Seattle Sounders v Portland Timbers Preview: Look Out for the Rich Kids, Take Aim...

The enemy. Obviously.

I saw a tweet about how the Portland/Seattle series features an unusual games where the home team loses. I didn’t screen-cap it and I can’t figure out a low-effort way to look it up, so, pffftt...

Seattle Sounders
Record/Basics: 8-7-2, 26 points, 5-3-1 home, 3-4-1 away; 26 gf, 19 ga, +7 goal differential
Last 10: WLWWLWTWLW (4-1-1 home, 2-0-2 away; more businesslike than outstanding)
Oppo: v VAN, @ FCD, v MIN, @ HOU, @ COL, v CLT, v LAFC, v SKC, v MTL, @ TFC

What We Know About Them
You mean besides the fact they’re like the rich-kid villain from every coming-of-age movie ever made? Personages from a dream from which you wish you could awake, only more annoying than frightening?

Look, hate ‘em or hate ‘em, the Seattle Sounders have been the most consistent team in Major League Soccer since joining in...I don’t care when. Even the players people (which, here, means Portland Timbers fans) shit on – e.g., Cristian Roldan; I’ll never get that one – tend to be good parts of the machine, even if they’re not the best players.

Despite the rocky start – which (how fucking on-brand is this?) paid off – Seattle wasted little time clawing itself back over the playoff line. Moreover, if anyone doubted they’d do exactly that, I never saw or heard them say it. As for my personal theory about the secret of Seattle’s success, it comes in two parts: 1) their goals allowed consistently falls below the league average (often well; related, the present average for goals allowed is 24.7, Seattle has let in 19); and 2) their attack puts teams in what I call “the Murder Box,” i.e., pinning the opposition in their defensive third with waves of bodies and often getting at least two shots/sequence off that.

People who watch more closely appreciate the Sounders made the climb despite missing a literal handful of regular starters (e.g., João Paulo, Xavier Arriaga, Raúl Ruidíaz, Will Bruin and Obed Vargas(?)), and that brings the story to the present.

FC Cincinnati v Red Bull New York Preview: Keeping the Bulls at Bay

Their logo compels them.

It’s been respectable for FC Cincinnati lately, good even, and they’ve battled multiple Eastern giants to one point per. It looks another week of the same thing on the menu, but, fuck it, it’s 2022, so let ‘er rip and dream big. First, some relevant facts:

Red Bull New York
Record/Basics: 9-5-5, 32 points, 3-2-4 home; 6-3-1 away; 29 gf, 20 ga, +9 goal differential
Last 10: TTTLWLWLWW (1-3-1 on the road, including all three road losses of 2022; hmmm...)
Oppo: v POR, @ PHI, v CHI, @ MIA, v DC, @ CLT, v TOR, @ LAFC, v ATL, @ SKC

What We Know About Them
Taking inspiration from the corporate logo on their shirts, the Red Bulls chase every pass, ball and player like blood-doped demons. Oh, and their forwards – mostly Patrick Klimala and Tom Barlow – have been crap this season (just 7 goals and 3 assists between them). Still, they’re difficult to play against and just as hard to beat and their road form, though worse lately (see above, maybe celebrate a little), ranks near the top of the league.

When it comes to goals for/allowed, they’re on the right side of average (24.7) in both categories; going the other way, they scored nearly half their goals in just four games - 4-1 @ TOR, 3-0 @ ORL, 3-3 v CHI, 4-1 v DCU. Game-to-game, then, they don’t score a lot (that’s good!), but, with that defense(/defensive scheme), they don’t need to (awww); then again, they’d given up two goals in every road game prior to their last, a 1-0 road-win over a serially hapless Sporting Kansas City team. About that...

