 |
| Portland, right now. Still standing. |
I want to start this post on a human note - a sincere one too, because I don’t know what my “voice” sounds like in other people’s heads. As I watched the Portland Timbers…I’ll get into it later, but let’s call it very fortunate 1-0 win over the Seattle Sounders, I noted a lot of players who played half-absent, i.e., they couldn’t and/or weren’t focused for this reason or that. If/when I dump on any given player down below, let me make one thing clear: Portland is a heavy goddamn place to be right now, what with the fires, the right-wing goon parades, protests, plus an ongoing, never-ending pandemic, and, as such, I hereby pardon anyone for a lack of focus, from now and until things are either better, or we’ve figured out how to endure Idiocracy with some form of grace.
The good news: the Timbers gutted the Sounders! And I have the good fortune of writing that literally, because by what other name do you call such a perfect incision?
The bad news: sweet Jesus' saliva, what the hell was going on with the team tonight? The Timbers were masters of nothing and nowhere, stumbling bumpkins on their home patch.
The Timbers haven’t played this flat, dazed and passive for the length of 2020. I could be talked into calling this worse than any of the regular nightmares from the 2019 season, if only in the sense that more people did several things wrong: sure, the 2019 Timbers tortured us all by flailing to score for hundreds of minutes on end, but the Timbers survived global failures just now and all around the field: the defensive posture respected Seattle more than they’ll ever deserve, which undoubtedly followed from the dead-frog-wired-to-an-electrode energy that Portland just couldn’t seem to snap out of, plus they couldn’t pass fucking wind out of the defensive third, and since the fuck when does a Timbers team not use passes to the low-side of the middle third - aka, Diego Chara land - to play out of the back?
I want to explain a hyphenated phrase in the above, because it might not be perfectly clear - e.g., “dead frog wired to an electrode energy.” The inspiration comes from either high school science, or maybe a dream I should be more worried about, but the broad image is this: it’s what happens when you flash electricity through a recently-pithed frog, as in it dances a bit, because Frankenstein wasn’t all wrong, just badly written. This was a damned strange game, and the strangest thing about it was how Portland would suddenly rouse themselves and send a flurry of shots toward Seattle’s goal and a suddenly anxious Stefan Frei (only he wasn’t so anxious, seeing as he only had the one save to make). These didn’t happen all that often and, fitting nicely with the metaphor, they happened less and less often the longer the game went on. A dead frog is still a dead frog, you see…
Speaking for myself, I need to see bright spots today (it’s been a rough one), so I’m going to dwell on the positives. First, Yimmi Chara scored another goal! (Link above! There was only one goal!) Better still, Jeremy Ebobisse provided not just that sharp, perfectly-weighted assist, but he added another one later in the first half (no stand-alone highlights there, unless they’re in the long-play reel, or MLS-in-15), and that’s on top of some clever, well-delivered cross-field switches of play, and a general collection of good ideas for what one does in the attacking third. Yimmi deserves a shout as well, even if his influence slipped as the game wore on; he’s looking more and more connected to the team as time goes on. Diego Chara, on the other hand…what can I say except that he played like two players and on both sides of the ball. Live. Ing. Legend.
The honors get harder to hand out after that. Steve Clark was positioned well through most the game and made at least one impressive save, but he strayed ill-advisedly far from his line too often, and he has this overall…general…looseness about him. In all honestly, I like Clark more than I should, and for most of the wrong reasons, reasons I can’t get into [Ed. - This is an elaborate way of saying Clark has never stopped making me nervous and probably never will, no, not even if Portland wins an MLS Cup with him between the sticks; the word I’m straining to avoid is “underdog” and all its connotations, but that’s exactly why I want him to win that MLS Cup.]
Let’s see, Jorge Villafana was decent…not great, just good in moments, like Portland as a whole (I’m toggling back and forth between the line-up and this post as I do this), I didn’t notice Julio Cascante, so that’s probably all right, um, both Diego Valeri and Jaroslaw Niezgoda looked competent on the rare occasions they got the ball…yeah, I guess that’s it.
I don’t want to linger on what went wrong, so the short version is Eryk Williamson looked flat as hell, and Dario Zuparic played sloppy. At the same time, that feels like singling out two players who had the same failings as every other Timber tonight, only more often and (after I keyed on them and started obsessing, frankly) more vividly. Williamson, especially. Look, the man wasn't himself tonight. And if that's the new (or old) him...shudder...
