Portland Timbers 2022 Review, aka, The Malaise Post

Aren't we all her? Only with beer?

I’m going to front-load the scandals that stalked the Portland Timbers/Thorns organization until it forced them to make the same choice they should have made half a decade prior. Nice as it felt to see Gavin Wilkinson and Mike Golub get their long-overdue comeuppance for years worth of cowardice and asshole-ism (respectively?), the muleheaded determination to let the wounds fester until something like the third investigation called sepsis by its name did what those things do: kill the host. Honestly, to persist in something that willfully destructive boggles the mind.

Fucking morons...

Now, had things worked out on the field for the Timbers the same way they did for, say, the Thorns, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this cardigan gearing up to bum you out. But, goddamn, if light brown and mustard yellow aren’t my colors...

Bluntly, I am excited about exactly one player on the Portland Timbers current roster: Santiago Moreno. That doesn’t mean I neither rate nor like anyone else: for all its issues, I don’t see a need to burn it all down and start from scratch (which wouldn’t work in any case); moreover, I’m open to the argument they under-performed this year. Going the other way, I lean toward thinking they didn’t – or, perhaps more accurately, they played to the level of available personnel. Staying healthy matters to any team, obviously, but the Timbers have operated on a late-stage Jenga level for longer than I like. And if losing one piece, or even two, means the whole thing comes down? Well, that’s when you know you’re doing something wrong.

The key missing piece was Felipe Mora. Portland’s transition game relied on his implausible knack (because fucker’s short) for receiving the first pass into the opposition’s defensive third and finding a good, and ideally unsettling, pass before defenses could clutter up the space. The Timbers attack could rarely break down a compacted defense even with Mora on the field, but the ball movement in the attacking third mingled buck-passing (take. or. take. a. fucking. shot. god. dammit.) with a sensation not unlike despair for much of 2022. A guy who pops into the twitter feed with the occasional comment argues that Gio Savarese organizes the attack to work for tap-ins. I think he’s sold me on that argument at this point. Even if he hasn’t sold me on his particular solution – i.e., build the team around speed – agreeing that something ain’t working is the first step to doing something different. Which, here, means anything.

And yet, the Timbers total number of goals squeaked a small margin over the league average – they scored 53, the average was 50.3 – and that put them higher on goals scored than four teams that made the playoffs from the Western Conference. To ask the obvious question, do I have a knotted stick up my ass around this question or did the seven goals they scored against Sporting KC in the season’s only blowout and the four goals they later failed to make count against Minnesota United FC put a band-aid on what had been a pretty shitty year for scoring? The 1.31 goals scored on average over the other 32 games of Portland’s regular season make a fair case for the latter. As did the evidence of my oft-glazed eyes. The word “excitement” didn’t slip into the same sentence as “Timbers” so much this season.

The defense didn’t help, obviously. It allowed as many goals as the offense scored – including the three that put an emphatic end to Portland’s season on Decision Day (relive the mall, and think of Wilkinson as you watch, you wretch) – and that despite a genuinely great year by the other happy upside of the Timbers 2022, Aljaz Ivacic. Yeah, yeah. All I can say is that ‘keepers only excite me when they play out of their goddamn minds. And for about a year. More to the point, that’s one field player and a ‘keeper. Two rocks don’t make a foundation.

As for the center back corps, the only player that lets me dream a little is Zac McGraw. He never looked out of place out there and his size/general presence definitely came in handy, but, in the context of building a better defense – which has got to be the goal – his relative youth matters more (he’s 25). I saw at least one careful observer say Larrys Mabiala has lost a step, but I still rate Dario Zuparic, even if I wouldn’t press a claim for league’s best defender farther than naked tribalism. That leaves Bill Tuiloma. I like Bill, and to the point I’d actually get pissed if they let him go, but he’s a bit like Zuparic, in that I doubt many would mistake him for a league-best defender. It's all the other things he can do – e.g., free kicks, above-pay-grade passing out of defense, an ability to move into midfield to support subs when they come in and it makes sense (surprisingly often) – that makes him so valuable.

Fine. The balance. I can take the miss.

Now, one can’t talk about Portland’s defense without nodding – fuck that, bowing – to Diego Chara. I’ll be damned if the salty bastard didn’t have another excellent season – at age 36, by the way, in midfield and he’s still running down players 10 years younger in the open field. I’ve been saying that can’t go on forever for at least three years, and feel free to call that a filibuster...but, Timbers fans got a fair glimpse of what the midfield as presently comprised is far too goddamn likely to play like when Chara retires in the season-murdering loss to Real Salt Lake on Decision/Judgment/You-Have-Been-Weighed-in-the-Scales-and-Found-Wanting Day. David Ayala is clearly a work in progress - on both sides of the ball, somewhat distressingly - and, as much as I’ve rated his progression this season, Cristhian Paredes does one thing well – moving the ball smartly, yet simply, but most important quickly – but he’s no great shakes defensively. And he sure as hell doesn’t shake half as much as he'd need to in order to fill Chara’s size fucking 20s as a defensive asset.

