Portland Timbers 1-1 Club America: Cold Truths & Something I Can’t Readily Identify

Can I interest you in life insurance?

I saw something tonight in the Portland Timbers 1-1 draw against Club America that I can’t help, but bring up - and mostly because it’s the first thought that came to me when I stepped away (taking the dog out for a shit makes room for thoughts). I’ve rarely seen Diego Chara a step beyond like he was over the first 20 minutes of tonight’s game. Club America hardly put on a clinic, but seeing Chara visibly chase the play like that looks like something broadcast from another universe.

It’s also the future that every Timbers fan knows is coming. The same thing goes for watching Diego Valeri watch the other end of a give-and-go roll by; because he can’t cover the ground in a way that really pulls apart the defense, his teammates have to play that ball differently. That or figure out something else to do with the ball entirely.

Valeri had his moments out there, but, because CONCACAF Champions League (CCL) semifinals, this game played at a high speed - i.e., exactly the kind of game that I expect to lose Valeri more and more. He’s not past it or anything…shit’s just changed. As for Chara, he started hip-checking motherfuckers all over from the 20th minute on; I last recorded next-level activity out of him around the 72nd minute, but there were times throughout the game he straight up cheetah-gazelle-d a guy on America (that is, ambushed a player from beyond who thought he had one more second of quiet). One Timbers legend can still play the same game, the other guy…I’m watching. Seasons change, the sun sets lower, it’s life, people.

Back to business, what to make of that 1-1 home draw?

Personally, I count two ways to read it. First, Club America is visibly a better team - and I mean that globally. The speed of thought is better, the movement sharper, the defense reorganizes like one of those goddamn liquid terminators (Terminators? Is it capitalized?), and, as I tweeted somewhere during the game, they shrank space fast enough sometimes that looked like they had 12 players out there. Hell, I’d even call the way they manage the game - e.g., the way they pause it to slow down the game, the flops…just everything - a little bit smoother. It’s one of those, you notice, but it’s never quite enough for you, never mind the ref, to make anything of it. Call it one a pervasive intangible.

Add the first half of the game: given the balance of everything - e.g., the (ballpark) 67-33 split in America’s favor in possession (as of the 33rd minute; it ended closer), and not the dicking around in the back kind by any means, more like bats flying out of a fucking cave - Portland did pretty damn well to give them as little they did. Timbers fans know the end-result, of course, Claudio Bravo gives Richard Sanchez a leg to fall over, etc. Penalty to America…which Roger Martinez buries. While I think every Portland fan would call the penalty stupid and unfortunate, I doubt many would argue it wasn’t earned: America was the clearly the better team over the first half…which raises the obvious problem.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 2: Embracing (Delicious) Chaos

The first image under "chaos." Nuts.

And we’re back for another Major League Soccer results round-up, Week 2 this time. As with last week, this post files the results for the week under three (subjective, yet reasonable) categories:

Expected (makes sense based on who’s playing who and where)
Noted (makes enough sense, but with some wrinkle worth flagging)
Holy Shit, What? (varying degrees of disbelief based on the match-up)

First things first, I committed to taking a longer look (e.g., MLS in 15 highlights, plus a long look at the stats) at three “Holy Shit, What?” results each week, and MLS went and delivered an extra one. Sadly, MLS’s video team failed to…property motivate the people who splice and dice the highlights into 15-minute form, which meant I could only see more of the three games I wanted to instead of four, with the San Jose Earthquakes’ large-margin win over FC Dallas winding up as the odd game out. I would have embraced the chance to see more, it being early season and all, and with a goal of building better assumptions, but I play the cards I’m dealt. As such, I’ll have to file San Jose v Dallas under “noted” for now, even if I see it as more "Holy Shit, What?" personally. That result joins five others in the "noted" category, while another four results came in as “expected.” Put it all together and you’ve got eight results with a little intrigue about them against four predictable ol’ duds.

That’s another way of saying, fun week, MLS! If I leaned too hard into any theory going into Week 2, that’d be the expectation that hosting would calm some unsteady starts. While that held up for the most part, literally all of the “Holy Shit, What?” results broke that mold. In the grander scheme, serve it up: what’s better for keeping an audience’s attention but more surprises and flies in the proverbial ointment? That said, early as we are in the 2021 season, no judgments below are firm and, should they read that way, just hear me tapping the sign that reads “no judgments are firm.” Speaking only for myself, the early surprises surround the teams that I might have overrated early, most of ‘em, but not all, in the Western Conference. Which would be good news for my Portland Timbers…

On to the review.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: Free Points!

