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| In the top 20 for "end of an era" and it's exactly as shapeless as I want it to be. |
“I’m not expecting glory, but I’m also not bracing for disgrace. The goal Portland scored tonight shouted loudly back to the team that punched five, ten feet over its weight through the 2018 post-season. This team at its best really is something – and it has been for years. The concern is that it’s been too many of them.”
- Notes from a 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy in LA, and 4h game of the season.
“As I see it, Portland Timbers 2019 never turned into a team to get excited about; it’s a team to support in the hopes of giving guys like Diego Chara, Diego Valeri, and, sure, Sebastian Blanco, and maybe even Jorge Villafana another happy memory before they check out.”
- Notes from the 2-2 road draw at Sporting Kansas City in the 2nd to last game of 2019.
A lot of games came, went and exhilarated or disappointed in the space between those two quotes, and the specifics about each of those games probably undercut whatever point I’m about to make, but it makes sense to me, so I’m rolling with it. The first quote above comes out of a match review of the third game in a five-game losing streak, one that happened at the very start of the season. The second quote comes out of notes on a third draw in three games of the not-doing-nearly-enough that typified the end of the Portland Timbers’ 2019 regular season. The first quote reflected a sort of conventional wisdom that the Timbers, a 2018 MLS Cup team with most of the same starters returning, would find their feet in the middle of a, frankly, awful fucking start to the 2019 season, and so everyone waited and, crucially, believed. The second quote came from the second-to-last game of the 2019 season, which gets at how long it took for people (including me) to accept that the Portland Timbers 2019 would not end in glory. Sebastian Blanco turned in one of his better performances of the latter half of 2019 in that game – all the regular performers did - but the Timbers as a whole couldn’t bring it home. They fell short at a time when they should have been doing the exact opposite.
If you put your money on the Portland Timbers to win MLS Cup (or even reach the semifinals) at any point after mid-September of this season, you’re the author of your own emotional damage; the writing was on the wall by then, and damned lurid. By which I mean, it was so obvious at that point that the only open question was when the Timbers would check out, not if.
- Notes from a 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy in LA, and 4h game of the season.
“As I see it, Portland Timbers 2019 never turned into a team to get excited about; it’s a team to support in the hopes of giving guys like Diego Chara, Diego Valeri, and, sure, Sebastian Blanco, and maybe even Jorge Villafana another happy memory before they check out.”
- Notes from the 2-2 road draw at Sporting Kansas City in the 2nd to last game of 2019.
A lot of games came, went and exhilarated or disappointed in the space between those two quotes, and the specifics about each of those games probably undercut whatever point I’m about to make, but it makes sense to me, so I’m rolling with it. The first quote above comes out of a match review of the third game in a five-game losing streak, one that happened at the very start of the season. The second quote comes out of notes on a third draw in three games of the not-doing-nearly-enough that typified the end of the Portland Timbers’ 2019 regular season. The first quote reflected a sort of conventional wisdom that the Timbers, a 2018 MLS Cup team with most of the same starters returning, would find their feet in the middle of a, frankly, awful fucking start to the 2019 season, and so everyone waited and, crucially, believed. The second quote came from the second-to-last game of the 2019 season, which gets at how long it took for people (including me) to accept that the Portland Timbers 2019 would not end in glory. Sebastian Blanco turned in one of his better performances of the latter half of 2019 in that game – all the regular performers did - but the Timbers as a whole couldn’t bring it home. They fell short at a time when they should have been doing the exact opposite.
If you put your money on the Portland Timbers to win MLS Cup (or even reach the semifinals) at any point after mid-September of this season, you’re the author of your own emotional damage; the writing was on the wall by then, and damned lurid. By which I mean, it was so obvious at that point that the only open question was when the Timbers would check out, not if.
So, what went wrong? My answer to that question – nothing too specific, but also everything – will unnerve you to the precise extent of where you fall on the “nothing/everything” spectrum. But first, let’s review a handful(-plus) of what I’d like to call the exemplary games from the 2019 regular season. In chronological order:
San Jose 3-0 Portland Timbers, April 6, 2019 (Game 5)
“I couldn’t give one wet shit where you play the worst team in the league; that’s a team a good team beats without regard to venue, and that’s everything anyone needs to say about Portland right now. After tonight’s loss, the answer to the question, ‘what is wrong with this team” has officially expanded to ‘everything.’”
