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| Yaaasss. (Also, is this the right Birdman for the reference. #shit.) |
“Just like Birdman, hit you with a left, then a right, plus a third hand.”
- KOOL A.D.
Yeah, I know. That’s just what came to me for the title, so I wanted to at least give the source.
The litmus test for how you feel about the Portland Timbers’ 0-1 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps at BC Place tonight has exactly one question in it: do you feel like the Timbers should have tied that game? If you answered no, yeah, this loss feels like a disaster. If you answer yes, well, that's the fun part: the answer is multiple choice.
I’ll start by borrowing from the Tale of Two Halves cliché (“it was the worst of times, and everyone else lived in London”), and call tonight’s loss A Tale of One-Third and Two-Thirds. Another soccer cliché comes in as well, e.g., playing on the front foot. I don’t think even Timbers fans would dispute that Vancouver outright owned the first 1/3 of the game; going the other way, I don’t think any ‘Caps fan would argue against ceding the final 1/3 of the game to the Timbers. The middle third feels a little more up for grabs, but within a Venn diagram that where the Tale of One-Third and Two-Thirds overlaps with parts of the Tale of Two Halves, and I can’t show you the wedges of each circle, so I’ll stop trying and switch to another line of argument.
If I had to weigh what Vancouver did against Portland in the first 1/3 of the game against what Portland did to Vancouver in the final 1/3, I see the scale tipping toward the Timbers. And that’s where the sub-title for this post came from (e.g., hitting someone from multiple sides), and why I feel OK about this loss. On the (theoretically) bleak side, I see tonight as a blown opportunity to investigate or, God forbid, seek to expand on the first team’s attacking potential, but that’s only leaving some personal, impractical theories on the table. Giovanni Savarese doesn’t have that luxury, just as no coach ever will, so I don’t remotely blame him for sticking with the Plan A that has brought the Timbers three straight wins. I just hope they can bottle whatever Savarese said or did to get the team geared up for that second half (is it amphetamines or is it Maybelline?), because it worked – and better than any of the time/space warping madness Portland used to beat Real Salt Lake last week.
And yet it gets weirder.
- KOOL A.D.
Yeah, I know. That’s just what came to me for the title, so I wanted to at least give the source.
The litmus test for how you feel about the Portland Timbers’ 0-1 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps at BC Place tonight has exactly one question in it: do you feel like the Timbers should have tied that game? If you answered no, yeah, this loss feels like a disaster. If you answer yes, well, that's the fun part: the answer is multiple choice.
I’ll start by borrowing from the Tale of Two Halves cliché (“it was the worst of times, and everyone else lived in London”), and call tonight’s loss A Tale of One-Third and Two-Thirds. Another soccer cliché comes in as well, e.g., playing on the front foot. I don’t think even Timbers fans would dispute that Vancouver outright owned the first 1/3 of the game; going the other way, I don’t think any ‘Caps fan would argue against ceding the final 1/3 of the game to the Timbers. The middle third feels a little more up for grabs, but within a Venn diagram that where the Tale of One-Third and Two-Thirds overlaps with parts of the Tale of Two Halves, and I can’t show you the wedges of each circle, so I’ll stop trying and switch to another line of argument.
If I had to weigh what Vancouver did against Portland in the first 1/3 of the game against what Portland did to Vancouver in the final 1/3, I see the scale tipping toward the Timbers. And that’s where the sub-title for this post came from (e.g., hitting someone from multiple sides), and why I feel OK about this loss. On the (theoretically) bleak side, I see tonight as a blown opportunity to investigate or, God forbid, seek to expand on the first team’s attacking potential, but that’s only leaving some personal, impractical theories on the table. Giovanni Savarese doesn’t have that luxury, just as no coach ever will, so I don’t remotely blame him for sticking with the Plan A that has brought the Timbers three straight wins. I just hope they can bottle whatever Savarese said or did to get the team geared up for that second half (is it amphetamines or is it Maybelline?), because it worked – and better than any of the time/space warping madness Portland used to beat Real Salt Lake last week.
And yet it gets weirder.
