Portland Timbers 2-1 Seattle Sounders: Success, Wheatfields, and Andy Polo

Middle fingers, all of 'em. YEEAAHHHH!!!

I showed up late to the game, mostly because I like to skip the National Anthem. (Honestly, I’m patriotic and appreciative as the next guy, I’m just not a fan of enforced rituals.) From the moment I walked in all the way through the Seattle Sounders’ opening goal, I never saw a Timbers’ player touch the ball in anything but desperation. In so many words, the omens didn’t favor victory.

I got no better sign of how much this series matters to Portland Timbers fans than the freakin’ wheat-field’s worth of middle fingers that went up all around my section (210) after Jeremy Ebobisse knocked in a finish beyond his years. Just to note it, the more I watch this kid play the more my brain silently repeats, “buy in, buy in, buy in.” Those voices in my head have no idea how hard that is for me.

This game’s actual miracle moment came when Diego Valeri dribbled through at least two tackles and flailed in the aftermath of one more to feed Sebastian Blanco the game-winner. After Blanco shrugged off some Sounders drapery to knock his goal past Seattle goalkeeper Stefan Frei, the sea of middle fingers rose again and underlined just how big this series feels in these parts. Is that healthy? Probably not, but that’s what’s going on and, golly, was I happy to take in the game live and in person. The mob mentality must have got to me because both my middle fingers shot up after both goals; this shit is infectious. The second goal was doubly satisfying after watching Cristian Roldan limp toward the farthest possible point of the sideline before stepping off the field. I have no idea why that pissed me off as much as it did, but I’m confident that Ted Unkel’s ultra-passive calls slid a burner under that and heated it to boiling. I want to sit down with him and ask how he only raised one yellow card through the length of that match…and I’m willing to listen.

After two late misses (one for either team) and an offside goal for the Timbers, that was all she wrote (here, I assume the author is Agatha Christie). Most importantly, the Timbers recovered from getting run over and scored on early to take a sadly slim 2-1 lead in this playoff series. As amazing as that was in the moment, it’s going to take some doing to make that score hold up in the second leg. A 1-0 Seattle win in Seattle is all it will take to send the Sounders through and that score-line fits that teams profile like personally-crafted skinny jeans (even my butt would look good). All the same, this win gives Portland a chance and, deeply apprehensive as I am about the road ahead, that’s all I can ask for, really.

On that same note, the Timbers should avoid giving Seattle a first goal Thursday fucking night like the plague-herpes-syphilis, especially early - and I mean to the lengths of extreme bunkering. The sooner the Sounders can make Portland chase the game, the sooner this series ends. Game-state stuff aside, I consider this a genuinely comforting performance by the Timbers. Not only did Portland come back from a goal down, they took real control of the game from the 20th minute to around the 80th. That was especially heartening after walking into Providence Park to see every man wearing dark green chasing white (tampon-esque) shadows. I sweated this series something fierce till then. Now, I’m back to wondering whether the Timbers can last for a run at MLS Cup.

My MVP list starts with the usual suspects. First, I could fill three posts with praise for Diego Chara, who played his recurring role of global wrecking ball/permanent short-term solution. Valeri reprised his eternal role of actual solution/savior and Blanco did his turn as the perfect straight-man to Valeri's magic (or vice versa). More than in the past, I want to give the credit for this win where I genuinely believe it’s due - and that’s with Liam Ridgewell. I don’t think anyone played under as much pressure as Ridgewell and, from watching him live, holy shit, did he hold up. He didn’t just fight on the land and in the air, he also directed and stepped up like as if both his job and his reputation depended on it. Without any disrespect to Bill Tuiloma, Ridgewell stood out as much as any Timbers player tonight and, as a semi-frequent critic, I want to acknowledge that. Hell, I need to.

