 |
| GOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!!!!! |
The title speaks to most of my thoughts about the game. And yet does that shoe really fit? And do we have to call in Cinderella for the tie-breaker?
On the chapter level, I don’t think tonight’s the Portland Timbers’ (glorious, radiant!) 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake requires any kind of detailed explanation. One decisive, isolated moment aside – here, I mean isolated as sighting a yeti riding the Loch Ness Monster – both teams struggled to stitch together anything terribly threatening and they both looked, for a lack of better phrase, like two groups of men contemplating their near-term fate.
That broad reality doubled the value of Santiago Moreno’s early go-ahead goal. Gods know it wasn’t pretty. Evander looked to have lost control of the ball, and too close on the left to make much out of it, until he saw Jose Mosquera loose and advancing on the back post. Evander’s cross strayed just past the toe of...what’s his name for RSL, landed in the slightly-hesitant path of Juan David Mosquera (frozen, apparently, by the lingering toe), he then pitched a cross into a wide-open gap into the beating heart of RSL’s defense, and Portland’s very own, long-troubled winger, Santiago Moreno, butted it home like a Bighorn in mating season, hallelujah, it was 1-0 to the Timbers.
I want to stop here to talk about Moreno, because he strikes me as one of the two real storylines for this game - not to mention the rest of 2023, and beyond. As any tuned-in Timbers fan knows, Moreno has had an angsty season, unsure of his role on the team, maybe even doubting MLS, God, and everything. As I watched him tonight, looking a little looser, more effective, maybe even a little more handsome, I got to wondering whether anyone on the coaching staff sat him down and told him that the slate is clean, the future is now, and so on. Set aside the question of whether saying such a thing is wise or deserved, part of me wonders whether it came up on practical grounds? To maybe knock things loose with a frustrated player, one perhaps in need of motivation? Reasonable hiccups aside, it worked. I’d call that Moreno’s best game of 2023...which doesn’t feel so brave, really. After all, that's one goal, one assist, one player.
After last week, who could the other player be but Evander? To chuck in my own two, I don’t think he changed any opinions tonight, but, because negatives are on my mind, the feeble stab that let RSL’s Andres Gomez danced around to a clean look at goal stood out (even if I understand it in light of last Saturday’s disaster penalty), as did his repeatedly getting caught on the ball and spinning, spinning, spinning to a brighter future (which, here, means to nowhere). Combine that with a larger, wider....well, what can I call it but invisibility? It’s less that Evander failed to turn in a commanding presence than I’m not sure he even managed a good one. Again.
The several things I think about the Timbers win tonight lurks in the penumbra of the above. Because neither team ever really got their hands (or feet) on the game, they spent most of it clawing for scraps. RSL scrapped a little harder – particularly from range, sometimes with better effect (e.g., Nelson Palacio’s shot for RSL around the 38th; surely in here somewhere) – but that only elevated the value of the game’s purest moment of quality, aka, the Portland Timbers’ (ultimately) winning goal.
First of all, it was surprisingly smooth. After so many months of neglect, it bordered on the romantic. As such, I hereby invite you to watch the play a second time....no, now. (Why? Because it’s dynamite! M-o-u-s-e.). As much as I admire the beauty of thing, everything from Claudio Bravo’s unexpected (for me) cross, Moreno’s sublime set-up and Felipe Mora’s eight-ball-in-the-corner-pocket finish, I want to spend just as much time celebrating the thing that started it – i.e., the Timbers breaking out of RSL’s occasional press. The visitors didn’t use it often, and lord knows it didn’t serve them well, but Portland got out of it, I don’t know, eight times out of ten? The real number is probably closer to half in both attempts and escapes, but they all point to the same thing: the Timbers moved the ball well enough all night. And you have to take the first step in order to take that first one. Mission accomplished.
Real Salt Lake did pull a goal back – a shot from range, with a telling deflection by (who else?) Cristian Arango – and they ultimately posted more shots on goal....perhaps by a disturbing margin (you tell me), but the Timbers still won the game. And, and, they did it in a way that left me feeling...more than less better about the road ahead.
On the chapter level, I don’t think tonight’s the Portland Timbers’ (glorious, radiant!) 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake requires any kind of detailed explanation. One decisive, isolated moment aside – here, I mean isolated as sighting a yeti riding the Loch Ness Monster – both teams struggled to stitch together anything terribly threatening and they both looked, for a lack of better phrase, like two groups of men contemplating their near-term fate.