Portland played five at the back for the twogames around this early, confidence-cratering(?) blow-out. That’s how bad the defending got at the beginning of 2019 – i.e., the Diego Chara/David Guzman/makes-sense-on-paper defensive scheme proved to be a mess in the real world. Portland positively/collectively bled goals at the start of the 2019 season, so the panic was real, and the need to adjust no less real. The five-game losing streak that Portland wallowed through to start the season was the team’s longest streak of any kind they had all season, so there’s something to sit with. This also set the stage for all the questions I had about whether or not Valeri is/was past it.
At the same time, it is (and was) worth noting the positives in the games Portland played on either side of that ass-scabbing result. The quote that tops this post came from one of them, and my notes for the next game – a 2-1 win over FC Dallas – talked up the same positives. The thing is, that talk made sense, precisely because the Timbers did much the same thing in 2018 – i.e., they started horribly, but with the pieces looking exquisitely poised to fall into place. Moving on...
Philadelphia Union 0-3 Portland Timbers, May 25, 2019 (Game 12)
“Tonight’s win over Philly confirms the eye test of the past 5-6 games: Portland, 1) still has viable (healthy) talent, and 2) has its shit figured out. At this point, the Timbers sure as hell look like they’ve got another genuinely competitive season in them, and can I get a huzzah?!”
Philadelphia besieged the Timbers goal throughout the latter half of the game, and in a way that proved predictive for both teams in the end – that is, Portland lost control of a game, and the Union had to play its way back into one. The game still showed the Timbers at their lethal best, and against Eastern Conference royalty (this year and in that moment, anyway). Better still, Portland had gone 4-1-1 in the six games leading up to this one, so, of course we had time to party like we’d relive 2018 all over again. Moreover, that hot-streak would continue into early July. This win over Philly was the beating heart of Portland’s best run of the 2019 season. I was crowing about the team’s depth at this point…true story.
New York City FC 0-1 Portland Timbers, July 7, 2019 (Game 17)
“Finally, Steve Clark was a beast, Mabiala was a beast, Blanco was a beast. All the same, this whole thing wouldn’t have come off unless every other single player on the field showed up and played well. They did.”
This was the, “yes, they can win without Chara” moment, and with all the stars sparkling in the firmament. Also, it was the first away win after The Endless Road Trip (and after dropping the first home game), and against a visibly solid-to-good team (and later, if misplaced, playoff favorite), and, as such, it really looked like a clear signal of a looming Providence-Park-based steamroller through the eventual 10-game home game stretch that would end the season. The only question left seemed to be how high the Timbers would finish. Yeah…
Portland Timbers 1-1 Orlando City SC (Game 19)
“By that I mean, will the Timbers find the most success against teams that actually play, whether by general norms of playing at home or tactical predilection? Going the other way, will the teams locked in a season-long Battle Royale for scraps prove to be the teams that give Portland the most trouble?”
It took just two games for the questions about that home-stretch to grow too tall to ignore. Not only was Orlando comparative shit, they didn’t have Nani, Ruan, or Dom Dwyer for this game. And yet Portland drew it, and in the second home game against the kinds of opponent that any remotely competitive team would win. The games that should have been confidence builders had the opposite effect…and I self-censored more than I should have after this draw, because I’d actually begun to quietly panic around this time (so quietly...). This result became such a dogged point of reference, a frame for all kinds of results, including even wins later in the season that failed to convince.
Portland Timbers 0-2 Atlanta United FC (Game 25)
“More to the tasks ahead, Atlanta is the kind of team [Portland will] 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.”
Portland showed plenty of fight during this stage – more than enough, as shown by the string of posts in which I fretted about red and yellow cards stacking up (something that started in Week 13, actually) – but I’d also started thinking about the playoffs, and Portland’s place in it. Worse, This was the beginning of “crossing Hell” – i.e., that long, languorous time when the Timbers would cross the ball 35+ times, only without having a clear plan to make that attacking process come good. Fun fact, my next match report – on a 1-2 home loss to the Seattle Sounders - included this:
“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.”
That’s a fun talking point, as it happens: the Timbers did win the first two games of those games, only to lose the third on an own-goal by Bill Tuiloma and the same paralyzing lack of imagination that contained Portland’s scoring all on its own. Said incapacity ultimately doomed them when they just fucking couldn't score over a 20-25-minute flurry from the start to the middle of the second half against Real Salt Lake in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. Despite some crazy fucking misses (including the best one, pointedly ignored), RSL got through in the end…if only to give a lesser account of themselves than I’m comfortably sure Portland would have provided in the Western Conference Semifinals, but, if you don’t beat the team you should have…well, should you have beat them? We have our answer in the real world, but sure….