Notes on Recent Form
Big picture, they’ve won four of their last six – a pretty compelling feat regardless of team/venue/form. It’s that specific context that makes their offensive production borderline embarrassing: they posted shitter-level xG in three of their past five games (0.7 or less), and topped out at 1.4 at home against Toronto. That said, that 0.7 xG fails to capture the way they seemed to flick a switch at the start of the 2nd half at SKC and find great looks (four for sure, maybe five) until Aaron Long nodded home off a corner. They went down a man for the final 20+ minutes of that game (due to stoppage time) and, a couple chances aside (one of them cleared off the line), they made SKC piss ‘em them all way with a combination of rabid-hyper-puppy harrassment and shithousery (Klimala, in particular, who found his special purpose).

New England Revolution 2-2 FC Cincinnati: Rhymin & Stealin

Remember when they used to smoke after sex in the movies?

And...yep, FC Cincinnati’s 2-2 draw at the New England Revolution lifted them to their personal best for points in a single Major League Soccer season. 25 > 24, people. And still so much time to play.

Before digging into it, I’d like to pause here to appreciate the weirdness of Cincy’s 2022 season.

When the season started, bringing Brenner off the bench, or just leaving him there, made perfect sense. And when he did come in, he just kind of wandered around, looking some pitiful combination of sad, confused and lost. From (weighty) sunk cost to a forward scoring goals worthy of his price tag in just a handful of games. Who saw that coming?

The conversation around Brandon Vazquez talked more about the ceiling hanging over all the good things he does rather than those good things as recently as the end of last season. Today, Vazquez is in the conversation for the U.S. Men’s National Team.

Nick Hagglund has been a regular starter for most of the season. And I don’t mind it one bit.

And, yesterday, Pat Noonan trotted out the kind of defensive midfield – Allan Cruz paired with Yuya Kubo – that had spelled spinning wheels in one direction and getting run over in the other.

I type this while craving, not so much the cigarette it sold, but the branding they used to sell it: you’ve come a long way, baby, aka, FC Cincinnati.

I started with the forest because I don’t have much to say about the trees except, they’re fine. I can’t think of one Cincy player I’d accuse of having a bad game yesterday, even as I imagine Geoff Cameron is still yelling self-affirmations into his bathroom mirror after giving up the second go-ahead goal to the theretofore silent Gustavo Bou’s near-post run. The team as a whole looked a little shaky for the 10+ minutes that followed, but they regained their footing and played their way back into the match.

Nashville SC 2-2 Portland Timbers: Improv Without a Prompt & a Bit o' Luck

I feel good, I do...just keep the damn thing on, for now.

What lies all but inertly for long stretches of time, only to come to and get to business?

The answer could be Jaroslaw Niezgoda or, in this game and, best case, the season, the Portland Timbers. It could be both, it could be neither: that’s my way of signaling I won’t even start getting ahead of myself.

After slipping down to somewhere between doomed and rock-bottom, the theretofore irrelevant Portland Timbers nabbed two straight brass rings on their way to a 2-2 draw on the road at Nashville SC on the back of (yet) a(nother) brace from the theretofore irrelevant Jaroslaw Niezgoda, at which point you have to ask yourself, is it all just a metaphor waiting for the big director in the sky box to whisper...action?

Again, good sense and more than a few visuals from tonight make a strong case for walking along the bandwagon to see what happens before you run ahead of it shouting promises of beer, wine and trophies. Best not say reckless things, and so on. If only the next word were “but.”

Leaving points on the table has become a house specialty for Nashville, for one, even against lower-rated teams that the Timbers. While I’d argue they never looked dominant tonight (confident might even be a stretch), you could feel the nerves of both team and city rattling the second a pair of their errors gifted Niezgoda the penalty kick. Penalty kicks being what they are – which Dairon Asprilla did his bit to sign, seal and deliver the Timbers to within one goal of one point – those two moments could have served as a wake-up call to Nashville or a rallying flag to the Timbers.

Fortunately for the visitors, momentum had already tilted Portland’s way courtesy of Eryk Williamson coming on for the valiant, sometimes-limited, yet clearly kaput, Yimmi Chara. [Ed. - I’ll defend him as a player (though probably not a DP...and is he still?) more than most; if they held a Utility Player of the Year Award and they gave me a vote, Yimmi would get mine, but I digress.] I also doubt any Timbers fan would seriously argue that Portland didn’t have a better second half. I’ll get to that, and Eryk’s role in it, but a word about the first half first.

