The Portland Timbers 2016: Patterns and Pratfalls (and Possibilties?)

No, think harder. What do you NEED?

I had plans to duck Darlington Nagbe entirely in this review (what do you mean, “you don’t believe me”?), but Stumptown Footy posted something last week about Scottish giants Celtic FC comin’ a’-courtin,’ and it sums up Nagbe’s game really well, so, y’know, what the hell?

“As fans in the Rose City know well, however, Nagbe provides much more than goals, assists, and tackles won. Although it’s a role that is typically far from glamorous, Nagbe is an elite shuttler who facilitates the Timbers’ transition and possession play in often spectacular fashion.”

To draw out a point: does what Nagbe bring to the team provide “much more than goals, assists, and tackles won?” And what the hell does “elite shuttler” even mean? The phrase implies that the Timbers transition better than all other teams in MLS, or even most of them, but do they? (By way of a quick comparison/name-drop, Ignacio Piatti starts and finishes his transitions.) Basically, I credit Stumptown for as tidy a summation of how Nagbe uses his considerable talents, but the actual productive value of that contribution remains an open question in my mind. And I hereby leave it open for anyone who reads this to answer…according to his or her judgment/conscience.

One final, preliminary comment: Timbers fans strike me as a fairly sentimental bunch. They connect to (most of) the players with genuine interest and a kind of familial fondness. I didn’t have a deep connection to any team for much of my soccer-viewing life, not a real one, and I have only one year in as an actual member of any supporters’ group and didn’t do anything meaningful with it when I did have it (nothing personal; I’m just not much of a joiner*), I’m not clear as to how normal this is among fans. (*That said, on this Saturday after Thanksgiving, I am genuinely thankful for having found a motley collection of people to watch games with. Yay!)

I don’t care if Timbers fans are unusually…clingy, honestly, but, when it comes to really cleaning a house, sentimentality often just sort of gets in the way. Sometimes one has to view grandma’s wish to be buried with her collection of cat statuettes for what it is: a little bit of madness. Those statuettes are worthless junk, so let’s bite the bullet and get rid of them…

…speaking of Lucas Melano. Guys, I’m kidding! Not that mean (am I?). Still, whether by fate or sub-par performance, he offers a good starting point for the story of Portland’s 2016 season.

Portland v. Vancouver: A Timely Experiment (that should end right now).

Not pictured: Blas Perez running in to kick these kids.

Well, that was fun, yeah? Seeing a collection of (metaphorical) toddlers run out against a bunch of (metaphorical) first-teamers. (OK, yes, low blow. Vancouver Whitecaps fans, you have my apologies. And yet...)

Immediately after I told the guy sitting next to me something to the effect that the Portland Timbers were doing pretty well in terms of keeping Vancouver's first team off the scoreboard? Of course they scored. Of course...a better fan would have gone piss immediately after to insure that the Timbers would have scored in his absence. I guess I'm not that fan, but, then again, scoring wasn't really on the cards for the Portland Timbers tonight, was it?

In case it's not clear by now, the Portland Timbers trotted out a clear B-Team tonight, to play against....yep, that's pretty much the Vancouver Whitecaps starting eleven. Well, give or take on Vancouver's starting eleven, but, still, they had more of their A-team in the game than Portland did, and by a country mile. Any Timbers fans losing his/her mind over this....well, first of all, he/she shouldn't. Not even the guy on the MAX who wondered out loud to his girlfriend how a team that won MLS Cup only a few months ago could lose at home in their preseason. He seemed especially disappointed that this happened right after beating Minnesota United so comprehensively just a few nights ago? It's not that shocking, is it? (And, to his credit, the same guy acknowledged shortly thereafter that Portland started virtually none of their, uh, starters, so...again, he was surprised, why?).