Fill in whatever blanks you want to, but that’s my summary of the Portland Timbers 2019 season as a whole. Sure, they should have won either everything or something, but they wound up winning nothing, and does that surprise you and isn’t that the whole fucking story? The brutal bottom line is that the Portland Timbers never really got started this season – their longest winning streak lasted just three games, and that happened at Columbus Crew SC (issues), Toronto FC (more issues), and RSL (inferiority complex, at least until it decisively wasn’t) – but all those came in late April, early May, and, with those, their best run of the season came too early and didn’t last long enough. They’d pair up wins after that, but with an increasingly meaningless rate of return – e.g., FC Dallas at home (in a thriller) and New York City FC away (less interesting), then at Seattle in a grind, followed by a rout at home over the Galaxy, which was quickly followed up by home wins over the Vancouver Whitecaps and the road-shitty Chicago Fire, both at home.
The Timbers made the playoffs in the end, with their asses bumping the ground all the way in and scooting out of the way just as fast. The extent to which it felt like shit notwithstanding, Portland dying in the first round made for a proper end to 2019. Given how much achieving in the MLS Playoffs turns on “getting hot” at the right time, and given how much the Timbers did the opposite (can I get a 3-4-3 record over their last three games, and with the last of those three Ws feeling like a last trip to Europe before checking into assisted living), that feels like justice. I wrote my favorite sentence of the 2019 season in my wrap-up to the penultimate game of the season, with this:
“I don’t see anything so stirring happening, either; Portland has been your biological dad taking you to the restaurant you loved four years ago for a couple months now.”
There was a certain sadness to the season in the end, a feeling that the protests over the Iron Front symbol, and political speech generally, only sharpened. The question for this post, is what those might have meant to the grand scheme of things. I wound up skipping a week to acknowledge/feebly support the protests (could have used the morale boost too, given a win and Valeri playing one of his better helpers of the season), but the bitterness toward the league and the pointlessness of the policy, which I wrote about instead of the game, lingers still. As to whether it distracted the players, I assume it did. I also maintain that the supporters’ groups did the right thing in the end – and I mean both the protests and the negotiated settlement with the league. Trying to get the league to see the light before burning it all down was the right decision in the moment…and, as much as I’ve built my life around a corporate product (honestly, if I told you how much time I spend on this shit, you would weep), I plan on supporting the next round of direct action if it comes to it. Obviously, the best case is that it will not come to it. Dammit.
I’m going to give the rest of this post over to projecting what happened last season to the upcoming and, as I see it, disturbingly unknown 2020 season. I closed my write-up on the Timbers’ first-round loss to RSL with a handful of questions I intended to answer at the end of this review, but I’m going to add a question/talking point or two as I go. With that, in no particular order…
1) This Season’s Revelations
To start with the players who feel like nothing but upside, the short-list of players I talked up all season long and who I expect/hope to see next season, those include: Larrys Mabiala, Bill Tuiloma, Jeremy Ebobisse (yes, Ebobisse), Steve Clark, and, finally, my candidate for most-improved Timber, Cristhian Paredes. To get really controversial, I’d add Andres Flores to that list – and not because he’s brilliant, but because he’s predictable enough to inspire me to turn my Week 7 write-up into an ode. Both Mabiala and Clark are getting up there – moreover, I’d argue Clark’s confidence fluctuates with the team’s confidence – but they’re probably good for 2-3 years as part of a foundation, while the other guys have whole goddamn careers ahead of them, and they’re all in important spots on the field. Now…let’s turn to more complicated questions.
2) The Stars in Portland’s Constellation – and Their Ages
I saw the Timbers Big Three Players – Chara, Blanco and Valeri – through different lenses this season, and I doubt I was alone in that. They’re all vital to what Portland does and, even allowing for Blanco having two years in hand and for Chara not showing it, they’re all getting up there in years. More to the point, both Blanco and Valeri regressed a bit on the (soccer-)widget production side – not a ton, and other players picked up slack (also, could that be the real story?) - and, painful as it is to admit it, I don’t expect Valeri to rebound at this late stage in his career.
I’ll address the issue of managing minutes when kicking around Giovanni Savarese’s future, but, with Valeri and Blanco, that regression in the numbers matched what I saw on the field. Both players had fantastic moments – and Valeri scored a couplebeauties (also, this is when he joined the 70/70 club) – but Portland’s results make a decent case that the magic happened less often than it used to. Despite playing (by my count) 2,970 minutes, Chara looked like he had another 300 minutes in him; still, he won’t always be there, and I’d be shocked if his minutes don’t need managing by 2021, if not before.
