FC Dallas 2-1 Portland Timbers: On Getting Robbed and Making Peace

Seriously? Again with these same fucking animals?

That was one weird goddamn game, so much so that I would have coughed up a totally different take had I written up it last night (or been able to; I took a wrong fork on the double header). I got one vague impression from watching live last night, and a second, sharper impression after reviewing 2/9th of the action (hello, condensed game). It’s the latter that fever-piqued my curiosity about the box score – of which, it’s worth the look.

For one, it reveals that, after a disastrous, here-we-go-again start to the match, the Portland Timbers wrestled just about every number to either parity or a slight edge in their favor. Everyone noticed that Portland had a very late shout for a penalty kick thanks to a hand-ball in the penalty area, but it’s possible that everyone (including me) missed that Jeremy Ebobisse got fouled on his 75th minute attempt on goal. If you watch the replay, you should see a rather egregious, well-timed shove in Ebobisse’s back. (Related: I’m hoping that Instant Replay reviews that handball because, in what’s become a paranoia-tinged tradition, MLSSoccer.com has started to bury blown calls). Neither call was made, obviously, and FC Dallas walked off the field with a 2-1 win, but neither team should feel good about the ultimate result, if for opposite reasons – Dallas, for almost failing to win at home, Portland for getting lightly screwed.

Close as Portland came to rescuing a point out of this game, and for all the positives I can wring out of it (you’ll be surprised, honestly), I can’t bring myself to calling the result itself positive. Dropping more points sucks, obviously and a team lining up in a 5-3-2 hardly sings “we’re gonna win the league!” in a tune anyone wants to hum along with. Worse, I can’t think of the last time I saw anything demoralizing as the fuck-up cascade that was Portland’s second goal, which achieved the mysterious depths of, say, someone losing his arms or legs, like they just fell off out of the blue for no discernible goddamn reason. (The first was no peach either; for anyone interested in reliving it, click on the “here we-go again start.”) Finally, when I reviewed the condensed game, I kept a loose tally of all the clean looks Dallas got on goal – i.e., massive openings that should haveended in goals (Jesus Ferreira had a good game; just file that away), but that instead ended up as generic “shots” in the box score. (Seriously, some stats are so heavily conditioned that I’m not sure how much sense it makes to count them.)

The paragraph immediately above gets at why I almost titled this post “Wilderness Days.” I still like that phrase for Portland’s long, lingering road trip, but that’s a disservice to how close the Timbers came to getting a point out of this game (and, seriously, Dallas should be having a deep conversation with the bathroom mirror right now), and it looks past some subtle strengths. First, I like coaches who figure out how to get the most out of the players they have; demoralizing as it is to see Portland line up in a 5-3-2, it’s probably the best formation for the team that they have. Second, I was outright delighted to see Giovanni Savarese rest Diego Valeri, and to see him have a game-plan with a decent chance of stealing points, basically gambling on an ultra-defensive formation to keep the score close and then bring on Valeri and Dairon Asprilla to steal everything you can. I can’t call that fool-proof with a straight face, but it’s a pretty fair stab at using the resources one has. If 2019 has suggested anything, it’s that the Timbers don’t have a complete, competitive team – or that they’ve slipped behind the pack at the very least – and that’s exactly what makes it satisfying to have a coach who thinks when he’s holding what looks for all the world like a bad hand.

Now, none of that paragraph immediately above erases a couple damning realities, and that’s the world the Timbers live in. For starters, there’s this stray comment from (I think) Dallas’ broadcast booth:

“I don’t want to be overly-critical of him, but I forgot he was playing.”

That was about Ebobisse, and it gets harder to push back against that kind of commentary every week. I’m nowhere near ready to abandon Ebobisse as a player/project, but something has to develop, either in his game or around it, for him to be an effective forward. For too much of this season, the attacking third feels like a foreign country to Portland, a place they’ve forgotten how to navigate to any effect. Maybe that’s an effect of starting the season with a 12-game (right?) road trip, but it doesn’t feel that way, which is to say the issue feels endemic. It’s not like Ebobisse is useless – e.g., watch the urgency of his run in that 75th minute chance, and that’s after dishing the ball to Sebastian Blanco – but he’s not visible too often.

Now feels like an appropriate time to bring up rumors of the cavalry and, to drag the conversation to where it really needs to go – i.e., whether having a good forward is sufficient for this current Portland Timbers team. Basically, does the team have enough oomph in midfield, and is the defense sufficiently there, especially, with or without five guys behind the ball? I don’t really know the answer to that question. Wish I did, but…nope!

To touch on mechanics a little, what to make of the 5-3-2 as a functioning formation? As much as I praised Portland for coming back into the game, they wouldn’t need to do that if they didn’t put themselves in a hole, and that formation just…feels too much like ceding two thirds of the field to the opposition, aka, quitter talk and who likes that? Going the other way, they punched out of the same formation in a stronger second half, and they played the same set up against the Los Angeles Galaxy, the game I still count as their best performance of 2019. And, back in the other direction, they lost both games they played in that formation, and by the utterly damning formula of giving up more goals than they scored, again, that’s in a five (5)-3-2. The “3-2” part answers for the failure to score, but how the Hell does a team put five players (allegedly; see Jorge Moreira) in the backline, and still come out on the wrong side defensively? And yet Portland has, and against every team except the Colorado fucking Rapids.

So, to circle back to the question of getting a new forward, my best guess is that it’ll help in terms of giving the other team more to manage in the attack, and that it might let key players like Valeri and Blanco cheat a little further forward. I’d just be surprised if that’s enough. And this is where hope goes to die. When I look at the team the Timbers fielded today, I don’t see a team that can compete in MLS. I understand that most of the same team competed quite well just last season, but, for whatever reason, they were a totally different team last year. In 2018, they had a knack for knowing where the next pass should go, and players moved accordingly and fluidly. I don’t know what happened to that, because it's not like they replaced much of the team, or that any players got that much older. And, before someone brings up the idea that this is Portland on the road, the Timbers played their way to MLS Cup 2018 on the road. That’s just six months ago, and that makes this a bad stretch, pure and simple. Worse, it feels structural.

I hope just one forward can fix that, even if just by altering the part of the field where other teams have to play Portland. If there’s an advantage to be had, I think Savarese is a coach who can figure out how to make the most of it. At the same time, I just don’t see it. And I’m good with that. I’ll watch, cheer and proselytize for them, same as I always do. I just won’t expect them to win all that often. A team wins, a team loses, it’s all the same to me: I tune in every week just to catch up on the story. A losing team isn’t all that different from a winning team in the end; I’m most interested in the reason why it’s happening.

And, to the extent anyone ever wondered, now you know why I regard mid-table teams with a special horror.