Speaking for myself, I didn't know what to expect when I showed up tonight – and that's mostly down to willful ignorance of Portland's staring eleven on any given match day. With that in mind, any and all can paint me all colors of giddy about what I watched out there tonight – e.g., our depth against (most of) an MLS club that many people expect to do pretty well in 2016. For this lukewarm mess of a team to lose just 2-0 to a club that scored once with a new striker (left wide-open on the back post) and again with one of last year's starters? Well, I wouldn't say I learned a ton about what to expect from the Timbers as a team this year. What I did learn, however, was a thing or two about Portland's depth, plus a likely sub here, maybe a starter there. And that's what the rest of this will be about. Ready, steady...go!

Timbers Draw Vancouver: Expectations Managed

Dear World: You're welcome.

Before getting into the meat of this thing, I want to state that I will post some thoughts on the first legs of the other three MLS Conference semifinals. It's only the mini-games for Montreal Impact v. Columbus Crew and Seattle Sounders v. FC Dallas. I sat all the way through DC United v. New York Red Bulls...of which I could say I have no regrets, but...

While we're on the mini-games, something struck me as I reviewed the (limited) tape for the Portland Timbers goal-less draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps. They're funny things, the mini-games, in that they inflate the competence and calamity of any given game. Don't know why that never hit me till today, but, yeah, that's a pretty distorted lens in the end. Have no goddamn clue how I'll adjust to that next season.

Wait, they're also the opportunity to pick up on little things one might have missed – e.g. because I watched the game with muffled sound, I didn't know that Taylor Twellman and Adrian Heath spotted a naked tricyclist in Portland last night. Ah, shine on Rose City, you crazy diamonds. I also missed how Madden-esque Twellman has become (e.g. obsessed with his own sometimes trivial fixations at time; see, potential concussions and theories on the state and presence of Steven Beitashour's wedding ring). There's a certain charm to it, really, Anyway, the game. The game, the game...

At least three people today told me that they were satisfied with the result, again the goal-less draw that, let's face it, anyone reading this post watched earlier today. Once one takes in all the factors – injuries/ailments to Diego "Mystery Ailment" Chara and Adam "Flu" Kwarasey, respectively, as well as a sometimes visible lack of rest (for some more than others) - that's a damned hard position to argue against. And I don't intend to argue against that, so much as to drag the result back to a kind of cold, neutral perspective. Because, to be clear, today's draw would pop little beads of sweat into Timbers fans' brows, and rightly so, under virtually any other set of circumstances. And so begins today's tale of acceptance...

Portland Rocks the Rapids: Happy!

31 weeks in the making, yo. Secret formula.

Well, that was fascinating. Twitter broke down halfway through – don't know if that's just my service provider, my phone, or Portland Timbers fans melting twitter (please let it be the latter) – so I couldn't launch (frankly, broadly ignored) bon mots throughout the course of the game. Still, holy shit, and welcome to the playoffs, Portland! And at a spot that lets you host the next round? Absolutely goddamn delectable! I'd like to think the club, the players, and the front office has been aging this particular barrel of grapes, so that it can age properly, but I'm closer to think it involved some kind of prison-specialty "home-brew," something utterly spontaneous, a little desperate, etc.. And yet, helluva win. Three straight wins with a goal differential clocking at 10 for and 3 against spells momentum in any tournament. And that's where Portland is right now, after a one-way railroad win over the Colorado Rapids. Can I get a huzzah?

As much as I talked about "unlocking Nagbe" across various posts and tweets over the past week, I'm nothing like sure it was that simple. Like it or not, the Timbers have MLS's most complicated player in Nagbe...bet no one thought Landon Donovan would pass that particular torch anyone, but there you go. What does he want most: it ("it" being optimal professional success and all its trappings), or the love of his children, or a trip to Cambodia, a week in a Vegas(-area) brothel? No one will ever know for sure, at least not until some specific set of data points gets settled definitively. All I know is that Nagbe picked it up the Burnished Crown of Inscrutability without anyone noticing. Or maybe he just picked up pieces of it. Jesus, is it hard to tell, or who?

