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| This, only even more dandy. |
Wow. That one just kind of sat there, didn’t it? A couple things happened now and again to make you think the game might open up, or at least kick out of neutral. Nope.
Houston Dynamo FC hosted yesterday’s goal-less draw versus the Portland Timbers and, yeah, the whole thing felt the same as two dudes squaring off for a fight, both of them announcing loudly “I don’t throw the first punch, bro.” At most, you can think of moments like Josecarlos Van Rankin’s no-look near-assist to Darwin Quintero as one of those dudes getting shoved and, say, falling backwards over a garbage can. He gets up, none the worse for the wear but some wet spots on the seat of his pants, while his wiser friend (Aljaz Ivacic) helps him up and away from the scene, without further embarrassment or potential pain, announcing over this shoulder, “let it go, man. He's not worth it.”
And I think that’s all I can get out of that metaphor.
The Timbers handed Houston at least one more breakthrough - courtesy of Quintero and Fafa Picault combining to break a high offside trap - but Ivacic bailed out Portland again. The Timbers’ new No. 1 pulled their asses out of the fire again in the 2nd half - and all those saves are lovingly documented in the highlights (which helped recall who did what on the morning after) - so you kept waiting for the rest of the team to do something with the pocket money he gave them. To their credit, Portland created their best chances during spells of attacking pressure, periods when they’d seemed to make the conscious, collective decision to get players forward to see if they can’t buy the go-ahead goal. Cristhian Paredes fired the best shot I can remember - and from a good if crowded spot - and I noted some better-than-half chances for each of Bill Tuiloma, Yimmi Chara, Marvin Loria, and a largely aimless Jaroslaw Niezgoda (hold that thought), but whether by lunging (Bill), or kicking more dirty that clean. Nope.
Both teams subbed in players of interest over the second half - for Houston, Corey Baird for Tyler Pasher (who let Portland’s Claudio Bravo catch up to his best moment), Zeca for Griffin Dorsey, and Thorleifur (is Thor a nickname?) Ulfarsson for a largely aimless Sebastian Ferreira; for Portland Dairon Asprilla for Niezgoda, David Ayala for…Paredes, Loria for Santiago Moreno…good Lord, why did I start this section, then, later Eryk Williamson for Sebastian Blanco - and, again, nearly all those changes made you hope ‘n’ wonder that each move might get the same unstuck. Nope.
When Houston’s Teenage Hadebe got chucked for his second yellow at the 75th minute, I couldn’t have been alone in thinking that, surely, this momentous decision will finally deliver the moment this game has waited on for…75 minutes. Yeah, no, didn’t happen.
Thinking back over the entire experience, it’s possible my personal highlight came during the half-time interview with Timbers head coach, Gio Savarese, who ended the interview by sputtering in frustration at the yellow cards his team had received and yanking off his head-set. Even if I didn’t agree that Portland got stiffed on cards, that was good comedy.
That’s it, really. The game ended (mostly) even on the numbers and somewhere close to the middle of nowhere. I can’t come up with a reasonable gripe either team could have with each of their donuts. I was glad to see Ivacic play his second strong game in a row and the result’s arguably better for Portland than Houston, but my ambivalence is my commentary on this one. Before wrapping up Portland, I have some quick notes on Dynamo FC.
This was the second straight full 90 of game-time I’ve seen from them and, first and foremost, I was surprised at the way they mostly relied on the same kind of half-random chances they created against the San Jose Earthquakes. I don’t mean to take anything away from Quintero sending Picault in naked against Ivacic - good heads-up play, etc. And Ivacic’s third save was the closest they’d get all afternoon - the Timbers’ ‘keeper touched the ball so subtly, I’m still not sure he actually made contact - but both performances gave the same impression: chance creation ain’t their long suit. I just went back to confirm (here’s the Form Guide; I’m not linking to all that shit), and I can probably amend that to, Dynamo FC doesn’t create a lot of chances generally, but they do it all right against the riff-raff - e.g., San Jose, the Vancouver Whitecaps, and Inter Miami CF. That thought contains another thought, one for which I’d like to hold up Picault as a symbol - he gives a team something, no question, but he stalls out short of league-elite. At this point, Houston looks like a solid team, one possibly made better by new coach Paolo Nagamura, but I’m guessing they need to, say, get more talent around Ferreira before he can really shine - and they did their best to get that with the signing of Hector Herrera - but that’s about the future, not the present. All in all, I feel good about them beating some teams and stymieing others (e.g., Portland), but don’t feel like MLS pundits will either see their ceiling or know how high it’ll go until Herrera suits up in Orange.
Houston Dynamo FC hosted yesterday’s goal-less draw versus the Portland Timbers and, yeah, the whole thing felt the same as two dudes squaring off for a fight, both of them announcing loudly “I don’t throw the first punch, bro.” At most, you can think of moments like Josecarlos Van Rankin’s no-look near-assist to Darwin Quintero as one of those dudes getting shoved and, say, falling backwards over a garbage can. He gets up, none the worse for the wear but some wet spots on the seat of his pants, while his wiser friend (Aljaz Ivacic) helps him up and away from the scene, without further embarrassment or potential pain, announcing over this shoulder, “let it go, man. He's not worth it.”
