Portland Timbers 1-3 New England Revolution: Chance Creation

Yes, that is who you think they are. 1996.

This week’s special word is “dispirited.” (Can I keep that bit up for 35+ games? Dunno….but I’m also not saying I won’t try.)

Because I came late to the party, I turned on the game already knowing the Portland Timbers lost their last game of the preseason 1-3 to, for what it’s worth, a New England Revolution team that I expect to be good-to-great in 2020. Again, who you lose to can go some distance to explaining why your team lost – i.e., if they’re better, what else would you expect? It’s possible, in other words, that the Revs are just better than the Timbers. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but, 1) the evidence points to yes, and 2) the question is what that means for Portland’s 2020.

To flesh out No. 1 above, I’d accept that New England has a better sense of how they want to operate on the field and, in that way, they are better than Portland. Even so, the final score damned the Timbers more than it flattered the Revolution. New England never had to be great on Saturday: they just had to defend well enough and put away the chances they created. The extent to which that’s true of literally every team in soccer is all it takes to understand all the problems Portland has going into 2020.

In the Timbers’ defense, putting this game beyond their reach took a bounce lucky enough to look like a perfect pass; the ungainly laws of physics that squirted the ball wide to New England’s Gustavo Bou in that specific moment operate on the same level of probability as a hard 8 in craps, so I feel all right putting Adam Buska’s goal down to blind and/or bad luck. The trouble is, the Revs hit that hard 8 two more times. The second one, Bou’s penalty kick, somehow hurt less, and maybe because Kelyn Rowe slotted a great pass to Buska (who may or may not have been offside; I never got a good angle on the stream). The first one, though, hurt like a mother, because it repeated a disturbing pattern from the blowout loss to Minnesota United FC – e.g., the game I’d allowed myself to write-off because head coach Gio Savarese opted to start T2 over T-Prime. For those who didn’t watch (or rewind the video three-four times), Bou crossed the ball to (I think) Brandon Bye, who then crossed it back to a wide-open Bou at the back-post, leaving him nothing more to do than hitting it with enough pace to slip past Portland’s Steve Clark. It’s the “wide-open” part (hence the italics) that really distresses a fella.

That goal’s worth watching again, honestly, because Dario Zuparic was way the hell over to the left and with Larrys Mabiala not far behind – and I don’t even know where Jorge Villafana was through all that. The thing that stood out, though, was the way you could see the warning siren wail in Jorge Moreira’s head when he finally spotted Bou in all that space; long story short the Timbers defense had collectively lost track of New England’s best player, and that’s hardly a recipe for success, now is it? That same defect – e.g., centerbacks over-compensating – accounted for at least two of the goals the Timbers allowed against Minnesota mid-week, and that raises the possibility of not just bad defensive decisions, but endemic habits.

I neither need nor want to make too much of that because either that will change or jobs will be lost, so let’s move on the main event – Portland’s continued, unnerving struggles to reliably create chances.

I saw someone float the “tale of two halves” cliché online and, without any intent to crap on that author (not least because I haven’t read his points), I saw one central through-line pass through this entire awful experience: the Timbers created their best chances when they forced turnovers in the Revs’ spine – mostly at Rowe’s expense, I noticed. Scott Caldwell made the mistake that gave Portland its one goal, and both Felipe Mora and Diego Chara did well to force the issue, but turnovers like that were the heart of the Timbers’ chance creation in the first half, and those moments didn’t come from anything like a consistent, well-constructed press, but from the kind of “catch-as-catch-can” pick-pocketing at which Chara excels. The team as a whole had a string of moments before Chara’s goal, a lot of it from Yimmi Chara breaking through New England’s back-line (something Diego Valeri struggled with all night), and, between them, Yimmi, Valeri, and Mora put shots on goal, but after tonight there should be a “Shots-on-Matt-Turner” stat, because Portland would have won the goddamn game had that counted more than goals…

…and yet Portland didn’t create that many good shots, at least not by my count. The highlights came with a couple pull-backs from the right around the 22nd minute, but, from there to the end of the game, the Timbers looked every sorry inch like the frustrated team from the tail-end of 2019. Watching them bury the ball down the left – e.g., pass to Blanco and/or Villafana and hope he crosses the perfect ball – looked first-name-basis familiar. Since the middle of 2019, the Timbers have lacked the confidence to play up the gut, to try to break down a team. I’m not even sure what they’re going for at this point, but futile crosses to static players seems all the rage – and the more of them from the left, the better.

I took this game as, 1) globally bad, and 2) a remarkably clear carry-over as to why 2019 ended so horribly. Every problem and limitation looks exactly the same and, at time of writing, I don’t see how this gets unscrewed. As such, where the Portland Timbers are concerned, I’ve got expectations dialed down to “patience” at this point. You don’t need to agree with me, but that’s where I am till further notice. To raise some sharper points:

Moving on to some details…

How to Get More Mora
After a second game of not watching Mora (as in, I literally didn’t see him outside a couple spare moments), I pulled up a highlight reel of someone’s take on Felipe Mora’s best goals. I’ll be damned, look at all those headers…timing, man. Timing matters...

Because he’s invisible, I don’t know what Mora is or isn’t doing on the field (and, yes, I’ve tried and failed at the “watch one player” method of watching soccer; I’m not a video review guy). I also have yet to see him function in any way that, say, brings Portland’s key players – e.g., Valeri and Sebastian Blanco – into the attack in any meaningful way. After that, I checked Mora’s stats and they’re…not eye-catching. Overall, though, I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of Mora. Or, maybe it’s that I hope we haven’t seen the best out of Mora. More than anything else, I hope the FO scouted him hard enough to know whether or not it’s worthwhile to give him time. I’m taking it on faith that they did.

The Defense Will Get Better
At least I think it will. That’s it. Is it bad now? Yes. Yes, it is.

I Think I Get Yimmi
Based on this game, I think Gio is looking to use Yimmi as a long option to stretch the defense, and create space for the other guys (e.g., Valeri, Blanco, god forbid, Jeremy Ebobisse) to operate.

I think…yes, that’s it for now. I’m going to spend tomorrow looking for the Portland Timbers’ pigeon-hole in the extended-MLS Universe, and, overall, I think they’re one of those high variable teams. I can see them making the playoffs, I can see them missing them, I can see them winning a trophy, but, only if an honestly astonishing number of stars align just so…

…bottom line, I’m worried about the old guard. Again.