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| Yeah, yeah, all good. You forget me, I forget you. |
Honestly, my head is swimming after the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 draw away to the San Jose Earthquakes. Sweet Ginger Brown, where to begin?
Broadly speaking and specific circumstances notwithstanding, I will never understand why anyone expects happy revelations of any line-up that doesn’t involve some number of starers. The argument against is in the bare concept of “starter” - i.e., they’re first-choice for a reason. As such, a wholesale change to your local team’s starting Xi should be treated, and I mean this generally, as a “burner game” in the same sense drug dealers use burner phones - e.g., it’s not Plan A and/or what you use to call your family, or even your mistress.
After that top-line thought, things get really complicated…
I want to start with San Jose because, based on what I’ve seen, the current standings and/or their league-leading goals against record - 2.45 goals against, y’all - this is not a good team. I hadn’t seen the goal Jordan Morris scored against them (early) in the Seattle Sounders’ 7-1 demolition of them two, three games ago (for San Jose), but that’s a why are you even in this league moment. Getting beat by the soccer equivalent of the end-around is down-right shameful. Regardless of the specific alignment they chose for tonight (but it looks starter heavy), that’s the team Portland’s reserves played tonight and, frankly, it wasn’t encouraging. Going the other way, that means San Jose either couldn’t bury Portland’s B-team at home - where they haven’t won since August 31 of 2019 (and they lost six straight through the rest of the season) - and while rarely looking anything like goal-dangerous, despite having number heavily in their favor. To the credit of exactly one man (Valeri Qazaishvili, aka, Vako), they scored the one goal they needed tonight earn the draw...if just to avoid shame. And even that barely went in. Look at the box score and weep, San Jose fans.
They had quality shots, though, that, but for the grace of God and Steve Clark’s left or right shoulder (c’mon, do you care?) could have turned the game into a runaway - and at various points throughout. Suffice to say, starting Diego Chara in a sea of newbs had its consequences and the Timbers were fortunate to survive all that, and for as long as it went on (which is to say, Cade Cowell hit the wood work at the 82nd minute and Clark had to bail out Portland again and damn-near the death). In case I haven’t hammered this home enough, there’s a transition coming down the pike for the Timbers and things are looking…again, complicated.
If anything truly disturbed me about tonight’s draw, it was the general/collective lack of composure. There was an ebb and flow to all that - e.g., the first 15 minutes sucked, but they gradually punched back (not too hard) and eventually got a goal when a long ball into a midfield scrum released Yimmi Chara for his first-ever goal for the Timbers (which was, in fact, well taken).
I want to linger on Yimmi for a bit, because he, and the balance of the players who started tonight for Portland are the future, or at least some form of it. And the future is coming. I saw Yimmi’s upside for the first time tonight and, to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, it was good. It wasn’t much - e.g., stepping his left foot over the ball so he controlled both the ball and the space over it, combining smartly on the same side, and pushing the ball into the channel inside San Jose’s fullback (Paul Marie, I’m guessing) - but that, combined with the goal and the clear chance he had 10 minutes later fulfilled my hope that the Timbers would get something out of the “other Chara.” This was Yimmi’s best night as a Timber and that’s something, dammit.
It only gets weirder from here, and in the sense of 1) what just happened and, 2) does it really matter?
Bottom-line: the most sane strategic choice the Timbers can make right now is to play to keep themselves in the mix for the post-season, followed by trying to pull off the same thing they did during the MLS Is Back tournament…admittedly without the MVP from the same (hello, goodbye, Sebastian Blanco)…talk about taking a shit all over your silver lining. With that thought, I’m trying to place one or two things into the grand scheme.
First, and so long as Portland’s defense can get its shit together, they have the attacking talent to win 2020 Fucked-Up MLS Cup. As much as Timbers fans have rightly bitched about results - 1-3-3 since MLS Is Back - and the many, many goals conceded (considerable to horrific), the Timbers do tend to play better against better teams (e.g., the ones that feel obliged to attack), especially when they’re whole. The second piece of that argument rests on keeping in the (generous, so, c'mon, but also, thank you!) playoff mix, while giving the key starters enough time to rest to manage a tournament-winning run of games.