The darker clouds hover over Blanco and Valeri. To be clear, the Timbers absolutely relied on them all season long - Blanco logged 2,879 minutes between league and Cup, while Valeri ran for 2,754 – which makes them something like the Jenga pieces that hold the entire edifice upright. Blanco should be good for the same kind of numbers next season or better, and that’s massive all on its own; the same may or may not go for Chara, but let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. As for Valeri…
3) I…Just Can’t.
No, I can’t sniff at an 8 goal, 16 assist season, no matter how Valeri got them (I saw a tweet that noted he got a healthy proportion of those assists off set-pieces, and I’ll take that without investigation). At the same time, I can’t see renewing a DP spot for a player who, 1) will turn 34 sometime next season, and 2) who looked visibly slower in 2019 than he did in 2018, not in a league that’s getting more competitive, not less. All the same, I’d be beyond loathe to see him go, I think he could be a nightmare/game-changing sub, so…what to do?
Rather than try to offer Valeri money as a player, I’d try to tempt him with a long-term gig. It can be scouting, an “ambassador-of-the-game” kind of role, or groom the man as a coach. Pay him good money now, just not DP-money, while making a back-end, long-term appeal to future financial security, and tied directly to fate and good fortune of the Portland Timbers organization. Bottom line, I’d fucking hate to see the man go, and I do want a statue of Valeri and Chara somewhere in Providence Park, but if a team doesn’t exist to set itself up to win trophies, I’m not sure why it exists. Moving on to the other side of that question…
4) Fat, Youth and Frustration
I count my post on the mid-season road loss to Montreal (Game 15) a fine explication of all the bad choices Portland has made when it comes to identifying talent. Dairon Asprilla and Lucas Melano headlined that post, and for the good and simple reason that they provide cautionary tales that apply to players like Tomas Conechny, Marvin Loria, and Eryk Williamson. This opinion is neither here nor there, mostly because they all need more time, but I see potential for Conechny and Loria, while I have yet to really feel any for Williamson. I’m fine with people sticking up for Williamson – especially based on what he does with T2 – but watching FC Cincinnati play USL opposition for a full (happy) year before they joined MLS has recalibrated my eye in terms of seeing how a player who looks bitchin' in the USL can vanish entirely in MLS (counter-point: FC Cincy’s Emmanuel Ledesma). My Week 29 write-up (the loss to DC) went as far as declaring Williamson a one-man metaphor for getting swallowed up by a game, and that's a fair statement on where I am with him. Loria and Conechny have both shown more sustained flashes – Loria more than Conechny for me – but I started this section with Asprilla and Melano for a reason: they both signed for Portland at age 22 and, as such, it’s worth holding those players’ ultimate fates against what happens with Loria (22), Conechny (21) and Williamson (22) going forward.
Look, I love the Mr. October bit as much as the next Timbers fan, but he’s still a sunk cost in the grand scheme; Melano, meanwhile, proved to be a waste (but, still, best of luck to him!). That said, I’m fine giving all three of those players more time – up to and including playing time (even if it means eating some losses) – something that I can’t say about a handful of players I straight-up don’t want to see in Timbers green anymore. Andy Polo tops the list, and mostly because he’s been given ample opportunity to show how he can improve the team. I also hope to see the team part ways with Claude Dielna; unless the Timbers assumed something long-term with him, I’m highly confident the Timbers could find an equally reliable defender by scouring the USL, or even the higher reaches of the NASL.
To get a lot more mercenary, I’d consider shopping Julio Cascante and Jorge Villafana, or trying to. Because I’m stubbornly ignorant of contract mechanics, this portion of the post could see me blasting people that I’ll have to watch next season whether I want to or not, so take that into consideration.
4a) Yes, this absolutely means that Portland will need defensive reinforcements next season. It’s possible I’m watching that more than anything else.
5) The (Was It?) $10 Million Dollar Elephant in the Room (Fuck It, Wasn’t My Money)
I’d like to think I didn’t get subsumed in “BriFer Mania” when Brian Fernandez arrived, but my Week 11 post got geeked up enough on his potential to undercut that memory/denial. All the same, enough worms had turned by Week 25 for me to write this:
“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.”
And then, in Week 27:
“…for the last couple games, the ball has been at Fernandez’s feet when a play died; either his touch is heavy, his timing out of sync, or he’s searching, searching, searching(!) for that opening on goal: bottom line, either teams have figured him out, or, more likely, Portland, as a team, is still trying to.”