So filthy.

I’ll start with a note to anyone who runs the game, whether in the front office or from the coach’s bench: soccer is one hell of a lot more fun between two teams who want to win; the visuals fall apart when you throw in one team that doesn’t want to lose. The Portland Timbers and the Houston Dynamo FC played it right tonight, so credit to both teams. That was fun!

Moving on, how do you spell G-R-A-V-Y? Three points at home while resting your starters. Just in fewer letters.

Gods in heavens, where do I begin?

Due to general enthusiasm, my notes on the Timbers 2-1 home/understudy win over Houston read (in general terms) as, “oooh, did you see that?!” As such, I’m going to do two things in this post:

1) Address the game in general terms; and
2) pass out player grades (or comments) for every Timber who played tonight.

So, I’ve never done player grades (at least that I can recall…hiccup!), but, given that Portland decided to lead with its depth (classic weak-hand trump game strategy, btw), going that route feels appropriate for this one. As we all know, there’s a long season ahead and that points to the wisdom of Portland priming its cover in every position possible - and, based on tonight’s result, progress looks good. I’ll get to that before digging into the player ratings, but first, let’s talk general terms.

The Game
There was no question as to who came out to win and who came out to contain early - that was Portland and Houston, respectively, and almost to a puzzling extent given everything that followed. The Timbers scored very early, and through what I thought (or what I sold to myself as) a Yimmi Chara dummy off a, frankly, brilliant move by Pablo Bonilla move/cross from the flank, only it wasn’t a dummy. Yimmi missed it, but Dairon Asprilla smartly played the odds and followed the play to slice home a pedestrian goal (by his standards). The Portland Timbers irregulars moved the ball smartly all over the field and all was right with the world….until it wasn’t.

New York City FC 5-0 FC Cincinnati: The Neverending Roster Build

All due respect to TQL Stadium, this is Cincy's home.

This game was (much) more and (a lot) less of a projection of what I saw in FC Cincinnati’s 2021 season opener: Cincy doesn’t know how to move the ball forward fer shit and, once they lose control of a game, they’re looking at [X minutes] of emergency defending. They failed very, very badly to contain the damage this week, and went all the way down 5-0 on the road against New York City FC. And, with the way NYC played through, over and around them over the last half hour of the game, it could have ended 7-0.

I’m not going to futz around much with the stats or the box score - what does it matter with that final score, for one? - but instead will talk about some obvious, present realities.

Cincinnati Failed to Address Its Greatest Need (…even if it wasn’t obvious)
I’m not talking about the central defense here, though that obviously remains an issue; a starting tandem of Nick Hagglund and Tom Pettersson will only carry them so far - and Maikel van Der Werff and a 21-year-old kid from Ecuador don’t look like saviors to me.

It is still what remains in front of them that most worries me, i.e., an incoherent midfield scheme made WTFAYFKM (that’s “what the fuck are you fucking kidding me”) worse by way of just baffling personnel decisions. I’ll expand on Kamohelo Mokotjo below, but can Jaap Stam kindly pull the fucking plug on the Yuya Kubo central midfielder experiment and light that plug on fire, please? An idea that looked fucking stupid turned out to be fucking stupid: just about anyone should have seen that coming. Kubo is not a central midfielder; on the evidence, he’s barely a forward or a winger. Next…

I’ve sat on judging Mokotjo to see what he could do and the current returns ain’t good. They absolutely suck, in fact, and to flag just one thing in the stats section, please see the passing map around No. 15 and those thin, short forward lines. For my money, the root of Cincy’s problem with moving the ball forward follows from playing Kubo and Mokotjo together; neither has shown they know how to do it - or even how to get to the ball to other players who can (more later). Worse, neither shows any capacity to stop traffic from running back toward Cincinnati’s (again) sub-standard defense. With the ball rolling the wrong direction for the (overwhelming?) majority of both games, it’s a miracle humping a miracle that Cincinnati didn’t start 2021 with two losses.

Vancouver Whitecaps 1-0 Portland Timbers: Unremarkable, Regrettable, Dull.

The 2nd image under "unremarkable" somehow.

I am struggling powerfully to come up with anything useful, meaningful, or even mildly interesting about the Portland Timbers’ season-opening loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps and all I’ve managed so far is to marvel at how Richard Farley managed to write so many words about a game that offered so little for The Mothership (then again, I sometimes think they get paid by the hype).