Is that a satisfying product to watch? No, not really. Would I accept a bunch of hideous games like tonight’s, frankly, fucking stupid draw against an audibly gasping San Jose Earthquakes team? Yes, yes, I would. All the same, and to repeat the clammy concern I tweeted after the game…
Gio’s game management was fucking appalling. Regardless of whether or not I believe Cristhian Paredes needs a long and/or eternal sit, any time you call in a bunch of players to either kill off or win a game and it descends into panic, whatever game-plan you had fell apart. If anything disturbed me about tonight’s draw it was the fundamental failure to control any part of the proceedings. I fully understood absorbing pressure over the first 20 minutes - especially in light of the late defensive record - but to play for the win over the final 15-20 minutes and with an attack that never felt like it knew where to go? I think the word is “folly.” In that situation, hit the brakes, play some possession soccer, if just to make the clearly leg-weary home team chase and add to their weariness. Portland had a couple chances to kill off the game earlier - e.g., a 3-v-1 in the first half the Pablo Bonilla broke with a shit pass, or Jeremy Ebobisse choking off a break-out by passing the ball to a well-marked Marvin Loria - and that might have flipped the dynamic, but, those chances in no way threatened James Marcinkowski’s goal (then again, the Timbers offered precious little in that regard); worse, they struggled to take even the things that were handed to them.
Suffice to say, there’s a lot going on with the Timbers right now (arguably, Portland, OR, is a generally stressful place to live at the mo). For what it’s worth, I don’t believe a mostly bench-player starting XI has what it takes to win in MLS right now. Going the other way, some players have shown themselves entirely capable as playing off some of the starters, even in the post-Seba era. With that, I’m going to close with some details.
- Eryk Williamson looked leggy tonight and got caught in possession too often. Rest him. Or do you have Renzo Zambrano on the roster for some other reason? If you're going to bleed points by choice - as the Timbers did tonight - what, exactly, will Zambrano do worse?
- That was (Diego) Chara’s worst outing in a while, and I really do blame the set up. The pain of watching Paredes look like me playing d-mid…sheer agony…
- I think the real story here is how well Felipe Mora, Jaroslaw Niezgoda, and Yimmi worked together. “Not well” springs to mind, but that doesn’t detract from how I feel about any of those players. As noted above, I’m higher on Yimmi than I’ve ever been and I’ve seen good things out of both Niezgoda and Mora. That said, replicability remains a big-ish concern with anything that looks like tonight’s line-up. Rephrasing, how many goals would that attacking set had to have scored to make you say, “Yessir, that’s the ticket!”
For what it’s worth, that strikes me as the key litmus test for your personal expectations. And mine. Till the next (fucking) game against (fucking) the San Jose Earthquakes (fucking Saturday [shit, said Sunday in the original, sorry for the error! (and thanks Ah Pook!] , worst day of the week).
I think that’s it for tonight. Till the next…event. Lord help us.
Broadly speaking and specific circumstances notwithstanding, I will never understand why anyone expects happy revelations of any line-up that doesn’t involve some number of starers. The argument against is in the bare concept of “starter” - i.e., they’re first-choice for a reason. As such, a wholesale change to your local team’s starting Xi should be treated, and I mean this generally, as a “burner game” in the same sense drug dealers use burner phones - e.g., it’s not Plan A and/or what you use to call your family, or even your mistress.
After that top-line thought, things get really complicated…
I want to start with San Jose because, based on what I’ve seen, the current standings and/or their league-leading goals against record - 2.45 goals against, y’all - this is not a good team. I hadn’t seen the goal Jordan Morris scored against them (early) in the Seattle Sounders’ 7-1 demolition of them two, three games ago (for San Jose), but that’s a why are you even in this league moment. Getting beat by the soccer equivalent of the end-around is down-right shameful. Regardless of the specific alignment they chose for tonight (but it looks starter heavy), that’s the team Portland’s reserves played tonight and, frankly, it wasn’t encouraging. Going the other way, that means San Jose either couldn’t bury Portland’s B-team at home - where they haven’t won since August 31 of 2019 (and they lost six straight through the rest of the season) - and while rarely looking anything like goal-dangerous, despite having number heavily in their favor. To the credit of exactly one man (Valeri Qazaishvili, aka, Vako), they scored the one goal they needed tonight earn the draw...if just to avoid shame. And even that barely went in. Look at the box score and weep, San Jose fans.
They had quality shots, though, that, but for the grace of God and Steve Clark’s left or right shoulder (c’mon, do you care?) could have turned the game into a runaway - and at various points throughout. Suffice to say, starting Diego Chara in a sea of newbs had its consequences and the Timbers were fortunate to survive all that, and for as long as it went on (which is to say, Cade Cowell hit the wood work at the 82nd minute and Clark had to bail out Portland again and damn-near the death). In case I haven’t hammered this home enough, there’s a transition coming down the pike for the Timbers and things are looking…again, complicated.
If anything truly disturbed me about tonight’s draw, it was the general/collective lack of composure. There was an ebb and flow to all that - e.g., the first 15 minutes sucked, but they gradually punched back (not too hard) and eventually got a goal when a long ball into a midfield scrum released Yimmi Chara for his first-ever goal for the Timbers (which was, in fact, well taken).
