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| Remember, the Timbers survived this... |
You can cut anything on as many angles as you like. For instance, you can call the Portland Timbers 2-2 home draw against the New England Revolution a failure to rebound from their MLS Cup 2021 loss. Or you could call it a strong result against 2021's record-setting Supporters’ Shield-winning team, and with some major starters - e.g., Larry Mabiala, Dario Zuparic and Felipe Mora - missing, and one regular starter/talisman - Sebastian Blanco - only available as a late sub.
The frame I choose: a short-handed Portland team went down to the Revs twice and came back just as many times with two genuinely beautiful, well-worked goals. One of last season’s heroes, and a favorite son to boot, equalized on the only successful version of the half-impossible play the Timbers tried to pull off all night (i.e., street ball up the gut), while one of last season’s workhorses scored the second equalizer with something beautiful and unexpected. Better still, last year’s attacking promise - aka, Santiago Moreno - combined to set up the first equalizer and generally showed a lot of what he could do.
Those compelled to find fault (and I’ve got one in my head; he lives in the left or right side of my head, still working on his residence) can find it, but I’m rolling with a narrative of resilience. New England scored its first goal at the end of one of those periods that have plagued the Timbers since 2019: one of those spin cycles where they get under a ton’s worth of pressure, where every clearance goes either awry or out for a corner and someone from the other team steps into the path of every outlet pass. Any which way the ball bounces, it spells the Timbers back under pressure. That happened for 10 whole goddamn minutes in the first half - from around the 30th minute to just past the 40th. The wheels spun fairly off during that period and that presented the Timbers with one of the greatest and best sporting cliches of all time: how does the team respond?
And that gets to why the resilience narrative works best in my mind. After struggling to pass out of the back like a man struggling to pass a kidney stone at the end of the first half, Portland/Gio Savarese found the reset from a decent opening 20 minutes to start the second half. From the great move early in the second half that freed Dairon Asprilla for his first, frustrating miss to the similar set-up he put away for Portland's first, the Timbers regained control of the game and set the tempo. And, yes, after Asprilla scored they planted foot on banana peel and let Sebastian Lletget score a go-ahead goal - and just minutes after their equalizer. Their heads could have dropped to their laps in that moment (wait…are you…never mind), sure, but they kept them up, high even, and persevered. As with any bicycle kick, Yimmi Chara’s goal was anything but inevitable, but, in my mind, that came off for the reason to so many Timbers attacks (including the first goal) had failed: they finally spread the field wide enough in the attacking third to open up space for passes. When Asprilla worked the ball to Josecarlos Van Rankin wide on New England’s left, he had the time and space to tee up a tricky cross. And that’s how the ball bounces to a largely vacant back-post and a moment Yimmi Chara will never forget and/or bore his kids with after every bad game they have in high school.
As for the opposition, I haven’t had a ton of chances to see Bruce Arena’s record-setting Revolution, at least not outside MLS in 15 clips (and The Mothership has brought those back online already) and their David-‘n’-Goliath games against FC Cincinnati, games that went as they should have (i.e., David hits Goliath in the head with a rock, Goliath strides across the field of battle, picks up David, and rag-dolls him to death a la the Hulk on Loki in the first Avengers movie). Their capacity to MacGyver a goal out of a paper clip, some spit, hard bubblegum and an idea came through across those settings. Still, the thing that most impressed me about New England’s performance tonight was how completely and systematically disrupted Portland’s process over the second half of the first. Even in their record-setting season, the Revs relied on emergency defending in a way that would make most managers faint - and tonight was no different - but they show a real capacity to adapt in-game defensively and to keep most of the danger in either direction contained within 20 yards of the center-stripe. Based on what I’ve seen, the Revs have a back-line - Andrew Farrell plus (usually) Henry Kessler, or, tonight a surprisingly spry Omar Gonzalez - that benefits quite a bit from a well-organized midfield that defends in depth. They’ll be a good team in 2022, but they also have not resolved their reliance on emergency defending and that’s gonna bite ‘em against good teams, just like New York City FC in last year’s playoffs and the Timbers tonight.
All in all, every complaint I had about tonight either got wiped out or was rendered irrelevant by a correction. Even if it was a one-off (e.g., the space for Van Rankin on the second goal), players and coach found a good solution. More importantly, the Timbers didn’t allow their let-downs and mistakes to break them: even in one of those scrums where defenders, ‘keeper, and probably a midfielder or two had to throw themselves between ball and goal, the players threw their bodies where they had to and kept the offense in it. The offense returned the favor by clawing back everything that slipped between the defense’s legs. The Timbers didn’t win tonight, but they got the big things right often enough against one of the top teams in MLS. And I’ll take that. Especially knowing they’ve got a handful of first-team players on their way back.