Setting aside mysteries for now – these are questions that time will answer – Nagbe bought, owned, sold, and re-bought at an extraordinarily-inflated value Sunday night. He defined omnipresence by putting in a couple odd tackles in the defensive third, and carrying the ball out of the back on a minimum of [random number generator] five occasions[?]. At the same time, he popped up around the goal just as many times, whether to score, play in someone else to score, or to simply set off panic in Colorado’s defensive third. Put together - and, here, I'm talking less about tonight than the season as a whole - Nagbe played the engrossing role of the talented friend in the crowd. He attends your show and, knowing he's super fucking talented, you invite him on stage, where he proceeds to lay down a shredding guitar solo, a magic act, and a tap routine that changes fucking history. And without props or equipment. You're left to think, why the hell isn't he doing this every week and getting paid, son? Somewhere in there, you come to understand that you’re the kind to spot talent, rather than possess it. (Um, personal problems, as yet unresolved. Judy? Where are my anti-depressants?)

Seattle v. Portland: The Timbers' Best Worst Loss of 2015

No, keep looking. This is for your own good. Focus...

The worst thing about the Portland Timbers' 2-1 road loss to the Seattle Sounders was that it allowed Sounders fans to feel happiness. The sweet buzz of victory couldn't have lasted very long, not with how Seattle played – and especially not against the backdrop of their recent results – but, in the moment, I saw their fans singing without a hint of irony or embarrassment. If Portland laid an egg like that, every gaffe and shortcoming would go under the magnifying glass and expletives would fill the air. Do I begrudge them the moment....well, yes. Obviously.

The result itself was the second worst thing. Because it was not fair. Weird officiating comes in at #3, even as I'm entirely willing to accept that the Timbers lost this one more than the ref stole it from them (see: total shots on goal). And at #4...well, there is no fourth worst thing. Not really.

Tonight, I'll be doing one of the easier things in fandom: celebrating a good performance and spiting the loss. Portland played pretty friggin' well on Sunday: they piled up a genuinely impressive number of chances, and didn't miss all of them by much; the defensive shape and pressure in midfield snuffed out nearly all Seattle's attacks before they could get going (the two to four that got through, though, holy shit, did those turn out poorly; more later); among the most impressive things about the game came with how well Jack Jewsbury and George Fochive covered for midfield stalwarts/dynamos Will Johnson and Diego Chara. Hell, ol' Jack turned the old line about old dogs on its head by being the most the dangerous man on the field.

It couldn't have gone perfectly, of course, or I'd be bragging about a win and Seattle's long fall from Olympus. For starters, throw that first goal onto the Steaming Pile of Shitty Goals, right next to that other piece of shit from the early season loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps. The flailing, the falling, just the plain shock of the damn thing. I mean, jesus, if I didn't throw up a little pulling up that clip. Worse, the same clumsiness that let that one slide past showed up a couple more times in the first half. I mean, clearing the goddamn ball. That's park-ball stuff.

As for the second goal...look, I wouldn't have called it, either, but it wasn't that egregious. No matter how inadvertent, Adam Kwarasey did keep Obafemi Martins from getting to a ball that he very likely would have run down. Put it this way: call it most unjust in the grand scheme of the game and move on.

MLS Week 19: The Half-Rack (e.g 12 Thoughts/New Feature)

Still undecided. That's half a half of whatever, goddammit!

Well, I didn't promise promise I'd stay away from Major League Soccer. In fact, I think I've landed on something more satisfying than damn, dirty power rankings (not least because, as argued in the Week 18/Season End Rankings, I don't anticipate much meaningful change in terms of how MLS's clubs stack up against one another till the end of the season).

Time constraints being what they are, I sat through only condensed versions of every game in MLS for Week 19 (well, except Vancouver v. Sporting KC, which isn’t up, condensed-style, at time of writing). It looked like a great week based on those snippets, lots of goals, lots of bad defending, some wacky refereeing – i.e. one's daily diet of madness, basically. And huzzah!

