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| Yes, on multiple levels... |
Of the 24 (full, unfucked) seasons in Major League Soccer history, 2015 counts as the most consequential for me, personally – and not for the obvious reason. Yes, the Portland Timbers won MLS Cup and, yes, it was one hell of a ride and I’ll cover all of that below, probably to the point of short-changing the rest of the league. To paraphrase the great moral philosopher, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, the writing of history falls to the victors (and, to finish his thought, yes, I just put Baby in the fucking corner, deal with it).
To get the personal weirdness out of the way, I barely enjoyed watching the Timbers win MLS Cup. It wasn’t a great game for one – and I mean that in terms of spectacle – Portland’s goals were cheap (the first) and dirty (the second) and, because their opponents, Columbus Crew SC, never really recovered from Diego Valeri’s sucker-punch goal in the very first minute, it was effectively over as a contest by the 7th minute when the Timbers’ Rodney Wallace scored their second, naughty goal (here's a wrap-up of all the malfeasance in MLS Cup 2015). On a deeper level – and a misplaced one, as explained below – I experienced the 2015 season as seven months of (at times deep) mediocrity followed by two weeks of joy. I struck out on a metaphor in my post on the 2014 season, so I’ll borrow a cliché and say I want at least four of those seven months back, dammit.
In fewer words, 2015 was the season I decided I’d take the Supporters’ Shield over MLS Cup every goddamn time. Watching a better team get results all year long sounds like a better season to me, thank you very much (and winning the U.S. Open Cup will always be a happy accident and/or a sporadic confidence builder for your bench, will be rewarded for their service by watching the starters step in to steal the glory over the final two games). The grass is always greener, the cup will never be anything but half-full, the pope wears a funny hat and shits in the woods, etc.
Moving on to programming notes, I’m not going to list all the teams, their records and some notes at the end of the post anymore. Back when I started this, that seemed like the best way to provide hard information about a season, but you can read and digest the final 2015 conference tables as well as I can, and now I’ve got the Form Guide, fresher memories, and more reliable access to video highlights, and that gives me enough material to create and/or embellish a narrative of the season. [Ed. – Point in fact, I could watch highlights of most games from the 2015 season, but I love myself too much for that madness.] Now, to our regularly scheduled programming…
Portland and Columbus, the eventual finalists for (the sham we call) MLS Cup (sorry, I’ll stop), both finished on 53 points in 2015 and with underwhelming goal-differentials - +2 for the Timbers and +5 for Columbus, both a ways of the New York Red Bulls’ +19 and also closer to the mean in what was a bizarrely symmetrical season. No team lost less than 10 games in 2015 - some playoff teams dropped as many as 13 games, but 10 and 11 was the mark of real quality- but things got crazy-tight all over the playoff field. Both FC Dallas and the Supporters’ Shield-winning Red Bulls finished on 60 points; the Vancouver Whitecaps tied Portland and Columbus on 53 points, while five (5) other teams – the Montreal Impact and D.C. United in the Eastern Conference, and the Seattle Sounders, the Los Angeles Galaxy, and Sporting Kansas City from the Western – finished on 51 points. The cutoff line for the playoffs ended with Toronto FC, who picked up 49 points in 2015 and their first-ever MLS playoff berth. They got kicked straight out of the newly-expanded knock-out rounds, but, hey, gotta crawl before you can walk. Even Sebastian Giovinco couldn’t re-write that script…
To get the personal weirdness out of the way, I barely enjoyed watching the Timbers win MLS Cup. It wasn’t a great game for one – and I mean that in terms of spectacle – Portland’s goals were cheap (the first) and dirty (the second) and, because their opponents, Columbus Crew SC, never really recovered from Diego Valeri’s sucker-punch goal in the very first minute, it was effectively over as a contest by the 7th minute when the Timbers’ Rodney Wallace scored their second, naughty goal (here's a wrap-up of all the malfeasance in MLS Cup 2015). On a deeper level – and a misplaced one, as explained below – I experienced the 2015 season as seven months of (at times deep) mediocrity followed by two weeks of joy. I struck out on a metaphor in my post on the 2014 season, so I’ll borrow a cliché and say I want at least four of those seven months back, dammit.
In fewer words, 2015 was the season I decided I’d take the Supporters’ Shield over MLS Cup every goddamn time. Watching a better team get results all year long sounds like a better season to me, thank you very much (and winning the U.S. Open Cup will always be a happy accident and/or a sporadic confidence builder for your bench, will be rewarded for their service by watching the starters step in to steal the glory over the final two games). The grass is always greener, the cup will never be anything but half-full, the pope wears a funny hat and shits in the woods, etc.