It’s all stray notes from here, so I’m switching to numbered paragraphs.
1) The Worst Thing
It wasn’t just that Portland attacked narrow for most of the night, or created an overload that they kept trying to feed even if it became clear it wouldn’t go down, it was the failure to switch fields to adjust, even when that situation presented itself standing naked, before God and all, in a spotlight. I can’t count the number of times I saw a Timbers attacker check the open, opposite side of the field, only to loop back and try to play into the overload like a kamikaze pilot teeing up his fatal run. As much as it has killed them in the past, Portland needs to return to the habit of moving the ball across the attacking third. This is the opposite of me advising them to play for a cross 30+ times in a game, because I know how that (typically) goes, but doing that shifts the defenses around a little, thereby creating bigger openings for Timbers attackers to find.
2) Grading the CBs
I’m pretty sure this was the first time Bill Tuiloma and Zac McGraw paired as the starting center-backs, and I’m also pretty sure they did all right overall. Like New England, they did their share of last-man-standing lunges, and they gave the Revs a dangerous number of good looks at goal, but, again, they did that against (most of) the same attack that led the league in goals last season. My guess is they’ll do better against weaker attacks. In the here and now, Bill and Zac will hold things together until at least one member of the cavalry (e.g., Larrys or Zup) gets off the recovery track and steps onto the field. So long as that happens in the next couple months and holds up all season, I’m not all that bothered.
3) Bravo, Bravo
Yeah, yeah, he takes wild, half-pointless swings at goal, and from miles away - shots that threaten no one besides the fans behind the goal - but, going the other way, at least Claudio Bravo tried to make things happen when nothing else was on. For me, though, the moments that made Bravo my man of the match came when Diego Chara pointed for a cross and, after a sequence of passes bounced to him, Bravo took it upon himself to dribble from his left back spot all the way across the field to make sure the cross-field switch reached its destination. It was a bit of a master-class because the move froze the New England defense and to where they still had to react to a switched field. Bravo may not have made the best decision on every final ball, but he did make some of the most sound and shrewdest ball-progression decisions of any Timber tonight. He’s coming along nicely…
4) Ivacic Grand Re-Re-Opening
The two biggest questions of the post-Steve-Clark era were which understudy/new signing would take his place between the posts and how well they’d fill the space. The job fell to Aljaz Ivacic tonight and I thought he did…more or less everything asked of him. I’m not sure he has the confidence of anyone involved in the extended Timbers Universe (e.g., team, coach, fucking front office and fans), but Ivacic managed all aspects of his role well enough to earn another start in my book.
5) The Lonely Forward
While I thought I saw Jaroslaw Niezgoda paired with Yimmi as the front edge of a defensive shape that only chases the ball with its eyes, the Polish forward couldn’t quite get ahead of the game on the attacking end. I recall one good pass in the first half, one that damn-near led to a goal, and the header he skied over an open goal in the second, but my general impression of Niezgoda’s night was a struggle to sort out where he fit in. Based on what I’ve seen from him, Niezgoda quite likely prefers the medley his teammates served him tonight, even if that means he doesn’t get the pass he wans every time. Broadly, though, the rapport between him and his teammates feels like a work in progress. Some of that follows from a loose theory that Portland has built its attack on playing to Felipe Mora - and I’m not sure a great reason to get away from that exists - but I hope all concerned can get the reps to get to where they know how to get the most out of Niezgoda too.
And that’s my full report. Overall, and again, I’m content with the result. The Timbers almost certainly get pinned down by their greatest sins - e.g., defensive lapses and forcing the attack - but they bounced back. And close enough to true. Until the next one…
The frame I choose: a short-handed Portland team went down to the Revs twice and came back just as many times with two genuinely beautiful, well-worked goals. One of last season’s heroes, and a favorite son to boot, equalized on the only successful version of the half-impossible play the Timbers tried to pull off all night (i.e., street ball up the gut), while one of last season’s workhorses scored the second equalizer with something beautiful and unexpected. Better still, last year’s attacking promise - aka, Santiago Moreno - combined to set up the first equalizer and generally showed a lot of what he could do.