Nashville SC v Portland Timbers Preview: A Hall of Mirrors in Another House

Makes me wanna puke, too.

The Portland Timbers road form (1-4-4) lends a real "but for Providence Park" vibe to the Timbers 2022 season. On the plus side, they’re playing a team that has struggled to get all three points at home – yes, even lately. First, their numbers:

Nashville SC
Record/Basics: 7-5-5, 26 points, 2-1-3 home, 5-4-2 road; 22 gf, 19 ga, +3
Last 10: TLWLWTWTLW (4-3-3; 2-1-2 home; middling, but last 5 were pretty soft)
Oppo: @ SJ, @ LAG, v RSL, @ HOU, v MTL, v ATL, @ COL, v SJ, v SKC, @ DC

What We Know About Them
I have a misconception that Nashville’s struggling stuck in the back of my mind, but that probably looks at their 2022 through the refracted lens of their home games – more on that later. When most people think Nashville, they probably think Walker Zimmerman at the back, Dax McCarty (somehow still) steering traffic through the middle, and Hany Muhktar running loose up top/off that old war horse C. J. Sapong. And, yes, both have done well in 2022 (8 goals, 5 assists for Hany, 5 goals, 3 assists for Sapong; funny side note on Sapong, he’s still an every other year player). Other words that may come to mind: combative and counter-attacking.

All that has largely held up lately, if with a little less Zimmerman (see, qualifying, World Cup).

Notes on Recent Form
I haven’t seen a ton of Nashville this season – and this’ll be my first full 90 with them – so I’ll have to stretch the numbers a bit. That said, I’m expecting the way they create chances to have a fair resemblance to what they tried – and with some real success against Orlando City SC in their midweek U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal (here’s the MLS in 15 for your edification). Nashville came within three stoppage time minutes of winning that game and had a fair argument for the better team, but that was also another road game; their last two wins both came on the road (at Colorado Rapids and at DC United). When I look at their last three home games – against Atlanta, San Jose and SKC – I’d expect at least five-six points out them, and yet they managed just two. More to the point, they rarely see more of the ball, even at home, and they played arguably their worst game when they attempted possession – the home loss to SKC.

To flesh out the general profile, Nashville doesn’t create a ton of chances – they probably averaged 11 shots/game in their last 5-6 games – but they get a useful number of shots on goal out of it (e.g., around six). And they probably get away with it because they rarely let the opposition get to, never mind much over, a 1.0 xG.

New England v FC Cincy Preview: New Sensation (and I Did the INXS Song Just Get Stuck in Your Head?)

First image for "a bright shiny future." Wow.

I tune in with anticipation for FC Cincinnati games in 2022. Not dread. Beautiful. Starting with some numbers...

New England Revolution
Record/Basics: 6-5-6, 24 points, 4-2-3 home; 2-3-3 away; 27 gf, 26 ga, +1 goal differential
Last 10: LWTTWTWTWT* (2-0-3 at home; more favorable than not, tho shit’s done changed)
Oppo: @ DC, v MIA, v CLB, @ ATL, @ CIN, v PHI, @ SKC, v ORL, v MIN, @ VAN

What We Know About Them
First, there have changes since the last time Cincy played New England – e.g., no more Matt Turner, no more Adam Buksa (ergo, no more this) – but something else changed as well: the Revs haven’t lost since the last day of April (30 days in April, right?). Still, hey have plenty of talent – your Bous, your Gils, your...rest of the team – and, after starting slower than an 80-year-old getting out of a low-slung sedan, they’re presently breathing down the back of Cincinnati’s collective necks. And the Orange and Blue play this one on the road.

Notes on Recent Form
[* Fucking Form Guide and its shifting dates...]