Moving on to programming notes, I’m not going to list all the teams, their records and some notes at the end of the post anymore. Back when I started this, that seemed like the best way to provide hard information about a season, but you can read and digest the final 2015 conference tables as well as I can, and now I’ve got the Form Guide, fresher memories, and more reliable access to video highlights, and that gives me enough material to create and/or embellish a narrative of the season. [Ed. – Point in fact, I could watch highlights of most games from the 2015 season, but I love myself too much for that madness.] Now, to our regularly scheduled programming…
Portland and Columbus, the eventual finalists for (the sham we call) MLS Cup (sorry, I’ll stop), both finished on 53 points in 2015 and with underwhelming goal-differentials - +2 for the Timbers and +5 for Columbus, both a ways of the New York Red Bulls’ +19 and also closer to the mean in what was a bizarrely symmetrical season. No team lost less than 10 games in 2015 - some playoff teams dropped as many as 13 games, but 10 and 11 was the mark of real quality- but things got crazy-tight all over the playoff field. Both FC Dallas and the Supporters’ Shield-winning Red Bulls finished on 60 points; the Vancouver Whitecaps tied Portland and Columbus on 53 points, while five (5) other teams – the Montreal Impact and D.C. United in the Eastern Conference, and the Seattle Sounders, the Los Angeles Galaxy, and Sporting Kansas City from the Western – finished on 51 points. The cutoff line for the playoffs ended with Toronto FC, who picked up 49 points in 2015 and their first-ever MLS playoff berth. They got kicked straight out of the newly-expanded knock-out rounds, but, hey, gotta crawl before you can walk. Even Sebastian Giovinco couldn’t re-write that script…
MLS expanded the playoffs because the league expanded in 2015 with the arrival of Orlando City SC and New York City SC ; a league that committed to making the regular season irrelevant as possible could not do otherwise, so the playoff field grew from 10 teams to twelve. While the final stretch of the MLS playoffs stayed the same – i.e., home-and-away for the conference semifinals and finals, followed by a one-off MLS Cup – eight teams qualified for the one-and-done knockout round instead of the previous four. Expansion also kicked the Houston Dynamo and SKC back to the Western Conference – where they belong, frankly - and balanced each conference at 10 teams a piece. Also, this:
“Each team played 34 regular season matches: two or three against conference rivals and once against teams from the opposite conference. The regular season concluded with all teams playing at the same scheduled time, a league first.”
That’s more about the first sentence than the second one, but, given how close everyone but New York and Dallas were at the end of the regular season, having all those final games kickoff at the same time was a wise and good move. With the balance of teams that qualified for the playoffs finishing on 51 and 53 points, those last games went a long way to determining playoff seeding – a big deal in the knockout rounds, especially.
The above talk of symmetry aside, the effective competitive threshold cut off somewhere between the San Jose Earthquakes (47 points) and Orlando City SC (44 points). While it’s tricky to identify exactly when everyone below 14th place (Orlando) saw the writing on the wall (“YOU SUCK”), MLS had six bad/irrelevant teams in 2015. The curious thing about all that is how many of them tried very hard to avoid that…
For one, nearly all of them signed designated players. Some aimed higher certainly – e.g., NYCFC with David Villa, Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo, Orlando with Kaka (and Carlos Rivas and Bryan Rochez), while the Chicago Fire called in a cavalry of new DPs with Gilberto, David Accam, Shaun Maloney, and Kennedy Igboananike – but it didn’t buy them much in 2015 (Chicago’s still searching for its feet, honestly). As you’ll see in the 2015 Form Guide, the Fire was never in it, but NYCFC and Orlando did all right for expansion teams – and I’m pretty sure 2015 was Orlando’s best season to date. [Ed. – Here’s to hoping your weird meets 2020’ weird and makes something beautiful Orlando; you are my MWoMLS sentimental favorite!] The rest of the outcast teams succumbed for different reasons: the Colorado Rapids, Houston and Real Salt Lake all had great-to-good defenses, but their attacks couldn’t knock down a sand castle. The Philadelphia Union couldn’t crawl out of the hole they dug over their first 10 games, while San Jose just fell short on goals scored and games won.
That actually makes for a dynamite segue to the next passage in this post – i.e., why I believed the Portland Timbers’ season would end horribly, and certainly without a post-season.
While the Timbers would close out the 2015 season by going 4-1-0 over their last five games, and that run started them rolling toward ultimate victory(!!), they went 2-4-4 in the 10 games before that. That 10-game…streak ended with Game 29 of the regular season, and that’s the point of this whole exercise: here’s what the rawest numbers (e.g., I’m not checking goal differential) looked like in Western Conference after Game 28:
Vancouver Whitecaps: 15-11-3, 48 pts.
Los Angeles Galaxy: 13-8-8, 48 pts.
FC Dallas: 14-10-5, 47 pts.
Sporting Kansas City: 12-9-8, 44 pts.
Seattle Sounders: 13-13-3, 42 pts.
Portland Timbers: 11-10-8, 41 pts.
San Jose Earthquakes: 11-11-7, 40 pts.
Real Salt Lake: 10-11-8, 38 pts.
Houston Dynamo: 9-12-8, 35 pts.
So, that’s the Timbers with a one-point toe-hold on sixth place. The deeper issue was the fact they weren’t getting points while many…no, make that all the teams around them were. Here are the records for each of the teams listed above 10 games prior to the “week” that ended with Game 29, listed according to record (and points earned):
Galaxy: 6-3-1 (19 pts.)
Whitecaps: 5-1-4 (19 pts.)
Dallas: 5-5-0 (15 pts.)
RSL: 5-5-0 (15 pts.)
Earthquakes: 4-3-3 (15 pts.)
SKC: 3-5-2 (11 pts.)
Houston: 3-5-2 (11 pts.)
Seattle: 3-6-1 (10 pts.)
