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| Jaroslaw Niezgoda says "Hi." |
I’ll start with a confession: I didn’t get the usual granular [ed. - what? listen to yourself, man!] read on the Portland Timbers in their 1-3 loss at Toronto FC because I was catching up with an old friend (#WorthIt). Still, I think I saw enough to state that things did not go well, and with some confidence. Anyone who disagrees may speak now or forever hold your........no takers, eh? Small surprise. The box score reduces that reality into numerical values, none of them good; I remember seeing the shots distributed at 7 shots to 0 sometime during the first half and hoping that improved in some way...but nope. Jaroslaw Niezgoda sends his regards from the remote desert island you can see on Portland’s passing map....
As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...
I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.
Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.
First and foremost, Aljaz Ivacic earned himself another bow on the back of nine (9!) saves that kept the Timbers alive for longer than they had any right to be. He only got beat when he got well and truly stranded...something that happened at least 12 times (per the box score) and three times that counted. And that brings the conversation to Toronto’s three goals.
Every defense in every league leaves little pockets of space – a team can only get so many players behind the ball (believe 11 is the real-world limit), and even that still leaves plenty of blades of grass to defend – but it’s not every day the local team plays another team as adept at making them defend every blade of grass as Toronto did tonight. Mistakes were made, obviously – Toronto’s first goal got a massive assist from a frankly stunning collective failure among Portland’s defense (seriously, watch Sebastian Blanco watch Richie Laryea run behind and outside Claudio Bravo, then watch every Timber watch Laryea run behind Bravo and leave damn near everyone in BMO Field wide open), as did their third goal (seriously, eight Timbers in the area and not one of them thought to get tighter on Federico Bernardeschi?) – and, no, those collective failures didn’t help tonight and, factually, never do. Insigne’s game-winner didn’t bother me a ton...despite the entirety of the Timbers’ right losing him on the play and Bill Tuiloma seeing his run too late, but the brute, brutal reality is that your local team will struggle any game in which the opposing team scores as many goals as your local team had in raw shots.
As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...
I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.
Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.
First and foremost, Aljaz Ivacic earned himself another bow on the back of nine (9!) saves that kept the Timbers alive for longer than they had any right to be. He only got beat when he got well and truly stranded...something that happened at least 12 times (per the box score) and three times that counted. And that brings the conversation to Toronto’s three goals.
Every defense in every league leaves little pockets of space – a team can only get so many players behind the ball (believe 11 is the real-world limit), and even that still leaves plenty of blades of grass to defend – but it’s not every day the local team plays another team as adept at making them defend every blade of grass as Toronto did tonight. Mistakes were made, obviously – Toronto’s first goal got a massive assist from a frankly stunning collective failure among Portland’s defense (seriously, watch Sebastian Blanco watch Richie Laryea run behind and outside Claudio Bravo, then watch every Timber watch Laryea run behind Bravo and leave damn near everyone in BMO Field wide open), as did their third goal (seriously, eight Timbers in the area and not one of them thought to get tighter on Federico Bernardeschi?) – and, no, those collective failures didn’t help tonight and, factually, never do. Insigne’s game-winner didn’t bother me a ton...despite the entirety of the Timbers’ right losing him on the play and Bill Tuiloma seeing his run too late, but the brute, brutal reality is that your local team will struggle any game in which the opposing team scores as many goals as your local team had in raw shots.
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| Far, far too apt. |
As I’ve already argued a dozen-plus times this season, I see the Timbers defensive failures as something baked in; if you see those getting better, God bless, but even Dario Zuparic got spun dizzy and stupid tonight (and the ball bouncing off Bill’s back on the winner, that shit was poetic). The current crop of Timbers fullbacks will get burned for as long as they’re on the roster, the center-backs have their issues, and the defensive cover from the midfield has some time and at least one major retirement (Diego Chara’s) before assuming whatever future form it finally achieves, etc. I’m willing to feel all the hope the Timbers can give me in that regard – I’ve seen good things from every Portland defender – but that side of the team is what it is until further notice. And that leaves this current Timbers team with one, and only one, viable option for success in 2022: running up the score to keep ahead of what's already baked in.
The first step in that process is scoring more than one goal- and that gets to what I found most discouraging about this game and the result. Setting aside all the time I spent chatting (and tweeting), it felt like I saw a Timbers attack die before breaking into Toronto’s defensive third every time I looked up. If Portland’s attack excels at anything, it’s getting the ball into the attacking third, but even that dried up tonight. Again, this was less about the Timbers failing to show up tonight - they had a solid opening 35 minutes, I thought - than not knowing what to do once they got there. And I suppose that’s the only pivot I have for either the game or the result.
Poorly as Portland played tonight, they did equalize and that gave them a shot at getting out of Toronto with at least one point. And...yeah, here’s where I acknowledge that the Timbers are the last team I should expect to close shop and gut out a draw in the face of baying customers...then again, isn’t that the dream?
26 games into the 2022 season – which means they’ve got just eight games to go – the Timbers have failed to arrive at a working balance that covers, or even just addresses, their weaknesses on both sides of the ball. My habit of writing them off early makes me (rightly) wary of doing so again, but, as tweeted somewhere in the game thread for this one, it’s damned hard to see the path to a successful season from where things are right now. That doesn’t mean no path exists, but it does mean that Portland can’t walk it until they find it.
Till the next one....and here's to hoping it goes a lot, lot better, if only on the attacking end.
The first step in that process is scoring more than one goal- and that gets to what I found most discouraging about this game and the result. Setting aside all the time I spent chatting (and tweeting), it felt like I saw a Timbers attack die before breaking into Toronto’s defensive third every time I looked up. If Portland’s attack excels at anything, it’s getting the ball into the attacking third, but even that dried up tonight. Again, this was less about the Timbers failing to show up tonight - they had a solid opening 35 minutes, I thought - than not knowing what to do once they got there. And I suppose that’s the only pivot I have for either the game or the result.
Poorly as Portland played tonight, they did equalize and that gave them a shot at getting out of Toronto with at least one point. And...yeah, here’s where I acknowledge that the Timbers are the last team I should expect to close shop and gut out a draw in the face of baying customers...then again, isn’t that the dream?
26 games into the 2022 season – which means they’ve got just eight games to go – the Timbers have failed to arrive at a working balance that covers, or even just addresses, their weaknesses on both sides of the ball. My habit of writing them off early makes me (rightly) wary of doing so again, but, as tweeted somewhere in the game thread for this one, it’s damned hard to see the path to a successful season from where things are right now. That doesn’t mean no path exists, but it does mean that Portland can’t walk it until they find it.
Till the next one....and here's to hoping it goes a lot, lot better, if only on the attacking end.
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