As everyone knows, Fernandez checked into the league’s substance abuse program, and I wish him the best of luck and health, no questions asked. But…sorry, just messin’. For what it’s worth, my personal jury is still out on Fernandez. That said, if he was good enough to play wing in Liga MX, it’s hard to believe he’s not up for producing at the same in MLS. He needs to improve, no question, but every time I see anything about faltering negotiations with Valeri, I hear the name “Fernandez, Fernandez” whispering in the breeze.
6) Gio Out?
First, the idea of pushing out Savarese never occurred to me until I saw people baying for the same at the end of the 2019 season. Judging by my little corner of the Timbers twitter-verse, the biggest issue on Savarese are his substitution patterns – i.e., they’re always too late and sometimes stupid. This confuses me for a couple of reasons.
First, I may be misremembering, but the same issue used to make me rip my hair out during the Caleb Porter era (so that’s what happened to his hair…), and I also see this same thing in most coaches. They seem to love their starting line-ups with the cold, clueless resistance of someone who doesn’t want to admit he’s losing an argument. In other words, I don’t care that people don’t like Savarese, but I’m not convinced that he’s an outlier on this score. (That said, convince me if you wanna.)
The deeper complaint might be the failure to properly rotate the squad. Now, that’s an argument to which I am deeply sympathetic – besides advocating for that since 2015 (or thereabouts), I top-lined that argument with Valeri all season and with both Mabiala and Blanco at specific points in the season; And, yes, I agree Savarese could have rotated more, ahem – especially with Chara, because the solid subs/padawans really are there in the form of Paredes, Renzo Zambrano and even Flores. I truly hope to see Chara saved for the must-wins in 2020, and the same goes for Valeri, assuming he’s still around, as I hope he’ll be. (Blanco, meanwhile, should play and play and play, at least until he’s 33.)
At the same time, I…just can’t hang much of what failed to work this season on Savarese. My proof for that is that the Timbers played well over enough stretches of the season to convince me that they could play most games to win. That spoke to a system, and that speaks to coaching in my mind, and I’m fine with anyone disagreeing on that. In so many words, the concept seemed sound enough, while execution didn’t always come off. It could also be that I understand what makes Gio jump more than I have any other coach I’ve observed up close, and maybe that just means I’m a hack too.
Fuck it, that’s it. I could go on all night, and through the end of the calendar year, but no one wants that, least of all me. The Portland Timbers 2019 was a lot of things, up to and including the end of an era. On the plus side, it could be the beginning of a different era, even if it takes some doing and positively savage decisions to get there.
“By that I mean, will the Timbers find the most success against teams that actually play, whether by general norms of playing at home or tactical predilection? Going the other way, will the teams locked in a season-long Battle Royale for scraps prove to be the teams that give Portland the most trouble?”
It took just two games for the questions about that home-stretch to grow too tall to ignore. Not only was Orlando comparative shit, they didn’t have Nani, Ruan, or Dom Dwyer for this game. And yet Portland drew it, and in the second home game against the kinds of opponent that any remotely competitive team would win. The games that should have been confidence builders had the opposite effect…and I self-censored more than I should have after this draw, because I’d actually begun to quietly panic around this time (so quietly...). This result became such a dogged point of reference, a frame for all kinds of results, including even wins later in the season that failed to convince.
Portland Timbers 0-2 Atlanta United FC (Game 25)
“More to the tasks ahead, Atlanta is the kind of team [Portland will] 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.”
Portland showed plenty of fight during this stage – more than enough, as shown by the string of posts in which I fretted about red and yellow cards stacking up (something that started in Week 13, actually) – but I’d also started thinking about the playoffs, and Portland’s place in it. Worse, This was the beginning of “crossing Hell” – i.e., that long, languorous time when the Timbers would cross the ball 35+ times, only without having a clear plan to make that attacking process come good. Fun fact, my next match report – on a 1-2 home loss to the Seattle Sounders - included this:
“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.”
That’s a fun talking point, as it happens: the Timbers did win the first two games of those games, only to lose the third on an own-goal by Bill Tuiloma and the same paralyzing lack of imagination that contained Portland’s scoring all on its own. Said incapacity ultimately doomed them when they just fucking couldn't score over a 20-25-minute flurry from the start to the middle of the second half against Real Salt Lake in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. Despite some crazy fucking misses (including the best one, pointedly ignored), RSL got through in the end…if only to give a lesser account of themselves than I’m comfortably sure Portland would have provided in the Western Conference Semifinals, but, if you don’t beat the team you should have…well, should you have beat them? We have our answer in the real world, but sure….
