Sporting Kansas City 3-0 Portland Timbers: Expectations and One (Vague) Idea

I dunno. Maybe try next time.

I had no expectations, at least not good ones. The Portland Timbers played under what expectations I had in the first half before rallying to a kind of latent respectability in the second. A pillow soft goal by Sporting Kansas City's Johnny Russell late in the game undercut the "latent" part of that whole "respectability" thought: in the end, the Timbers looked like discombobulated shit losing 0-3 at Sporting Kansas.

Still, if you ask after the state of my faith, I’d tell you it’s fine. This past week had "suck" written all over it, especially after the home loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps; neither of the week's road games looked easy in context (and, for the record, here are my thoughts on the 1-4 loss to DC United) and also, the road. Given SKC’s recent uptick - e.g., they’ve now won as many straight (3!) as Portland has lost (3?) - this loss really did have the predictability of getting lung cancer from smoking. I won’t buy a doom-spiral until Portland loses another game or two and on some track similar to giving up nine(!) goals and scoring only two. The team would inevitably drop some points this season - every team in MLS does, and usually in bunches - but the good ones recover, to where they win games like DC United away, maybe draw away to a rising SKC side.

The Timbers looked like that team I could lose all faith in tonight and, bring it in for a big group hug, and right now, I will still love that team, yes, the one that struggles. At the same time, I can’t even begin to organize tonight’s errors into some kind of useful hierarchy: the mistakes came from all over the field (no, you have to earn “pitch”), and each of the breakdowns on those three goals were whimperingly pathetic. For a team that has made defense its calling card so far this season, goals like that violate the fucking brand.

And, if you want to ask what’s wrong, this feels like the quickest answer: the Timbers have lost their way defensively and have therefore lost their way. There’s not much more to take out of giving up 3.0 goals per game over their last three (why the decimal? no idea). As for what causes it, questions proliferate until you’re tangled up in chicken-egg madness. With the loss to DC, did the disconnection between the defense and the midfield cause the problems, or should the defenders cope far, far better to…call them catastrophic breakdowns in midfield? That was easier to answer tonight with the red-carpet-welcome goals SKC scored, and that’s a new, disastrous calling card, something a team has to swap out before it kills them? Even when SKC missed, they moved through and around a stunningly stagnant Portland team with depressing ease, and all over the field. A cousin of the same bug played out on the other side of the field? Timbers players: you can’t play back to goal if you keep letting your defender step in front to receive the in-let pass. (And maybe the team is still sorting shit out post-Fanendo Adi, etc. All the same, how long had it been since Adi started/played?)

Why has the defense flown off the goddamn rails? I’m going to pass over an obvious answer - e.g., “dude, Lawrence Olum is the fulcrum of your back three” - and move to indict that same back three as the problem. The past several weeks have thoroughly shaken my faith in Larrys Mabiala and Julio Cascante - yes, enough even for a spare thought about Liam Ridgewell to come to mind, and without the first reply to that thought being, “no” - but I’m also thinking that the Timbers simply don’t have the personnel for a back three. If you watch SKC’s second goal, in particular (but also Cascante failing to “defend on an island” for much of the game), I’d argue you’ll see why it takes a special set of defenders to play in a three-player back-line. Portland’s left has been bad enough over the past two games, at least, for whispers of “Vytas?” to dance in the winds, and that’s because an ever-growing succession of teams have got behind on that side and wrecked havoc.

Cascante, a center back, effectively playing as a left fullback in something like a 3-5-2 (frankly, I don’t know what to call that mess they showed before the game) has a lot to do with that. With Marco Farfan some form of invisible for a lot of this game (but he was there, because here he is!), SKC could isolate Cascante wide time and again today and, look, he just struggles defending close to the touch-line. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Mabiala does any better as the second line of defense behind Zarek Valentin as a wing-back, and having Olum in the middle of all that doesn’t sound nearly as sound as Alvas Powell at right, Mabiala and [whoever] in the middle, and with Valentin out left. Maybe an available-v.-injured thing played a role tonight - there's something hopeful - but this formation has failed as often as Giovanni Savarese has trotted it out. Sure, some of those Christmas tree formations probably flexed to a 3-5-2, and that’s a counter-point, maybe a footnote on the futility of talking formation when personnel is the issue. Moving on…

File all the goals SKC scored tonight (here are the other two) - and even some of their chances - under “Things You Keep From the Children.” And this takes the conversation away from formations to talking about “posture” - i.e., the way the Timbers approached the game. “Not well,” obviously, but I’ve seen teams defend as deep as Portland did tonight, but they confront every pass into its own half with enough intensity to call said posture, “bristling.” The Timbers didn't “bristle” tonight, and consistently - nearly every player in green and gold spent a lot of time walking and staring, in fact - and that’s how you give up three points, three goals, and over three times as many shots to the opposition (not to mention running up shots on goal to a multiple of 10). That’s also just about everything about why I didn’t expect much from this game: these guys are tired. Just about every positive scenario that I ran through my head featured an energized, swarming Portland team putting SKC into some kind of wrestling/MMA reverse - y’know, like the old swash-buckling, counter-attacking games from the best parts of the Timbers’ 15-game winning streak? For tonight’s game, I wanted compact, yet aggressive, defense, plus the two-to-three fingers of doom reaching out to poke the eyes of the opposition.

I was looking for some sign that the Timbers had some piece of past-2018 glory in their boots, basically, and it’s hard to find anything positive in tonight’s drubbing.

And, you know what? Fuck it. Call it this the science project the Timbers didn’t prepare for, the school play where they thought they had their lines down only to realize on opening night that they’d put more time and thought into their 50 Shades of Grey fan-fic. And, sure, maybe if these three games hadn’t come after a 15-game unbeaten streak, my butt would be a lot more puckered about, again, the sheer awfulness of the goals the Timbers, again, a team that, prior to the past week, lurked amidst the lower nobility of MLS defenses - and that’s at a minimum - gave up tonight. Tonight didn’t spell “playoffs” for anyone dressed in green and gold. “Layoffs,” maybe, but not playoffs.

To wrap this up on a high note, the Timbers have some winnable games ahead - e.g., hosting Toronto FC and the Colorado Rapids (even as that one ain’t what it used to be) and the New England Revolution and the Houston Dynamo away. Sharper readers might have noticed I didn’t list the Seattle Sounders in Portland next weekend. All I have to say about that is brace yourselves. Be ready to have a full-body ejaculation in the event of a win, but also…just do what you gotta to cope with a loss. Because, well, we don’t talk about that, now do we?

Bottom line, much like the weather, circumstances came together to make this past week harder than it looked even four weeks ago. It went about as badly as it could, but Portland’s out of at least that patch of woods right now. If things don’t turn around, say, over the next 5 weeks…yes, you have my permission to panic, and what’s your favorite MRE, because I have some thoughts.