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| A feeling that, in retrospect, miraculously passed. |
I’ve struggled with where to start this look back at a 2021 season that was as complicated for me as it was for the Portland Timbers. I’ll keep the personal side short: I shut down this site in early August - and every intention of walking away forever - only to revive it on October 16. I still tweeted game threads and almost certainly watched more games than I missed, but that choice left a 13-game hole in the permanent record I only lightly consulted before writing this post.
That period contained both the lowest low - the 2-6 loss at home to the Seattle Sounders - and the season-saving high that was the eight-game stretch that saw Portland pick up a nether-stirring 22 points out of 24. For perspective, the Timbers picked up just 33 points over the other (shit!) 26 games of the 2021 season, which amounts to a piddling 1.27 points per game; for further perspective, they picked up 23 points over their first 17 games of 2021, a figure that, somewhat surprisingly, pans out to a superior, overall goal differential of 1.35…I don’t get bowling math either, but that’s a whole other goddamn story. Things ended better than they started, basically, and I wonder how far that slipped down the memory hole and for how many people.
To start with the biggest question - i.e., what to make of it all? - I’ m pretty sure that accounts for the struggle. On the one hand, I know I never expected the Timbers to reach MLS Cup; on the other, I never expected them to tank that badly when they won the right to host the same final, not with how they’d been playing on both sides of the ball. And yet, all it took in the end was the same kind of collective defensive brain-fart that had panicked and enraged Timbers fans since…honestly, I think that’s been a thing for some time, and playing a good defensive team to revert back to a form I noted in the last Timbers post before (temporarily) shutting down this site, a meltdown of a 1-4 loss at the Los Angeles Galaxy:
“What are the two most frustrating thing about the Timbers? My bingo card shows stupid defensive errors and aimless attacking moves. This game was a smorgasbord of both…”
While the way(s) Portland struggles/fails files under plus ca change, some of what looked like the biggest moments of 2021 came and, because I don’t have notes (I’m willing to dig up) on it, went during that 13-game gap. For one, fan/personal favorite Jeremy Ebobisse left for the barren, over-priced wastes of San Jose (as opposed to the fertile, over-priced glory of Portland) in August 2021. Quirks in timing - specifically, that loss in which Seattle handed the Timbers their asses six times, followed shortly by the 2nd beat-down at Austin FC of the season - filled the skyline with dark, heavy clouds. At least half the Biblical plagues descended on the Rose City just a few weeks later when Eryk Williamson limped off the field, never to return. Again, I’ve got no written record of exactly what I said or thought in those moments, but “we’re fucked” might have made an appearance or two.
That period contained both the lowest low - the 2-6 loss at home to the Seattle Sounders - and the season-saving high that was the eight-game stretch that saw Portland pick up a nether-stirring 22 points out of 24. For perspective, the Timbers picked up just 33 points over the other (shit!) 26 games of the 2021 season, which amounts to a piddling 1.27 points per game; for further perspective, they picked up 23 points over their first 17 games of 2021, a figure that, somewhat surprisingly, pans out to a superior, overall goal differential of 1.35…I don’t get bowling math either, but that’s a whole other goddamn story. Things ended better than they started, basically, and I wonder how far that slipped down the memory hole and for how many people.
To start with the biggest question - i.e., what to make of it all? - I’ m pretty sure that accounts for the struggle. On the one hand, I know I never expected the Timbers to reach MLS Cup; on the other, I never expected them to tank that badly when they won the right to host the same final, not with how they’d been playing on both sides of the ball. And yet, all it took in the end was the same kind of collective defensive brain-fart that had panicked and enraged Timbers fans since…honestly, I think that’s been a thing for some time, and playing a good defensive team to revert back to a form I noted in the last Timbers post before (temporarily) shutting down this site, a meltdown of a 1-4 loss at the Los Angeles Galaxy:
“What are the two most frustrating thing about the Timbers? My bingo card shows stupid defensive errors and aimless attacking moves. This game was a smorgasbord of both…”
While the way(s) Portland struggles/fails files under plus ca change, some of what looked like the biggest moments of 2021 came and, because I don’t have notes (I’m willing to dig up) on it, went during that 13-game gap. For one, fan/personal favorite Jeremy Ebobisse left for the barren, over-priced wastes of San Jose (as opposed to the fertile, over-priced glory of Portland) in August 2021. Quirks in timing - specifically, that loss in which Seattle handed the Timbers their asses six times, followed shortly by the 2nd beat-down at Austin FC of the season - filled the skyline with dark, heavy clouds. At least half the Biblical plagues descended on the Rose City just a few weeks later when Eryk Williamson limped off the field, never to return. Again, I’ve got no written record of exactly what I said or thought in those moments, but “we’re fucked” might have made an appearance or two.