Because branding is everything in these teenage years of the 21st century, I hereby introduce the Conifers & Citrus "Half-Rack": the 12 comments that came to me as I watched, in this case, all those condensed games. They're not talking points, even if as I view each of them as segues to larger conversations, and, ideally, I'll stray away from flagging the obvious. Even as I will sometimes fail, as when I point out that, holy shit, is that Sebastian Giovinco kid really goddamn good.

Last part to the preamble: was "half-rack" an East Coast or West Coast term? Not trying to start another rap war, but I spent enough time on both coasts, and have put enough mileage on my brain, that I can’t remember where I lived when friends (and, yes, family) asked me to "pick up a half-rack" on the way to this or that event, or when they just asked for a half-case.

At any rate, 12 Points, Comments, Ideas...Things unfold below...starting with a quick hit on my beloved, yet misbehaving, Portland Timbers.

Portland Loses to Real Salt Lake Again. Competition/Venue Notwithstanding

We tried to wake him on the charter. He didn't look so good.

I'll start by owning some ill-advised tweets. For starters, when I said Real Salt Lake was "thin" all over and the Portland Timbers "thick" I overlooked the presence of Javier Morales and Joao Plata; the same statement also ignored Sebastian Jaime, the RSL forward who has been coming on of late, and Luke Mulholland, who has been RSL's ironman/most consistent contributors for going on two years (yes, it’s still true even if goal posts confuse him).

When I was tweeting what turned out to be utter crap, I was actually talking about RSL's defense, which had not only lost local legend Jamison Olave to a dodgy hammy, but also back-ups Chris Schuler and Justin Glad. In my defense, I said something about Phanuel Kavita...which is a thin defense seeing as he didn't play tonight. Aaron Maund did, I think, and he did fine. They all did fine. But does it matter who lined up for Real Salt Lake when the Timbers did so very, very little to put that defense under pressure? No, obviously.

Whether from fatigue, lack of real interest in the U.S. Open Cup, a pre-agreed upon lackluster night, the Timbers never really took the game to Real Salt Lake. Altitude wasn't an issue, Kyle Beckerman wasn't a problem (because, not there), so unless the entire Portland team gasped for air the second they stepped off the chartered bus, there's no not so much an excuse for tonight as an acceptance that the club, collectively, didn't want the U.S. Open Cup trophy (and the CONCACAF Champions' League spot that goes with it) nearly enough. And, so, they lost 2-0.

As much as I basically missed the entire first half, it didn't really look all that different, at a glance, from the second half – of which I caught every exceedingly dull minute. The Timbers got players forward, and more than once, but soft diagonals to the flanks generally replaced the passing and movement that Portland uses to create their best chances. And all the crosses that I saw got cut off three yards from the crosser’s boot, so, no, not very effective.

MLS 2X6: Sending Off DeRo; The (Imaginary?) Jewsbury/Johnson Situation + 6 More!

But....TRADITION!!!

First of all, and son of a bitch, somebody pinched my feature title (yes, yes, almost certainly before I first used it, but still)! It turns out that the Portland Timbers' official site carries a feature titled 2 X 4. It's pure puff-piece to me, but I’m not about to go toe-to-toe with a media behemoth like portlandtimbers.com...so I went with the obvious solution – e.g. add a couple inches to one side.

That said, since I'm rarely going to be timely posting this thing once-per-week, I really need to kill on content. Or at least produce an amusing read. Gulp.