All in all, and without regard to what caused it, something felt off about the Timbers tonight. They showed less positive energy winning tonight than they did losing 2-4 to Los Angeles FC. They allowed Seattle attackers to creep and crawl all over their defensive third and generally failed to mind their half of the field as any decent counter-attacking team would - e.g., counters work a lot better when you force unexpected turnovers somewhere on the field; Portland looked content to sit back and let Seattle solve them, which, per the box score, they did 19 times, with six of them on target. The Timbers played with fire tonight, without question, and…they really did get away with it.
And I guess that’s the big take-away. If this wasn’t the worst game of Portland’s thoroughly-fucked-up 2020, it belongs in the running. They managed, at most, 15 minutes of competent soccer out of a 90-minute game and the only thing to say to that is, Thank you, Jesus, because they had no business getting even one point out of that pig in a poke (and what does that actually mean, because I’ve never looked into it), never mind three.
To give Seattle their due, they should have won this game twiceover in the first half (given some links above, they could have had three or four), and there’s no question they played the better game tonight. In the same vein, maybe they deserve credit for creating the defensive cul-de-sacs all over the field that clogged the Timbers preferred release valves. Going against that, they missed a ton of good shots in good spots; again, credit to them for creating the shots, but self-harm is self-harm. If you look at their line-up (no, the sidebar that just lists the names), every player in that list made at least one dangerous play; four of them did at least two: and yet they’ve still got that zero on the scoreboard.
As for the Timbers, I’m going to take it for granted that they won’t be this bad next week or the week after that, because they haven’t been this bad all season long. On a more sharply practical level, Portland currently has six-points’ worth of give between them and the wrong side of the fucked-up 2020 playoffs (i.e., they only have to finish 8th in a 12-team conference, and the thought completes itself). To put that another way, this is like a lot of MLS seasons: all any team really has to do is survive the regular season and then hit the post-season the best possible shape and form they can manage…
…so, from Portland’s point of view, that’s a fucked-up 2020, only with the same set of players on a shorter time-line for recovery/reintegration into the side. So, to get back to larger realities, yes, Sebastian Blanco is gone for the season and that’s a blow. The question becomes, what can you do to work around that absence, and that’s with a heavy reference to some of what Ebobisse did out there tonight and what Williamson has done on earlier occasions, and how to work that in with the rest. On the other side of the team, how much of the starting core can you get back and keep back - e.g., is Larrys Mabiala tentative, or do you want to start getting whatever alternative you use into its best possible shape?
Anyway, those are just some thoughts and/or the thing I do to think about everything but everything. Until the next one, take care.
The good news: the Timbers gutted the Sounders! And I have the good fortune of writing that literally, because by what other name do you call such a perfect incision?
The bad news: sweet Jesus' saliva, what the hell was going on with the team tonight? The Timbers were masters of nothing and nowhere, stumbling bumpkins on their home patch.
The Timbers haven’t played this flat, dazed and passive for the length of 2020. I could be talked into calling this worse than any of the regular nightmares from the 2019 season, if only in the sense that more people did several things wrong: sure, the 2019 Timbers tortured us all by flailing to score for hundreds of minutes on end, but the Timbers survived global failures just now and all around the field: the defensive posture respected Seattle more than they’ll ever deserve, which undoubtedly followed from the dead-frog-wired-to-an-electrode energy that Portland just couldn’t seem to snap out of, plus they couldn’t pass fucking wind out of the defensive third, and since the fuck when does a Timbers team not use passes to the low-side of the middle third - aka, Diego Chara land - to play out of the back?
I want to explain a hyphenated phrase in the above, because it might not be perfectly clear - e.g., “dead frog wired to an electrode energy.” The inspiration comes from either high school science, or maybe a dream I should be more worried about, but the broad image is this: it’s what happens when you flash electricity through a recently-pithed frog, as in it dances a bit, because Frankenstein wasn’t all wrong, just badly written. This was a damned strange game, and the strangest thing about it was how Portland would suddenly rouse themselves and send a flurry of shots toward Seattle’s goal and a suddenly anxious Stefan Frei (only he wasn’t so anxious, seeing as he only had the one save to make). These didn’t happen all that often and, fitting nicely with the metaphor, they happened less and less often the longer the game went on. A dead frog is still a dead frog, you see…
Speaking for myself, I need to see bright spots today (it’s been a rough one), so I’m going to dwell on the positives. First, Yimmi Chara scored another goal! (Link above! There was only one goal!) Better still, Jeremy Ebobisse provided not just that sharp, perfectly-weighted assist, but he added another one later in the first half (no stand-alone highlights there, unless they’re in the long-play reel, or MLS-in-15), and that’s on top of some clever, well-delivered cross-field switches of play, and a general collection of good ideas for what one does in the attacking third. Yimmi deserves a shout as well, even if his influence slipped as the game wore on; he’s looking more and more connected to the team as time goes on. Diego Chara, on the other hand…what can I say except that he played like two players and on both sides of the ball. Live. Ing. Legend.
