Portland Timbers 2-2 Colorado Rapids: Hideous Bookends

I don't want the season to end like this.

I made my first visit to an embiggened Providence Park last night, returning to the same seats where I bought season tickets all those years ago (wistful for 2011, on so many levels). 210 was a standing section that season, and has been for every game I’ve been to since. People stood through the first half and took a seat at the half, per the custom, but, for whatever reason, everyone remained seated when the second half started. I attempted to reassume the (standing) position when the whistle blew to start the second half, as did (literally) two or three others, but the social pressure caught up with us, one by one. The guy who sat down the last man standing with a sweep of his hand to the rest of the fully-seated section…what can I say? He wasn’t wrong.

What caused the bad kind of funk – i.e., the old-school, deflating kind of funk, as opposed to the good funk with the dope beats and bulging bass that makes you want to shake your money-maker till you break it? Was it the deflation of the Colorado Rapids scoring its second goal of the game/the first one in its favor less than a minute after Tommy “OG” Smith put the Timbers in the lead (that was one of the finest own-goals I’ve ever seen; such power)? Surely it wasn’t Colorado’s late rally at the close in the second half, because didn’t Portland ‘keeper Steve Clark give these fans more than everything they could ask of him (certainly more than their sitting asses deserved)? I couldn’t poll them, as I’m accustomed to polling people in twitter (technology fails me, once again), so that will remain a mystery.

In the end, it took anger to make people stand. Seconds after Sebastian Blanco got chopped down while winding up for a shot (and Lalas Abubakar rather ungraciously barked at him where he laid, broken), Julio Cascante got sent off for a scissored lunge at Kei Kamara from behind and, with that, more formerly sedate section rose to its feet, raged foully, and remained standing for the rest of the game. Everyone around me spat words not safe for motherfucking print at that stupid son-of-a-bitch of a referee (Kevin Stott) for nearly as long as it took for Diego Valeri to score the penalty kick that followed from Abubakar’s hand-ball in Colorado’s area. And that started another avalanche of profanity and a full, ripened wheat field’s worth of middle fingers in Stott’s general (stupid, useless) direction.

All the above was a nice reminder of what makes live games worth going to. Oh, and the game ended 2-2 after Sam Nicholson beat (first) Renzo Zambrano, then Clark to equalize for the Rapids. It was a good goal, honestly, not much worse than the one Jonathan Lewis curled past Cascante to equalize for Colorado the first time. Truth is, Colorado played a solid game, certainly a better one than I expected, and I’ll absorb the totality of it all with due humility.

In the preview thread I posted to twitter last Friday, I stated that I couldn’t see a reason why Portland wouldn’t win this game. Colorado provided a couple reasons with stout defending – there, Abubakar stood out with a close, accurate reading of the game that allowed him to cut out just about everything Portland threw at the Rapids’ defense – and with a series of sharp questions for Steve Clark, sometimes in bunches, some with pain involved (watch Clark's head in the slow-mo replays; uncomfortable).

“There but for the Grace of Steve Clark” would have given a fair title to this post, because he really did stand on his head to make this result hold up. But I wanted to highlight what feels like one of the less-appreciated reasons for mystery results in this sport we all know and love – i.e., the way any given two teams fit together when they play. For those who don’t remember, the Timbers started 2019 with a game/blizzard against this same Rapids team. That game ended in a draw (3-3), and with Portland having a one-man advantage for more time than Colorado was up a man last night; there was even the symmetry of the Rapids scoring an own-goal, and that feels like a crazy level of similar detail between the two games. I don’t raise these points to give myself a pass for all but predicting a Timbers win – the Rapids both defended and attacked better than I had reason to expect they would, and they deserve real credit it for that. All the same, this game, as well as the way it played out – i.e., against the “Fortress Providence Park” on which all assumptions of a happy 2019 season for Portland rely – should have the practical effect of keeping the word “pending” in front of what Timbers fans should expect from the slew of home games ahead for their local professional sporting outfit. It’s the usual stuff about birds in hands versus birds and bushes, and the proper time for counting chickens.

That said, it was the defensive side of the Rapids’ game that really stood out. Toward the end of the first half, the guy in front of me turned around and bluntly stated that the game was terrible. My first thought was, compared to what? My second was, in what sense? As I saw it, Portland moved the ball forward fairly comfortably for most of the game, and Timbers players, as a whole, did the right things when receiving the ball. Colorado, though, nearly always had an answer, most often in the form of Abubakar swooping in clear up anything that threatened to sneak behind the defense. And, when he broke down, Tim Howard (who had a game of his own) provided another back-stop. This is mostly remarkable in context: a roughly equivalent version of this Timbers team has faced off against and beat plenty of teams that just about everyone would call Colorado’s betters – e.g., the Philadelphia Union on the road several weeks back, but also New York City FC on the road only a week ago, and Los Angeles FC just mid-week. The Timbers grew as the game went on against the latter, especially, but here comes the allegedly lowly (again, as alleged by me) Colorado Rapids, and what did they do but make Portland sweat bullets for large portions of this game? To anyone laughing off that talking point, I don’t know about you, but the box score confirms what I watched last night.

Best case for Portland, the Rapids are just a tricky match-up, while not being predictive of future struggles for the Timbers at home. In the here and now, though, all the above suggests an answer to the question of whether or not, for all the bile I directed at him online, Stott somehow decided the game with the red card to Cascante. As I see it, while it’s clearly not ideal to play with one player less than the opposition, the straight red on Cascante was justified, and nothing about the final result feels in any real way unfair. My only quibble hovers over the general vicinity of what might have been re the foul (or alleged foul) on Blanco that immediately preceded it. Whatever happened with the ensuing free-kick from that foul (again, on Blanco), the play that lead to Cascante’s sending off would never have happened. There’s a phrase for this that’s escaping me for the moment (and it is fucking breaking me; plz halp!), but, in more words, Timbers fans didn’t get that game. We got the one that ended in a genuinely stressful 2-2 draw at home.

Apart from some notes on individual players, I think that’s everything I have to say. And here are those notes on individual players:

- Speaking of polls, I floated one that asked which player people most wanted to see rested. I expected that everyone would go with Blanco – and they did, and by a 54% majority (with 26 votes responding) – but I had Larrys Mabiala in my head when I posed the question. Mabiala has been massive lately, a one-man key to proactive defending and superior passing out of the back. My question is, how much did Portland miss him last night? The extent to which they did corresponds fairly directly with my anxiety about Mabiala picking up an injury, or just his form slipping.

- Zarek Valentin was also slated for some rest. He handled his 80 unexpected minutes with ample, admirable aplomb. Apple. Apricot. Aviary. More "A" words....

- Related, rest Blanco the next game, even if you have to tie him to a chair. Rest is good.

- I find strange comfort in the reality that Brian Fernandez can’t solve all the team’s problems.

- Jeremy Ebobisse has silky feet and he uses his body really well. If that guy becomes a reliable goal-scorer….look out.

- Dairon Asprilla properly belongs in the USL and the month of October. That is all.

Now that’s everything. Till Thursday night and Orlando City SC’s visit.