TWO...
1) A Legend Quietly Departs Stage Left (Tres Canadien)
And that quiet piece is curious because, as pointed out in a "what all did he mean for Canadian soccer?" think piece, Dwayne DeRosario didn't play quiet. A showy goal celebration defined his career (on top of pulling off one of the most memorable political moments in MLS history*) and, prior to the last couple seasons, De Rosario could flat-out fucking ball (more on that later). As has been pointed out all over, DeRosario could have got a long (tortured) Landon-Donovan-esque arrivederci had he retired right – that's as opposed to doing well short of a whole lot for Toronto FC last season and posting a whisper via Twitter. Happily, the tributes came in regardless (even archived ones) and DeRosario absolutely earned it. He was every bit Donovan's peer, a ready answer in any argument about who was the best player in MLS for everyone who didn't like Donovan. Now, personally, I always preferred DeRo, who was gritty and inventive were Donovan was practiced and polished (to diamond clarity, it bears pointing out). Hit that first link above and you'll see why DeRosario had his haters, too, if for vastly different reasons than Donovan. With the latter, it was an argument about phoning it in, while it was a whiff of arrogance that dogged the former throughout his career. Well, screw that: I like my players messy; that's why I didn't really take to Donovan until, 1) his freakout departure to Cambodia, and 2) I could no longer ignore all the, uh, records.

Timbers Review/Preview, Week 3/Week 4

Start running on those legs and kill! KILL!!

This past weekend, the Portland Timbers choked a draw out of Sporting Kansas City. This coming weekend, they travel to the Great White North to kick off the Cascadia rivalry/fronting for 2015 against the Vancouver Whitecaps. (And, curse my wretched lot, I am going to miss this one, at least the live broadcast. Life, you see.) As always, let's start talking about what will happen by looking back at what happened last week.

So, that KC game. Was it two good, albeit colt-legged, teams canceling each other out (per the SBI podcast) or just a flat-out disappointment (per ExtraTime Radio)? Personally, I prefer to think of it as proof of the theory that it's easier to stop goals than to score them. In that vein, the one area of agreement was that Portland's defense held up pretty well. And that's pretty much it for meaningful happy talk. Coherence and creativity neither started, nor brought relief off the bench. Per my review, I felt Sporting stifled the usual suspects in Portland's attack, especially on the right, which could explain why I was able to single out Dairon Asprilla and Alvas Powell for the faint praise I offered. Anyway, the only person I came across who felt much of anything by the end of this...well, wet turd, was Back Office Gavin, who found inspiration somewhere in there to rage against pragmatism.

A sliver of a novel talking point emerged when one of Stumptown Footy's people dubbed Liam Ridgewell his Man of the Match. Nothing wrong with that, but I keyed in on Nat Borchers, if only for winning a pair of foot-races toward Portland's goal against KC's Dom Dwyer (which surprised me, actually; is Dwyer that slow, or is Borchers faster than I thought?). Visibility means good things or bad when it comes to defenders, but I was most interested in what all that said about the nature of Ridgewell's and Borchers' partnership, and how it normally functions. While it's almost certainly still a work in progress, I had assumed that Ridgewell would be the guy stepping to the play and Borchers the one laying back and reading – and those foot-races suggest Borchers as a last line of defense. Anyway, call it something to watch and, maybe, hold one’s interest during one of those inevitable slow games.

Portland Timbers v. Los Angeles Galaxy: Building a Reputation, One Collapse at a Time

I see ya, Jorge! It's a-comin'!

Well, at least it’s familiar. Like that old shoe you keep wearing,. Then again, it's only because you can't afford new shoes. And yet the Portland Timbers spent money – designated player money, for one, and quite possibly a bump in salary (i.e. Nat Borchers probably makes more than Pa Modou Kah and/or Mamadou "Footy" Danso, right? wow...no.) – to fix the defense. And yet, there it was, that last-gasp dagger, the goal that slips between your ribs so often that the stupid wound just won't heal.

Each and every Timbers fan should fully it expect by now. I mean, would it be the Timbers without it?

