Portland Timbers 0-0 Sporting Kansas City: Touching the Ceiling

Welcome back, guys!

“Unbeaten in Nine”

Look, I’m happy about last night - if the performance more than the result - but I’m not having that shit. I pulled that from the official Portland Timbers webpage, so I get that Pravda-esque cheering comes natural, but “Unbeaten” isn’t good enough, not when it leaves two points on the table in consecutive home games. Basically, aim low enough and you risk shooting your damn foot. OK, enough of that.

Because I said “yes” to something I should have said “no” to, this review will necessarily be a little impressionistic. It’s not all a blur: for instance, I remember seeing “No. 32” for the Portland Timbers charge up the gut and asking the people around me at the bar, “Who is that? Is that Cascante?” only to see it was Marco Farfan ranging forward (from a more natural fullback position) and nearly stabbing home a goal. I also remember the name of the dude I introduced myself to after the game - for regular readers, this is the person I conversationally ambushed about a penalty kick last week. That thing where you repeat a name over and over until it sticks really does wonders for sufferers of CRS (that’s “Can’t Remember Shit”).

Farfan’s Foray (TM) didn’t make the highlights (I mean, what the fuck’s up with that? the kid had a moment), but the rest of them rang a bell when I saw them again (for the record, I have modified CRS; my memory works just fine if prompted correctly), and all the other prompts I have in front of me now confirm the same thing: the Timbers played pretty solid soccer in last night’s 0-0 draw at home against Sporting Kansas City. The game played out about the way you’d expect from two good, defensively-stout teams. Both sides found their chances, but they definitely had to look for them, and both sides contained the other’s biggest threats…again, take a bow, Marco Farfan (and welcome to the party, Modou Jadama).

I don’t have much to add about the game itself, but was instead going to move on to chatting about Portland’s game. That said, I just read the comments to the official recap, and I’m kind of glad I did, because it runs into the teeth of those comments. Loose suggestions of a “reorganized defense” come in and out of those (along with this question, which I very much second: “Are you really not considering Valentin a starter at this point?), and I guess I don’t get the premise. “Reorganized” from what?

To back up a little, seeing Lawrence Olum set a couple pre-game butterflies fluttering. He is, without question, a down-grade from Diego Chara (no offense intended, Larry), but Olum can play a role so long as you assign him a role he can play. That is, you’ll never get Chara’s manic herding dog dynamism from Olum, but he can clog the center and manage safe-not-spectacular distribution; playing him means resigning yourself to losing a little something on the attacking side, but, when you’ve got no choice…only the team does have a choice, and his name is Eryk Williamson, and I guess I’ll just leave it there. I don’t watch Timbers2 enough (or ever, I suppose) to make a case that Williamson should start over Olum, but that’ll remain an open question in this space till we get the real-world data to resolve it.

Olum aside, my thoughts/questions about the Timbers’ depth actually revolve around Andres Flores. When you watch him play, you see why Giovanni Savarese packed him when he moved to Portland. He covers a lot of ground and plays clean and simply - the kind of guy you can send out there and feel pretty good about him not fucking up, basically, and that’s a good player to have in the back pocket when, say, an injury comes up (Chara) or international duty calls (Andy Polo). That also happens to be his ceiling as a player, or at least that’s what it looks like, and I guess that circles all the way back to the top of this post and the question of leaving four points from the last two home games on the table.

I realize that some this amounts to quibbling over a word/verb - “reorganize” - but I’ve been with the Larrys Mabiala/Julio Cascante centerback pairing for as long as we’ve had it. Mabiala has his limits, but he makes up for them, more or less, with good decisions and/or positioning. As for Cascante, he looks like he’s getting better with each passing week; I recall a couple solid interventions last night (and take that with as much salt as you need to given my confession above), and he makes a reasonable enough partner with Larrys and that’s enough for me to wonder why you’d automatically return Liam Ridgewell to the line-up if/when he gets whole. (Also, does anyone wish Larrys was really erratic to make it easier to joke about "which of the Larrys will show up"? No?) I guess I’m arguing that, if this is a “reorganized” defense, the rebuild went well enough. My concern, then, remains on the attacking side.

These last two draws have shaken my faith in Portland winning any trophies this season - not unless Cristhian Paredes or Andy Polo (or anyone, really) can help the team into a higher gear. That six-game winning streak suspended gravity for a bit, but that’s where I started this season, and regular laws of gravity appear to have returned. This is a good Portland team, one I trust to compete in every game, but without any real sense that the sky is its limit. As currently constituted, I can see the Timbers winning, say, the U.S. Open Cup - I could be persuaded to go as far as saying it’s built for that kind of tournament - so maybe it’s time I started watching that tournament. Because I think Timbers fans have a good team, that doesn’t necessarily rule out reaching MLS Cup, but it doesn’t make a case for it either.

One last note in closing: it’s been so long since I’ve seen David Guzman start a game, that I’ve pretty much forgotten how the team works with him in the line-up. More to the point, Guzman has yet to play a steady role in this version of the Timbers - e.g., with Polo, Paredes, or even Samuel Armenteros running around up top instead of Fanendo Adi. Who knows? Maybe Guzman’s return will help the team find that higher gear. My only thought on that is that he didn’t look like the guy to do it during his last run of regular appearances - which is to say, Guzman didn’t look up to holding things together without Chara on the field, and that’s enough to make me question his capacity to transform this team…

…or to give it the “oomph” it needs on the attacking side of the ball. Anyway, that’s all for this week until the Portland Timbers next game. I’ll drop a couple posts on FC Cincinnati between here and there, but otherwise, see all y’all after the World Cup break.