Portland: 2-4-4 (8 pts.)
Houston didn’t look like much of a threat, but, against the Timbers’ eight-point “haul,” RSL and San Jose sure as hell did. Vancouver and LA looked like they were running away with things at the top of the table, so they didn’t really matter for Portland, and Dallas looked safe and with six points in hand. Neither Seattle nor SKC looked great but, being ahead, all they had to do was stay ahead of the tripping Timbers. With five games left to play, the Timbers looked like a decent bet to slip under San Jose and RSL and out of the playoffs. In the bigger picture, Portland had played most of the season to land at precariously mid-table. I had multiple conversations about the state of the team with friends, associates and collaborators during that time, but what I don’t have is a memory of anyone telling me that the Timbers would turn things around – never mind win MLS Cup.
And here’s the plot twist. That jaundiced view of Portland’s season remains my defining sensation of the 2015 season, but was it accurate? Because I can be a miserable fucking hardass as an analyst, I decided to go back and watch the highlights for that 10 game, 2-4-4 stretch and with an eye to figure out why I thought Portland was thoroughly fucking doomed to an early off-season. Also, and before I get rolling on this, I’d urge anyone who finds this post to go click on one of the links below and just watch the highlights. After three months in lockdown, that looks like a broadcast from another, much better world (so, vote in 2020, goddammit). I can still place myself at some of those games…shit, I’m tearing up over here…just need a minute…
“The streak” started July 11 with a 3-0 loss on the road against Philly. With six wins in seven games behind them, Portland opted to rest key players and, given a road game and a struggling opponent, why wouldn’t they? It went to shit – especially up Jeanderson’s side of the field – but the results didn’t come back after, and for complicated reasons. Because I’ve become more of a “results-are-form” dogmatist since 2015, all 10 of the results from this stretch make some kind of sense in the context of a title-winning team. Sure, Dallas kicked Portland’s ass(es) 4-1 in Dallas (3rd game in the stretch), and the Red Bulls ripped three points out of Providence Park (10th game), but those were the best teams of 2015, so you roll with that one (while knowing the road to any final rolls through teams like that). Going the other way, Portland needed to do better than edge a woeful (yet defensively-sound) Chicago team and draw a toothless Houston team, both at home. The Timbers lost at Seattle, something you hate to see, but should reasonably expect (especially with Diego Chara suspended), and they probably should have done better against San Jose on the road (and Adi came close, y'all; think how different this would sound), and SKC at home. On the plus side of the ledger, the stole three points out of Utah and, given Vancouver’s considerable lead in the standings and momentum, they did all right playing them to a 1-1 draw at home (in which Nat Borchers cleared yet another ball off the line).
So, no, nothing egregious happened over that 10 game stretch, so why did my underwear slip so far into my crack as I took all that in? If I had to relocate the pulse of what freaked out Timbers fans over those 10 game (or me, just me), the goal differential makes for a good suspect. The goals average for 2015 ended at 46.8, and Portland fell under in both goals for and against. The Timbers allowed 14 goals over those 10 games and scored only seven, so, without reviewing the archives (seriously, this would never go up), that feels like the likeliest cause for Timbers’ fans’ pessimism (or, just mine; I am a spokesman for nothing and no one).
Before mapping out the road to the Cup, I want to close commentary on the Timbers with one though. I had a blast going back through those highlights. It carried me back to a lot of happy memories – e.g., the realities, ideas, theories and arguments that people batted around as they watched a mess of a team win a title for the Rose City. The happy side saw Borchers’ presence and savvy when he bailed out the Timbers defense by clearing one ball after another off the line, not to mention him gracefully passing on a celebration for his game-winner against RSL. Valeri’s all over those highlights just making shit happen; it was nice to reconnect with how crazy-influential he was/is. You get to see Fanendo Adi in his MLS prime, something FC Cincinnati fans never got to see and that’s a shame. To…continue(?) with the debit side, those highlights provide at least two examples of why Timbers fans turned on Lucas Melano (e.g., home v Chicago and home v SKC), and, more than anything else, and I'll die on this fucking hill, why I never rated Adam Kwarasey. I don’t know who commanded his box, but it sure as shit wasn’t him. I also see what got up my ass about Liam Ridgewell. Overall, though, this was a good, fun, and likeable team. Jack Jewsbury got another trophy, Rodney Wallace became the-guy-least-likely-to, but who kept on doing it, and Darlington Nagbe continued his riddle inside an enigma inside a mystery trick (and, yes, the highlights include an audio snippet of a commentator pining after higher attacking output from him).
To get back to the mission (focus!), the defense looked bad here and there, and the attack took a while to get going sometimes, but the Timbers looked competitive across nearly every one of those 10 games. I didn’t look at the four wins and one loss that carried the Timbers to the post season, but they topped every team in the Western Conference over those last five games, with the exception of Dallas…and, boy, will that look like a head-fake before the end of this post…onto the playoffs.
