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| Referees pictured at right, toward the top... |
I can’t speak for the rest of Providence Park, but, the
second the halftime whistle blew, my little corner of it positively raged at the
referee (Alex Chapman, right?). So many middle fingers; didn’t think there were
enough hands to hold all of ‘em. And
yet, a couple notes on this.
First, referees are as the gods; we are but their
playthings. To put that another way, try to think of them the same way the
ancient Greek thought of their gods – i.e., as capricious beings meddling in
the affairs of mortals – and you’ll keep your blood pressure in check, your
face won’t develop lines later in life because you’ll twist it into contortions
less often, etc. I guess this makes the crowd a Greek chorus of the crowd, and
the players the armies at the foot of Troy’s walls…c’mon, we’ve all read The
Iliad, yes?
As for the job of refereeing itself, I view keeping a lid on
potential violence during a game as their primary mission. After that, I assume
they all try get things right, but I also understand that they’ll bone a few
calls most games, and it is what it is. All in all, it’s a shitty, thankless
job that both fans and players make worse. A world without referees is a world
without soccer, so can we all move on from this particular whining point?
OK, next point…hold on…gotta climb down from my high horse…
Second, in most cases a referee can only hurt a team when
they’ve left themselves in a position to be hurt. And that’s at least a bit of
what happened last night in the Portland Timbers' (eventual) 4-2 win over the
Houston Dynamo: the Timbers coughed up free kicks all around their 18, and most
of the fouls were legit – including the one that lead to Houston’s penalty
kick. Roy Miller got his leg around Erick “Cubo” Torres, a call was reasonably
made, etc.
As for the penalty call itself, once Chapman called DaMarcus Beasley’s thing a handball, he had no choice but to make the same call against
Diego Chara. Chara’s handball was worse if you ask me. And maybe that’s part of
the reaction in that third paragraph. You want a bad call? Look at the one
Johan Kappelhof picked up in the Chicago Fire’s loss to Atlanta United FC. That
fucker was draconian, and it buried the Fire (or just helped bury them; we’ll
never know).
Even if you found the referee offensive, what about that
game, eh? The first half was all frenetic beauty, with each team throwing wailing
haymakers at the other. The second half, though, should inspire big dreams in
Timbers fans because, once the Dynamo’s dam broke, they flailed in the resulting
deluge…gods, floods…what the hell have I been reading lately?
To stick with Houston a bit, their second goal was what I
expected/the thing I fretted about on Friday. (can't embed tweet; still in media blackout)
Even so, that pass by Alberth Elis deserves respect; no, plaudits; also, the
finish by Romell Quioto was nowhere near as easy as he made it look. And,
something that might get lost – and it’s important that it doesn’t – it was
Torres who flashed the header wide to Elis that got the whole play running.
Those three look very good together so far with Torres, especially, finding
inventive ways to play to the Hondurans’ strengths (Elis and Quioto are both
Honduran; should mention that). The good news for Houston doesn’t end there:
Beasley figured out a way around Alvas Powell at least a couple times, and I’ll
talk up Alex Lima (who had a minimum of two quality and well-taken chances) to
anyone who will listen. If there’s a problem on this team, it’s the back four.
I don’t think they’ve managed a clean sheet yet (can’t check, though; behind
schedule on everything else), but it’s also fair to pose one big question here:
Is Houston’s defense actually bad, or is Portland’s attack
that good? These are the questions we should all struggle to answer
definitively, at least in the regular season’s opening weeks. Still, what’s
Portland’s goal-differential right now? +7? That’s one hell of a magic sword,
people…
Happily, there appear to be an ever-expanding number of
reasons why it’s working so well. First and foremost, the Old Reliable – i.e.,
the Fanendo Adi/ Diego Valeri connection – looks even better this year than it
has in the past. They found each other inside the first 30 fucking seconds, and
they had a minimum of three similar plays in the first half alone, and that’s a
number I’m consciously low-balling. Each player seems to know where the other
is, and will ultimately go, without needing much in the way of communication,
and they’ve both got the skill to do real damage to any team.
It’s the other pieces coming together that’s contributing to
the Timbers’ broad lethality. Yes, that narrow, frustrating win over the Los
Angeles Galaxy should temper enthusiasm, but there’s green shoots of what could
grow into some damn big trees all around – e.g., Darlington Nagbe’s “Sweep the
Leg” assist on David Guzman’s go-ahead goal; Guzman playing in Adi for Portland’s back-breaker (i.e., the fourth goal; though it’s not like anyone was tight on
Adi), or, perhaps as interesting as any of it, Valeri’s early-2017 mania for
scoring with his head. That tying goal was a weird one, too, from the way Adi
bobbled the entry to Zarek Valentin’s half-weird cross (it was effective, but
the way he got his body around that ball was so conscious that I could almost
hear him talking himself through it in the stands).
All that stuff paid off last night, and the stuff that didn’t
completely pay off – e.g. Sebastian Blanco and Powell’s collaboration on
Portland’s right (though Blanco earned Portland’s PK, and he’s finding his
feet, and he busts ass out there; looks like a SOLID pick-up so far) – looks
like it’s developing in due course. So, yeah, so long as all these pieces stay
healthy, and maybe even if some don’t (I’m guessing that Vytas Andriuskevicius
will always look better than Valentin, but Valentin did just fine last night),
Portland has reliable, and expanding ways to hurt an opposing team. Moreover,
the way they dispatched both Minnesota and Houston hints that the attack can
comfortably shoulder the “elite” label – i.e., good enough to torture weak defenses,
but also (and hopefully) strong enough to break down the better ones.
It wasn’t all perfect, of course. Full credit to Houston for
their second goal, but the defender in front of Quioto (Miller? Olum?) has to
step in at some point, if only to give the two trailing players (Diego Chara
and I want to say Valentin) a chance to get ahead of him; a player should only
back off for so long, in other words. Feel free to blame Chapman for all the
freekicks Portland coughed up around their area, but I think that lets the
Timbers midfielders off too lightly for being a little reckless in tough areas;
that can become fatal against a better team…
…and I trailed off there because I’m not real clear on
Houston’s level this year. They have definitely improved over 2016; hell,
Torres has already played more positive minutes for Houston in 2017 than he did
in all of 2015 and 2016. And, crap: I got all the way to the end of this thing
without mentioning that Adolfo Machado(central defender, #3) looked pretty damn
good out there. If they’re going to struggle this season, my guess is that the
problem will grow from their midfield – e.g. Rico Clark playing his first
season on borrowed legs, maybe not enough craftiness (by that I mean, Lima has
speed and power, but he’s lacking for subtlety).
All in all, not knowing what to make of Houston this year
argues against reveling about what Portland did last night. But, when a team
overcomes adversity (however you scale it – e.g., was it Portland against
Houston or Portland versus Houston and Alex Chapman?), it’s always good sign.
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