The honors get harder to hand out after that. Steve Clark was positioned well through most the game and made at least one impressive save, but he strayed ill-advisedly far from his line too often, and he has this overall…general…looseness about him. In all honestly, I like Clark more than I should, and for most of the wrong reasons, reasons I can’t get into [Ed. - This is an elaborate way of saying Clark has never stopped making me nervous and probably never will, no, not even if Portland wins an MLS Cup with him between the sticks; the word I’m straining to avoid is “underdog” and all its connotations, but that’s exactly why I want him to win that MLS Cup.]
Let’s see, Jorge Villafana was decent…not great, just good in moments, like Portland as a whole (I’m toggling back and forth between the line-up and this post as I do this), I didn’t notice Julio Cascante, so that’s probably all right, um, both Diego Valeri and Jaroslaw Niezgoda looked competent on the rare occasions they got the ball…yeah, I guess that’s it.
I don’t want to linger on what went wrong, so the short version is Eryk Williamson looked flat as hell, and Dario Zuparic played sloppy. At the same time, that feels like singling out two players who had the same failings as every other Timber tonight, only more often and (after I keyed on them and started obsessing, frankly) more vividly. Williamson, especially. Look, the man wasn't himself tonight. And if that's the new (or old) him...shudder...
All in all, and without regard to what caused it, something felt off about the Timbers tonight. They showed less positive energy winning tonight than they did losing 2-4 to Los Angeles FC. They allowed Seattle attackers to creep and crawl all over their defensive third and generally failed to mind their half of the field as any decent counter-attacking team would - e.g., counters work a lot better when you force unexpected turnovers somewhere on the field; Portland looked content to sit back and let Seattle solve them, which, per the box score, they did 19 times, with six of them on target. The Timbers played with fire tonight, without question, and…they really did get away with it.
And I guess that’s the big take-away. If this wasn’t the worst game of Portland’s thoroughly-fucked-up 2020, it belongs in the running. They managed, at most, 15 minutes of competent soccer out of a 90-minute game and the only thing to say to that is, Thank you, Jesus, because they had no business getting even one point out of that pig in a poke (and what does that actually mean, because I’ve never looked into it), never mind three.
To give Seattle their due, they should have won this game twiceover in the first half (given some links above, they could have had three or four), and there’s no question they played the better game tonight. In the same vein, maybe they deserve credit for creating the defensive cul-de-sacs all over the field that clogged the Timbers preferred release valves. Going against that, they missed a ton of good shots in good spots; again, credit to them for creating the shots, but self-harm is self-harm. If you look at their line-up (no, the sidebar that just lists the names), every player in that list made at least one dangerous play; four of them did at least two: and yet they’ve still got that zero on the scoreboard.
As for the Timbers, I’m going to take it for granted that they won’t be this bad next week or the week after that, because they haven’t been this bad all season long. On a more sharply practical level, Portland currently has six-points’ worth of give between them and the wrong side of the fucked-up 2020 playoffs (i.e., they only have to finish 8th in a 12-team conference, and the thought completes itself). To put that another way, this is like a lot of MLS seasons: all any team really has to do is survive the regular season and then hit the post-season the best possible shape and form they can manage…
…so, from Portland’s point of view, that’s a fucked-up 2020, only with the same set of players on a shorter time-line for recovery/reintegration into the side. So, to get back to larger realities, yes, Sebastian Blanco is gone for the season and that’s a blow. The question becomes, what can you do to work around that absence, and that’s with a heavy reference to some of what Ebobisse did out there tonight and what Williamson has done on earlier occasions, and how to work that in with the rest. On the other side of the team, how much of the starting core can you get back and keep back - e.g., is Larrys Mabiala tentative, or do you want to start getting whatever alternative you use into its best possible shape?
Anyway, those are just some thoughts and/or the thing I do to think about everything but everything. Until the next one, take care.
I saw a lot of Cascante on Weds night... too much for my liking was borderline clumsy, and although it proved effective, another ref might have challenged his place in the game.
ReplyDeleteI'm prone to write this one off given the workload over the last 10 days, 360+ mins, but that takes me to the coaching staff. They did not set this team up for success. I get the rotation, but there's no way Valeri should be starting back to back games, especially when the second one is Seattle, even in a Blanco-less side.