And I think that’s all I can get out of that metaphor.
The Timbers handed Houston at least one more breakthrough - courtesy of Quintero and Fafa Picault combining to break a high offside trap - but Ivacic bailed out Portland again. The Timbers’ new No. 1 pulled their asses out of the fire again in the 2nd half - and all those saves are lovingly documented in the highlights (which helped recall who did what on the morning after) - so you kept waiting for the rest of the team to do something with the pocket money he gave them. To their credit, Portland created their best chances during spells of attacking pressure, periods when they’d seemed to make the conscious, collective decision to get players forward to see if they can’t buy the go-ahead goal. Cristhian Paredes fired the best shot I can remember - and from a good if crowded spot - and I noted some better-than-half chances for each of Bill Tuiloma, Yimmi Chara, Marvin Loria, and a largely aimless Jaroslaw Niezgoda (hold that thought), but whether by lunging (Bill), or kicking more dirty that clean. Nope.
Both teams subbed in players of interest over the second half - for Houston, Corey Baird for Tyler Pasher (who let Portland’s Claudio Bravo catch up to his best moment), Zeca for Griffin Dorsey, and Thorleifur (is Thor a nickname?) Ulfarsson for a largely aimless Sebastian Ferreira; for Portland Dairon Asprilla for Niezgoda, David Ayala for…Paredes, Loria for Santiago Moreno…good Lord, why did I start this section, then, later Eryk Williamson for Sebastian Blanco - and, again, nearly all those changes made you hope ‘n’ wonder that each move might get the same unstuck. Nope.
When Houston’s Teenage Hadebe got chucked for his second yellow at the 75th minute, I couldn’t have been alone in thinking that, surely, this momentous decision will finally deliver the moment this game has waited on for…75 minutes. Yeah, no, didn’t happen.
Thinking back over the entire experience, it’s possible my personal highlight came during the half-time interview with Timbers head coach, Gio Savarese, who ended the interview by sputtering in frustration at the yellow cards his team had received and yanking off his head-set. Even if I didn’t agree that Portland got stiffed on cards, that was good comedy.
That’s it, really. The game ended (mostly) even on the numbers and somewhere close to the middle of nowhere. I can’t come up with a reasonable gripe either team could have with each of their donuts. I was glad to see Ivacic play his second strong game in a row and the result’s arguably better for Portland than Houston, but my ambivalence is my commentary on this one. Before wrapping up Portland, I have some quick notes on Dynamo FC.
This was the second straight full 90 of game-time I’ve seen from them and, first and foremost, I was surprised at the way they mostly relied on the same kind of half-random chances they created against the San Jose Earthquakes. I don’t mean to take anything away from Quintero sending Picault in naked against Ivacic - good heads-up play, etc. And Ivacic’s third save was the closest they’d get all afternoon - the Timbers’ ‘keeper touched the ball so subtly, I’m still not sure he actually made contact - but both performances gave the same impression: chance creation ain’t their long suit. I just went back to confirm (here’s the Form Guide; I’m not linking to all that shit), and I can probably amend that to, Dynamo FC doesn’t create a lot of chances generally, but they do it all right against the riff-raff - e.g., San Jose, the Vancouver Whitecaps, and Inter Miami CF. That thought contains another thought, one for which I’d like to hold up Picault as a symbol - he gives a team something, no question, but he stalls out short of league-elite. At this point, Houston looks like a solid team, one possibly made better by new coach Paolo Nagamura, but I’m guessing they need to, say, get more talent around Ferreira before he can really shine - and they did their best to get that with the signing of Hector Herrera - but that’s about the future, not the present. All in all, I feel good about them beating some teams and stymieing others (e.g., Portland), but don’t feel like MLS pundits will either see their ceiling or know how high it’ll go until Herrera suits up in Orange.
As for the Timbers, my overarching thought is that they didn't really show us anything new - or least not anything big picture new, e.g., Van Rankin’s still a liability, Bravo got away with a couple things because he largely covered a USL-elite attacker (Pasher), and Timbers fans are still getting a loud clicking sound from the attack, and that issues from an engine trying to turn over as opposed to all the players synching on the same beat. I saw a couple reasons for that as the game petered out into a soft fart after 90 minutes, among them:
- Moreno’s touch is too long, and by a couple miles, and that killed off a couple promising moments.
- Asprilla has been flat all season, lacking inspiration, if you will. Seeing as he almost carried the attack in the early games of 2021, that's an issue.
- Too many Timbers players are too goddamn unwilling to shoot the goddamn ball.
- Blanco’s attempting to cut inside and fire toward the near post, while trying to find players on the back post to get at that one. There are…a number of things wrong with the latter, but it’s also all a tad predictable.
