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...
