Portland Timbers 0-1 Portland Timbers (Fine, DC United)

These don't have a snooze button. There is no snooze button.

Well, are we all prepared to pretend Thanksgiving dinner came off all right this week?

[Ed. - Fwiw, the walkout by the Emerald City Supporters was the right response in my book; funny things could happen when MLS decides to make the ambience more appealing to right-wing supporters. I’d love to stop talking about this shit too, but here’s the thing: it never came up until the league started enforcing the ban.]

A fairly experimental Portland Timbers line-up came up against a fiercely organized DC United defensive set-up – especially in the second half – and the Timbers mostly peppered it with blows both glancing and wayward (looking at you, Jorge Moreira). Forced to choose between shooting into a thicket and trying to get around it, the Timbers tried the latter to fairly useless effect. On the plus side, Portland scored all the goals today – even the one the entire goddamn refereeing apparatus failed to spot (keep bringing the quality product, MLS) – they just scored them for DC, and so the game ended 0-1 against the Timbers, who no longer look like the 2nd-in-the-West “lock” more than a few of us dreamed of earlier this season…y’know, before some great thinkers decided to complicate the enthusiasm.

DC deserves credit for playing in the first half, because they didn’t do that so much of it in the second half. They didn’t have to either – see Paul Arriola’s near-miss on Andres Flores’ gift – because they looked ready and capable of keeping Portland out of the goal for another 250 minutes.

Portland held the upper hand throughout, but Bill Tuiloma’s own-goal at the 25th minute rightly tripped the “oh, shit alarm.” With the way they defend (well), a DC lead always had the potential to steal a result, and DC had found ways to unsettle Portland’s defense before the goal – e.g., Paul Arriola carving a seam up the gut. The goal followed from Ulises Segura getting around some scrambling defenders and hitting the cross that Tuiloma chipped in. The halftime whistle felt like hitting the snooze button, but the sense the Timbers would ever wake up slipped away bit by bit, starting with whistle to start the second half sounded. First came an awkward back-pass, then came Eryk Williamson’s yellow card; these were not the thoughts and motions of a locked-in team. The field generally tilted in Portland’s favor from there, but, hard as I hoped for it, I stopped expecting them to win around the 70th minute, and figured they’d fall short of a draw when Tomas Conechny’s fresh Argentine energy fizzled against the same low-block force-field that Portland could only cross into and over with toddler-like power and precision. That was around the 80th minute, but probably a little after.

With the way people have flagged just how thoroughly fucking terrible Portland is at crosses online, it almost feels like I don’t need to acknowledge it in this post. (This isn’t unlike being the third person to say, “dude, your fly is open” to a dude whose fly is open.) It does bear noting, however, because the sheer number of times Portland organized the attack around setting up crosses – and hold that thought, setting up – should mean they have some idea of how to make them effective. The blunt problem is, they don’t. These didn't make the highlights, because they're the opposite of highlights.

And this is where it’s necessary to take a step back, because I don’t think crosses are ever Portland’s first thought in the attack. First things first, yes, the Timbers would play against anything but a bunkered defense if offered a choice. They prefer a runs-‘n’-gaps arrangement, and the more gaps the merrier. And, when they’re being really positive against a bunkered defense, you still see Portland try to pull this off – e.g., great pieces of inter-play between Marvin Loria and Jeremy Ebobisse somewhere in the middle of the second half, then Diego Valeri, Conechny and Chara (with some serious help from DC’s defense – but the former ended in DC’s Joseph Mora picking the ball off Loria’s feet and the latter with a soft-pass by Chara to a run Valeri didn’t make. That’s what hurts most about this loss to me: the Timbers failed to make most of the few real chances they had. And so they crossed a lot. 39 times, in all. And passing maps and/or ridicule ensued.

A lot of the crosses got set up the exact same way. A Timbers attacker would receive the ball just outside the corners of DC’s 18 and, after trying to turn inside dried all the way up, said attacker would pass the ball to Jorge Villafana overlapping on one side, and Moreira overlapping on the other. It’s here where the failure comes in: both fullbacks would either putz around with the ball long enough to get closed down on the cross, or the team would combine to create a totally ineffectual overload that ended the same way – e.g., with a cross that either 1) got pinged off a DC defender’s ass/thigh area, or 2) rarely came close enough to a player in Timbers green to matter.

