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| Mom/Caleb makes me walk away. |
I know I said I wasn’t going to comment on any Portland
Timbers preseason games until the two before the season. I also know that I’ve
run out of ways to say, “MLS Team X picked up Player Y. I don’t know anything
about Player Y, so this move feels Z.” (And that's been the staple of a lot of the Late Tackle posts). I still want to talk about soccer, so, in two parts, I’ll
write what I’ve got about yesterday’s 1-1 draw between the Timbers and the
Seattle Sounders; after that, I’ll close a couple notes on the state of the U.
S. Men’s National Team. Or at least what it feels like after a short sample…
Speaking of short samples, and I say this with love, I never
know how much heart and brainpower I should invest when the Timbers play the mix of
trialists, draftees, T2 guys and players from the Siberia end of the bench. Even
if I like what I see, what are the actual odds that I’ll see that player again?
Like petting a puppy at a pet store, I tell you…
Meanwhile, on Seattle’s side of the ledger, they sent out one
of the rare MLS line-ups that I greet with a rare, but literal and thorough, “who the fuck
is that?” Anonymity notwithstanding, one of those guys forced a penalty kick
and forced the tie. And, yeah, I know Harry Shipp, and best o’ luck to the poor
bastard. He’s on the tough end of a chunky depth chart. (And, guys? That
picture? The one on the team’s roster page? He looks like a still from an ISIS snuff video. Maybe do a
re-shoot, yeah?)
To wrap up Seattle, that seems like a good place to start. So,
they got that Swedish cat, Gustav Svensson, and he seems to lurk around the
same part of the field where people got used to seeing Cristian Roldan last
season, so what’s that mean when Osvaldo Alonso comes back? As much as I preach
squad rotation, players can get restless watching and, before you know it, a
guy like Roldan accidentally winds up in the bin marked “surplus to
requirements,” and then what, y’know? Depth is good and all, and I support it;
it can have consequences. That’s all.
Seattle looked pretty slick yesterday; thanks to some good
ideas about how to move the ball through the lines, they got to goal
fluidly…where all people watching were treated to an human-scale exposition on
the difference between Will Bruin and Jordan Morris. Dempsey looked OK, even if
more as part of that process of moving the ball toward Portland’s goal, and he had
a nicely athletic flail on goal before coming off, and that was nice, etc. If
anyone stood out for me on Seattle’s side of the ball yesterday, it was Joevin
Jones. He’s really becoming something, that one…
OK, now, Portland…just some stray notes, yes? It’s preseason
for all of us…
First, they looked far, far more coherent than they did
against the New York Red Bulls – and that’s either a statement on how good the
Red Bulls will be this year or a supporting argument for the value of another
week’s training. And I think that held, even in the second half. I have only a
few specific notes there. I’ll address the low-hanging point first: for all
that Victor Arboleda, possesses good physical tools, and even decent instincts,
he’s pretty damn loose with the ball. That’s not a strong comment one way or
the other, especially given the sample size (two games), it’s just being noted.
On the second point, someone (Back Office Gavin) tweeted a
note that reads, “Ryan Johnson needs more looks.” Given the context, it’s
possible he’s being facetious, but that kicked off one of those conversations
that pop into my head as I drift off during a game and one chemical or another
kicks in: between Johnson and Jack McInerney, which player better fits the
Timbers’ line-up and how they play? If I just think about both players in terms
of their attributes, I’d say Johnson, but McInerney made that a harder choice
yesterday. It wasn’t just that great feed to Augustine Williams that maybe shoulda lead to a penalty (did it? put it this way: I think
the call was reasonable), either. I caught at least a dozen soundly smart,
well-delivered passes from McInerney, and in different parts of the field. He
was able to do good things when he dropped deep, basically, and while that
doesn’t have to mean anything, it…well, noted.
As for the first half, the Timbers looked good enough to get
a couple daydreams started. It’s also possible we got a glimpse of how the
David Guzman/Diego Chara central pairing will work. While I saw Guzman cheat upfield
here and there, he appeared to stick pretty closely to that deeper role. There
are times when he’s deep enough to look like part of the defense and, for what
it’s worth, I think that’s, 1) by design, and 2) a possible path for Portland
to cover the back four until/when the Timbers sign that starting centerback
that they talked about (PROMISED!!!) during the broadcast. Chara, then, would
push higher on the field to pressure the ball and that feels like a decent system
to me, even I’m not sold on Chara as a particularly inventive passer of the
ball. I mean, he’s clean, and that’s good…look, I’m not knocking the guy. Chara
has a role, and he’s good at it…
…but what kind of fans don’t aspire to godhead?
The only other specific comment I have is that I feel like
Dairon Asprilla finally has a clear role for this team. He’s a defensive sub,
someone the team can put on to protect a lead, someone who will stay tight and
just wrestle the ball off the opposition and kill time. He doesn’t strike me as
an attacking solution – and I think that was always the (reasonable) knock on
him – but, by winning the ball off Seattle players over two-thirds of the
field, he put in a good shift yesterday.
As for the rest, it’s some combination of fine and
contingent. By the latter I mean, the team will cohere and (could be wrong,
but) I know we haven’t seen this team’s Final, First-Choice Iteration for 2017
as yet. Once that unit starts playing – and this holds even if injuries rob the
team of talent between here and the first game; I mean you have who you have
when you have them – fans and pundits can start talking about what the chances
look like for MLS Cup and the Supporters’ Shield (yeah, yeah, the U.S. Open Cup; that one’s a total crapshoot). I was encouraged, yesterday (actually, all
this happened today; keeping that straight has driven me fucking nuts
throughout this post), by hints that Diego Valeri and Fanendo Adi still look
great and signs that the center of defense could hold against a decent, if
rusty Seattle attack (c’mon, they looked all right). For all that, it’s too
early to say where this Portland team punches in MLS circles.
