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| 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.)
Writing as a frequent Asprilla doubter, I want to give the man his due for, 1) bringing the same intensity he always does and deserves real credit for doing, but also, 2) looking smart, focused and measured in nearly everything he did. Yimmi might have put away the goals - and that first one…sheer, perfect beauty - but it was Asprilla who dislocated the defenses with powerful runs and quick thinking (e.g., the lob to himself on the yards-long run that created Portland’s first goal). He created a bunch of chances too - think Felipe Mora’s stab toward “D. Torres’” (guys, full names!) goal - with a poise and awareness he hasn’t always shown. Combine that with the battling spirit he brings to (I imagine) just walking down the street and the Timbers would have a regular contributor on their hands.
I don’t want to take away anything from Yimmi “Hat-Trick Hero” Chara, because he got goals three different ways tonight - e.g., a seeing-eye finish (1st goal); a sneaky run (2nd), and good fundamentals (following the shot for his 3rd). Valeri passed in his goal between Yimmi’s 2nd and 3rd, while Marvin Loria* cut his late goal through the five hole, but I’m perfectly content to credit tonight’s win primarily to Yimmi and Asprilla. Again, 5-0 on a roll…
(* Loria looked sharper tonight, he had a couple real moments (see Yimmi's third), so, again, think of the possibilities. If either Loria or Andy Polo wakes all the way up, Portland could very well skip past additions to the attack and go straight to multiplication.)
Speaking of that word, “roll,” clarifying what I mean by that, 1) gets to what makes Portland so damn dangerous, and 2) opens space to talk about the clammy little fretting confessed to up above. First and foremost, that didn’t happen in the first half: Portland started a little on the cool side and just about every part of the defense gave fans cause for concern - e.g., think a stray ball or two rolling across Portland’s area, Steve Clark’s latter-day first half gaffes, or what it all could have meant had Marathon scored during those two scrambles just before the ref blew the half-time whistle. No small part of that happened precisely because Portland couldn’t get the ball moving forward quite right, or that they got some combination of reactive and complacent in different phases of the game. Despite the two-goal edge provided by Asprilla, Chara & Sons, in other words, Marathon looked disturbing alive at the end of the first half.
That only makes me value and, frankly, love the way the Timbers started - and continued - the second half all the more. Shots of Red Bull, a great half-time speech from Gio Savarese, or a better relationship with the Lord: the Timbers should bottle whatever carried them through the second half and keep it handy as needed for key moments in the 2021 regular season, because that shit was lethal. And yet this is where the clammy little fretting finally makes its appearance.
The Timbers have a knack for dictating the game even when they let the opposition have more of the ball. Their ability to transition, for lack of a better phrase, like a motherfucker forces just about every team they meet to play them with at least half a step toward their own goal. And, so long as the Timbers can keep the game in front of them, the whole thing works famously and buys the entire bar a round.
We all endured the converse of that during the first half. The defense will struggle almost exaclty as often as the opposing team can knock the Timbers off even some version of the front foot; just a forward pass they don’t expect seems to send them scrambling. And if the other team can force them into emergency defending? It’s not quite the same as saying it’s all over, but the odds of scoring on Portland goes way up within a minute or two of them getting out of their preferred comfort zone. Keep it up for five minutes and, at time of writing, you're almost guaranteed a goal.
And…that’s pretty much it. I don’t want to get too caught up in the doom scenarios, especially not after a night/half as glorious as that, but the particular failing has an irksome familiarity and again, the Timbers are something short of “stacked” in a couple key parts of the field. Going the other way, if all of that offense comes on-line, Portland has a better than fair chance of scoring their way out of trouble during 2021 and, sweet baby Jesus, I am so fucking on-board for watching that.
Last but not least, and to give Marathon their due they made a very good Timbers team sweat for 135 minutes. Also, I hope MLS scouts have “D.” Torres’ agent’s number on hand because he is one hell of a goalkeeper. If I had to fault anything in their performance - and this applies to the…35th minute on - they made the fatal mistake of giving the Timbers too much space in which to operate on the vertical axis. It’s smarter to face Portland with a compact defense, something that Marathon arguably lost the chance to do once they went down 2-0, but they seemed to come into the game no less willing to manage the game than Portland, something that served them all right until it didn’t.
At any rate, that was a great goddamn win. I imagine the Rose City will party tonight, even if in the isolation of their own homes, and it’s richly deserved. I haven’t seen them straight-up bury a team like that since watching them dismantle the Los Angeles Galaxy here and there during 2020. It was good to feel that again. By way of wrapping up, I have only one stray thought left.
Jetpack Fullbacks
I came out of the first CCL game pretty high on Josecarlos Van Rankin, while not having much to say about new left back, Claudio Bravo. After having a second look at both of them (and just the second, thanks to some black-out bullshit during preseason), I liked what I saw from Bravo on the defensive side and I really liked what I saw from Van Ranking going forward. Based on what I’ve so far seen, he looks to be a fun little destabilizing free-radical out of the back, one reminiscent of what Portland got out of the hella-fun Jorge Moreira, only without the disabled panic button.
All in all, I don’t know what Portland fans have on their hands for a whole goddamn MLS season. All I know is, several details about tonight’s game and/or state of play leaves me more encouraged than I was going into tonight. Boffo…
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.)