I’ve already noted TFC’s exit from the knockout rounds, but I didn’t talk about the Montreal Impact team that showed them the door. If you watch the beginning of the highlights on Montreal’s 3-0 dunking on Toronto, you’ll see most of the classic line-up that nearly won the CONCACAF Champions League either the year after or the year after that. Toronto, who had most of their famous names by then, would take another year or two to meld. Between the way the New England Revolution limped into the post-season and that D.C. United never really mattered, I skipped DC’s win in the knockouts, but I did refresh my memory on Seattle’s action-packed 3-2 win over the post-Donovan Galaxy. The Galaxy wasn’t a bad team that season – and Seattle hadn’t really figured their shit out either – so it’s less surprising that the Sounders won that one on LA’s (glaring) mistakes (the spat between Donovan Ricketts and Steven Gerrard is/was priceless).
That said, there’s no question as to what was the great, epic, and eternal raw, uncut gem of the 2015 playoffs, maybe the best game in all of playoffs, ever in sport – aka, the Portland Timbers’ win over Sporting Kansas City, the double-post miracle, the night everyone was there in spirit if they couldn’t be there in body, the formative, bonding experience and, fuck it, this is when they won a title in my mind, but not the title. Because words can’t do justice to living through that glorious shit (the birth of my child next to that? eh…), here are the highlights from the game, highlights of the never-ending penalty duel, plus video of the whole goddamn game. I don’t roll that way, but, if you do…
The conference semifinals kicked off from there. In the West, Portland got past Vancouver, mostly in the second leg, but those highlights give a glimpse of how well Adi and Valeri worked together when they clicked (Chara's scored the insurance goal at the death in a way that’s very on-brand). Another attacking duo – that’d be Fabian Castillo and Mauro Diaz – showed they could have just as much fun in a 1-2 first-leg loss in Seattle to the Sounders, but credit Clint Dempsey for that game-winner and, wow, did Victor Ulloa have a crap series (actual foreshadowing for FC Cincy fans)? Those same teams battled hard in the second leg, creating what looked like plenty of chances, but it took Dallas until the 84th minute to go 1-0 up and take the lead in the series through Tesho Akindele. Chad Marshall answered back for Seattle and, in a changing of the guard moment straight outta fiction, Walker Zimmerman stole the show not once (with an even later header than Marshall’s to tie the series), but twice (by scoring the series-winning penalty kick and never let it be said that Zimmerman doesn’t piss ice water). Dallas would face Portland in the Western Conference Finals.
I couldn’t find highlights for the Red Bulls’ win over DC, so I’ll pick up the Eastern Conference at Montreal versus Columbus. Again, this was the Didier Drogba, Ignacio Piatti, Laurent Ciman Impact team, aka, the only truly Italian-inspired team in MLS history, the raw judo of the counter-attack, etc. They gifted Columbus the first goal in the series when Drogba nodded a soft clearance toward Federico Higuain (that’s bad). Impact iron man, Patrice Bernier, equalized thanks to some truly tragic marking by the Columbus defense (the same one that allowed 53 goals during the regular season, 2nd worst among playoff teams after Toronto, and bookmark that shit), and then Peter Vagenas scored the winner for Montreal when he picked the ball off Michael Parkhurst while he tried to pass it out of the back – something Columbus insisted on doing that season, and bookmark that too. Columbus won the return leg 3-1 and a couple things stood out. First, who remembers Cedric Mabwati? I ask because he carried Columbus through the playoffs from that point to MLS Cup. Columbus got back in the series with their standard approach during the Gregg Berhalter era, only to have Montreal’s Dilly Duka equalize for Montreal in Leg 2. After missing a (soft) PK, Crew SC scored two more goals, both set up by Mabwati. But, wait! There’s more!
Because they were the lower seed (because MLS), Columbus hosted the first leg of the Eastern Conference Finals, where they went ahead in the first minute and I want to pause here to acknowledge how cleanly that goal answers the complaint, “I don’t know why they just whack the ball upfield, chase it and hope for the best.” A very good Red Bulls team fought back hard – this was the season after Thierry Henry left, so it was peak Bradley Wright-Phillips up top with Sacha Kljestan, Felipe, and Lloyd Sam providing service, with Dax McCarty in support and Zubar, Matt Miazga and (lookie there), Sal Zizzo in defense – and they won every statistical category, but couldn’t win the game. The Red Bulls would win the second leg 1-0, but it bears acknowledging the wide array and volume of saves Columbus forced Luis Robles to make and that – who else? – Mabwati delivered Columbus’ insurance goal for the series late in the 1st leg (factually, Kei Kamara scored it). He did a credible reinterpretation of Swan Lake with a soccer ball on that one. I don’t recall whether Mabwati contributed much to Columbus, or any other MLS team in 2016 or thereafter, but the idea I want to flag here is that he was not a designated player.
The Western Conference Finals delivered an epic – even if it doesn’t look that way at first blush. Portland did run over Dallas in Leg 1 in Portland – they even got away with resting players: Valeri sat it out (suspended? Maybe), so it was Dairon Asprilla and Melano under Adi with Nagbe between them, and Jewsbury and Chara behind them. Dallas countered with David Texeira up top, Castillo, Diaz and, arguably one of the most reliable and underrated players in MLS, Michael Barrios behind him, and with Victor Ulloa and Kelyn Acosta behind them – not that that mattered. Ridgewell trundled in the first goal and Asprilla added another chapter to his Mr. October legend with a bomb of a goal that, like most of them, he couldn’t score again if he tried 20 times. Dallas was too good to go down without a fight and they pulled one back by neatly dismantling Portland’s left (and when did JeVaughn Watson stop being that good?), but the Timbers added one more through Borchers at the death giving them a 3-1 advantage.