To turn to trickier things, few positions struggled this afternoon as much as the fullbacks. After Seattle’s one goal, I tweeted something pissy about the Timbers’ absent fullbacks (think it was Zarek Valentin in that case), but, to expand on a theory that developed as the game went on, Seattle plays its fullbacks in a way that’s designed to force your team’s fullbacks into damned hard choices. Their fullbacks played high (I remember Nouhou Tolo being a complete pain-in-the ass), our fullbacks played high and, lo, space opened up behind both, but ours more than theirs. Hate them all you want, the Sounders have a really good game-plan: defend the center, stretch the field horizontally with the fullbacks, and let the skill players go fucking nuts. The question of whether this is a really well-designed team gets a vigorous “yes” from Game 19 of the MLS regular season to this precise moment in time…

…the question is whether the Portland Timbers’ best designed team can hold them off Thursday night.

The Timbers will get the considerable plus of having Larrys Mabiala back in the starting line-up on Thursday (that said, Tuiloma did great tonight; thanks for bringing it, kid!). Going the other way, David Guzman - a player I suddenly care about very deeply - limped off earlier than I’d ever want to see (52nd?), and I’ll have to think about how the Timbers stay relatively positive if he can’t go Thursday. Everywhere else, though, every key Timbers player stepped high enough tonight to give me faith in the second leg: Ebobisse continues to make the best argument for letting Fanendo Adi go and sitting Samuel Armenteros on the bench; Blanco and Valeri sometimes alternate on quality, but Valeri has dominated every game that counts since every game became a playoff game. I covered Ridgewell above, Chara too…and I think the fullbacks managed one hell of a challenge reasonably well, Jeff Attinella was good…I’m pretty sure that’s everyone….only it’s not.

Watching from inside the stadium gave me a rare chance to key on Andy Polo (it helps that he played on my side of the field, and from which I had an exquisite view, for the length of the second half). So, what'd I see? Polo walking most of the times my attention cycled back to him. Worse, he never got involved in…most things going either forward (aka, the attack) or backward (aka, the defense). In fact, the more I watched Polo today, the less I enjoyed the game. Fairly late into the game, I was asking myself whether he even showed up to play. It only caused me to me to flirt with all kinds of irresponsible ideas, up to and including getting Dairon Asprilla into the game.

It took 80 minutes for it to occur to me that Polo lingered around where he did for a reason. He played on Portland’s right, but he always cheated to the middle. The fact that he rarely got forward pissed me off only a little less than seeing him stay in his weird, specific little spot even when Seattle broke down Portland’s right, most often through Tolo. Through the second half - e.g., when I had the clearest view -Polo floated in a kind of no man’s land, 15-20 yards from the touchline, and neither forward nor back…

…and maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe Giovanni Savarese charged the Peruvian with making sure that the width Seattle opened up with Tolo on Seattle’s left (therefore, Portland’s right) didn’t open a channel for someone like Victor Rodriguez or, worse, Nicolas Lodeiro to run into/let slip the dogs of goals. Polo’s seeming uselessness could have been the flip-side of him serving as a plug first and foremost, but it still would have been nice to see him look effective or, gods forbid, dangerous. Even when Polo got the ball at his feet…meh.

If the Timbers coaching staff opted to take him off the board as an attacking piece today, you can make a reasonable case that it worked. Honestly, the scariest thing on Portland’s right today was the number of times Valentin got caught lingering on the ball, and without a safety net behind him. Polo lurked to his inside, and maybe that was enough. I’ve never got Andy Polo for as long as he’s been a Timber. I heard people have faith in him even today; someone around me said, “speed kills,” and, because I’ve never seen Polo really chew up turf around another player, I’m left asking, “where?” I also know what I saw out there tonight - Valeri, Blanco, and Ebobisse circling like sharks, with Chara rushing in for support and out for cover, and Guzman feeding the ball back into the circle every time he could - and I think that’s a winning formula for the Timbers, or at least as close as they’ll get in 2018. If the team loses Polo as an attacking threat to free up that little mosh-pit, he's welcome on the ship. All the same, I’d bet both he and I would like to see him play a bigger role in the attack…

…and I could be entirely full of shit as to how Savarese played Polo tonight. For all I know, he was just tired and/or bored. All the same, the “we’ve got this” scenario feels better… Till Thursday, y’all, and may it be happy!