That broad reality doubled the value of Santiago Moreno’s early go-ahead goal. Gods know it wasn’t pretty. Evander looked to have lost control of the ball, and too close on the left to make much out of it, until he saw Jose Mosquera loose and advancing on the back post. Evander’s cross strayed just past the toe of...what’s his name for RSL, landed in the slightly-hesitant path of Juan David Mosquera (frozen, apparently, by the lingering toe), he then pitched a cross into a wide-open gap into the beating heart of RSL’s defense, and Portland’s very own, long-troubled winger, Santiago Moreno, butted it home like a Bighorn in mating season, hallelujah, it was 1-0 to the Timbers.
I want to stop here to talk about Moreno, because he strikes me as one of the two real storylines for this game - not to mention the rest of 2023, and beyond. As any tuned-in Timbers fan knows, Moreno has had an angsty season, unsure of his role on the team, maybe even doubting MLS, God, and everything. As I watched him tonight, looking a little looser, more effective, maybe even a little more handsome, I got to wondering whether anyone on the coaching staff sat him down and told him that the slate is clean, the future is now, and so on. Set aside the question of whether saying such a thing is wise or deserved, part of me wonders whether it came up on practical grounds? To maybe knock things loose with a frustrated player, one perhaps in need of motivation? Reasonable hiccups aside, it worked. I’d call that Moreno’s best game of 2023...which doesn’t feel so brave, really. After all, that's one goal, one assist, one player.
After last week, who could the other player be but Evander? To chuck in my own two, I don’t think he changed any opinions tonight, but, because negatives are on my mind, the feeble stab that let RSL’s Andres Gomez danced around to a clean look at goal stood out (even if I understand it in light of last Saturday’s disaster penalty), as did his repeatedly getting caught on the ball and spinning, spinning, spinning to a brighter future (which, here, means to nowhere). Combine that with a larger, wider....well, what can I call it but invisibility? It’s less that Evander failed to turn in a commanding presence than I’m not sure he even managed a good one. Again.
The several things I think about the Timbers win tonight lurks in the penumbra of the above. Because neither team ever really got their hands (or feet) on the game, they spent most of it clawing for scraps. RSL scrapped a little harder – particularly from range, sometimes with better effect (e.g., Nelson Palacio’s shot for RSL around the 38th; surely in here somewhere) – but that only elevated the value of the game’s purest moment of quality, aka, the Portland Timbers’ (ultimately) winning goal.
First of all, it was surprisingly smooth. After so many months of neglect, it bordered on the romantic. As such, I hereby invite you to watch the play a second time....no, now. (Why? Because it’s dynamite! M-o-u-s-e.). As much as I admire the beauty of thing, everything from Claudio Bravo’s unexpected (for me) cross, Moreno’s sublime set-up and Felipe Mora’s eight-ball-in-the-corner-pocket finish, I want to spend just as much time celebrating the thing that started it – i.e., the Timbers breaking out of RSL’s occasional press. The visitors didn’t use it often, and lord knows it didn’t serve them well, but Portland got out of it, I don’t know, eight times out of ten? The real number is probably closer to half in both attempts and escapes, but they all point to the same thing: the Timbers moved the ball well enough all night. And you have to take the first step in order to take that first one. Mission accomplished.
Real Salt Lake did pull a goal back – a shot from range, with a telling deflection by (who else?) Cristian Arango – and they ultimately posted more shots on goal....perhaps by a disturbing margin (you tell me), but the Timbers still won the game. And, and, they did it in a way that left me feeling...more than less better about the road ahead.
 |
| He will come. He will come. It will come. It... |
It’s all talking points from here, so let’s get started:
A Perhaps Meaningless Caveat
Full credit to Mora’s glorious goal, but I feel like the quality of the team dropped off as the subs came on. I don’t mean anything grandiose by that. For all I know, it followed from new-kid-coach, Miles Joseph, starting the most-repped line-up from last week’s practices. I suppose I’m mostly saying mind the line-up (and, even there, maybe just the players lined up, not necessarily the formation) , because maybe it’s okay?
Colombian Connection
Mosquera and Moreno ran some great combination play up the right during the first half. It culminated in a play at the 42nd minute, where Mosquera got high on the right and with nothing to do but size up a pass. He rolled a beauty into Moreno – but also the space Franck Boli opened by pushing against the back-line – only for the latter to sky-shank it. Bottom line, all the what was hinted at what could be between these talented youngsters.
My New Fave
Boli just has never stopped growing on me since he joined the team, but seeing him total an RSL midfielder and then sprint the other direction to widen an opening in the defense? Sure, it happened early in the game, but....good stuff!! More than anything else, Franck Boli plays like he really wants to be here. If that’s his default, full credit to him. But I haven’t seen one minute of quit in that player since he came on.