Portland scored the first goal in the 2nd leg and the series looked finished. That specific goal is worth watching because you get a really nice glimpse of the Valeri/Adi connection – and it’s a nice reminder of how powerful Adi became we he stopped flopping and started fighting (he throws off Zimmerman with aplomb). Dallas battled back (again) scoring two beauties and, but for the grace Borchers, Dallas could have tied the damn series through Blaz Perez late in the game. (I will go to my grave believing Borchers was Portland’s most important defender). Things turned the other way and in the oddly-fitting way of Melano (of all people) dribbling in the goal that tied the game at 2-2 and ended the series (also, take a bow, kid; that's the least I can say after dumping on the kid for all those years).
I want to pause here to mourn one of the great tragedies in MLS history. Teams out of Dallas have had their share of shit years, but they’ve also put together their share of tough teams, entertaining teams, and teams that supplied both. In recent years, they created one of the most reliable pipelines for talent in the country and, against their attendance numbers, Dallas has deserved better attendance since Day 1. Their 2015 team was a damn good one, and probably their best shot at a major trophy, any major trophy (as in, fuck the U.S. Open Cup). I’m happy that the Timbers won in 2015, and for the same reason – i.e., who knows when this comes around again? – but I really feel for Dallas fans.
And, of course, MLS Cup happened after that. I’ve already mentioned the…nature of both of Portland’s goals (if VAR had existed back then, would they have called back Wallace’s goal? also, it’s like Columbus stopped playing or anything), but what really sucked the fun out of it was Columbus’ inability to get back into it. Yes, the game ended 2-1, which means the Crew scored, but it was an ugly orphan of a goal that relied more on Portland’s mistakes than Columbus’ talent. If you watch the highlights, you’ll see something else: Portland had really good chances at (literally) 10-minute intervals throughout the second half; hell, Michael Parkhurst got away with a hand-ball on one of ‘em (and a penalty kick shout as well, see the malfeasance link above), and that helps me feel less dirty about the Timbers’ second goal. Anyway, Portland won and it was a good thing. Honestly…
…though I have to say that I didn’t feel uncomplicatedly happy about all of it until the victory parade rolled past my office…shit, I should've traveled to Columbus for that one, amirite?
“Each team played 34 regular season matches: two or three against conference rivals and once against teams from the opposite conference. The regular season concluded with all teams playing at the same scheduled time, a league first.”
That’s more about the first sentence than the second one, but, given how close everyone but New York and Dallas were at the end of the regular season, having all those final games kickoff at the same time was a wise and good move. With the balance of teams that qualified for the playoffs finishing on 51 and 53 points, those last games went a long way to determining playoff seeding – a big deal in the knockout rounds, especially.
The above talk of symmetry aside, the effective competitive threshold cut off somewhere between the San Jose Earthquakes (47 points) and Orlando City SC (44 points). While it’s tricky to identify exactly when everyone below 14th place (Orlando) saw the writing on the wall (“YOU SUCK”), MLS had six bad/irrelevant teams in 2015. The curious thing about all that is how many of them tried very hard to avoid that…
For one, nearly all of them signed designated players. Some aimed higher certainly – e.g., NYCFC with David Villa, Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo, Orlando with Kaka (and Carlos Rivas and Bryan Rochez), while the Chicago Fire called in a cavalry of new DPs with Gilberto, David Accam, Shaun Maloney, and Kennedy Igboananike – but it didn’t buy them much in 2015 (Chicago’s still searching for its feet, honestly). As you’ll see in the 2015 Form Guide, the Fire was never in it, but NYCFC and Orlando did all right for expansion teams – and I’m pretty sure 2015 was Orlando’s best season to date. [Ed. – Here’s to hoping your weird meets 2020’ weird and makes something beautiful Orlando; you are my MWoMLS sentimental favorite!] The rest of the outcast teams succumbed for different reasons: the Colorado Rapids, Houston and Real Salt Lake all had great-to-good defenses, but their attacks couldn’t knock down a sand castle. The Philadelphia Union couldn’t crawl out of the hole they dug over their first 10 games, while San Jose just fell short on goals scored and games won.
That actually makes for a dynamite segue to the next passage in this post – i.e., why I believed the Portland Timbers’ season would end horribly, and certainly without a post-season.
While the Timbers would close out the 2015 season by going 4-1-0 over their last five games, and that run started them rolling toward ultimate victory(!!), they went 2-4-4 in the 10 games before that. That 10-game…streak ended with Game 29 of the regular season, and that’s the point of this whole exercise: here’s what the rawest numbers (e.g., I’m not checking goal differential) looked like in Western Conference after Game 28:
Vancouver Whitecaps: 15-11-3, 48 pts.
Los Angeles Galaxy: 13-8-8, 48 pts.
FC Dallas: 14-10-5, 47 pts.
Sporting Kansas City: 12-9-8, 44 pts.
Seattle Sounders: 13-13-3, 42 pts.
Portland Timbers: 11-10-8, 41 pts.
San Jose Earthquakes: 11-11-7, 40 pts.