Fill in whatever blanks you want to, but that’s my summary of the Portland Timbers 2019 season as a whole. Sure, they should have won either everything or something, but they wound up winning nothing, and does that surprise you and isn’t that the whole fucking story? The brutal bottom line is that the Portland Timbers never really got started this season – their longest winning streak lasted just three games, and that happened at Columbus Crew SC (issues), Toronto FC (more issues), and RSL (inferiority complex, at least until it decisively wasn’t) – but all those came in late April, early May, and, with those, their best run of the season came too early and didn’t last long enough. They’d pair up wins after that, but with an increasingly meaningless rate of return – e.g., FC Dallas at home (in a thriller) and New York City FC away (less interesting), then at Seattle in a grind, followed by a rout at home over the Galaxy, which was quickly followed up by home wins over the Vancouver Whitecaps and the road-shitty Chicago Fire, both at home.
The Timbers made the playoffs in the end, with their asses bumping the ground all the way in and scooting out of the way just as fast. The extent to which it felt like shit notwithstanding, Portland dying in the first round made for a proper end to 2019. Given how much achieving in the MLS Playoffs turns on “getting hot” at the right time, and given how much the Timbers did the opposite (can I get a 3-4-3 record over their last three games, and with the last of those three Ws feeling like a last trip to Europe before checking into assisted living), that feels like justice. I wrote my favorite sentence of the 2019 season in my wrap-up to the penultimate game of the season, with this:
“I don’t see anything so stirring happening, either; Portland has been your biological dad taking you to the restaurant you loved four years ago for a couple months now.”
There was a certain sadness to the season in the end, a feeling that the protests over the Iron Front symbol, and political speech generally, only sharpened. The question for this post, is what those might have meant to the grand scheme of things. I wound up skipping a week to acknowledge/feebly support the protests (could have used the morale boost too, given a win and Valeri playing one of his better helpers of the season), but the bitterness toward the league and the pointlessness of the policy, which I wrote about instead of the game, lingers still. As to whether it distracted the players, I assume it did. I also maintain that the supporters’ groups did the right thing in the end – and I mean both the protests and the negotiated settlement with the league. Trying to get the league to see the light before burning it all down was the right decision in the moment…and, as much as I’ve built my life around a corporate product (honestly, if I told you how much time I spend on this shit, you would weep), I plan on supporting the next round of direct action if it comes to it. Obviously, the best case is that it will not come to it. Dammit.
I’m going to give the rest of this post over to projecting what happened last season to the upcoming and, as I see it, disturbingly unknown 2020 season. I closed my write-up on the Timbers’ first-round loss to RSL with a handful of questions I intended to answer at the end of this review, but I’m going to add a question/talking point or two as I go. With that, in no particular order…
1) This Season’s Revelations
To start with the players who feel like nothing but upside, the short-list of players I talked up all season long and who I expect/hope to see next season, those include: Larrys Mabiala, Bill Tuiloma, Jeremy Ebobisse (yes, Ebobisse), Steve Clark, and, finally, my candidate for most-improved Timber, Cristhian Paredes. To get really controversial, I’d add Andres Flores to that list – and not because he’s brilliant, but because he’s predictable enough to inspire me to turn my Week 7 write-up into an ode. Both Mabiala and Clark are getting up there – moreover, I’d argue Clark’s confidence fluctuates with the team’s confidence – but they’re probably good for 2-3 years as part of a foundation, while the other guys have whole goddamn careers ahead of them, and they’re all in important spots on the field. Now…let’s turn to more complicated questions.
2) The Stars in Portland’s Constellation – and Their Ages
I saw the Timbers Big Three Players – Chara, Blanco and Valeri – through different lenses this season, and I doubt I was alone in that. They’re all vital to what Portland does and, even allowing for Blanco having two years in hand and for Chara not showing it, they’re all getting up there in years. More to the point, both Blanco and Valeri regressed a bit on the (soccer-)widget production side – not a ton, and other players picked up slack (also, could that be the real story?) - and, painful as it is to admit it, I don’t expect Valeri to rebound at this late stage in his career.