Writing as a frequent Asprilla doubter, I want to give the man his due for, 1) bringing the same intensity he always does and deserves real credit for doing, but also, 2) looking smart, focused and measured in nearly everything he did. Yimmi might have put away the goals - and that first one…sheer, perfect beauty - but it was Asprilla who dislocated the defenses with powerful runs and quick thinking (e.g., the lob to himself on the yards-long run that created Portland’s first goal). He created a bunch of chances too - think Felipe Mora’s stab toward “D. Torres’” (guys, full names!) goal - with a poise and awareness he hasn’t always shown. Combine that with the battling spirit he brings to (I imagine) just walking down the street and the Timbers would have a regular contributor on their hands.
I don’t want to take away anything from Yimmi “Hat-Trick Hero” Chara, because he got goals three different ways tonight - e.g., a seeing-eye finish (1st goal); a sneaky run (2nd), and good fundamentals (following the shot for his 3rd). Valeri passed in his goal between Yimmi’s 2nd and 3rd, while Marvin Loria* cut his late goal through the five hole, but I’m perfectly content to credit tonight’s win primarily to Yimmi and Asprilla. Again, 5-0 on a roll…
(* Loria looked sharper tonight, he had a couple real moments (see Yimmi's third), so, again, think of the possibilities. If either Loria or Andy Polo wakes all the way up, Portland could very well skip past additions to the attack and go straight to multiplication.)
Speaking of that word, “roll,” clarifying what I mean by that, 1) gets to what makes Portland so damn dangerous, and 2) opens space to talk about the clammy little fretting confessed to up above. First and foremost, that didn’t happen in the first half: Portland started a little on the cool side and just about every part of the defense gave fans cause for concern - e.g., think a stray ball or two rolling across Portland’s area, Steve Clark’s latter-day first half gaffes, or what it all could have meant had Marathon scored during those two scrambles just before the ref blew the half-time whistle. No small part of that happened precisely because Portland couldn’t get the ball moving forward quite right, or that they got some combination of reactive and complacent in different phases of the game. Despite the two-goal edge provided by Asprilla, Chara & Sons, in other words, Marathon looked disturbing alive at the end of the first half.
That only makes me value and, frankly, love the way the Timbers started - and continued - the second half all the more. Shots of Red Bull, a great half-time speech from Gio Savarese, or a better relationship with the Lord: the Timbers should bottle whatever carried them through the second half and keep it handy as needed for key moments in the 2021 regular season, because that shit was lethal. And yet this is where the clammy little fretting finally makes its appearance.
The Timbers have a knack for dictating the game even when they let the opposition have more of the ball. Their ability to transition, for lack of a better phrase, like a motherfucker forces just about every team they meet to play them with at least half a step toward their own goal. And, so long as the Timbers can keep the game in front of them, the whole thing works famously and buys the entire bar a round.
We all endured the converse of that during the first half. The defense will struggle almost exaclty as often as the opposing team can knock the Timbers off even some version of the front foot; just a forward pass they don’t expect seems to send them scrambling. And if the other team can force them into emergency defending? It’s not quite the same as saying it’s all over, but the odds of scoring on Portland goes way up within a minute or two of them getting out of their preferred comfort zone. Keep it up for five minutes and, at time of writing, you're almost guaranteed a goal.
And…that’s pretty much it. I don’t want to get too caught up in the doom scenarios, especially not after a night/half as glorious as that, but the particular failing has an irksome familiarity and again, the Timbers are something short of “stacked” in a couple key parts of the field. Going the other way, if all of that offense comes on-line, Portland has a better than fair chance of scoring their way out of trouble during 2021 and, sweet baby Jesus, I am so fucking on-board for watching that.
Last but not least, and to give Marathon their due they made a very good Timbers team sweat for 135 minutes. Also, I hope MLS scouts have “D.” Torres’ agent’s number on hand because he is one hell of a goalkeeper. If I had to fault anything in their performance - and this applies to the…35th minute on - they made the fatal mistake of giving the Timbers too much space in which to operate on the vertical axis. It’s smarter to face Portland with a compact defense, something that Marathon arguably lost the chance to do once they went down 2-0, but they seemed to come into the game no less willing to manage the game than Portland, something that served them all right until it didn’t.
At any rate, that was a great goddamn win. I imagine the Rose City will party tonight, even if in the isolation of their own homes, and it’s richly deserved. I haven’t seen them straight-up bury a team like that since watching them dismantle the Los Angeles Galaxy here and there during 2020. It was good to feel that again. By way of wrapping up, I have only one stray thought left.
Jetpack Fullbacks
I came out of the first CCL game pretty high on Josecarlos Van Rankin, while not having much to say about new left back, Claudio Bravo. After having a second look at both of them (and just the second, thanks to some black-out bullshit during preseason), I liked what I saw from Bravo on the defensive side and I really liked what I saw from Van Ranking going forward. Based on what I’ve so far seen, he looks to be a fun little destabilizing free-radical out of the back, one reminiscent of what Portland got out of the hella-fun Jorge Moreira, only without the disabled panic button.
All in all, I don’t know what Portland fans have on their hands for a whole goddamn MLS season. All I know is, several details about tonight’s game and/or state of play leaves me more encouraged than I was going into tonight. Boffo…
Well put. Hopefully Portland can continue to beat inferior teams all season the the defense gells.
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