Real Salt Lake: 10-11-8, 38 pts.
Houston Dynamo: 9-12-8, 35 pts.
So, that’s the Timbers with a one-point toe-hold on sixth place. The deeper issue was the fact they weren’t getting points while many…no, make that all the teams around them were. Here are the records for each of the teams listed above 10 games prior to the “week” that ended with Game 29, listed according to record (and points earned):
Galaxy: 6-3-1 (19 pts.)
Whitecaps: 5-1-4 (19 pts.)
Dallas: 5-5-0 (15 pts.)
RSL: 5-5-0 (15 pts.)
Earthquakes: 4-3-3 (15 pts.)
SKC: 3-5-2 (11 pts.)
Houston: 3-5-2 (11 pts.)
Seattle: 3-6-1 (10 pts.)
Portland: 2-4-4 (8 pts.)
Houston didn’t look like much of a threat, but, against the Timbers’ eight-point “haul,” RSL and San Jose sure as hell did. Vancouver and LA looked like they were running away with things at the top of the table, so they didn’t really matter for Portland, and Dallas looked safe and with six points in hand. Neither Seattle nor SKC looked great but, being ahead, all they had to do was stay ahead of the tripping Timbers. With five games left to play, the Timbers looked like a decent bet to slip under San Jose and RSL and out of the playoffs. In the bigger picture, Portland had played most of the season to land at precariously mid-table. I had multiple conversations about the state of the team with friends, associates and collaborators during that time, but what I don’t have is a memory of anyone telling me that the Timbers would turn things around – never mind win MLS Cup.
And here’s the plot twist. That jaundiced view of Portland’s season remains my defining sensation of the 2015 season, but was it accurate? Because I can be a miserable fucking hardass as an analyst, I decided to go back and watch the highlights for that 10 game, 2-4-4 stretch and with an eye to figure out why I thought Portland was thoroughly fucking doomed to an early off-season. Also, and before I get rolling on this, I’d urge anyone who finds this post to go click on one of the links below and just watch the highlights. After three months in lockdown, that looks like a broadcast from another, much better world (so, vote in 2020, goddammit). I can still place myself at some of those games…shit, I’m tearing up over here…just need a minute…
“The streak” started July 11 with a 3-0 loss on the road against Philly. With six wins in seven games behind them, Portland opted to rest key players and, given a road game and a struggling opponent, why wouldn’t they? It went to shit – especially up Jeanderson’s side of the field – but the results didn’t come back after, and for complicated reasons. Because I’ve become more of a “results-are-form” dogmatist since 2015, all 10 of the results from this stretch make some kind of sense in the context of a title-winning team. Sure, Dallas kicked Portland’s ass(es) 4-1 in Dallas (3rd game in the stretch), and the Red Bulls ripped three points out of Providence Park (10th game), but those were the best teams of 2015, so you roll with that one (while knowing the road to any final rolls through teams like that). Going the other way, Portland needed to do better than edge a woeful (yet defensively-sound) Chicago team and draw a toothless Houston team, both at home. The Timbers lost at Seattle, something you hate to see, but should reasonably expect (especially with Diego Chara suspended), and they probably should have done better against San Jose on the road (and Adi came close, y'all; think how different this would sound), and SKC at home. On the plus side of the ledger, the stole three points out of Utah and, given Vancouver’s considerable lead in the standings and momentum, they did all right playing them to a 1-1 draw at home (in which Nat Borchers cleared yet another ball off the line).
So, no, nothing egregious happened over that 10 game stretch, so why did my underwear slip so far into my crack as I took all that in? If I had to relocate the pulse of what freaked out Timbers fans over those 10 game (or me, just me), the goal differential makes for a good suspect. The goals average for 2015 ended at 46.8, and Portland fell under in both goals for and against. The Timbers allowed 14 goals over those 10 games and scored only seven, so, without reviewing the archives (seriously, this would never go up), that feels like the likeliest cause for Timbers’ fans’ pessimism (or, just mine; I am a spokesman for nothing and no one).
Before mapping out the road to the Cup, I want to close commentary on the Timbers with one though. I had a blast going back through those highlights. It carried me back to a lot of happy memories – e.g., the realities, ideas, theories and arguments that people batted around as they watched a mess of a team win a title for the Rose City. The happy side saw Borchers’ presence and savvy when he bailed out the Timbers defense by clearing one ball after another off the line, not to mention him gracefully passing on a celebration for his game-winner against RSL. Valeri’s all over those highlights just making shit happen; it was nice to reconnect with how crazy-influential he was/is. You get to see Fanendo Adi in his MLS prime, something FC Cincinnati fans never got to see and that’s a shame. To…continue(?) with the debit side, those highlights provide at least two examples of why Timbers fans turned on Lucas Melano (e.g., home v Chicago and home v SKC), and, more than anything else, and I'll die on this fucking hill, why I never rated Adam Kwarasey. I don’t know who commanded his box, but it sure as shit wasn’t him. I also see what got up my ass about Liam Ridgewell. Overall, though, this was a good, fun, and likeable team. Jack Jewsbury got another trophy, Rodney Wallace became the-guy-least-likely-to, but who kept on doing it, and Darlington Nagbe continued his riddle inside an enigma inside a mystery trick (and, yes, the highlights include an audio snippet of a commentator pining after higher attacking output from him).
