Portland Timbers 1-2 Seattle Sounders: Fuller Than Your Average Evening

That flag only hurts fascists and snowflakes.

Last night was a weird one, no question. The Iron Front protest happened, of course, and few things surprised me more than seeing not just an Iron Front flag waving, but a big, gigantic motherfucker of an Iron Front flag, and a with a backing chorale of little DIY-homemade versions swaying around it. And, for those who don’t watch the local nightly news, KGW gave so much of its opening segment to the protest, that they gave just a barebones reading of the final result – a frustrating 1-2 home loss for the Portland Timbers to the hideously-attired Seattle Sounders – at the end.

I saw boasts of victory scattered here and there on twitter last night, but honestly have no idea how this (profoundly silly) ban plays out. God knows what would have happened had Providence Park security waded into the Timbers Army to seize that flag, so thank God they didn’t, but there will be a next time and less attention, so there’s that…and, no, I don’t get it. It’s not like the Iron Front flag slips off the stick, floats into the night to stalk your children and Trump-loving grandparents, but willful misunderstanding of what antifa is and how it functions is all the rage in your more self-interested political circles (who brought the bag of dicks to the potluck, dammit?).

Reports of a meltdown at the Timbers Army by Timbers owner Merritt Paulson for “costing us the game” spiced the post-game lather as well, and it’s worth contrasting a rich man whining about a group of people interfering with his vanity project against the same people displaying their anxiety about white supremacist douches popping up all over the country like poison mushrooms (and with President of the country winking encouragement its way). Call me crazy, but one of those feels bigger than the other. That feels like this political moment in microcosm, as well my expectation that our corporate masters would roll over for fascism-lite so long as the trains ran on time and people showed up for the games and smiled and sang and forgot all the trouble visited on other people, etc. Moving on....

Obviously, a game happened as well. It didn’t end well, and even that was a rich experience of more lows than highs. After going down two goals – more on that later - the Timbers pulled one back with a mildly cheap deflected goal by Diego Valeri; from that point forward, a barely competent siege ensued. A couple things stood out, both after Valeri’s goal and before it. When Portland tried to force the ball up the middle, Seattle littered the path with athletic bodies; as several teams before them, the Sounders seemed fine with letting the Timbers play wide and cross – something that did with a maddening mix of frequency and incompetence (fwiw, forty-five (45?!) crosses is high). To direct your attention to a more relevant part of the boxscore, the Sounders swept the defensive stats - tackles and duels, in particular - and that matches what I watched out there.

One last thing I noticed – and this is something I can literally only see from my occasional vantage at the middle of Section 210 – Portland made very few attempts at playing into the channels. It was all either up the gut (and getting stuffed) or playing the ball wide as possible and crossing. I could be forgetting a few – God knows I had distractions (e.g., a guy who from Montreal talking over my shoulder who understood all the rules of the game, but always, always got the numbers wrong) – but I can’t recall a single run between Portland’s widest players and the scrum in the middle, and who knows what might have been had the attempt been made. Maybe nothing, but there’s the whole “road not taken” and the regrets that follow (I haven’t forgotten, Marjorie…)

Because the Sounders defended the way they wanted (and well), they only needed the other half of the formula to come together – e.g., a one-trick-pony to score a goal or two. Because I didn’t know he was suspended (as memorialized on my twitter feed), I worried about Jordan Morris running into the space behind Jorge Moreira going into the game when I should have been worried about Morris running at Zarek Valentin. Valentin’s name is all over the in-/post-game commentary, and for good reason, but Morris is Morris –i.e., a blunt instrument in search of the perfect foil. Valentin let the fatal ball through both times – once with feeble (or, more fairly, off-balance) resistance, and the same move again without so much as a toe-poke. The rest of Portland’s defense failed to provide cover – especially on the first goal (see all those Sounders at the back post) – and the two-goal cushion Seattle built by the 47 minute carried them to the final whistle and three very valuable points for them, and one big heartbreak for Portland fans.

For all the flaws in their approach, the Timbers created enough chances – and, to the fans’ credit, belief that Portland could salvage a result carried through till after the 90th minute (Sebastian Blanco’s late, late miss came out of nowhere). Twice at different points in the second half, the fans in Section 210 erupted into cheers for “goals” that never happened – one, from Blanco(?) into the side-netting (which I saw miss), the other an offside shot from Brian Fernandez (which I believed went in with enough conviction to bruise my arm with a vigorous “up yours” salute; and, for reasons I can’t fathom, this play failed to rate as a clip in The Official Highlights, but you can review if you start around 2:45 of the full version of The Official Highlights). Portland’s two best shots after Valeri’s goal came within a minute of one another – a shot from (reasonable) range by Valeri, followed by a free header with which Cristhian Paredes absolutely “should have done better.”

All in all, nothing felt great or positive last night, never mind enduring. Speaking for myself, I have no idea how either the political kerfuffle or the rest of Portland’s season pans out from here. To close out with just the game, Portland’s players did the things they usually do – e.g., Blanco cutting inside the right fullback and firing diagonally toward goal, or Jeremy Ebobisse helping to get the ball forward and making good runs – but those felt expected and managed in Blanco’s case (who I’d like to see take a little time off to get the appetite back online), while Ebo finishes and/or decisions never matched the quality of his combination play and movement. Fernandez, meanwhile, has looked average enough lately to get people speculating that he’d give the team more by playing wide and moving Ebobisse to the center. While I can’t provide a good reason against that shift, I also wouldn’t presume it’ll deliver results. What I would argue is that Portland has moved to a phase in the season where “trying shit” feels like a good call.

Sure, Moreira would have changed the dynamic on the right (and probably going both ways) and a certain talismanic light shines on Larrys Mabiala when he’s leading the defense, but the games will come and the Timbers will start the players who are available and I expect the political distraction that MLS needlessly created will continue until it resolves one way or the other. With two home losses in a row, and given that this was close enough to the Timbers’ starting eleven, my faith in what Portland will get over its seven remaining home games took a hit. I count the next three games as borderline massive – the first against Real Salt Lake, in particular - and if the Timbers can’t get all three points versus Sporting Kansas City and DC United, I’ll pull the fork out of the drawer and get ready to stick it where events indicate it should go.

All for this one. Sigh.