The dirty secret about the Timbers, and it’s something the rest of the league has figured out (even if they don’t know it), is that they’ve failed to fully work out Plan B – i.e., that is, the cross. The runs aren’t there, the timing is, like, fucking miles outside the stadium. Some days, I get the feeling they don’t even practice them, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong (or is it?). On the evidence of the 2019 season, it’s entirely possible that the Timbers need to figure out how to make the cross dangerous – even if that just means making it dangerous enough to open space to break-down bunkered defenses. To float a theory, that will take some work on timing and the runs players make; it’ll probably take shifting players to pre-ordained positions the second a Timbers attacker…well, cries uncle and plays to an overlapping fullback. Bottom line: the players should know the spaces they’ll attack in that situation, and the fullback (or midfielder) who receives the ball for the cross should know where to expect those runs to happen, all that in service of playing the ball quickly, and to predictable places.

Easier said than done, I appreciate that, but, when your offense faces a defense that “compels” you to try a tactic 39 times in one game, that becomes your Plan B: thinking of any way to make Plan B work better feels like a pretty good idea.

I think that explains why Portland lost today fairly well – e.g., they allowed a goal against a sound defensive team, then proceeded to play to the strength of that sound defensive team – and that just leaves the big picture. The post-season would be nice, obviously, and a deep run into would be better, but the idea of the Timbers riding into the 2019 MLS playoffs on the back of a big home-game run keeps taking hits. They currently sit in 7th – e.g., dead last for the playoffs, and with FC Dallas even on points with them, Sporting Kansas City fidgeting ever-closer below them, and a bunch of teams above them – e.g., LA Galaxy, Minnesota, and Seattle picking up wins all today, too. In other words, this was a bad game to drop, not just for momentum in the playoffs, but for even making the playoffs.

That’s all I have to say about the game. I’ll close out with some stray notes on players – especially the new kids. Of which there were so many…

- Williamson offered the perfect metaphor for the team as a whole: started brightly, then became baffled by tactics. He’s 22, and he’s got good instincts and softer feet, but he’s also got a lot to learn.

- Loria might be my favorite young player on the roster, but he’s got to get faster, and/or more decisive. If he can’t be both faster and more decisive, that could be his ceiling.

Hold on, that’s just two guys. While I didn’t hate either of them, neither of them looked ready to change a game. And, with Valeri, Chara, and Blanco aging ever closer to retirement, that’s what Portland needs in the next year or two.

- I am not a Conechny stan. In fact, I’ve called for more half-reasoned ends to the whole Conechny experiment that I feel truly blessed to say this: I think he might have something. He gets better every time I see him.

Now, to venture onto the dark side…

Snatching at a couple half-chances aside, Jeremy Ebobisse wasn’t useful tonight and neither was Andy Polo. It matters more with Ebo, a semi-regular starter, than it does with Polo, but Portland’s depth doesn’t feel as deep as it did in July. Again. I’ve forgiven Tuiloma already (he made more mistakes too, but he also had the guts to make a second tricky clearance, and he should have better with his headed shot/assist in the second half when he came forward to pad Portland’s attacking numbers), but Claude Dielna made too many safety-last lunges for me to trust him. I know the Timbers have no choice but to play him, but consequences really do follow therefrom, none of them good, even when they’re not fatal.

That was a rough game in the end. People raised questions about this squad a couple months back – including me – and those questions haven’t really gone away. To run to the end of the farthest limb, tonight made Portland missing the playoffs a real possibility.

I’ve got one final note: I’d call Diego Valeri the most influential (attacking) player on the field today. (Given how the game panned out, I’d call Steve Birnbaum and Frederic Brillant more influential.) He had his solo moments, but he also gave Portland its best moments. It wasn’t enough tonight. And that follows from the thought above. Just…sit with that.