Portland Timbers 0-2 Atlanta United FC: Narratives and Their Wrinkles

That is clarifying (apparently), but who sees it as such?

I loved this game for everything except the result. It was a fucking diamond, I tell you, in that it reveals different things when you hold it up to the light…

I didn’t like that the game ended with the Portland Timbers losing to Atlanta United FC 0-2 in Portland, obviously, even if I kinda saw it coming, or at least the outlines of it. To make a list of it, if you look at Portland’s last 10 opponents – @ MTL, v FCD, @ NYC, v COL, v ORL, @ SEA (ha!), v LAG, @ MIN, v VAN, v CHI – between talent and form, Atlanta presents as the most thoroughly leveled-up of the bunch. Sure, NYCFC looked as strong as Atlanta when the Timbers beat them in the Bronx, but the rest of all of those teams rolled into their game against Portland with some amount of baggage and pain, and that’s the line I’m drawing in this post: in Atlanta, Portland finally met a team with a similar kind/amount of talent and momentum and, the shocking evenness of the evening notwithstanding, it didn’t go great for the Timbers. They lost at home and with…a solid percentage of what most people seem to regard as its best team on the field. The only question I have is what percentage of Timbers fans found this result disappointing and what percentage see it as clarifying.

I’m borne for the latter camp (Team Clarifying!), even as it cuts against the record the Timbers compiled over their last 10 games; trust me, 20 points from 30 is fucking rare in this league, but that’s been Portland’s level. (Immediately relevant thereto, Atlanta has managed 19 points in its last 10 games, MLS regular season only, as in, not this game, or what the Mexican press thought of it.) At the same time, Atlanta has played well – sometimes very well - against MLS’s better teams – e.g., your NYCFCs, your LAFCs, your Galaxys (a fallen family, but still). Portland, to their very real and enduring credit, has done the proverbial business since finding their feet toward the end of its long, opening road trip; whatever I think of each of the ten teams listed below, wins in those games didn’t just happen and Portland posted some memorable wins during that stretch – there, wins over Seattle and LA stand out – but that doesn’t change the blunt reality that this resurgent, surging Atlanta teams was a different animal.

Before digging into details, sure, it could have gone either way last night…and that applies even if I think Atlanta created the better chances overall. As much as it’s fair to point out that Julio Cascante made the inexplicable decision that lead to Atlanta’s second goal (not sarcasm!), that wasn’t every reason why the Timbers failed to draw, never mind win, last night’s game. (Also, and because I ignored it entirely below, here's Atlanta's first goal.) They were not centered, they did not feel…

Dumb joke, sorry, but, with Marianne Williamson running for president, it also doesn’t feel entirely wrong. The Timbers had plenty of decent ideas, most of them delivered at speed, and they created a fair number of mostly nude openings based on that movement/magic. Portland should have scored last night, at least once – smarter shots could have lead to how many goals? – but when they weren’t nodding the ball straight at Brad Guzan (see, Ebobisse, Jeremy), Brian Fernandez ran just offside (and I might not have called it; fwiw, I’d argue the cosmic scales returned to close enough to balance when Bill Tuiloma didn’t get called for a PK when he took down Pity Martinez some time later), or Brad Guzan pawed away Portland’s best shot of the night. It came down to soccer players making soccer plays and Atlanta’s guys made them, while the Timbers did not, the margin of victory meets the margin of error and so on.

To give Atlanta their due, they boggled Portland’s defense more often than Portland managed to repay the favor. It started with the diagonals from fullback to winger that gradually broke the Timbers’ press over first 20 minutes – while also, really crawling inside Portland’s collective heads – and, the odd, but steady parade of successes aside, Portland struggled to pin down Atlanta. Both teams either couldn’t stop the other team for playing, or they just said to hell with it and asked their defenses to manage as well as they could while they went out and stormed the opposition goal.