I’ll address the issue of managing minutes when kicking around Giovanni Savarese’s future, but, with Valeri and Blanco, that regression in the numbers matched what I saw on the field. Both players had fantastic moments – and Valeri scored a couplebeauties (also, this is when he joined the 70/70 club) – but Portland’s results make a decent case that the magic happened less often than it used to. Despite playing (by my count) 2,970 minutes, Chara looked like he had another 300 minutes in him; still, he won’t always be there, and I’d be shocked if his minutes don’t need managing by 2021, if not before.
The darker clouds hover over Blanco and Valeri. To be clear, the Timbers absolutely relied on them all season long - Blanco logged 2,879 minutes between league and Cup, while Valeri ran for 2,754 – which makes them something like the Jenga pieces that hold the entire edifice upright. Blanco should be good for the same kind of numbers next season or better, and that’s massive all on its own; the same may or may not go for Chara, but let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. As for Valeri…
3) I…Just Can’t.
No, I can’t sniff at an 8 goal, 16 assist season, no matter how Valeri got them (I saw a tweet that noted he got a healthy proportion of those assists off set-pieces, and I’ll take that without investigation). At the same time, I can’t see renewing a DP spot for a player who, 1) will turn 34 sometime next season, and 2) who looked visibly slower in 2019 than he did in 2018, not in a league that’s getting more competitive, not less. All the same, I’d be beyond loathe to see him go, I think he could be a nightmare/game-changing sub, so…what to do?
Rather than try to offer Valeri money as a player, I’d try to tempt him with a long-term gig. It can be scouting, an “ambassador-of-the-game” kind of role, or groom the man as a coach. Pay him good money now, just not DP-money, while making a back-end, long-term appeal to future financial security, and tied directly to fate and good fortune of the Portland Timbers organization. Bottom line, I’d fucking hate to see the man go, and I do want a statue of Valeri and Chara somewhere in Providence Park, but if a team doesn’t exist to set itself up to win trophies, I’m not sure why it exists. Moving on to the other side of that question…
4) Fat, Youth and Frustration
I count my post on the mid-season road loss to Montreal (Game 15) a fine explication of all the bad choices Portland has made when it comes to identifying talent. Dairon Asprilla and Lucas Melano headlined that post, and for the good and simple reason that they provide cautionary tales that apply to players like Tomas Conechny, Marvin Loria, and Eryk Williamson. This opinion is neither here nor there, mostly because they all need more time, but I see potential for Conechny and Loria, while I have yet to really feel any for Williamson. I’m fine with people sticking up for Williamson – especially based on what he does with T2 – but watching FC Cincinnati play USL opposition for a full (happy) year before they joined MLS has recalibrated my eye in terms of seeing how a player who looks bitchin' in the USL can vanish entirely in MLS (counter-point: FC Cincy’s Emmanuel Ledesma). My Week 29 write-up (the loss to DC) went as far as declaring Williamson a one-man metaphor for getting swallowed up by a game, and that's a fair statement on where I am with him. Loria and Conechny have both shown more sustained flashes – Loria more than Conechny for me – but I started this section with Asprilla and Melano for a reason: they both signed for Portland at age 22 and, as such, it’s worth holding those players’ ultimate fates against what happens with Loria (22), Conechny (21) and Williamson (22) going forward.
Look, I love the Mr. October bit as much as the next Timbers fan, but he’s still a sunk cost in the grand scheme; Melano, meanwhile, proved to be a waste (but, still, best of luck to him!). That said, I’m fine giving all three of those players more time – up to and including playing time (even if it means eating some losses) – something that I can’t say about a handful of players I straight-up don’t want to see in Timbers green anymore. Andy Polo tops the list, and mostly because he’s been given ample opportunity to show how he can improve the team. I also hope to see the team part ways with Claude Dielna; unless the Timbers assumed something long-term with him, I’m highly confident the Timbers could find an equally reliable defender by scouring the USL, or even the higher reaches of the NASL.
To get a lot more mercenary, I’d consider shopping Julio Cascante and Jorge Villafana, or trying to. Because I’m stubbornly ignorant of contract mechanics, this portion of the post could see me blasting people that I’ll have to watch next season whether I want to or not, so take that into consideration.
4a) Yes, this absolutely means that Portland will need defensive reinforcements next season. It’s possible I’m watching that more than anything else.
5) The (Was It?) $10 Million Dollar Elephant in the Room (Fuck It, Wasn’t My Money)
I’d like to think I didn’t get subsumed in “BriFer Mania” when Brian Fernandez arrived, but my Week 11 post got geeked up enough on his potential to undercut that memory/denial. All the same, enough worms had turned by Week 25 for me to write this:
“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.”
