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| Spirit animal. |
[Ed. – For those interested only in a breakdown/preview of
MLS Cup, skip down to the double asterisk. For everyone else…let’s dig in.]
I went to bed two nights ago with the grand ambition of scouting
Atlanta United FC by watching three of their archived: their two 2018
post-season home wins and their home win over the Montreal Impact back in
April. I’d whittled that down to two games last night – the 3-0 home rout over
the New York Red Bulls (patoo-patoo, [salt over my left shoulder], [cross
myself in both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition], a pox, and may such an
abomination never come to pass until 2019, amen) and the Montreal game.
I realized I’d already watched the win over the Red Bulls by
the second minute (why didn’t I remember watching it? While I was stone-cold
sober, my wife talked over that whole damn game, hence the hole in my head),
and decided I’d only watch the Montreal game. That’s when I learned that
ESPN+’s archived footage would only let me go back to November 1...
…and so, thankful that circumstances saved me from my most
excessive impulses, I just read some stuff and watched a couple videos of
people doing the lifting for me. Like a normal person.
** After a week of being completely checked out of MLS, I
don’t have a ton of specifics on what will help or hurt the Portland Timbers when
they battle Atlanta for MLS Cup. After a battle of my own – How MLS Organizes
Content on its Home Page versus Me (MLSoccer.com won; seriously, it takes a
fucking divining rod to tick through their content) – and considering those
inputs, here are my take-aways.
The Layout Favors Atlanta, but There Is No Underdog
In the one in-depth preview video I found (before giving up;
work on it, a-holes), Taylor Twellman and Matt Doyle (also Calen Carr) made
smart comments about Atlanta’s greater flexibility in terms of how they can
attack, and I think those are accurate. Doyle leaned harder into the argument
that Portland is a one-trick pony – e.g., stay organized (a word that needs
refining) and counter – but the Timbers are really good at that trick;
moreover, “really good” leveled up to fucking great around the beginning of October. Better still, this “you had one job” style of play travels well. I
don’t know whether to call it irony or accidental brilliance, but the MLS home
page’s article on that same point puts more time into talking about the
Timbers’ other long-suit instead: how thoroughly capably this team plays for
another. Portland has been on the same sentence of the same page for the entire
post-season, something that has made them so damn hard to beat that no team
has.
To the extent Atlanta holds an edge, those factors – e.g., a
reliable game-plan that every player understands and believes in – push back
against it.
What I Know About Atlanta
The results-fixated model I used to track all of MLS this
year (example) worked surprisingly well for tracking law-of-average outcomes,
but it doesn’t give me much to work with for weighing expectations in a
one-game Cup final. Because I watched Atlanta play…three, maybe four times all
season, I’d direct anyone looking for intimate knowledge of how they play, or
their strengths and weaknesses to that video above and Doyle’s (solid) MLS Cup preview. That said, I have two comments:
1) Even if Bradley Wright-Phillips running into Daniel Royer
is the one detail I remember from Atlanta’s 3-0 win over the Red Bulls (that’s
how I knew I’d already watched the game), New York’s utter helplessness in that
loss left an impression – a deep and anxious one. The Red Bulls played against
what brought them success (for god knows what reason), and the Timbers won’t do
that (GUYS: don’t do that), but Atlanta has some good veteran brains guiding
that defense, so getting a goal past them – or, worse, falling behind, at all –
will be a problem.
2) As noted in a 12 storylines article (again, MLS home
page), Miguel Almiron and Josef Martinez make a powerful case for the best
attacking partnership in the league. And, yes, careful readers will espy “Diego
y Diego” immediately below that – i.e., praise for Portland’s own magical duo,
Diego Valeri and Diego Chara (with bonus third wheel Sebastian Blanco) – but
having Almiron playing behind/near/around Martinez means one very important
thing: if Portland gives Atlanta chances, Atlanta will put them away. Oh, and
before I move on, Josef Martinez wrote an utterly charming essay about his
life, his move to Atlanta and his partnership with Almiron. It’s one of the
best, sweetest things I’ve read this season.
Careful readers will also note the complementary nature of
Nos. 1 and 2. Now, to close this out with the things that no Timbers fan wants
to talk about.
My Biggest Fears
If I had to name Portland’s most exploitable on-field
positional weakness, it’d be the fullbacks. Zarek Valentin has had a career
2018 as far as I’m concerned, but the way he got twisted into a pretzel and
run over by a truck coming and going against Sporting Kansas City highlights
what the Timbers got away with in that game and what could go wrong against
Atlanta. Atlanta plays on a bigger field than Portland’s and that’ll only
increase the strain that, as Doyle points out, Atlanta will bring to bear.
Staying too compact could kill Portland s well, because they can’t allow a
fiesta of crosses with Martinez out there.
My bigger fear, though, centers on what everyone (who’s
savvy) agrees is Portland’s greatest strength: Diego Chara (and I love how hard
Twellman goes to bat for Chara in this video). Chara is the Portland Timbers’
brilliant, efficient engine (srsly, fucking crazy mileage), but he
rarely faces a player gifted with Almiron’s kind of speed; it’s unique to
the league in the same way as Chara’s tenacity. I don’t remember where they
discussed this (think it’s in the preview video, only god knows where), but if
Chara spends all game putting out fires around for other Timbers players,
Portland will get their asses kicked first, then handed to them second.
Doyle’s preview makes a cool and, again, accurate
counter-point that Chara can make some devastating runs from the depths of his
own and suggests (again, accurately) that Almiron might be the only guy on the
field who can keep up with Chara, but he doesn’t play where he can do that. So,
there’s one ray of sunshine. Now, here’s what I think will give the Portland
Timbers their best possible chance of making sure the sun comes out tomorrow
(bet yer bottom dollar!).
Don’t Be Victims
The idea is contained in this sentence (from Doyle’s
preview):
“They scored 140 goals over the last two seasons for a
reason, and they annihilated the New York Red Bulls in the first leg of the
Eastern Conference Championship when Chris Armas put his team in a shell that
was juuuuuuust a little bit too passive.”
Here’s where I refine the word “organized” (see the fifth
paragraph): while the Timbers should sit in a low-block, they need to challenge every ball in the in or near their defensive third. Passivity will kill them –
and, as I see it, create the nightmare scenario of Chara chasing after fires
like a methed-out Dalmatian. This doesn’t need to be a permanent posture, they
should mind the game-states and look for opportunities to take them game
Atlanta (because they can), but I want every Timber player to defend his patch
of turf like a cornered badger.
Well, those are all my thoughts. In the final analysis, all
Portland needs to do is continue with the whole business of being their best
possible selves, something they’ve been doing since the start of October. For
what it’s worth, this doesn’t feel like 2015; that win felt inevitable, where
this one does not. This run feels better in the sense that it requires belief.
There’s something deeply endearing about that and, by translation, this team.
Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m happy as a clam on ecstasy over here.
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