And that brings the conservation to the rumors – specifically, the ones about Eryk Williamson leaving the team in the off-season. First, that wouldn’t surprise me. The fact that a guy in the conversation for the U.S. Men’s National Team didn’t start in the decisive game of the season – and that he didn’t even come on – sends a signal with reggaeton-horn energy that something ain’t right. To wrap up the conversation above, I don’t see Williamson as a solution to the defensive woes that will inevitably follow if the Timbers don’t adequately replace Diego Chara – and, to be clear, I care less about how they do it than whether or not they get ‘er done. Still, Williamson has real upside in the attack, at least when he’s motivated...of which, see above comments about “things ain’t right”; also, fun aside, I saw people on twitter today using phrases like “hard pass” when presented the idea of Eryk joining their team. One of them called paying “Alex Ring money” something very much like crazy. Your call to make...

Williamson has talent to burn, as I see it (and did he in 2022?), but, to get back to Moreno, he was the guy when it came to unbalancing a retreating team through midfield and making this year’s attempt at transition offense work generally. Hence the excitement I feel. By the numbers, he had a thoroughly respectable season – seven goals and eight assists (tied with Sebastian Blanco, for what it’s worth) - but, if only he had a foil closer to goal to work with, say, some guy named Mora. Still, and for all his very real talent, I don’t see Moreno going far above those kinds of numbers going forward, not unless he sharpens up his finishing (i.e., imagine him on a twelve goal season), and that at long last pushes the conversation to the front of the pitch, aka, the forwards. And the various pretenders to the role.

I was about to say Blanco’s numbers fell off this season, but...they didn’t, not really. He was injured and/or hobbled during the time when the team needed him to step up most – i.e., after Diego Valeri’s departure – but Blanco got enough minutes this season (1829) to get the team somewhere close to on his back, but neither he nor they got there. And had you told me that the only thing that separate Dairon’s 2022 numbers from his 2021 numbers was one thin assist, and in the wrong direction, I would have called you a liar. The fact is, Asprilla has had his two best seasons over the past two seasons – and that’s great, honestly – but the man’s just not a franchise player. He’s got heart to spare, but could stand to borrow a little on the skill-set side. Passing comes to mind...

I haven’t mentioned Portland’s other forwards yet – e.g., Nathan Fogaca (good energy), Tega Ikoba (umm), and Diego Gutierrez (never seen ‘im) – but none of them have staked his claim as first-team material. And that leaves just two (main) attacking players: Yimmi Chara and Jaroslaw Niezgoda. To be blunt about it, and numbers can go straight hell, both of them strike me as square pegs. While both have fairly visible upsides – e.g., Niezgoda passes pretty well, if mostly when running toward the opposition goal and he’s a slick finisher, and Yimmi...let’s just call him willing and good for holding onto the ball in a 1-v-1 when he has possession – both have struggled to fit into, so far as I can tell, the system Savarese insists on playing. And, as I feel like I’ve made clear across multiple posts on two teams (at a minimum), I am a 1,000% believer in adjusting your system to the players you have and, near as I can tell, Savarese does not do that. Related, he just got signed to a “multi-year” extension that will keep going regardless of what I do, and, yes, that does seem relevant. It also doesn’t change the state and nature of Savarese’s employment and/or what he does with the team.

Careful observers will note that I haven’t yet mentioned the fullbacks, but that’s mostly because they don’t interest me. Josecarlos Van Rankin, aka, one of the great mysteries on the roster, has already been let go and I accept Claudio Bravo for what he is – i.e., a high-risk, (relatively) high-reward performer. Like Zuparic, he’s not league-best at his position, but he’s also far from the worst. Finally, and for what it’s worth, I like what I’ve seen from Juan Mosquera so far. He brings an level of strength and speed Timbers fans haven’t seen since Alvas Powell and he’s young, just 20 years old; if his technical skills are better, Portland may have backed into a winner. And dim memories of Justin Rasmussen getting roasted in one, apparently damning, game aside, he looks reasonably promising too...

...but that doesn’t erase the fact that the Portland Timbers, as presently constituted, don’t have a single game-breaking talent on the roster. In the here and now, what they have is a legend carrying good enough as far as he can carry it. If the Timbers want to go anywhere worth watching in 2023 – something I absolutely mean on an aesthetic level – they’re going to have to make moves that pay off either that season or the next one or two.

I saw reports that what’s left of the Timbers front office is fishing. His name’s Evander, or something like that (right?), but I also don’t do futures. He will come or he won’t, he’ll succeed or he won’t. The same goes for any player Portland finds, signs and delivers. But that’s a different story for a later post. Till then....