Portland Timbers 4-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: This Summer's Coming of Age Movie

Another coming of age movie that's very worth seeing...that cast...

Swear to God, that game, despite the lopsided final score, should be what a soccer fan shows the heretics to convert them to the cause. Until the Portland Timbers scored their second pair of goals late in their ultimate, and profoundlysatisfying 4-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy, this game could have gone anywhere from Poulsbo, Washington to Mars. Until the Timbers scored its third goal, this game could have gone, literally, anywhere. As I might have said more than once this season, there but for the grace of Steve Clark…

Despite the lopsided score, this is game was a fucking blast, an example to teams across the league as to how soccer should be played – i.e., both teams looking to both win it and play, and leaving the vertical space open to allow that to happen. (Every time I hear people complain about that, the same thought runs through my head on repeat: “But that’s how you make the game fun, but that’s how you make the game fun, but that’s how you make the game fun,” etc.) That allowed the Galaxy to give as good as they got with disturbing frequency, and that made the whole thing such a grand time. At least half the six saves Steve Clark made were desperate and tricky AF, and the entire experience had the feel of navigating that weird board game/puzzle where you had to steer a ball through a maze with holes all over it, but only by tilting the plane of the board (it was tres analog, obviously). But fun!

The Timbers survived it, though, and a shit-ton of the pressure landed on the shoulders of Cristhian Paredes. And, holy shit, did that kid take it all on and then some. After two seasons of contributing (more or less) nothing to the attack, Paredes delivered, nodding home a freebie and then followed that up by scoring a gem that refracted the light according to scientific parameters. In between those, he chewed up midfield real estate (just in a different way than Timbers fans are used to seeing); I lost track of all the times Paredes played a short lateral pass from the top of Portland’s defense, or rode a crap challenge and kept charging forward, but he starred last night as much as any Timber and, for a 21-year-old who struggled for daylight (or just for me to notice) in 2018, that’s a great fucking sign for the future. It’s quite possible that Portland Timbers fans previewed a coming of age movie last night. (And if you haven’t seen Booksmart, see it. It’s amazing, and it feels a little like this…but probably without the ayahuasca scene. But, to get back to non-claymation/stop-motion references…)

The Timbers as a whole brought the now-familiar aggression, and that kept the game poised on the ragged edge of chaos. Frayed tempers continue as a feature of Timbers games and…it’s complicated. On the one hand, I don’t think they win without playing at a certain heightened pitch, but, on another, it’s entirely possible that MLS referees will start comparing notes on the games they struggle to manage and, if/when Portland’s name keeps coming up? There’s the gamesmanship too – and Paredes gives an example, as when he stayed on the ground after a(n alleged) hard foul only to get up right when LA played the ball out of bounds, or when he took a dive in the area. He got a screaming from Diego Polenta on the former (while Polenta got a card), and ate a yellow for his first dive. Some might call that maturity or savvy, but I call both a risk barely worth taking it. Zlatan lost his shit throughout the game and people will (probably) argue to the end of time over the extent to which Efrain Alvarez's late red followed from Portland driving LA mad. (Again, aggression good, fouls bad. I just see this coming home to roost if it continues…ah, what am I doing, but ruining the moment.

The 4-0 score-line might flatter the Timbers a bit. While they were better (even the (allegedly neutral) broadcast booth agreed, as did the numbers), this was a deeply delightful nail-biter throughout. Portland sliced the ball through LA’s defense on multiple occasions, but LA responded in kind; there was never a time in this match where one team or the other couldn’t have scored). Both teams had their share of wild, pointless moments, but, had you watched Toronto FC v. FC Cincinnati earlier yesterday, you’d understand why I feel like I’m comparing a Caravaggio to what some high school kid slopped onto paper (not a canvas, because why waste it?) after watching Portland v. LA last night. But I digress…

