Portland Timbers 3-1 Minnesota United FC: Weird, Good and Glorious

My people call it Sebastian Blanco.

Does anyone else think that Portland Timbers fans just witnessed something parts weird, good and glorious? To take the adjectives in turn:

Weird: Did anyone else see as much walking as I did, and from both teams? That note speaks to the second half - specifically, after Sebastian Blanco slipped in his first, deciding dagger - and also covers the time when I thought Minnesota United FC would push the game, if for no better reason than they had to. Related thereto, how many Timbers counters, 1) started about 20 yards from their own goal, and 2) started with Dairon Asprilla either winning the ball or getting it at that place, looking at a wide-open field ahead of him and starting up with a look that said, “this shit again?”

Good: Because, before Blanco scored the dagger described above and the, no, please, after you, insurance goal that Minnesota gifted him, the possibility that he wouldn’t continue, never mind finish the game, looked like a real possibility. I mean, how many of you fretted to sweating about the Timbers’ post-season chances in any shape when you saw Blanco on the ground rubbing his back/ass?

Glorious: Because the Timbers overcame an early deficit against a team who has always given them trouble, pushed through a heavy dose of chippy shit (that was six cards by Minnesota, and one of them should have been red and had damn well better earn a date at Studio 54 (aka, DisCo should review that and fine or otherwise punish Franco Fragapane for that straight-up shitty lunge at Diego Chara)), and had the comfort of seeing Steve Clark cover every piece of, admittedly, weak shit that Minnesota managed to fire on goal.

I won’t lie: I had ample and frequent questions about the choices and posture of the Timbers, and on both sides of the ball, but they still ended the night 3-1 winners over perhaps their fiercest bad match-up in MLS, and looked oddly comfortable once they got back in it. Up next, the Colorado Rapids and 4,000+ more feet in elevation. First, however, let’s drink it in, shall we?

First question, how the hell did this happen?

MLS 2021 Round One Playoff Preview: Data, Borrowed Insights and a Shortage of Firm Predictions

Shit. That's not the future. It's glaucoma...

The first I’ll do is congratulate Major League Soccer for finally navigating the post-season and the international break closer to right. Can’t believe it took ‘em this damn long to get rid of the annual momentum-suffocating break, but, better late the never, I suppose.

Moving onto the main feature, I won’t pretend to have any great insights on how the first-round of the 2021 MLS playoffs will shake out. In fact, I don’t have more to share than stray data points and borrowed insights - e.g., Matt Doyle’s “why they will, why they won’t” playoff preview and Joseph Lowery’s post on X-factors for each team; and I reference both heavily below with “D” standing for a note from Doyle and “L” standing for a note from Lowery - but, what I read in those tells me I have a fair enough grasp on general trends across the league, and I dig talking things out and that’s a fair summary for what comes below in this post.

And so, without further ado, and starting with the big match-up closest to where I live, here goes.

Portland Timbers v Minnesota United FC
2021 Head-to-Head: Well, shit. Two wins for Minnesota, zero for the Timbers, and with a 3-1 edge. If it makes anyone feel better, both came during Portland’s early, uneven phase.
Down the Stretch, Portland: WWWWLLLWWW (6 home, 4 away); best result: 2-1 at LAFC; worst result: 2-3 v Vancouver
Down the Stretch, Minnesota: WLDLWWDLWD (5 home, 5 away); best result: in context, the 3-3 draw at the Galaxy; worst result: 1-3 loss at DC
Notes from MLS’ In-House Hacks
D re Minnesota: “…it’s worth remembering the heater Kevin Molino was on last year. He was the one taking those gaps Reynoso carved into opposing defenses and turning them into chasms, and then turning that into goals.”
D re Portland: “This is very obviously a veteran team that’s entirely comfortable with the idea of flipping the switch when they need to…”
D re Portland: To paraphrase, Portland’s fullbacks take too many risks and Portland’s centerbacks are merely “adequate.”
What I Expect
A close, low-scoring, probably ugly game, honestly, which here means I’m open to food dares if either team wins by two goals. All in all, the 0-1 home loss back in July presents the likeliest template. I expect Minnesota to force Portland to play and look to Reynoso for the open-field back-breaker; second option, a put-back off a corner the Timbers just can’t clear. In Portland’s favor, they haven’t suffered a truly lopsided loss since August (see the 2-6 loss to Seattle in (fucking) Portland), and, apart from the collapse against Vancouver, they haven’t allowed more than three goals in a game since mid-August, and they’ve only allowed two goals twice over the same period. Better, they’ve scored 29 goals over the same period, while allowing only 11: short version, Minnesota will face a different Timbers team this Sunday than the one they played in July and, for all the literally incredible good he’s done, it wasn’t all Blanco. Going the other way, and fretting a little, the Timbers also played a pretty soft schedule down the stretch, and their most impressive wins came against teams they just seemed to pair well against - e.g., LAFC and (especially RSL).

A 2021 Major League Soccer Review, in Which I Circle Back to My Predictions

Revisiting my preseason predictions.

On April 4, 2021, I wrote a loosely predictive post about how all 27 teams in the league would fare over the whole damn regular season.

This post revisits that post.

I retained the groupings from the original post - The Good, The Middling, and Mystery Meat - as a kind of Route One to sorting out how much or how little any given team’s season surprised me. And I agree that makes no goddamn sense, but, once committed, etc. 2021 did throw me a couple curves, but they’re both more subtle and hittable than I expected when I banged out the original post with one good eye on the page.