My Old Fave
I remain a huge Felipe Mora stan. Dude’s game is hospital-corners tidy.
Witness to a Career Season
I had to skip a beat thematically, but this ties back to one thing I said about Boli: Dario Zuparic has played every single of 2023 like he’d do anything to prevent a loss. Failing that, he’d do the same to make sure the Timbers won’t give up the next goal. In a season sorely lacking in highlights, Zuparic is an easy call for my personal Top 5. Maybe even my Top 3.
In the big picture, 75% of everything went fine tonight. The Timbers didn’t lock down anything on either side of the ball and, honestly, they always looked like giving up at least one goal, starting with the period right the scored what proved to be the game-winner. But they also scored a godddamned good game-winner and held out to the final whistle. That feels like a good way to end this post because few things have defined the Portland Timbers’ 2023 quite like precarity. They’ve been squeezing their path to even MLS's middle-class (aka, the playoffs) all season long – sometimes just when they’ve stopped doing it at long goddamn last – and, despite some encouraging signs in what I watched tonight, I can’t see that stopping this season. That doesn’t mean I don’t hope for it and scan the skies for it like a toddler pining for Santa on Christmas Eve, but Portland’s still playing out of a hole (just four points now!) and this was still a wobbling RSL team in Portland. I don’t type that to Debbie Downer the whole occasion – and it’s not like the next three opponents (@ SEA, v LAFC, @ ATX) don’t have their issues – but those are two games on the road (where the Timbers are not good), plus a...n intermittently dangerous team at home.
All in all, though, that’s the first bar to the Promised Land cleared. Keeping pumping those legs, lads, and kicking over the obstacles. Till the next one...
A Perhaps Meaningless Caveat
Full credit to Mora’s glorious goal, but I feel like the quality of the team dropped off as the subs came on. I don’t mean anything grandiose by that. For all I know, it followed from new-kid-coach, Miles Joseph, starting the most-repped line-up from last week’s practices. I suppose I’m mostly saying mind the line-up (and, even there, maybe just the players lined up, not necessarily the formation) , because maybe it’s okay?
Colombian Connection
Mosquera and Moreno ran some great combination play up the right during the first half. It culminated in a play at the 42nd minute, where Mosquera got high on the right and with nothing to do but size up a pass. He rolled a beauty into Moreno – but also the space Franck Boli opened by pushing against the back-line – only for the latter to sky-shank it. Bottom line, all the what was hinted at what could be between these talented youngsters.
My New Fave
Boli just has never stopped growing on me since he joined the team, but seeing him total an RSL midfielder and then sprint the other direction to widen an opening in the defense? Sure, it happened early in the game, but....good stuff!! More than anything else, Franck Boli plays like he really wants to be here. If that’s his default, full credit to him. But I haven’t seen one minute of quit in that player since he came on.
My Old Fave
I remain a huge Felipe Mora stan. Dude’s game is hospital-corners tidy.
Witness to a Career Season
I had to skip a beat thematically, but this ties back to one thing I said about Boli: Dario Zuparic has played every single of 2023 like he’d do anything to prevent a loss. Failing that, he’d do the same to make sure the Timbers won’t give up the next goal. In a season sorely lacking in highlights, Zuparic is an easy call for my personal Top 5. Maybe even my Top 3.
In the big picture, 75% of everything went fine tonight. The Timbers didn’t lock down anything on either side of the ball and, honestly, they always looked like giving up at least one goal, starting with the period right the scored what proved to be the game-winner. But they also scored a godddamned good game-winner and held out to the final whistle. That feels like a good way to end this post because few things have defined the Portland Timbers’ 2023 quite like precarity. They’ve been squeezing their path to even MLS's middle-class (aka, the playoffs) all season long – sometimes just when they’ve stopped doing it at long goddamn last – and, despite some encouraging signs in what I watched tonight, I can’t see that stopping this season. That doesn’t mean I don’t hope for it and scan the skies for it like a toddler pining for Santa on Christmas Eve, but Portland’s still playing out of a hole (just four points now!) and this was still a wobbling RSL team in Portland. I don’t type that to Debbie Downer the whole occasion – and it’s not like the next three opponents (@ SEA, v LAFC, @ ATX) don’t have their issues – but those are two games on the road (where the Timbers are not good), plus a...n intermittently dangerous team at home.
All in all, though, that’s the first bar to the Promised Land cleared. Keeping pumping those legs, lads, and kicking over the obstacles. Till the next one...
No comments:
Post a Comment