Portland Timbers 0-2 New York Red Bulls: Short (Pfft!), Sharp and Disappointed

Happy Halloween, motherfuckers!! (aka, how crosses work).

I want to start with one thought, something I feel escapes fans from time to time.

If your accountant fucks up your taxes, you complain, yes? If the kitchen sent you something you didn’t order and it’s cold, you send that wrecked fucking garbage back to the kitchen and demand an apology, right?

When a ref calls a bad game, you lose your whole goddamn mind and tell him you wish he would die in a fiery crash tomorrow with his whole worthless, myopic family, don’t you?

Professional athletes are not sacred spirit creatures. They are people who are hired to do a job. When they fail at the job, there is nothing wrong with pointing it out.

When you insult them personally, or, for example, wish them bodily harm (as in the refereeing example above; i.e., neither say nor think such things), yes, you have crossed the line and, as MLS says, don’t cross the line.

The point is, there’s nothing wrong with saying this player or that hasn’t done well for some time or, to borrow a point from someone else (@isaacfharris), that a coach isn’t making the proper adjustments. Now, to tonight’s game. Bullet-point style.

The New York Red Bulls beat the Portland Timbers a belated 2-0 tonight by doing to them what they used to do to other teams. Every time a Portland player got on the ball, a guy in Red Bulls white challenged him. That intensity has been lacking from both teams’ games for a while, and that only makes it more of a damn shame that New York recovered before Portland did.

That was not a low-block. Based on history and what I saw in the stadium, the Red Bulls do not, and did not play a low-block. The condense space horizontally, and especially vertically, and in the middle of the field. This denies teams space in which to play, and condensing will always fuck up Portland’s game-plan regardless of where it happens. To put that another way, I don’t think Diego Chara had a tougher game this season.

The Timbers went down in the third (3rd!) (motherfucking!) minute, and that forced them to play catch-up again, only they didn’t. Though they did have their chances. My picks of the bunch included:

1) The straining (for Diego Valeri) break-away that Chara looped against the bar. I don’t mind that, seeing as both Chara and Valeri did their bit tonight, but that also felt like the game somehow.

2) Tomas Conechny’s sculpted/deflected near-miss.

3) Dueling chances for Jeremy Ebobisse, first a header that he nodded directly into Luis Robles’ thankful arms (also, goodbye gravity on that jump!), then a pair of one-on-ones with the ‘keeper on either side, but I’m only bothered by the second, because that’s one of those moments where you hold your Glock sideways and just do it, bro (also, great service by Sebastian Blanco on that, welcome back, and please fix everything).

That said, how many clean looks did Brian Fernandez get tonight? At least Ebo is getting there.

There were some early, frankly terrifying scrums in Portland’s area – like this one – that could have put the game beyond reach, even before Chara’s miss. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Chara scoring that goal would have changed the Red Bulls’ approach to the game. A second goal, sure, but not an equalizer.

Tonight’s secret question: did you feel like Portland would ever score two goals tonight? Answer that quietly, and in your own head. Or down below. I don’t give a shit.

I want to talk about Claude Dielna for a second – decent header, by the way – because good and bad clings to his person like an eternal conundrum. He challenges everything that comes close to him and aggressively, the good side, but he also flails away clearances like some yahoo in a batting cage who doesn’t understand that home-runs don’t count in there. The boxscore tells me that posted a passing accuracy of 75% tonight. I swear to God, Dielna accounted for 15% of the wayward shit.

Overall, this was a goddamn mess of a game, two teams that feel fine, just fine brawling over every ball; the passing accuracy stats bear me out on that. I don’t think anyone could convince me that New York didn’t do a better job of it. And, to build off an earlier point, they played their game tonight – e.g., force a turnover (eh), connect 3-4 passes, and score as many goals as you can therefrom. That’s how they got their first goal and, as things panned out, ended the game.

There’s really nothing to say at this point beyond: 1) The Timbers have to start winning games, anywhere, because there’s nothing else to talk about; and 2) they have to start playing faster, and globally.

It mostly manifests as failing to take the first shot or any given wide player taking 2-3 touches before sending in the cross…or, rather, pinging the cross of a defender’s ass in various stinging degrees. Crosses work best when they catch a defense off-guard, and that leads to Part 2.

When I watched the condensed game, I caught a moment around the 40th minute that I’d implore any Timbers fan to watch, because I think it’ll help you understand Portland’s struggle with crosses. For those who can’t watch, here’s the scene:

Jorge Villafana gets the ball wide and (Portland’s) left near the top of the Red Bulls attacking third. In the same moment he receives the ball, no fewer than three Timbers attackers make a run to the same space and then move away like they do in romance movies when the lovers' hands accidentally(?!) brush, as opposed to professional athlete bodies. (I don’t know either, but) my point is, I’m doubling down on last week’s talking point – i.e., Portland knows how to time neither cross nor runs, and that’s upping the degree of difficulty on their crosses to irrelevance, while making them easy to shut down (e.g., shrink the vertical space, wherever you have to).

BIG PICTURE: I don’t know anymore. Their better qualities notwithstanding, both DC (defense) and the Red Bulls (gegenpress chaos) limped into Providence Park, the wrong side of .500 in recent games for both of them, and questions buzzing around them like flies on poop/a corpse. For Portland, those are the must-win games, the ones a team wins just to remind themselves that they're good. Worthwhile teams win those games. With or without the hyphen, and now I’m not even sure.

These posts are never short, are they? Beyond noting there’s another game Sunday, and against a team that’s better on paper, that’s all I’ve got to say.