in charge. It wasn’t pretty, but that also didn’t seem important given that Klinsmann would slowly make the U.S. his team…I don’t know that that ever happened. I’m not sure anyone knows whether that happened…

MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 3: Trades, Progress and "Progress"

My li'l all-Homegrown team, in my head. And who they'll face...

To start with a happy thought, preseason dates are now bubbling up to the top of the crawl on MLSSoccer.com, and that means people will be kicking balls and people very, very soon (maybe even people’s balls). Wait! I’ve just received word of people kicking with intent! Sporting Kansas City knocked around Sporting AZ FC pretty good only yesterday, and thus the ball rolls forward for 2019. (What?! Rodney Wallace moved to SKC? Was this in between black-outs or something?) Based on the crawl, my personal preseason starts on January 30 when FC Cincinnati plays L’Impact de Montreal (show it, plz?). I’ll delve into all (available) things FC Cincy, and Portland Timbers down below and, after that, take a tour by all personal points of interest around MLS. But, with a big date on the domestic soccer calendar coming before everything that isn’t SKC getting amped (Peter Vermes is involved, obviously) for the CONCACAF Champions League (CCL), let’s start there.

Meet the New Boss, Nothing Like the Old Boss (and thank gods for it)

This time next week, I’ll be getting on my giddy about the U.S. Men’s National Team for the first time since U.S. Soccer finally and correctly terminated The Jurgen Klinsmann Experience. It makes sense to restate my beef with Klinsmann, briefly – i.e., I felt like he never prepared the team tactically, never mind conceptually, and that, like most self-help people, he had a horrible knack for blaming everyone but himself when things went wrong – because, per some soccer porn put out by U.S. Soccer (Behind the Crest, I think they call it), Gregg Berhalter takes a different approach, maybe even its micro-managing opposite. When the U.S. Men play Panama next Sunday, then Costa Rica the following Saturday, I don’t need to see the U.S. beat both teams badly enough to have to peel their boot out of their collective asses after the final whistle; I just want a team that doesn’t take the field seized with existential doubt about what the hell the coach actually meant by “expressing yourself" and “getting a little nasty.” Hearing Tyler Miller talk about Berhalter’s system not as gospel, but as a plan to “fall back on,” played in my ears like a chorus of angels.

We’re All Getting a Baby Brother (mom and dad have been doin’ it again!)

Now, back to MLS, I have a couple league-wide notes. First, the league confirmed Austin FC as the league’s 27^th team – and one with a much firmer plan/vision for the future that New York City FC or whatever the fuck they’re calling Miami’s boondoggle. Austin will officially join in 2021, and without shivving the hearts of another city, and, if all goes well, playing in a privately-funded stadium of their own. Don Garber said something about “a non-linear process” for getting a team in Austin, but all the above strikes me as doing things a damned site better than the two “glamour teams” named above.