Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers: Kindly Stop Saying "Unbeaten in Three"

In a word, the strategy feels off...

A sum of the sum of things. As in one example of several things. I think that gets to the marrow of it.

Would it help if Timbers attackers did better with their rare chances? Of course. When the call came, neither Marvin Loria nor Santiago Moreno answered (shit…there was one more chance I’m forgetting, but…). Loria, at least, had a dynamite moment of half-consciousness proficiency at the end of the first half, and off the Portland Timbers’ best chance of the day (helluva shot, kid), but Timbers attackers mostly fired the ball over William Yarbrough’s goal like they thought that was the point of the game. To float a theory, when your team isn’t great at finishing chances, that only raises the importance of creating more of them - i.e., if you only score once in every 30 chances, getting to 30 chances as quickly as possible feels like the shortest distance to goal. This being the age of analytics, a necessary disclaimer: I don’t know the Timbers’ goal:chance ratio. I only know they don’t generate a lot of good chances (40 shots total over their last three games), and that makes every chance a little more sacred.

Speaking of creating chances, the Colorado Rapids’ xG spiked for the first time after Diego Rubio got sent off in the 63rd minute. And, sadly, that's what it looked like in real time. The Timbers, meanwhile, flat-lined for the next 10-15 minutes thereafter and generally pissed away a man-advantage for the last 30 minutes of the game. The Big Bad Wolf howling at the brick house. And that seems to be a theme for 2022.

That inspired the title, by the way. After three games unbeaten, the Timbers got beat tonight - 2-0 at the Colorado Rapids - but I can’t remember the last time Portland looked like beating any team. Playing at that level puts their ceiling at draws, most of them goal-less, and that’s not a great place to be for a variety of reasons, up to and including entertainment. Worse, they haven’t exactly played the cream of MLS during that time - i.e., at Houston, v Real Salt Lake, and, tonight, at Colorado, aka, as close to middling (and yet still higher than the Timbers) that it gets - and that adds up to 282 minutes, plus stoppage time and in reasonably playable conditions, since the Timbers have scored a goal. I never thought Colorado on the road would be easy, but the few chances Portland got seemed to surprise (and baffle) them as much as they did me and it’s been the same thing for a while now: they don’t make chances, they grasp at them. So long as a team plays like that, the defense needs to have a perfect evening, maybe even something Disney magical…and yet the 0-2 final score speaks for itself…

Credit to the Rapids for getting the handful of things they needed to right. They genuinely know how to move the ball, both around and up the field - something even more impressive with Jack Price (who I really rate) missing - and most of that comes from having both players and the ball divining the correct angles all over the field. The previous sentence contains most of my worries going into this game - i.e., that Colorado would manage Portland to death - but the Rapids didn’t get a bounty of chances out of all that, and Portland’s Aljaz Ivacic stoned Colorado’s Jonathan Lewis every time he got loose. Still, they moved the ball with more purpose more often than Portland generally managed, and that allowed them to pace the game.

I've hired a consultant.

With all the above in play, all the Rapids had to do was score, and once in all likelihood, to get all three points. Rubio did that, with a (dynamite) free kick, on the (or Colorado’s left) side of Zone 14, about half an hour before he got sent off (deliberately written to sound like an accusation in Clue(!), btw, because I am going for j’accuse). And it’s worth lingering on the fact that the Timbers saw two players - Larrys Mabiala and Eryk Williamson - go into the book on the play that led up to Rubio’s free kick. Again, the Rapids’ collective movement caused problems and, to introduce a device I’m going to start using a lot - heck, I may even lead with it - had an alien landed in Commerce City tonight, bought tickets to the game, maybe did a little tailgating, and, what the hell, what’s one keg stand(?) and one bong-rip(?), and gone inside to watch, I think it would have agreed Colorado deserved the win. And what is that but another way of saying Portland deserves the loss?

It wasn’t all chocolate gravy rainbows for the Rapids tonight, not by any means, but (stay with me), if that alien’s money was good in that Commerce City mega-parking lot, I’m pretty confident it would put money down on Colorado to go further than Portland in 2022. So, let’s dig into that…

First, I don’t want to hear about who Portland had missing tonight, and mostly because the learning curve for playing without Diego Chara and Sebastian Blanco gets higher with each passing game. The first team will have to make do without both by necessity in a year, two at most, the future is now, etc.

Some pieces have filled in well enough. For instance, Bill Tuiloma and Larrys Mabiala formed a decent enough defensive partnership for most of the game, and Dario Zuparic will buy Portland a couple years of a competent center back pairing after Mabiala checks out, and Zac McGraw buys them a couple more, etc. That’s to say, I don’t blame the defense for Colorado’s insurance goal/exclamation point on the game (that was, “no, you are not” in soccer form) - and, for the dozenth time (it’s like I’m doing penance or something) Cristhian Paredes has looked great all season, Yimmi Chara does what he does…and that’s kind of the ceiling. If you want to something to worry about, think about how much better all of that works when Diego Chara’s on the field, then apply the least doe-eyed math to how much longer he’s gonna last. And, yes, Ivacic has been a very real bright spot through the past three shaky/timid performances, and having a good goalkeeper creates a margin for error in the attack…though, again, a team that can’t make use of that margin effectively erases it. And Portland have: with just 10 goals scored, and in as many games, the Timbers sit on a 1.0 goals/game average and nearly two goals per game behind the league average, something that would matter less if Portland’s defense wasn’t on the wrong side of average by just as much.

Long story short, Portland’s 10th in the West for a reason. Having players missing has hurt, no question; it’s early in the season and Timbers fans seem to give that a pass, and I’m fine with that: my personal issue comes with not being able to see the path forward. Dairon Asprilla carried the Timbers through these early games in 2021 - not unlike how Yimmi Chara carried them through the first couple this season - but I haven’t seen 2021 Asprilla once in 2022. With that, the only path toward improvement that gives me any faith it’ll actually happen runs through Felipe Mora. And to say the quiet part out loud, no, I’m not taking a full return for Blanco as a given.

I squinted hard as I could go see anything to celebrate after tonight’s loss, and all I came up with were Justin Rasmussen’s long throw-ins and David Ayala’s passing and movement, which, for the time he was on the field looked both connected and pretty sharp - and that’s a real improvement. Williamson had a couple moments out there and he’s got time to further develop his upside, but he’s not fully present and, without Asprilla playing his best (a flash or two notwithstanding), with Jaroslaw Niezgoda wandering around like he’s playing a game in an alternate universe (seriously, look at Portland’s passing map and despair), and with Loria still not ready for primetime, the attack becomes Yimmi, Paredes and half a Williamson against the world, and/or 10th in the West.

And I think that’s the sum of things right now, i.e., somewhere between decent and not nearly good enough. Till the next one…