OK, pushing past the daze to recap: the Timbers tied the Los Angeles Galaxy tonight 2-2, in Portland, and the game ended with two goals, one at the death (Portland's) and another after the death (LA's). All in all, it wasn't a bad game: the Timbers had the better of the first half – the first 20-25, especially – and they went into halftime with a justified lead; LA seemed content, in fact, to hit the lockers at halftime with an eye to re-grouping. When the second half came, either the Galaxy came out better, or the Timbers came out worse (I'm absolutely awful at telling the difference, frankly), but, regardless, LA looked sharper overall and clawed back a goal to get the teams level at 1-1. And it looked a whole lot like things would end there. Until Portland scored. Then it looked like Caleb Porter’s first career win in March. Until LA scored. Goddammit.

Anyway, tough outing, gut-wrenching ending. Here are the three things that stood out most for me...a theme unites the first two:

Portland Timbers at Mid-Week: Looking Back (at RSL), Looking Forward (at LA)

No, no, no! It'll be too late by St. Patrick's!

The question that has preoccupied me since, oh, last weekend – not coincidentally, when I learned of it – was the history of barren March...shit, what's the plural of March, the month? Marches? Anyway, it seems that Portland Timbers head coach Caleb Porter has never won a game in March. So said Stumptown Footy in its 3 Questions post after last weekend's draw to Real Salt Lake. Call it one of those fluky stats that is defining in some mysterious way. The Timbers haven't won in March since entering MLS. Damn.

A couple notes on that. First, picking up a win in March won't come easy in 2015. Portland has the Los Angeles Galaxy this Sunday. After that, it's back-to-back away games against Sporting Kansas City (shit!) and the Vancouver Whitecaps (shit. punctuation matters here). Second, the reviews are in on Portland's draw against RSL and they read favorably...at least when judging the quality of the contest. "Playoff intensity" says World Soccer Talk (well, roughly). There were more raves, but I won't link to them. Expecting people to sit through all those damn podcasts is a big ask, but, scout's honor, plenty of pods talked up the on-field quality of Portland v. RSL.

Sadly, that doesn't translate directly on-field quality for the Timbers: power rankings from MLSsoccer.com, in particular, put the Timbers at the barest edge of the playoff picture, but a couple other rankings recognized the recurring role of one Nicholas Rimando in thwarting Portland from, to borrow a phrase, being all they can be. MLS's site put it best with their one-word summary: "Rimando'd."

Portland Timbers v. Real Salt Lake: The Late, Late (Yet Positive) Report

Nice touch on the 40, y'all!

Given my druthers, I'd like to put up a match report immediately after or, failing that, a day after the match. It spaces out my content better, for one (already struggling), but it's good to post things when thoughts are hot and memories fresh. I gave myself a pass on Week 1, based on the soft assumption/lie-I-told-myself that I would re-watch Portland Timbers v. Real Salt Lake in its entirety. Sadly, MLS Live thwarted me with its eternal national/regional broadcast delay. Just know I was willing...

I went to Saturday's opener, which was good and bad: good because I got a nice snapshot of the tifo (see?), some fireworks, saw some good moments in real time, taunted Tony Beltran ("Wallace owns you, motherfucker!"), etc.; bad because I was surrounded by people so fervently obsessed with cards that they would have given a yellow to a blade of grass for failing to curl just so. It also didn't help that I spent much of the time catching up with friends, talking about our crazy kids, downing beers, responding to texts from both inside and outside the stadium, etc. Suffice to say I was distracted.

Still, I do remember some good things. The Tour de Joi starts with Darlington Nagbe breaking Kyle Beckerman's ankles in the first half (ha ha, he fell on his bottom!) to turn toward goal and create a decent shot for Rodney Wallace (that came about the 15th minute, but shows up just after 0:45 on the highlights). It continued, however, with the most promising piece from Saturday: a (basically) four-piece defensive set of George Fochive, Jack Jewsbury, Nat Borchers and Liam Ridgewell who, collectively, stormed out to kick and generally smother just about everything that came anywhere near the top of the 18. For anyone who endured last season's defensive cluster-cuss that's like the Holy Grail floating over the Castle Anthrax.