To get back to the mission (focus!), the defense looked bad here and there, and the attack took a while to get going sometimes, but the Timbers looked competitive across nearly every one of those 10 games. I didn’t look at the four wins and one loss that carried the Timbers to the post season, but they topped every team in the Western Conference over those last five games, with the exception of Dallas…and, boy, will that look like a head-fake before the end of this post…onto the playoffs.
I’ve already noted TFC’s exit from the knockout rounds, but I didn’t talk about the Montreal Impact team that showed them the door. If you watch the beginning of the highlights on Montreal’s 3-0 dunking on Toronto, you’ll see most of the classic line-up that nearly won the CONCACAF Champions League either the year after or the year after that. Toronto, who had most of their famous names by then, would take another year or two to meld. Between the way the New England Revolution limped into the post-season and that D.C. United never really mattered, I skipped DC’s win in the knockouts, but I did refresh my memory on Seattle’s action-packed 3-2 win over the post-Donovan Galaxy. The Galaxy wasn’t a bad team that season – and Seattle hadn’t really figured their shit out either – so it’s less surprising that the Sounders won that one on LA’s (glaring) mistakes (the spat between Donovan Ricketts and Steven Gerrard is/was priceless).
That said, there’s no question as to what was the great, epic, and eternal raw, uncut gem of the 2015 playoffs, maybe the best game in all of playoffs, ever in sport – aka, the Portland Timbers’ win over Sporting Kansas City, the double-post miracle, the night everyone was there in spirit if they couldn’t be there in body, the formative, bonding experience and, fuck it, this is when they won a title in my mind, but not the title. Because words can’t do justice to living through that glorious shit (the birth of my child next to that? eh…), here are the highlights from the game, highlights of the never-ending penalty duel, plus video of the whole goddamn game. I don’t roll that way, but, if you do…
The conference semifinals kicked off from there. In the West, Portland got past Vancouver, mostly in the second leg, but those highlights give a glimpse of how well Adi and Valeri worked together when they clicked (Chara's scored the insurance goal at the death in a way that’s very on-brand). Another attacking duo – that’d be Fabian Castillo and Mauro Diaz – showed they could have just as much fun in a 1-2 first-leg loss in Seattle to the Sounders, but credit Clint Dempsey for that game-winner and, wow, did Victor Ulloa have a crap series (actual foreshadowing for FC Cincy fans)? Those same teams battled hard in the second leg, creating what looked like plenty of chances, but it took Dallas until the 84th minute to go 1-0 up and take the lead in the series through Tesho Akindele. Chad Marshall answered back for Seattle and, in a changing of the guard moment straight outta fiction, Walker Zimmerman stole the show not once (with an even later header than Marshall’s to tie the series), but twice (by scoring the series-winning penalty kick and never let it be said that Zimmerman doesn’t piss ice water). Dallas would face Portland in the Western Conference Finals.
I couldn’t find highlights for the Red Bulls’ win over DC, so I’ll pick up the Eastern Conference at Montreal versus Columbus. Again, this was the Didier Drogba, Ignacio Piatti, Laurent Ciman Impact team, aka, the only truly Italian-inspired team in MLS history, the raw judo of the counter-attack, etc. They gifted Columbus the first goal in the series when Drogba nodded a soft clearance toward Federico Higuain (that’s bad). Impact iron man, Patrice Bernier, equalized thanks to some truly tragic marking by the Columbus defense (the same one that allowed 53 goals during the regular season, 2nd worst among playoff teams after Toronto, and bookmark that shit), and then Peter Vagenas scored the winner for Montreal when he picked the ball off Michael Parkhurst while he tried to pass it out of the back – something Columbus insisted on doing that season, and bookmark that too. Columbus won the return leg 3-1 and a couple things stood out. First, who remembers Cedric Mabwati? I ask because he carried Columbus through the playoffs from that point to MLS Cup. Columbus got back in the series with their standard approach during the Gregg Berhalter era, only to have Montreal’s Dilly Duka equalize for Montreal in Leg 2. After missing a (soft) PK, Crew SC scored two more goals, both set up by Mabwati. But, wait! There’s more!
Because they were the lower seed (because MLS), Columbus hosted the first leg of the Eastern Conference Finals, where they went ahead in the first minute and I want to pause here to acknowledge how cleanly that goal answers the complaint, “I don’t know why they just whack the ball upfield, chase it and hope for the best.” A very good Red Bulls team fought back hard – this was the season after Thierry Henry left, so it was peak Bradley Wright-Phillips up top with Sacha Kljestan, Felipe, and Lloyd Sam providing service, with Dax McCarty in support and Zubar, Matt Miazga and (lookie there), Sal Zizzo in defense – and they won every statistical category, but couldn’t win the game. The Red Bulls would win the second leg 1-0, but it bears acknowledging the wide array and volume of saves Columbus forced Luis Robles to make and that – who else? – Mabwati delivered Columbus’ insurance goal for the series late in the 1st leg (factually, Kei Kamara scored it). He did a credible reinterpretation of Swan Lake with a soccer ball on that one. I don’t recall whether Mabwati contributed much to Columbus, or any other MLS team in 2016 or thereafter, but the idea I want to flag here is that he was not a designated player.
