Portland Timbers 2-4 Minnesota United FC: An Unfortunate Spin on the Usual

What if we screamed louder?

I never mentioned it online, at least not until just before kickoff, but I wanted to see the Portland Timbers’ bench tonight. Sure, the FO grasped for some upgrades in the off-season, but the first team hasn’t changed enough (yet) to kill off my curiosity about who else the Portland Timbers have laying around the clubhouse.

When things started well – and they did, all the way up to “Help Me” Dairon Asprilla’s screamin’ opener (I know where the “help me” comes from, but I don’t get it either) – the narrative of a glorious collective future unspooled in my head. The idea was, Portland getting as many players as possible on the field would make this a real team-effort: all hands on deck, every man playing his part, just total, global buy-in from all concerned, and with plenty of minutes all-'round. It looked plausible too, for as long as the Timbers looked plausible. Then the goals started going the other way. Over and over and (one more) over again. The game ended 2-4, and not in Portland's favor.

I credit the Timbers coaching staff for testing the theory (or a theory) to the bitter end. They even doubled-down, as if someone dared them to do it. The last set of players looked like they took a wrong turn out of Lincoln High School’s locker room, but those young ‘uns took a couple shades off Portland’s blushes courtesy of Ken Krolicki scoring Portland’s second screamer of the night. I scream, Dairon screams, Krolicki screams…can we get two more and go to bed happier?

As a game, it wasn’t awful until it became awful. I think a lot of that had to do with Minnesota, unfortunately. They defended without any kind of intent for the game’s first 30 minutes, not really guarding space and certainly not pushing in some direction away from their own goal, but just kind of milling around in that slow-zombie way. Asprilla’s goal capped it all off, but Julio Cascante nodded a powerful header on goal and Pablo Bonilla fired in a solid near-post shot before that; the Timbers looked like they had the game by the scruff for as long as the Loons seemed willing to offer their necks.

I didn’t see the first goal except by highlights, and that video only started rolling after Minnesota had broken Portland’s right side. That said, had I started watching that one shape up five seconds earlier, I’m guessing I would have seen something similar to the buildups to Minnesota’s next two goals. A lot of the chatter I saw on twitter noted that three of tonight's goals came from the far post, specifically, the patch of ground Marco Farfan should have sewn up. Setting aside the first goal (by necessity), the next two followed from breakdowns that proceeded anything Farfan did or failed to do. Chris Duvall got beat in one buildup – he lunged the ball off Thomas Chacon’s foot, only to have it bounce to Mason Toye’s – while a missed tackle on the same side (can’t recall the culprit) kept Minnesota’s attack live and dangerous long enough for someone to find Chacon (again) on the weak side (hi, Marco!), from which point there was nothing left to do but make Aljaz “All The Jazz” Ivacic flop and tuck in the shot. I didn’t catch (or, honestly, care about) the build-up to Minnesota’s fourth – when you’ve had 10 beers, does the 11th beer even count? – but I did see Ivacic block Ethan Finlay’s shot. On that, I like All the Jazz well enough that I worry a little less about Steve Clark’s state of mind.

I don’t fault Farfan for the goals – or at least not any more than the defense/midfield as a whole. That he failed to make the perfect choice in the moment matters less than the fact he was forced to make that choice. Each of those collapses – even the one Toye dribbled past Marcus(?) Epps mere seconds before Minnesota’s third goal – required Portland’s defense to shift; last time I checked, watching a player from 10 yards away to see what he’ll do next gets you fired in the professional game. The Loons were playing around and/or behind a defense chasing its marks by that point and that's a bigger concern than Farfan finding the most Platonically-wise placement to stave off an ongoing disaster.

At the same time, what am I doing? Portland’s starting eleven for tonight won’t play in the regular season opener any more than Minnesota’s starting eleven for tonight will (they didn't start there A-team either and let that sink in). The only thing that really died tonight was my personal longing for a large, continually-rotating, happy-family, super-collective squad. Even if some of the guys who started tonight see the field in the early weeks of the regular season, it’ll be a stray player here and there mixing with the regulars. The real question to ask of tonight is, which player(s) and how often? To start the conversation, here’s tonight’s starting XI (which assumes a 4-2-3-1):

GK: Clark
D: Bonilla, Duvall, Cascante, Farfan
Midfield 2: Andy Polo, Renzo Zambrano
Midfield 3: Tomas Conechny, Eryk Williamson, Asprilla
F: Jeremy Ebobisse

First of all, it was possible to get a little higher on any of these players during the first 30 minutes. To name a few, though, I saw good moments early from Duvall, Zambrano, Conechny and, as much as anybody, Polo. The latter mostly caught my eye for smart defensive plays, which seemed to open up some possibilities for him on another part of the depth chart, but I could say the same for Zambrano on the defensive side, and Conechny on the attacking side. At some point, though, a simple, powerful rule – i.e., chaos begets chaos - took over the game, and suddenly you start seeing Zambrano got caught in possession, or far too many residents from the great state of Minnesota behind the Timbers midfield, and then you realize you have no idea when Ebobisse left the match, and so on.

Before moving on to a conclusion, I wanted to note the one player who impressed me after the proverbial flaming bag had caught fire. Somewhere around the early-60s, Williamson went on a five-plus minute cover-‘n’-tackle spree; he didn’t just thwart attacks either, he won the ball and sent it to better places. I know Williamson didn’t win anything by standing out when everything around him had caught fire, but he also looked like the only guy on the field who had any clear idea as to how to turn things around. And I have to say, I really like the way he crosses a ball off a set-piece. Helluvan arc, kid…

My final comment is global, sadly, and it strikes me as Portland’s defining trait from last year to this one. Based on everything I’ve seen, the Timbers will give up goals. They are vulnerable defensively and denying that feels like the same thing as walking outside on a rainy day and pretending it’s not raining. Given that, they’re stuck in a place where they need to score more goals than they allow – only they don’t look up to that, or at least not often enough.

Nothing about tonight’s loss disturbed like seeing the Timbers run out of ideas. And that’s precisely because I’ve seen it before. And as recently as the second half of 2019.