I’m going to spend the rest of the night (this is a lie) trying
to figure out a schedule of games to watch until (and, really, through) the
start of the season. For what it’s worth, I think I’ve found the limit of my
use – i.e., the best thing I can do is just watch games, pass on any thoughts
that feel novel, and then confirm or deny the stuff I read. That applies to
both the Timbers and MLS teams, generally. Oh, and also to these guys…
Camp Cupcake, Graduation Speech
It took me some years to fully grasp the notion that any
given country’s national team won’t necessarily play the best soccer that takes
place on its own soil. To put that another way, even if you find and field the actual best players from any given country (which, harder than it sounds), the fact that they don’t play
together all that much, combined with the reality that gaps in the player pool
can’t be repaired by simply going out and finding the kind of player to fit the
system (or the coach’s wet dreams), as in, your country produced the player you
need or they didn’t, your team’s ceiling will never be optimal. It will only be
as good as it gets at each relevant moment, and with a literal shit-ton of
factors tripping up the path to the optimal like so many of the team’s own
dicks.
Sorry, I just love the “tripping over their own dicks”
metaphor that much…did that make sense or too many run-on sentences?
To apply all that gibberish, I was happy with the U.S. Men’s
friendlies, and on a couple levels. Sure, the team played one B-team (Serbia)
and one team that’s regularly considered “lesser” (Jamaica) and, yes, they
struggled to score (I lost count of the number of times I heard or read, “the
end-product was missing”). Well, the U.S. went in missing a player or two and they
still controlled both games comfortably, if a couple near-fatal slips aside,
and, generally, played like they had at least one fucking part of one fucking
sense of what they were doing.
That's the big contrast from the Jurgen Klinsmann era, where
it was the norm for U.S. teams to look uncertain. And that opens up a
conversation. It was only toward the end of Klinsmann’s tenure that word that
he didn’t give much in the way of tactical direction leaked out with enough volume to create some
momentum. That detail fit something I’d detected as early as the first games in
Klinsmann’s tenure – i.e., the broad hesitation in their play – and that
appeared here and there throughout his time with the national team...I dunno,
maybe they could already hear Klinsmann throwing them under the bus during the
game...
The point is, 1) I could absolutely be only seeing what I
want to see, and 2) the U.S. looked a lot like the U.S. during these past two
games. And I mean that on every single level possible, good and bad. Trying
hard and struggling to score is what we do, people. It’s sort of our marker on
the international stage, at least until further notice. But what I saw not just
Friday, but also last…whenever the fuck we played Serbia, was a U.S. team that beat
the opposition to the ball; it was a team that moved around the field as if
they knew where the other players were going to be: they looked comfortable,
basically, and, as alluded to in the Armchair Analyst’s write-up, that’s a step
in the right direction.
It could be that we’ll never climb the Ultimate Mountain
(i.e., win the World Cup, then summit K2, then have the U.S. Men’s Team storm
the White House Seal-Team-6 style, take out President Trump and announce the
dawn of a true, free republic…OK, just the first thing), unless or until a U.S.
team can absorb a phrase like “express yourself” with Rosetta-Stone-esque precision.
Maybe needing direction is a crippling limitation. In the here and now, though,
I think the U.S. plays in stages: we feel comfortable defensively, then we feel
confident, then we start actually doing neat stuff in the attack. And with more
and more players like that hitting the U.S. pipeline, I think we’re inching
towards being a good team on the world stage. And if it takes a coach holding
our hand and reading thoughts from a daily affirmations calendar with each and every step, so be it.
To close with some specific notes:
I’m on the Walker Zimmerman bandwagon. Matt Doyle (Armchair
guy, in case you’re new; see above) wasn’t as blown away as a couple other people, but his open-field
defending impressed me. To see a defensive player make every correct
decision and take every correct angle, in his debut, and as he was tracking back
against much faster attacking players was enormously reassuring. I’m guessing
he’ll be a regular in the side by his late 20s. And maybe before then.
My other standout was Dax McCarty. He’s another player who
papers over what he lacks in athleticism with next-level anticipation. More
than that, he organizes everyone around him in a way that…I don’t know how to
describe it beyond saying you can just see him talk and then see people
respond. And, generally, he’s giving great direction. Add his ability to keep a
team strung together with passing – and Doyle’s post has a great graphic on
this – I’ll admit I’m a big fan of McCarty’s, maybe too big, but I’d still try to get him on
the field. And for qualifiers, and all that means. I’m not even sorta kidding.
Last but not at all least, Jordan Morris looks good. By that
I mean, I’m actually sold on the kid. (What? I think it’s good to give it a
whole year before committing.) As for the goal, Morris absolutely deserves
credit for the finish (I mean, there are more ways to fuck that up than not),
but trust was the thing that really brought it about. When a team is confident,
its players will make tough passes into tight spaces; once they see it can pay
off, as it did with the close-knit interplay between Benny Feilhaber and
Morris, they’ll believe it’s worth trying, and that’s how they’ll get good at
it.
And that, to me, is why U.S. teams need to have direction
and structure and defensive solidity. It creates, first the confidence, then
the space, for the kind of goal that undid Jamaica. I know there are harder
opponents ahead. That only makes it more important for the U.S. to find solid
footing before they face them.
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