On the defensive/hella positive side, Larrys Mabiala put in his usual solid shift, while, as noted above, Clark stood on his head. “Solid shift” might sell Mabiala short because, due to the way Jorge Moreira inches forward (with the alacrity of a deeply-irresponsible base-runner), he spent a lot of the first half defending one-on-one against a winger out wide again and again. He managed it (with more or less success), but the whole “Moreira” situation does create a permanent vulnerability (worth it...till further notice). I won’t pretend it’s weird to see a fullback play high – not after 90 minutes of Justin Morrow doing the exact same thing for Toronto FC – but it does leave a gap, one that LA exploited for a lot of the first half. For what it’s worth, I think Portland gets that and sends defensive personnel to the right times and places – e.g., Larrys, wherever the hell it needs to happen and, Cascante, more or less marking someone (say, Zlatan) out of the game. And now this is where the topic turns to LA…

…who is, in fact, better than I expected. I do think that, over 2/3 of the field, they play the game the same way Portland does – and it suits them pretty well (as in, don’t write them off). Things get weird, however, in the final third. If you’ve heard the word “gravity” assigned to a specific player, Zlatan epitomizes the role. I lost track of the number of times I saw the Galaxy set up to where they’d get the ball in isolation on the wing, and then hoof the ball to Zlatan at the back-post; I turned into parody by the 10th try, on a “definition of insanity” kind of level. It gets weird arguing that's all LA does, though, when you see Zlatan show up all over the field, it becomes clear that the Galaxy use him in a lot of different ways, up to and including play-making from as far back as the center stripe. You can’t say it was all to no avail, either, but there is something going on with LA’s attack because, I just checked the math and 18 of the 24 teams in MLS have scored more goals than LA – some of them, just, comically awful (e.g., the Chicago in the East), or consistently lowly (e.g., the Colorado Rapids and Sporting Kansas City in the West).

I’m not gloating about that either; Portland has just five more goals scored on the season – and that’s with the four added last night. The back-to-back agonies of drawing Colorado and Orlando City SC show dry spells can afflict anyone. Going the other way…is this the first time the Timbers have had a positive goal differential this season? (Hell, yeah…)

It took a while for Portland to get the Galaxy back on its heels – and I’d say they held the right side of the edge for the first 15-20 minutes – but, once the game opened up, it favored the team that knows how to seize an open game with both hands, e.g., Portland. I lost track of the instinctual, almost muscle-memory touches Timbers played to one another, but they piled up fast and, according to the most primal math, to a 4-0 win for them. If this isn’t an extraordinarily well-drilled team, I don’t know which team is. At the same time, there’s a spontaneity to them – by which I mean, at least four of those players can rush into the attacking third and do damage – and, assuming Paredes keeps panning out, that’s five players doing whatever the Hell they want with a stout defense and ample aggression behind them, and that pretty much sounds like a nightmare for any opposing team.

Uh, what else? Am I on to details yet? Eh, let’s do the details.

- Unless my brain doesn’t work (that’s 50/50), Jorge Villafana assisted on both Portland’s decisive goals (here's one!), but that came late, after a performance where most of his visible moments included scrambling backwards.

- My decision to focus on Paredes above meant giving short shrift to Diego Valeri, who…let’s call it arguably, won the game with a goal/move so slick it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye (and I’ve watched this goddamn thing three times; must be turning away at the decisive moment). You hear people talk about the five minutes after a goal is scored and how that can make the game-states go wild; Valeri tamed/channeled them in that moment and, while anything could have happened last night, Valeri’s goal tipped the odds heavily in Portland’s favor.

- I mentioned Cascante’s game above, but without giving it the praise he deserved. I’m not entirely sure that Gio Savarese assigned Zlatan-management to Cascante, but he seemed to be around for the bigger battles. And, for the defender I see/hear eating criticism most often, Cascante was damn near flawless, and against one of the better forwards in MLS. Take a bow, son.

- Jeremy Ebobisse deserves a shout too, because his instincts are off the charts, and getting sharper with experience. Whether it’s the people he plays with or his brain taking in and taking advantage of his own read of the game, Ebobisse feels more and more like something special. Between his touch and how he reads the game, I keep moving closer to the idea that he has more upside to deliver/develop.

- Finally, did anyone else see Renzo Zambrano out there? Me neither, or not much anyway, and I mean that in the sense that he might have quietly had himself a game out there.

And, that’s it. I know I’m missing something, but this is ample. That was one helluva game, and an even better win.