And then, in Week 27:
“…for the last couple games, the ball has been at Fernandez’s feet when a play died; either his touch is heavy, his timing out of sync, or he’s searching, searching, searching(!) for that opening on goal: bottom line, either teams have figured him out, or, more likely, Portland, as a team, is still trying to.”
As everyone knows, Fernandez checked into the league’s substance abuse program, and I wish him the best of luck and health, no questions asked. But…sorry, just messin’. For what it’s worth, my personal jury is still out on Fernandez. That said, if he was good enough to play wing in Liga MX, it’s hard to believe he’s not up for producing at the same in MLS. He needs to improve, no question, but every time I see anything about faltering negotiations with Valeri, I hear the name “Fernandez, Fernandez” whispering in the breeze.
6) Gio Out?
First, the idea of pushing out Savarese never occurred to me until I saw people baying for the same at the end of the 2019 season. Judging by my little corner of the Timbers twitter-verse, the biggest issue on Savarese are his substitution patterns – i.e., they’re always too late and sometimes stupid. This confuses me for a couple of reasons.
First, I may be misremembering, but the same issue used to make me rip my hair out during the Caleb Porter era (so that’s what happened to his hair…), and I also see this same thing in most coaches. They seem to love their starting line-ups with the cold, clueless resistance of someone who doesn’t want to admit he’s losing an argument. In other words, I don’t care that people don’t like Savarese, but I’m not convinced that he’s an outlier on this score. (That said, convince me if you wanna.)
The deeper complaint might be the failure to properly rotate the squad. Now, that’s an argument to which I am deeply sympathetic – besides advocating for that since 2015 (or thereabouts), I top-lined that argument with Valeri all season and with both Mabiala and Blanco at specific points in the season; And, yes, I agree Savarese could have rotated more, ahem – especially with Chara, because the solid subs/padawans really are there in the form of Paredes, Renzo Zambrano and even Flores. I truly hope to see Chara saved for the must-wins in 2020, and the same goes for Valeri, assuming he’s still around, as I hope he’ll be. (Blanco, meanwhile, should play and play and play, at least until he’s 33.)
At the same time, I…just can’t hang much of what failed to work this season on Savarese. My proof for that is that the Timbers played well over enough stretches of the season to convince me that they could play most games to win. That spoke to a system, and that speaks to coaching in my mind, and I’m fine with anyone disagreeing on that. In so many words, the concept seemed sound enough, while execution didn’t always come off. It could also be that I understand what makes Gio jump more than I have any other coach I’ve observed up close, and maybe that just means I’m a hack too.
Fuck it, that’s it. I could go on all night, and through the end of the calendar year, but no one wants that, least of all me. The Portland Timbers 2019 was a lot of things, up to and including the end of an era. On the plus side, it could be the beginning of a different era, even if it takes some doing and positively savage decisions to get there.
Nice highlighting of the dispiriting turbulence of the 2019 season. The reputedly Chinese curse of "May you live in interesting times.", indeed! The political banners rancor; the team's maddeningly inconsistent play and collective inability to learn lessons from their mid-season setbacks, and the deadening effect on fan enthusiasm of every-three-days home games kinda left me wanting it all to be over for 2019...
ReplyDeleteYes we are a corporate sports entity. But, the history of the Timbers since '75 is one of several resusitations from team death just by the will of local fans to have local pro soccer. It makes me hope/believe that turning us into half-engaged soccer entertainment customers is not going to happen all that soon.
I like the little appreciation nod to Flores. Yes, a guy for whom we don't have sky-high expectations, but he did go out and earn his paycheck on the field all season.
Valeri and Chara's career arcs make us nervous because of the very mixed player scouting skills of the front office. Are they really up to finding good replacements? After all, Valeri came in partially as a fill-in for the sought-after, unsigned American superstar, Mix Diskerud (last seen playing in the South Korean league). And Chara was seen first as a mild disappointment because the club talked him up as being an attacking, scoring midfielder. So...
I really appreciate the thought you put into this review.
Glad you enjoyed and thanks, as always for taking the time to read. It's a trip revisiting your note on Chara, because I vaguely remember that chatter; part of me wonders if teams don't read mindlessly from the same stupid script any time they sign a player who isn't a centerback or a goalkeeper. And, ah, Mix Diskerud. What thankfully was not...
ReplyDeleteOn the Timbers history and connection to the community, I hope the whole country moves past the madness of this moment and restores politics to where we don't all trip over it every damn day. Cheers!