After watching, oh, 2/3 of last Wednesday’s 0-0 draw at the Vancouver Whitecaps and poking around some box scores, I noted some commonalities. New England generally likes possession, whether at home or on the road (they got ~60/40 in three of their last five, but had a 6% margin at lowest), but they no longer run up the chances (as I recall them doing). The 1-1 draw at the Union aside (danger, Will Robinson, danger!), they’ve generally gone shot-for-shot against the opposition; perhaps more tellingly (or hopeful), they’ve posted modest xG lately – e.g., from a low of 0.5 against Minnesota, but the rest (again, Philly excepted) fell in the just over 1.0 line.

Some details run between the numbers – e.g., they got an assist in the win over Sporting Kansas City with an Uri Rossell red card around half time, and they played up the gut (and got a little lucky) against the Loons, but they showed some tendency to play toward their left – i.e., toward newbie Dylan Borrero’s – in a couple other games. One more thing to flag, they’ve run over their season-average goal differential and/or pattern lately, but not by much. You can see who they played over their past five games, and where, I’m just providing some context for the results.

Portland Timbers 3-0 Colorado Rapids: In Which I Get Carried Away...

Shh. Shhh. SHHHH!! I...I got this. (And they did)

The first thing I want to say was that this felt different from the bawdy romp over Sporing Kansas City...back whenever the fuck that happened. I mean, SKC fell apart where the Colorado Rapids merely crumbled. Now, the real thing...

After watching Colorado’s Michael Barrios torment any New York City FC defender who ventured out to face him on their left, I’d already keyed on the Barrios/Claudio Bravo duel as a key to the game. Bravo did better than worse throughout the first half – I mean, he lunged here and there; he’s a chronic lunger – but he bit into a 48 oz. Porterhouse twice - one of those monsters they where they'll pay for your dinner if I keep it down - early in the second half and I figured it would take only one Rapids goal to start the Rube Goldberg machine of the Timbers’ unraveling; seriously, if Barrios ever got the upper-hand in that one, I’d be writing about a different game.

I wasn’t so much Bravo holding on – though he did – than the Timbers attack swarming the Rapids’ area like aggrieved hornets for a solid 10-15 that decided the game. Call Bravo’s little flutter (along with Santiago Moreno giving away the ball twice) the storm before the calm. I’m not entirely clear on which insurance goal deserves the most credit for knocking the collective wind out of the Rapids, but the game ended with both a whimper and a final 3-0 win for Portland.

The outcome looked less clear for the first 40 minutes. I don’t think the Rapids ever had better chances, but they had enough of them; the Rapids chose to open the space, even when that meant giving space as well, and both teams’ attacks benefited. While the game as a whole had its ins and outs, its beginnings of theories, that kind of thing, my top take-away was that the Timbers won for the first time this season by being good instead of lucky, or even gently blessed; to bring in a data point, I think The Mothership’s xG call gets it right. I’ll go to my grave arguing the Timbers had to get something going on offense in the first half of 2022, and they finally got that crucial critical mass of attacking momentum – there, I give most credit to Yimmi Chara and Santiago Moreno – to keep the Rapids attack honest, which, here, means conservative. Even after the edge slipped away toward the end of the second half, Moreno put in the hustle to chase a late, half-aimless through-ball. He got around the Rapids’ last man, got a clean touch on the ball, then got all of William Yarbrough (and without a whiff of malice). To continue a thought from the twitter thread, that might have been the singularly most obvious concussion call I’ve ever seen, and I wish the man a speedy and total recovery. Because that bell got rung.

The resulting penalty kick – tidy as you like by Sebastian Blanco – might have put the Timbers in the driver’s seat, but I started at the middle of the game, and the whole Bravo/Barrios duel, as a way to...acknowledge, I suppose, the moment when everything could have gone wrong. And it didn’t. Those five-to-ten loose minutes had a real drunk-teenager-walking-on-the-edge-of-a-tall-building energy, an experience highlighted by the double save by Aljaz Ivacic (c’mon, hop on the wagon), but Portland shook it off, got the upper hand and kept it up till the final whistle.