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| Me. |
With the Portland Timbers clawing back to a 2-2 draw against
MLS new kids, Minnesota United FC, it feels like we’re finally getting to a
place where fans and weirdos like me have a deep enough sandbox to play in.
This being (my personal) first contact with Minnesota, I want to dig into them
first.
Overall, though, tonight’s lessons are:
1) Minnesota has enough of a plan.2) Portland has a better one.3) And Portland has both (some) depth and a plan for it.
All that’s pure speculation, of course, me projecting
fantasies into a Being Caleb Porter automaton that is more me than Caleb
Porter, and therefore is it really Caleb Porter?
At any rate, on Minnesota United FC
Combine a little distraction (e.g., dinner and Grammys) with
a more than a little unfamiliarity, I cannot tell a lie, but I’m not sure about
when, if or whether Minnesota made changes on the field. All my notes are
therefore, 1) general, while also being, 2) about players who stood out. All in
all, Minnesota feels conservative, a team that will use solidity as a platform
from which inspiration can jump that much higher, and I’m drawing that less
from their roster, than from a one-game sample – tonight’s game, in fact, and
that’s totally it. You’ve been warned.
The one player I kept seeing for Minnesota was their Brazilian
midfielder, Ibson. And, for frame of (potentially meaningless) reference, Ibson’s
more Dunga than Socrates. Based on tonight’s game, he plays more safety valve
than weapon, and that’s nothing to sniff at: teams need calm and pacing and
Ibson looked good in that role. It probably also helps that he's familiar to the club, a sort of anchor for the transition. He also benefitted from having a stopping block
behind him in the person of Joseph Greenspan (yep, U.S. Navy kid); he’s a big kid, maybe the next
Axel Sjoberg, even though Greenspan never looked as elegant. So long as
Minnesota has Kevin Molino (who not so much smoked as evaporated (an admittedly
stranded Zarek Valentin), Christian Ramirez’s (at-first-blush) intriguing
attacking tools, and – golly! – if Bashkim Kadrii didn’t present as someone to
watch this 2017: yeah, I think they have stuff to work with. I don’t expect a
flawless start, but that team – the one I saw for the first and only time –
looked like they’ll be competitive enough.