The Western Conference Finals delivered an epic – even if it doesn’t look that way at first blush. Portland did run over Dallas in Leg 1 in Portland – they even got away with resting players: Valeri sat it out (suspended? Maybe), so it was Dairon Asprilla and Melano under Adi with Nagbe between them, and Jewsbury and Chara behind them. Dallas countered with David Texeira up top, Castillo, Diaz and, arguably one of the most reliable and underrated players in MLS, Michael Barrios behind him, and with Victor Ulloa and Kelyn Acosta behind them – not that that mattered. Ridgewell trundled in the first goal and Asprilla added another chapter to his Mr. October legend with a bomb of a goal that, like most of them, he couldn’t score again if he tried 20 times. Dallas was too good to go down without a fight and they pulled one back by neatly dismantling Portland’s left (and when did JeVaughn Watson stop being that good?), but the Timbers added one more through Borchers at the death giving them a 3-1 advantage.
Portland scored the first goal in the 2nd leg and the series looked finished. That specific goal is worth watching because you get a really nice glimpse of the Valeri/Adi connection – and it’s a nice reminder of how powerful Adi became we he stopped flopping and started fighting (he throws off Zimmerman with aplomb). Dallas battled back (again) scoring two beauties and, but for the grace Borchers, Dallas could have tied the damn series through Blaz Perez late in the game. (I will go to my grave believing Borchers was Portland’s most important defender). Things turned the other way and in the oddly-fitting way of Melano (of all people) dribbling in the goal that tied the game at 2-2 and ended the series (also, take a bow, kid; that's the least I can say after dumping on the kid for all those years).
I want to pause here to mourn one of the great tragedies in MLS history. Teams out of Dallas have had their share of shit years, but they’ve also put together their share of tough teams, entertaining teams, and teams that supplied both. In recent years, they created one of the most reliable pipelines for talent in the country and, against their attendance numbers, Dallas has deserved better attendance since Day 1. Their 2015 team was a damn good one, and probably their best shot at a major trophy, any major trophy (as in, fuck the U.S. Open Cup). I’m happy that the Timbers won in 2015, and for the same reason – i.e., who knows when this comes around again? – but I really feel for Dallas fans.
And, of course, MLS Cup happened after that. I’ve already mentioned the…nature of both of Portland’s goals (if VAR had existed back then, would they have called back Wallace’s goal? also, it’s like Columbus stopped playing or anything), but what really sucked the fun out of it was Columbus’ inability to get back into it. Yes, the game ended 2-1, which means the Crew scored, but it was an ugly orphan of a goal that relied more on Portland’s mistakes than Columbus’ talent. If you watch the highlights, you’ll see something else: Portland had really good chances at (literally) 10-minute intervals throughout the second half; hell, Michael Parkhurst got away with a hand-ball on one of ‘em (and a penalty kick shout as well, see the malfeasance link above), and that helps me feel less dirty about the Timbers’ second goal. Anyway, Portland won and it was a good thing. Honestly…
…though I have to say that I didn’t feel uncomplicatedly happy about all of it until the victory parade rolled past my office…shit, I should've traveled to Columbus for that one, amirite?
Even when Adi stepped up to take the PK in the RioT, I thought the season was done for, because that's the frame of mind I came into the game with. Galaxy up next seemed unbeatable, I was there in person to witness the previous dismantling and despite my being just 20 mikes down the road I passed on the second act expecting more of the same and no potential in it.
ReplyDeleteGolly how I was wrong, and goodness was that weird.
I knew, just KNEW, deep down we were meant to lose in the playoffs (except against the Caps, because "our house, in the middle of BC")... thank god I was wrong.
I was convinced the Timbers were dead by the end of the 10-game stretch obsessed over above. At some point, the entire march to the Cup achieved a Zen-life state of inevitability in my head, but I can't reconnect to when that was. If I had to guess, it was probably Leg 1 against Dallas.
ReplyDeleteThis was a big reason for the nagging fugue of anti-climax I felt during the final - especially after the Timbers went up two early. Watching a team that frustrated me all season win MLS Cup at the end of it just re-wired the pleasure centers in my brain, so now I spend most seasons pulling for the Shield and taking MLS Cup (and, to be fair, the U.S. Open Cup) as another, completely different shot at hardware...
...though, yes, winning MLS Cup has the benefit of being the one all the other teams talk about and get jealous of. I just had to get things compartmentalized right, so's I can enjoy it.
As you've argued in the past, in the context of playing youth, as there is no relegation there is very little downside to taking losses in the season - and in fact if you're bad enough you get money, because PARITY. There is only upside, Cupside if you will.
ReplyDeleteTaken together, the incentive to blood youth and the lack of punishment, makes the shield the least desirable trophy to pursue (ostensibly). In practice few teams take this approach, save say FCD who still managed a shield along the way. To hope that some team, perhaps your favorite, would din to pursue such a thing in the face of those constraints is truly a folly of desire only someone such as yourself could rationally pursue. And I mean that as a compliment of the highest order.
"Cupside." Nice.
DeleteIt's all about going home happy and how often you get to do it, man...
You get to leave the house???
Delete#PlagueJoeks