Those compelled to find fault (and I’ve got one in my head; he lives in the left or right side of my head, still working on his residence) can find it, but I’m rolling with a narrative of resilience. New England scored its first goal at the end of one of those periods that have plagued the Timbers since 2019: one of those spin cycles where they get under a ton’s worth of pressure, where every clearance goes either awry or out for a corner and someone from the other team steps into the path of every outlet pass. Any which way the ball bounces, it spells the Timbers back under pressure. That happened for 10 whole goddamn minutes in the first half - from around the 30th minute to just past the 40th. The wheels spun fairly off during that period and that presented the Timbers with one of the greatest and best sporting cliches of all time: how does the team respond?
And that gets to why the resilience narrative works best in my mind. After struggling to pass out of the back like a man struggling to pass a kidney stone at the end of the first half, Portland/Gio Savarese found the reset from a decent opening 20 minutes to start the second half. From the great move early in the second half that freed Dairon Asprilla for his first, frustrating miss to the similar set-up he put away for Portland's first, the Timbers regained control of the game and set the tempo. And, yes, after Asprilla scored they planted foot on banana peel and let Sebastian Lletget score a go-ahead goal - and just minutes after their equalizer. Their heads could have dropped to their laps in that moment (wait…are you…never mind), sure, but they kept them up, high even, and persevered. As with any bicycle kick, Yimmi Chara’s goal was anything but inevitable, but, in my mind, that came off for the reason to so many Timbers attacks (including the first goal) had failed: they finally spread the field wide enough in the attacking third to open up space for passes. When Asprilla worked the ball to Josecarlos Van Rankin wide on New England’s left, he had the time and space to tee up a tricky cross. And that’s how the ball bounces to a largely vacant back-post and a moment Yimmi Chara will never forget and/or bore his kids with after every bad game they have in high school.
As for the opposition, I haven’t had a ton of chances to see Bruce Arena’s record-setting Revolution, at least not outside MLS in 15 clips (and The Mothership has brought those back online already) and their David-‘n’-Goliath games against FC Cincinnati, games that went as they should have (i.e., David hits Goliath in the head with a rock, Goliath strides across the field of battle, picks up David, and rag-dolls him to death a la the Hulk on Loki in the first Avengers movie). Their capacity to MacGyver a goal out of a paper clip, some spit, hard bubblegum and an idea came through across those settings. Still, the thing that most impressed me about New England’s performance tonight was how completely and systematically disrupted Portland’s process over the second half of the first. Even in their record-setting season, the Revs relied on emergency defending in a way that would make most managers faint - and tonight was no different - but they show a real capacity to adapt in-game defensively and to keep most of the danger in either direction contained within 20 yards of the center-stripe. Based on what I’ve seen, the Revs have a back-line - Andrew Farrell plus (usually) Henry Kessler, or, tonight a surprisingly spry Omar Gonzalez - that benefits quite a bit from a well-organized midfield that defends in depth. They’ll be a good team in 2022, but they also have not resolved their reliance on emergency defending and that’s gonna bite ‘em against good teams, just like New York City FC in last year’s playoffs and the Timbers tonight.
All in all, every complaint I had about tonight either got wiped out or was rendered irrelevant by a correction. Even if it was a one-off (e.g., the space for Van Rankin on the second goal), players and coach found a good solution. More importantly, the Timbers didn’t allow their let-downs and mistakes to break them: even in one of those scrums where defenders, ‘keeper, and probably a midfielder or two had to throw themselves between ball and goal, the players threw their bodies where they had to and kept the offense in it. The offense returned the favor by clawing back everything that slipped between the defense’s legs. The Timbers didn’t win tonight, but they got the big things right often enough against one of the top teams in MLS. And I’ll take that. Especially knowing they’ve got a handful of first-team players on their way back.
It’s all stray notes from here, so I’m switching to numbered paragraphs.
1) The Worst Thing
It wasn’t just that Portland attacked narrow for most of the night, or created an overload that they kept trying to feed even if it became clear it wouldn’t go down, it was the failure to switch fields to adjust, even when that situation presented itself standing naked, before God and all, in a spotlight. I can’t count the number of times I saw a Timbers attacker check the open, opposite side of the field, only to loop back and try to play into the overload like a kamikaze pilot teeing up his fatal run. As much as it has killed them in the past, Portland needs to return to the habit of moving the ball across the attacking third. This is the opposite of me advising them to play for a cross 30+ times in a game, because I know how that (typically) goes, but doing that shifts the defenses around a little, thereby creating bigger openings for Timbers attackers to find.