Then I drank some more and got to talking about teenagers and near-teenagers and the baffling rage that percolates under some mother-daughter relationships. Shit. Where am I?

Portland Timbers: First Team 1, Second Team 1, Sporting KC 0

I see an....NLS Cup in your future!

What did I learn from tonight's super-early preseason clash between the Portland Timbers and Sporting Kansas City? For starters, I learned that “Fochive” is pronounced “Fo-sheev-ay.” Also, Peay is “pay.” Who knew, right?

Overall, though, I’m encouraged. 2-0 to Portland, and all that. Then again, if someone told me I’m beautiful, I would agree that, yes, I am beautiful. And do go on. (As in, people hear what they want to hear, and see what agrees with their hopes and dreams.) But, no, the wiser course is to slow down, to cool the collective jets, drop the nuts into some ice water and generally view these first 90 minutes of a sweet, ideally strike-free 2015 with the most powerfully clear-eyed prescription known to man.

In all honesty, I don’t have much for notes. The video feed hardly helped, what with the way it looked like Madden circa 2002. Still, I saw well enough to believe that Portland played a pretty solid, energetic game for this year’s first preseason outing. Splitting entire teams between 45-minute halves certainly helps with the energy, but that was smarter, cohesion-wise, than Sporting’s Tale of Three Halves. Which, like, defies physics. Or just science.

Good omens abound, though, when you think about it. The Timbers defended with proactive soccer on the way to keeping the sheets clean. And, holy shit, Portland got a penalty kick? If that’s not Mama Albighetti smiling on the Timbers’ 2015, I don’t know what is!

Anyway, the few notes I have, starting with Portland:

 Portland Notes

1) The first team defense looked amazing enough to foster delusion. Seriously, I’m so sold on the central trio of Ben Zemanski sitting in front of Norberto Paparatto and Nat Borchers that I’m seized by visions of clean sheets in late September, when the club is driving for Glory. Admittedly, I missed 10 minutes of the second half, but I didn’t see KC make much of a dent outside that errand-based blackout. While I’m by no means saying Liam Ridgewell won’t come back to start besides Borchers, I’m comfortable with Zemanski on top of two solid centerbacks of any name and combination when the club hopes to kill off games.

1a) Overall, Paparatto looked good. Borchers looked better. Just really ahead of everything. Here’s to praying to multiple gods, if that's what it takes, that that continues.

2) And, btw, swap in Ridgewell for Paparatto and I can’t help but think that the Timbers fielded the club’s starting eleven during the first half, pending Diego Valeri's and Will Johnson's return. More on this later…

3) Zemanski’s game is shockingly simple. So, so simple. Too simple?

4) I wouldn’t mind seeing Jack Jewsbury return to a central midfield role. Nice pass on the near goal in the second half through Jeanderson, into Urruti, etc. I think we’re deep enough at right back to think differently about what Jack can do, even if it limits his minutes…hmm…

Sporting Kansas City Notes

1) The Paolo Nagamura and Benny Feilhaber central midfield is pretty damn stacked. That’s a serious yin-yang there, people.

1a) I’d trade some crazy shit to land Feilhaber.

2) A 16-year-old kid took the field for KC tonight. He’s not even first team as it turns out, but his name is Felipe Hernandez. Now, physically/aesthetically, the kid looked every inch the pro. Problem was, he never put a ball in front of a player, at least not that I saw. It was like he always passed the ball to where his target stood when he made the pass. He’ll be fun to watch, that one, assuming he figures out how to lead players. I did, however, like the Feilhaber-esque way he’s able to keep the ball in front of him and at his feet while looking for the pass.

3) I didn’t catch that he was out there till he came off, but I do want to see more of Krisztian Nemeth, the Hungarian guy.

Anyway, nice win. I missed the goddamn free kick by Michael Nanchoff. Tell me it was a thing of beauty, something pretty enough to pair with the Sugar Plum Fairy in Swan Lake…

All for now.