With that in mind, what trippingly unspools below is a list of every team in MLS, in the order I organized them back in April (and, no, I don’t remember the rationale for the way I organized them, and deleted all the relevant information to boot). In most cases, the words you see after “[2021] Overall [Prediction]” in connection with every team below is a complete, unedited version of the comments in that preview post. The notes after “How That Panned Out” assesses how well my prediction held up, if with some gentle fudging…which sounds gross and wrong now that I’ve typed it.

With that, let’s review how I did.

The Good
Atlanta United FC
[2021] Overall [Prediction]: "I expect Atlanta to compete in the East, and in general, in 2021."
How That Panned Out: Anyone fishing for a reason to feel impressed should recall that Atlanta dumped the potentially sociopathic Gabriel Heinze just last July, because I didn’t see his mad reign coming, but they overcame and made the 2021 playoffs with the talent that was always there. They didn’t exactly kill down the stretch, but they look/feel respectably competitive.

Columbus Crew SC
[2021] Overall [Prediction]: "They still have to rank among the favorites to repeat, so anything short of close to that will look like a fail. Given the above, a slow start wouldn’t throw me too much…"
How That Panned Out: File this under a case of, name one person who saw this coming. If Caleb Porter didn’t have the, “the teams I coach to a championship will miss the playoffs the next season” curse, I’d call this impossible to explain.

MLS Decision Day Primer: Some Math, Some History, the Soft Lie of Decision Day...

When your bit is more important than the formatting...

FC Cincinnati v Atlanta United FC
Columbus Crew SC v Chicago Fire FC
Club du Foot Montreal v Orlando City SC
Nashville SC v Red Bull New York
New England Revolution v Inter Miami CF
New York City FC v Philadelphia Union
Toronto FC v DC United
Colorado Rapids v Los Angeles FC
Sporting Kansas City v Real Salt Lake
Los Angeles Galaxy v Minnesota United FC
Portland Timbers v Austin FC
San Jose Earthquakes v FC Dallas
Vancouver Whitecaps v Seattle Sounders

There they are (barring typos), the final match-ups of Major League Soccer’s 26th(?) season (fuck it, I miss my own anniversary every year, as does my wife). For those wondering about how a 27-team league can have “everyone” play on the final day of the season, while playing only 13 games (as I did until further study), the Houston Dynamo have alreay eaten the hemlock on its 2021 season, splitting the twig with now-former head coach, Tab Ramos, who was let to go today. Or yesterday. Good dude, or least I always liked him. Cheers, Tab.

While I’ve got theories about who will win what in the above games, 1) that’s not the main theme of this post, and 2) I’ve been shit for predictions lately, so my best advice to anyone fishing for that would be to sit a chicken at the center of some arcane pattern with MLS logos, scatter around some feed, see where the chicken pecks, and bet accordingly.

Some of those games don’t matter, of course, and for a variety of reasons. With that in mind, consider the following unconsidered:

Columbus v Chicago
New England v Miami
Portland v Austin
San Jose v Dallas

Real Salt Lake 1-3 Portland Timbers: Easy, Breazy, Kinda Sleazy

Call it a general sentiment.

I don’t know how many times the Portland Timbers’ defense scrambled over the 13 minutes I spent staring at a(n at best) regional football game, but I saw at least two instances after it. Between that and the black box of the opening 13, I didn’t know what to think about the Timbers’ chances early.

Even after Sebastian Blanco cleaned up an oopsie with a standing (well, leaning) header, putting the Timbers up 1-0, I didn’t see any reason to think the game would slip out of competitive…then Blanco forced a fuck-up out of Aaron Herrera, putting Portland up 2-0. The game ended there if you ask me. While I have no doubt RSL out-shot the Portland (and I was right), the Timbers defense never gave them a look even one-seventh as good as the sitter RSL handed Blanco. Put it this way, you can’t build a sound home when you get the angles that wrong.

With that, the Timbers walked out 3-1 winners, sole beneficiaries of RSL’s largesse on the season, and, if I’m not mistaken, immovably in fourth-place in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference.

I’m not sure the game deserves much than that. It crapped out as a contest around the 65th minute, RSL clawed back the one, but I doubt even their fans give a shit about it. They handed it to Portland. And I mean that in at least two ways - i.e., RSL defended with neither a net nor a plan, something Blanco can tear to shit all on his own…and he did, but doesn’t that beg the question, what can we really take from this one/win? I mean, the Timbers beat RSL with a Dairon Asprilla tied behind their backs. The rest files under…

Loose Ends/Theories
Take a Bow, Utahans
To start, I just want to say how impressed I am that RSL had they season they did with that avalanche of bullshit over their heads. I hope they make it…just glad it didn’t come at the Timbers’ expense.

The Rest They’ve Earned
I’d rest starters for the Austin game. The result won’t change a damn thing and it should give the depth of the depths a shot of confidence in case the call comes down…then again, a bad result could shatter their confidence to dust, so…eh, I say go for it. Blanco’s the only player I’d play on principle - he needs the reps at this point - but sit I’d sit anyone else who could use it. That thought starts with the last name Chara, but I’m very open-minded on the rest…does Portland even have a third forward?