I want to linger on Yimmi for a bit, because he, and the balance of the players who started tonight for Portland are the future, or at least some form of it. And the future is coming. I saw Yimmi’s upside for the first time tonight and, to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, it was good. It wasn’t much - e.g., stepping his left foot over the ball so he controlled both the ball and the space over it, combining smartly on the same side, and pushing the ball into the channel inside San Jose’s fullback (Paul Marie, I’m guessing) - but that, combined with the goal and the clear chance he had 10 minutes later fulfilled my hope that the Timbers would get something out of the “other Chara.” This was Yimmi’s best night as a Timber and that’s something, dammit.
It only gets weirder from here, and in the sense of 1) what just happened and, 2) does it really matter?
Bottom-line: the most sane strategic choice the Timbers can make right now is to play to keep themselves in the mix for the post-season, followed by trying to pull off the same thing they did during the MLS Is Back tournament…admittedly without the MVP from the same (hello, goodbye, Sebastian Blanco)…talk about taking a shit all over your silver lining. With that thought, I’m trying to place one or two things into the grand scheme.
First, and so long as Portland’s defense can get its shit together, they have the attacking talent to win 2020 Fucked-Up MLS Cup. As much as Timbers fans have rightly bitched about results - 1-3-3 since MLS Is Back - and the many, many goals conceded (considerable to horrific), the Timbers do tend to play better against better teams (e.g., the ones that feel obliged to attack), especially when they’re whole. The second piece of that argument rests on keeping in the (generous, so, c'mon, but also, thank you!) playoff mix, while giving the key starters enough time to rest to manage a tournament-winning run of games.
Is that a satisfying product to watch? No, not really. Would I accept a bunch of hideous games like tonight’s, frankly, fucking stupid draw against an audibly gasping San Jose Earthquakes team? Yes, yes, I would. All the same, and to repeat the clammy concern I tweeted after the game…
Gio’s game management was fucking appalling. Regardless of whether or not I believe Cristhian Paredes needs a long and/or eternal sit, any time you call in a bunch of players to either kill off or win a game and it descends into panic, whatever game-plan you had fell apart. If anything disturbed me about tonight’s draw it was the fundamental failure to control any part of the proceedings. I fully understood absorbing pressure over the first 20 minutes - especially in light of the late defensive record - but to play for the win over the final 15-20 minutes and with an attack that never felt like it knew where to go? I think the word is “folly.” In that situation, hit the brakes, play some possession soccer, if just to make the clearly leg-weary home team chase and add to their weariness. Portland had a couple chances to kill off the game earlier - e.g., a 3-v-1 in the first half the Pablo Bonilla broke with a shit pass, or Jeremy Ebobisse choking off a break-out by passing the ball to a well-marked Marvin Loria - and that might have flipped the dynamic, but, those chances in no way threatened James Marcinkowski’s goal (then again, the Timbers offered precious little in that regard); worse, they struggled to take even the things that were handed to them.
Suffice to say, there’s a lot going on with the Timbers right now (arguably, Portland, OR, is a generally stressful place to live at the mo). For what it’s worth, I don’t believe a mostly bench-player starting XI has what it takes to win in MLS right now. Going the other way, some players have shown themselves entirely capable as playing off some of the starters, even in the post-Seba era. With that, I’m going to close with some details.
- Eryk Williamson looked leggy tonight and got caught in possession too often. Rest him. Or do you have Renzo Zambrano on the roster for some other reason? If you're going to bleed points by choice - as the Timbers did tonight - what, exactly, will Zambrano do worse?
- That was (Diego) Chara’s worst outing in a while, and I really do blame the set up. The pain of watching Paredes look like me playing d-mid…sheer agony…
- I think the real story here is how well Felipe Mora, Jaroslaw Niezgoda, and Yimmi worked together. “Not well” springs to mind, but that doesn’t detract from how I feel about any of those players. As noted above, I’m higher on Yimmi than I’ve ever been and I’ve seen good things out of both Niezgoda and Mora. That said, replicability remains a big-ish concern with anything that looks like tonight’s line-up. Rephrasing, how many goals would that attacking set had to have scored to make you say, “Yessir, that’s the ticket!”
For what it’s worth, that strikes me as the key litmus test for your personal expectations. And mine. Till the next (fucking) game against (fucking) the San Jose Earthquakes (fucking Saturday [shit, said Sunday in the original, sorry for the error! (and thanks Ah Pook!] , worst day of the week).
I think that’s it for tonight. Till the next…event. Lord help us.
All spot-on, as usual Jeff.
ReplyDeleteExcept the next SJ match is _Saturday_.
Assist!
ReplyDelete