Real Salt Lake 2-1 Portland Timbers: A Mirror to 2019

On seeing what I didn't want to see.

I don’t how many of you shifted in his/her seats in anticipation of extra time Saturday night, but I know I did. Sure, Real Salt Lake had absorbed the kitchen sink the Portland Timbers threw their way, but they didn’t show any meaningful signs of breaking through either. The play that won the game – i.e., RSL isolating Joao Plata on their left – had been tried before, and with just as many Timbers defenders buzzing around to cut off options. In the telling moment, however, Plata poked the ball across the top of Portland’s 18, Albert Rusnak had the wit ‘n’ savvy to leave the ball for Jefferson Savarino, and those split-second decisions put the sword to not just one of Portland's better recent spells, but also to the Timbers’ 2019 season.

That’s how it ended – 2-1 in RSL’s favor. With that, their season continues, while Portland starts facing the tough questions they could only push off for as long as they had games left to play. 2019 wound up as a…fairly fucked up year. Even if Timbers fans can't agree on what exactly went wrong, I think most people would agree that, Jesus preserve us, what a fucking mess. I’ll review the entire season later this week (Saturday?), and I’ll close this post with some questions that I hope in that review. To preview that, the second half of the 2019 season posed all kinds of questions to the future of the Portland Timbers team and/or franchise. I’ll do some reading and/or reminiscing and try to come up with something useful, all without promising that I can, but, I want to continue this wrap up of their final game with a question:

How the hell does a team of professional athletes forget how to do their collective jobs for 45 whole goddamn minutes?

I credited a couple Portland players for robustly stand-out starts – e.g., Cristhian Paredes and Bill Tuiloma both made a pair of stellar solo defensive plays each during the first half – but no one in the Timbers starting eleven looked prepared to do anything but disrupt and tackle over the opening 45 minutes. If any Timber found the proverbial friend during that first half, I either missed it or it didn’t matter. That failure lead to an avalanche of pressure falling on the Timbers defense (a decent example), and they handled all they could until Deimar Kreilach ghosted behind Larrys Mabiala’s shoulder and ahead of a ball-watching Bill Tuiloma to tap a free header past Portland’s ‘keeper, Steve Clark, who, to fill in all the blanks, played an aggressive (and intriguing) sweeper-‘keeper role, and to the point of stranding himself once or twice. RSL didn’t actually give him a ton to manage – too many of their shots dropped right into the ol’ breadbasket – but they had him dead to rights on both goals, and only the first one hurt real, real bad, even if they all count the same, and so on.

The larger point is that the Timbers pissed away an entire half before playing any semblance of soccer, never mind the good shit. And that’s what really makes you want to rip your hair out: when the Timbers started playing, they cut through RSL’s lines at will and they created quality chances from range by scrambling RSL’s defense before they could settle. Both of Portland’s key players – Sebastian Blanco and, once he came on, Diego Valeri – had chances they could have, and absolutely should have put away, respectively, but Valeri simply missed his (pulled it wide, outrageous that there's no video for one of the game's defining moments), while Blanco’s shot was just the first of several Rimando-ings that, per standard practice, will define this series till Nick Rimando hangs up his jersey…which I think is happening, like, once RSL’s season ends.

Anyway, that's the part of the story that matters. Obviously, they have…a number of things to sort out before they can return to full, trophy-winning competitiveness in Major League Soccer – and that’s what the season in review will cover, very likely in a little too much depth, and probably too many directions, because that’s what I do. To hold up one thought on this game that touches on just about everything: didn’t this game feel like the Timbers’ 2019 season in microcosm? As it went last night, so it went with the season: the Timbers could play any team off the field on their better days - or, on the game-level, their better moments - but those didn’t come often enough to convince anyone, including the opposition (and they game-planned as such). Every time they were off, 1) they ran out of ideas in the attack, and 2) then the nerves took over in defense. The end-result was a team that played too close to the trap-door all season long.

I can’t claim that the Portland Timbers got robbed on Saturday, not with a straight face. I can’t pretend they should have had higher seeding, or that if this healing (Brian Fernandez) or injured player (uh…Julio Cascante?) could have turned the tide Saturday night. That’s not to say they couldn’t have won it: they had more openings outside their best one...and, wait, did I really go this long without celebrating Dairon Asprilla’s equalizer?! (I don't know, maybe because it didn't matter in the end?) To finish the thought, Asprilla got Portland back on level terms early in the second half and with plenty of time to turn around the game, but, as noted above, they didn't. Worse, I didn't see them doing it in the second half, and maybe that's what accounts my personal fixation with getting the game to extra time; I couldn't see the Timbers getting another goal without them sitting down and getting assignments and approaches to goal sorted out again. They never got the chance, obviously.

To wrap up, Asprilla’s goal feels like the perfect segue to the questions I’ll try to answer in my 2019 Portland Timbers review post. To float a set of questions, which are by no means complete:

1) With Asprilla very much in mind, where is the fat on the Timbers roster? What players can they cut and, barring some real bad decisions, find someone better? To continue the annual tradition of tying an anchor around Asprilla’s neck, how useful is a player who only delivers in October?

2) How to upgrade/solidify the defense? At this point, I take Mabiala as a given in the starting eleven, and everyone else as an open question.

3) What's the state of the youth movement – e.g., Paredes, Marvin Loria, Renzo Zambrano, and, sure Jeremy Ebobisse, Bill Tuiloma, and even Eryk Williamson: do they look ready to not just compete in the regular season, but challenge for trophies?

4) Who pushes Clark? I love Steve Clark. I even liked him swinging for the fences Saturday night, but having a safe-hands option feels like a minimum need right now.

5) What to do with Diego Valeri? I’ll be the first to admit that I'm not sure I'll be able to wrestle this one to ground in a way that feels just or satisfying.

Finally, because I saw people talking about it:

6) Do people seriously want to see Giovanni Savarese move on?

Those are all the questions I have for now. I’m going to review all the posts I put up over the season, see if I can’t access some memory that I haven’t yet directed to the above questions. Till then!