Ooh, just thought of a couple more: the game ended 0-1. Let’s see, what else? What else?

There’s the game’s lone goal, of course, via a loud, collective brain-fart the defense allowed by letting the ‘Caps large striker, Lucas Cavallini, slip into a wide patch of space for a free header off a corner kick. The Timbers appeared to let in another goal on a later set-piece, but that one was called back for either a handball or offside; beyond signs of continued shakiness on set-pieces, it’s hard to care about a non-goal that wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the game. Had Portland been knocking on Maxime Crepeau’s goal, that would have been a moment, obviously, but I didn’t see (or, to keep with the knocking metaphor, hear) anything worth noting. Related, I’m looking at The Mothership’s collection of highlight clips, which didn’t bother to include Felipe Mora getting a step behind Vancouver’s defense around the 89th minute. For what it’s worth, and on the grounds it felt unremarkable in the moment, I don't mind the omission.

Unremarkable. There’s a good word. Regrettable? Dull? Disappointed? Nah. I don’t have the energy for disappointment.

I have one external note: for good or ill (I’ll tell you in six-seven days), and because I don’t have (fucking) ROOT Sports at home, I actually watched this one at a bar. The place was pretty quiet, fortunately, but I still sat about 20 feet from the TV, so I couldn’t see very well. The combination of that distance, the weirdness of the setting (who among us gets out much?), and just operating outside what has become routine translated into something of a metaphorical distance; put it this way, I’ve gotten used to the quiet of isolation for these games. Going the other way, given the near-complete absence of tension and/or drama, what conceivable setting could have turned that dull fucker of a game into something compelling? Everything I can come up with (e.g., “being suspended over a giant pit of ______”) would only, and perhaps blissfully, provide an excuse to stop watching.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 1 Review: The Expected, the Noted and the Holy Shit, What?

Think one of those set ups in volleyball. #Goals.

And…yes, I’m attempting a form of global coverage of Major League Soccer. Again. Fear & Self-Loathing in Hillsboro, etc.

The approach turns on the gap between expectations versus results, and with a strong emphasis on the results gained in the actual time/space dimension we all occupy. The mechanics are also pretty straightforward: 1) I check who’s playing who each week and, based on what I think/know, take a stab at what seems likeliest to happen in each game and post it on the twitters (and the dozens of notepads littered around my house), and 2) note what actually happened in these weekly posts. And, once I have said results in hand, I’ll sort them into the following categories:

Expected
Noted
Holy Shit, What?

That, only in reverse order. The meat of these posts will dig into three (3; and only three) of the “Holy Shit, What?” results, which games I’ll review through the MLS-in-15 videos, box scores and anything else I can think of besides post-game interviews because, dang me, are those things as worthless as a White House press conference. I’ll start the post with those three, continue through the “Noted” results - i.e., games with something that feel worth flagging for future reference - and wrap up with the “Expected” results - i.e., the ones that follow expectations. My notes on the latter two groups won't take that long, honest.

Well, that’s the program. If that doesn’t make sense, just look at this Week 1 review as an open hand in cards. The concept will (or should) make sense by the end. Let’s roll - and, the link to The Mothership's Buffet of Easy Data shows up as a link in the score of each game. I'll throw in the odd fitting link, but the rest is up to you.

Nashville SC 2-2 FC Cincinnati: Take the Point and Leave Town VERY Quietly

Just makes you sad at a certain point...

After taking a 2-0 lead that no one saw coming, FC Cincinnati spent the final 70+ minutes of tonight’s 2-2 draw at Nashville SC showing, in thorough detail, that they still don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I’ll squeeze all the bright spots out of this lipsticked pig that I can below, but, golly, was that a shit-show. And to think I came in with low expectations…

To ac…centuate the positive, Cincinnati genuinely deserved that first goal. It came during a strong period, the play was sharp and aggressive, it involved all the shiny new toys: there was a lot to love about it, not least the insidious promise of better days comin’. Luciano Acosta was where they needed him to be (just a shade off the front of the attack), Ronald Matarrita split two defenders with an excellently weighted pass. In the moment it felt like they would do it all day. And the way Cincy’s press frazzled and dislocated Nashville’s passing out of the back? You asked yourself, where is Dax McCarty? Where is Anibal Godoy?