2) Grading the CBs
I’m pretty sure this was the first time Bill Tuiloma and Zac McGraw paired as the starting center-backs, and I’m also pretty sure they did all right overall. Like New England, they did their share of last-man-standing lunges, and they gave the Revs a dangerous number of good looks at goal, but, again, they did that against (most of) the same attack that led the league in goals last season. My guess is they’ll do better against weaker attacks. In the here and now, Bill and Zac will hold things together until at least one member of the cavalry (e.g., Larrys or Zup) gets off the recovery track and steps onto the field. So long as that happens in the next couple months and holds up all season, I’m not all that bothered.
3) Bravo, Bravo
Yeah, yeah, he takes wild, half-pointless swings at goal, and from miles away - shots that threaten no one besides the fans behind the goal - but, going the other way, at least Claudio Bravo tried to make things happen when nothing else was on. For me, though, the moments that made Bravo my man of the match came when Diego Chara pointed for a cross and, after a sequence of passes bounced to him, Bravo took it upon himself to dribble from his left back spot all the way across the field to make sure the cross-field switch reached its destination. It was a bit of a master-class because the move froze the New England defense and to where they still had to react to a switched field. Bravo may not have made the best decision on every final ball, but he did make some of the most sound and shrewdest ball-progression decisions of any Timber tonight. He’s coming along nicely…
4) Ivacic Grand Re-Re-Opening
The two biggest questions of the post-Steve-Clark era were which understudy/new signing would take his place between the posts and how well they’d fill the space. The job fell to Aljaz Ivacic tonight and I thought he did…more or less everything asked of him. I’m not sure he has the confidence of anyone involved in the extended Timbers Universe (e.g., team, coach, fucking front office and fans), but Ivacic managed all aspects of his role well enough to earn another start in my book.
5) The Lonely Forward
While I thought I saw Jaroslaw Niezgoda paired with Yimmi as the front edge of a defensive shape that only chases the ball with its eyes, the Polish forward couldn’t quite get ahead of the game on the attacking end. I recall one good pass in the first half, one that damn-near led to a goal, and the header he skied over an open goal in the second, but my general impression of Niezgoda’s night was a struggle to sort out where he fit in. Based on what I’ve seen from him, Niezgoda quite likely prefers the medley his teammates served him tonight, even if that means he doesn’t get the pass he wans every time. Broadly, though, the rapport between him and his teammates feels like a work in progress. Some of that follows from a loose theory that Portland has built its attack on playing to Felipe Mora - and I’m not sure a great reason to get away from that exists - but I hope all concerned can get the reps to get to where they know how to get the most out of Niezgoda too.
And that’s my full report. Overall, and again, I’m content with the result. The Timbers almost certainly get pinned down by their greatest sins - e.g., defensive lapses and forcing the attack - but they bounced back. And close enough to true. Until the next one…
In attendance for this match, I was mostly struck by the Timbers' overall confidence in their buildup play. They believed they could pass their way through the Revs. And often did. The vibe was good. When asked after the Revs first goal for my prediction, I felt it would end 1-2. We looked like we would tie it up and then be edged out by a late goal. Glad to have been proved wrong by that beautiful Yimmi goal.
ReplyDeleteThe Revs are evidently a affirmative argument for football success via the Great Man theory. Hire the right coach in MLS and all else falls into place. (That assumes he's in charge of player personnel.) Certainly, their ownership interest is lukewarm at best. Sixteenth spot out of twenty four in attendance in 2019. In the weird 2021 season, they stayed at sixteenth, with twenty seven teams. Maybe Arena finds the salary-capped, small-scale MLS budget structure strangely akin to building a college soccer powerhouse out of unpaid, gone-in-three-years students.
First match, but Niezgoda as you said seemed off the pace and holding himself back from full commitment to attacking the goal. And, yes, there's a question whether our other attacking players were even looking for him very much.
The worst I can say about Ivacic in goal is that he's not a team-leader personality who emotionally inspires defensive efforts. Not yet anyway.
Thanks for the eyewitness account. And good to hear from you again!
ReplyDeleteWhat you point out on Ivacic fits into the two-horse race between him and Bingham: I'm sure Ivacic played somewhere we he was "the shit" between the sticks, but I know Bingham had a period where people rated him fairly highly; as such, I can more readily see him doing the team-leader thing. Say what you want about Clark, his teammates seemed to love/respond to the guy (along with the fans...I know I miss that dude).