- Finally, and this one’s new: watch Niezgoda’s runs and movement generally. When the breaks (aka, moments of transition) come, you’ll see him staring back at the player on the ball and nothing but - or that’s what he kept doing yesterday. To float a theory, I think he does that because his instinct is to combine from closer together, i.e., he’s looking for a pass to his feet that he can, say, send someone else through on a one-touch pass. As such, he likes to hover closer to the ball and in space between defenders. Again, I know we’ve covered this, but the hold-up play thing isn’t Niezgoda’s game; he’s more likely to get (literally) bloodied on a knock-down header than he is to hit the ball anywhere useful. So, yeah, I think they still haven’t fully on-boarded Niezgoda.
There’s a larger issue with how Portland’s attack works, or fails to, and this gets back to that hanging note about Blanco: too often, he’s trying to play that back-post header to just one guy loitering in a crowd over there. The ball’s going away from the goal, the angle sucks, defenders stand between him and the goal, along with the goalkeeper. The details vary (minimally), but that’s one flawed version of the Timbers’ attack: two dudes trying to score against four to six.
As for the other version, that usually takes the form of Portland getting all kinds of numbers in the vertical space about 25 yards from the goal line and ineffectually passing it around. At times, the ball seems to go in just for the sake of it - i.e., just so players can be seen to be doing something - and, when a crack of daylight opens, players seem more inclined to pass than to try to fire something into it.
It's a design issue, basically. Teams know you can cede a lot of ground to the Timbers - e.g., everything up to the vertical space about 25 yards from the goal-line - and let them turn themselves in circles and generally fuck around until it all ends in a corner or a goal kick. I don’t have any concrete fixes for this, just a vague idea that the Timbers need to figure out a way to create some vertical space in its attack outside transition moments. It’s either that, or figuring out 1) how to play a cross (as in, how to make useful runs), and 2) actually send a sufficient number of bodies into the area to make something happen. Your dice, Gio…
- Moreno’s touch is too long, and by a couple miles, and that killed off a couple promising moments.
- Asprilla has been flat all season, lacking inspiration, if you will. Seeing as he almost carried the attack in the early games of 2021, that's an issue.
- Too many Timbers players are too goddamn unwilling to shoot the goddamn ball.
- Blanco’s attempting to cut inside and fire toward the near post, while trying to find players on the back post to get at that one. There are…a number of things wrong with the latter, but it’s also all a tad predictable.
- Finally, and this one’s new: watch Niezgoda’s runs and movement generally. When the breaks (aka, moments of transition) come, you’ll see him staring back at the player on the ball and nothing but - or that’s what he kept doing yesterday. To float a theory, I think he does that because his instinct is to combine from closer together, i.e., he’s looking for a pass to his feet that he can, say, send someone else through on a one-touch pass. As such, he likes to hover closer to the ball and in space between defenders. Again, I know we’ve covered this, but the hold-up play thing isn’t Niezgoda’s game; he’s more likely to get (literally) bloodied on a knock-down header than he is to hit the ball anywhere useful. So, yeah, I think they still haven’t fully on-boarded Niezgoda.
There’s a larger issue with how Portland’s attack works, or fails to, and this gets back to that hanging note about Blanco: too often, he’s trying to play that back-post header to just one guy loitering in a crowd over there. The ball’s going away from the goal, the angle sucks, defenders stand between him and the goal, along with the goalkeeper. The details vary (minimally), but that’s one flawed version of the Timbers’ attack: two dudes trying to score against four to six.
As for the other version, that usually takes the form of Portland getting all kinds of numbers in the vertical space about 25 yards from the goal line and ineffectually passing it around. At times, the ball seems to go in just for the sake of it - i.e., just so players can be seen to be doing something - and, when a crack of daylight opens, players seem more inclined to pass than to try to fire something into it.
It's a design issue, basically. Teams know you can cede a lot of ground to the Timbers - e.g., everything up to the vertical space about 25 yards from the goal-line - and let them turn themselves in circles and generally fuck around until it all ends in a corner or a goal kick. I don’t have any concrete fixes for this, just a vague idea that the Timbers need to figure out a way to create some vertical space in its attack outside transition moments. It’s either that, or figuring out 1) how to play a cross (as in, how to make useful runs), and 2) actually send a sufficient number of bodies into the area to make something happen. Your dice, Gio…
Random thought: When Teenage Hadebe turns forty, will he change or alter his handle? Maybe become Tee'Nage Hadebe?
ReplyDeleteTo show my age, the "loud clicking sound from the [Timbers] attack" is engine ping from low octane fuel. Picault may be short of being league-elite - but who on the Timbers currently is anywhere close to that designation?
I know that to have deadly, first-time shooters in our midfield and wing ranks requires DP-level money, but, geez, sometimes the toothless quality of our attack in certain matches leaves me with low-grade depression.
And, finally, Niezgoda getting his bell rung to the point where they seemed to elastic-tape his head back together, probably means that yesterday's shift by him doesn't tell anything meaningful.
Nice tip on the clicking and, no, no one on Portland looks much better right now. And the attack is...really frustrating right now. REALLY frustrating, even as it feels somewhat familiar.
ReplyDeleteI hear you on Niezgoda's noggin getting knocked around, but I'm still going to start watching his runs. Something tells me he's trying to do something else - something that could be helpful too - but, as noted above, he's far from the only issue. Till the next one, I guess...