Little by little, though, you couldn’t stop seeing McCarty and Godoy. Worse, if you weren’t seeing them, you saw the ball advance via Daniel Lovitz, Alistair Johnston and the very and lethally lively Randall Leal. Once that started, what Cincinnati fans watched tonight stopped being a game and turned into an exercise in extreme patience. Fuck it, call it indulgence.

When the very expensive and thereafter invisible Brenner got close enough to punish a dodgy touch by Nashville’s ‘keeper Joe Willis, he gave Cincinnati nine lives’ worth of cushion to take something out of the game. It was a good moment for the kid, no question, but it’s nothing a team can rely on for production; to be a dick about it, it falls within the realm of a “hustle play” that any eager mug can do and, as such, falls well short of $15 million expectations. Credit where it’s due, Brenner took responsibility for the resulting (and just) penalty kick and went on to put his shot past a (very large) ‘keeper who guessed right.

FC Cincinnati would go on to burn through eight-and-a-half of those lives, at a minimum. Honestly, if Hany Mukhtar was worth half his DP tag, Cincinnati would have lost by a goal or two; Dave Romney had a free header from six yards out for gods’ sake, which extended the borrowed time well beyond any reasonable credit. The gods did ‘em right tonight - or wrong, depending how you look at it. The very, very hard reality about the rest of the season: the gods can only help them so much, and FC Cincinnati has to sort out the rest. And, based on tonight at least, they don’t look up for it.

Portland Timbers 5-0 CD Marathon: Exploring the Meaning of "Stacked"

Poor CD Marathon...

To start with the biggest take-away, the Portland Timbers will roll into the 2021 regular season immediately after steam-rolling CD Marathon 5-0. Now, that is how you want to roll into a regular season. Some clammy little fretting aside (which I’ll bury for now), I’ve got nothing but positives about how the Timbers played tonight, so time to get after it.

I keep seeing loose talk about the Timbers being “stacked” at most positions (or "absurdly deep") - especially from pundits circling the orbit of The Mothership - and, in all honesty, that drives me a little batty. I mean, fully armed, equipped, and with the Y-fronts thrown on right (i.e., with Sebastian Blanco, Jaroslaw Niezgoda, and Jeremy Ebobisse whole and healed), sure, Portland is stacked on the attacking side. The central defense, on the other hand, is…not stacked, not unless Zac McGraw shows something when he gets the chance. Moving further up the field, things look better than swell so long as Diego Chara and Eryk Williamson can start - the latter, in particular, show a positively Darlington-Nagbe-esque capacity to play out of pressure in the defensive and defensive side of the middle third tonight - but, every time I read about Portland’s depth, I keep wondering how much time those commenters have spent watching Cristhian Paredes, or whether they’ve seen Octavio Zambrano actually play in some alternate universe I haven’t visited yet. And, sure, you can expand that out to, say, Marvin Loria, even Andy Polo: the under-studies didn’t exactly slay 2020, which leaves me wondering what the hell those people saw that I didn’t…

…and, no, that’s not the clammy little fretting. Wait for it…

This insight doesn’t cut too deep - the broadcast booth picked up in it late in the opening 45 minutes, fer crissakes - but, if Dairon Asprilla can regularly contribute even 2/3 of what he delivered tonight? And if Yimmi Chara’s 2021 matches the second half of his 2020, the Timbers really are stacked, if only in the offense. And that's several miles far from nothing.

Getting at how strange and delightful that concept really is takes some thinking. By that I mean, step back and think about how many conversations you’ve had or read about Portland’s depth over the past…say, four-five years. Once you’re there, ask yourself this: how many times has Asprilla been a real part of that conversation? Now, hold that thought in your head and think about everything a fully-fit version of this Portland roster could throw at the opposition; think of a well-rested Diego Valeri, Blanco and Niezgoda with time to fully recover; think of the possibilities with Ebobisse just about anywhere in that attack. It’d be a like a hydra that grows back two heads for everyone you cut off. (Also, if that’s the way the hydra really works…look, just don’t embarrass me, I’m sensitive.)

CD Marathon 2-2 Portland Timbers: Solutions & Problems

Almost this bad. No exaggeration...

If someone told me at 3:00 pm PST that the Portland Timbers would tie Honduras’ CD Marathon 2-2 in the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions’ League home-and-home series, I would have shaken his/her hand and said, "thank you very much." And, some really unnerving details aside, I’m still there. I’ll pass quickly over the caveats - e.g., Portland’s knee-deep in a long off-season, a playing surface composed entirely of divots lumped together, travel, nerves, age, etc. - and offer two big take-aways:

1) Portland did allright despite playing in the soccer equivalent of half-finished sentences; and

2) if the central defense doesn’t tighten the hell up, Steve Clark’s gonna need longer arms.