The general focus shifts to a different field when you combine the dynamic of this game against some of what’s happened during Portland’s most recent (e.g., the last 10) run of games. For instance, teams like Vancouver, Orlando and even the Galaxy don’t have players who can pass comfortably through or around the Timbers’ pressure; as most Timbers fans will recall, Darlington Nagbe can do that on his own on his better days. Moreover, when they do, they’re not playing to guys on the same level as the Martinezes (Pity and Josef) or even wingbacks like Justin Meram (who’s returned to form since moving to Atlanta) and Julian Gressel. Comparative talent is a thing and Atlanta’s had the roster all season; it only took them figuring out what Frank de Boer wanted them to do, or Frank de Boer accepting that he has the players he has, or however that resolved. In Atlanta, the Timbers faced the best, most conceptually together attacking team they’ve faced since…shit, New York City FC way back on July 7.

To close out Atlanta, watching Pity Martinez for 88 minutes solidified a general, spotty perception that he’s got his feet under him by now. Apart from wreaking general havoc, he didn’t do anything outstanding last night, but he still managed to be the most persistent pain in Portland’s ass. To touch on something of equal importance, Atlanta has figured out a thing lately, something that thing starts from Julian Gressel and goes in multiple useful directions. For what I’ve gathered, that followed from moving Gressel from the middle of the field to that place on the right wing. With the way he’s piling up assists of late, teams haven’t yet adjusted to that tactical wrinkle; Portland just joined those sorry ranks last night on Atlanta's second goal.

To return to Portland, an ongoing debate has grappled with how to interpret, or even whether to accept the premise, of the Timbers struggling, at times, to break down bunkered defenses. It’s not surprising that some people resist that premise: Portland put three goals past Chicago and Vancouver in (very) recent weeks, and another four past the Galaxy; Brian Fernandez has paid back the investment with a reliable stream of goals, with other players chipping in, and so on. And yet the narrative exists. The question is, what to make of it and whether or getting shut out by Atlanta adds a fresh wrinkle to it, or whether it’s the same wrinkle looked at from a different angle. I’m not sure how to characterize what’s going on, so I’ll just offer this working theory: yes, Portland is scoring, and often enough, but they don’t necessarily look elegant/controlled while doing it. I guess that’s the best knock on what the Timbers aren’t doing in the moment. 17 goals from the last 10 games isn’t awful, but it feels like the balance of Portland’s recent goals have come late and courtesy of straggling/broken defenses, by which I’m suggesting that there’s padding on the scoring side of the ledger, or am I wrong? (Also, please tell me I’m wrong.) Moreover, they left buying the insurance goals pretty damn late against teams like Vancouver and Chicago – two teams that, if you polled the average Timbers fans, you’d find most of them would accept that those are lesser teams than Portland.

Those are my big picture thoughts on this one. Every time I’ve made the vague, “Portland will face better teams” argument, this was the kind of game I had in mind – i.e., that (probably) cold (ideally wet, because in Portland!) day when the Timbers played a team that didn’t bunker for survival’s sake, on the road or off it. More to the tasks ahead, Atlanta is the kind of team they’ll have to get through to win a trophy. The real question in play is whether this edition of the Timbers has the legs, health, practical impunity (to avoid suspensions), and talent to pull that off and win MLS Cup. That’s a question for the post-season and the games between here and there. Before flagging some details, I want to highlight something that got obscured in all the above: again, last night’s game was fucking fun. In terms of how I spend my time, I’d trade last night’s 90 minutes – and all the intriguing, challenging, maddening questions that go with it – for the 90 I spent begging for the win over Chicago to end. Now, some odds and ends:

- While I won’t hang last night’s loss on either defender (and, golly, do I love the way Bill Tuiloma plays, find him a partner for his very specific set of skills, etc.), watching the Timbers function without Larrys Mabiala does raise uncomfortable questions about how far Portland can go without him, aka, not the question you ever want to ask about your team’s central defense in the latter half of the month of August. At the same time, as much as I appreciate that Cascante’s not perfect, he’s not a disaster either. He makes more plays than mistakes – a thought that doesn’t preclude an upgrade, btw – but I wouldn’t saddle Cascante for this loss either. It was a team thing (go team!).

- The Church of Brian Fernandez has good and reasonable roots, I love his commitment, he’s got a very good shot, and so on. Now for the heresy: his combination play is sloppy. Some of that comes from trying (semi-audacious) shit, but he’s a little too loose up there at times. And I’d hesitate very, very much before asking him to dial it back – because mojo – but it’s there.

- The same applies to Jorge Moreira. I expect I’ll have an “oh, what a lovable scamp” relationship to both players for as long as they pull on a Portland jersey before each game.