One final thought: it took me 2/3 of the game to remember that Marathon hails from Honduras, and not Nicaragua, and that realization took the edge off the panic a little. No disrespect to Nicaragua intended, but one of those nations is ahead of the other in real-world soccer terms. Now, some notes on the game…

First things first, I saw both combinations, and attempts thereof (thereto?), that will actually come off at Providence Park and that makes me more optimistic about the second leg. Even when Marathon’s defending forced a hitch in the momentum, Portland’s players generally had sound ideas about how to move the ball forward; the grass grabbed the ball like Velcro on passes and dribbles alike - so many scooped passes, so many stifled first touches, and for both teams, by the way - but the thought process came through. My one caveat on that follows from Marathon’s peculiar defending, especially in the first half: defending can come from either pressure or organization, but the Hondurans offered neither, and even seemed mildly surprised, when Portland played passes in between their lines. I’m not sure how much the Timbers will see that in league play this season, but, what the hell? Fingers crossed.

Drilling down, I saw hints of a couple problems in defense, neither of them good. Seeing Portland’s central defenders struggle that hard with literal basics like tracking runs - see Marathon’s first equalizer and the damn-near go-ahead goal from a disturbing similar spot not even 10 minutes later - puts very direct questions as to much necessary shit the central tandem has sorted out. Based on the highlights (which, son of a bitch, don't appear to allow you to select individually any more), you’d have to ask every player but Josecarlos Van Rankin to explain himself (Larrys Mabiala, more than the rest), but that was nothing less than a tap-in - a real gut-punch given that Portland had at long last broken through via Felipe Mora just…wow, four minutes earlier.

MLS Weakly, 04 03 2021: The Final Preseason Round-Up, with a Dash of Futures

I'm not rubbing my nipples, you are.

Against earlier promises, I’ve decided to take another run at organizing some general thoughts about the 2021 Major League Soccer regular season. Because The Mothership didn’t hire enough interns (or wake him/her up or something), the stand-alone “Preseason Schedule and Results” gets updated without due religiosity, this whole thing also doubles as a sleuthing mission for all the preseason results I can find. If they won’t do the work, etc.

As with the…oh, past three to five seasons, I’ll be leaning into trends in the results as the clearest instrument for picking up where the winds are blowing around MLS. I think I’ve got a plan for how to do that, if loosely, but that whole process starts with expectations of what should happen when Team A meets Team Z, say, in Team Z’s hometown. The end result won’t quite be “power rankings” - because fine-tune ranking in this league means nothing in any scheme, grand or otherwise - but to, again, create a broad set of assumptions of how the first two weeks of regular season games look likeliest to shake out. Oh, and expectations aren’t predictions. I don’t do predictions. I do, however, like it when a team surprises me…c’mon, FC Cincinnati. Do me like that…

One final preliminary, I have not yet organized any team’s preseason results into a formal preseason record - mostly because I thought someone would do it for me, but, no, of course they didn’t - and that’s going to be the main work of this post. (I’m out-of-pocket next weekend, so this is my last shot at this.) Once I get each team’s record to date fleshed out, I’ll organize all the teams in MLS into…let’s go with three categories: good, middling, and mystery meat. The latter means they could go just about any way (but with down being the more likely); also, I nixed “bad” as a category and on the grounds that I’ll let the season do the talking on that.

And, yeah, guess that’s the preamble. Once I put every team in the pretty little boxes I prepared for them, I’ll close out the post with a discussion of the first two weeks of games for the 2021 regular season.

Ready? Set? Go!

The Good
Atlanta United FC(a soft 4-0-0(?), and it looks like they’re done)
Atlanta did a tour de USL for their preseason and, between the actual recorded scores on The Mothership and half-glimpsedrumors on Dirty Soccer South, it looks like they swept all four games (against South Georgia’s Tormenta FC, the Charleston Battery, Chattanooga FC and Birmingham Legion). Near as I can tell, they scored 14 and might have given up just one goal - about what one would expect from a team in the American top-flight with Rocky-like ambition to rise back to the top. Fans should have a better idea where they are against real opposition by around 7 p.m. Tuesday (Pacific Time).
Overall: I expect Atlanta to compete in the East, and in general, in 2021.