Houston Dynamo FC 1-0 Portland Timbers: A More Complete Incompleteness

One way to "break" one's duck...

In my mind, the biggest question about last night’s game was which team would score first. The Portland Timbers came (god)damn close in the fourth minute when my personal Man of the Match, Santiago Moreno, found Cristhian Paredes loose on the right side of the six (gotta be in here somewhere), but Houston Dynamo FC gored the proverbial duck first, thereby taking a 1-0 lead they never surrendered. Timbers lose, Timbers lose, etc.

By the way, does anyone know where the phrase “break your duck” comes from? Yeah, I could google it, but what’s the fun in that? This stays poultry-heavy for a few, btw. Moving on…

Lacking as it was in some familiar areas - e.g., attacking verve and total concentration in defense - I don’t have a lot of gripes about Portland’s overall performance yesterday and, as a handful of people reminded me on the Timbers subreddit, they don’t often leave the “great” state of Texas with points. A point or three would have been nice, sure, but all things considered, I find it harder to argue that Portland deserved some slice of the points last night than to argue that Houston didn’t deserve all of them.

Given the way Houston has played under Ben Olsen, this one was always going to be grind. The Dynamo play a patient, methodical game and, to use a phrase I may have forgotten to get to in the preview, they can hold onto the ball until they behoove themselves (it can take a while sometimes) to swing into the attack. No less important, Houston tends to have its ducks in a row behind the ball as they push forward – and, outside some frantic moments over the opening 15 minutes, that held  last night. Feel free to chicken-and-egg this until you, a regular human, unlocks the ability to lay eggs, but Houston reliably had at least one player in the right place at all times and all night. Whether that followed from the Timbers’ lack of execution or from the Dynamo just having really goddamn good defenders – e.g., Micael exceeded my already high expectations and, bluntly, Phil Neville should have Juan David Mosquera watch video of how Griffin Dorsey plays the same position until further notice – I can’t say and it just doesn’t matter at this point.

The reason it doesn’t matter? The Timbers made the game’s one, fatal mistake and that’s all this game had in it.

Get in the swing, Juan David.

Mosquera catches all kinds of hell for crap defending in the online conversations I follow and, to a fair extent, I get that. And yet, I can't bring myself to give him the wedgie/the swirlie/the childhood torture of your darkest imaginings for the botched communication with Maxime Crepeau that led to the game’s only goal. First, hats off to Adelberto “Coco” Carrasquilla for delivering that back-breaker of a sliced ball, because it created chaos o’ plenty. Now, if Crepeau called him off - and he might have too, given how aggressively Crepeau came out  to claim the ball (and Crepeau definitely had the better line on it) - then, yes, Mosquera screwed up. And yet, isn't the fact he's so often out of position one the fanbase's bigger beefs with Mosquera, and therefore wasn't it good to see him in a decent defensive position to where he could make...a reasonable play on the ball? All that’s academic now, in the past, and a discussion on how to do better for the next team meeting.

Before picking through some talking points, I have one more (rather long, as it happens) point to make about the game and the teams that played it. Whether through injury (Houston) or reinforcements that haven’t yet arrived (Portland) or some combination of the two, Houston and Portland met as incomplete teams. For all that, I believe that both teams are playing the best version of “their game” with the personnel on hand. The argument for Houston deserving the points follows from a case that they’re farther along in that project than the Timbers are. On the one hand, playing completely without a No. 9 – i.e., Amine Bassi has the physical presence of a 4 ½ tops – limited them (quite a bit) and they have the piddling attacking stats to show for it. On the other hand, the Dynamo more or less excelled at their fundamental game-plan of holding and using the ball. Content to putz it around the back, comfortable with playing the ball into Artur or Jan Gregus (for me, Houston’s low-key MotM) only to have them play it straight back, just fine with building up the flanks, but also capable of controlled ball progression through Bassi and Sebastian Kowalczyk coming back to find the ball: Houston takes a calm, collective approach to the game regardless of who’s in the line-up. With the exception of, say, Dorsey and Hector Herrera when he’s in, I doubt neutrals see many best XI players in the Dynamo roster, and yet they somehow still set the tempo in a lot of games. That’s not the same as winning, obviously, as their current place in the standings shows, but they are a good team and that’s down to the way they play.

The Timbers, meanwhile, can feel like a team waiting on missing pieces. Again, I don’t think they played a bad game yesterday. Some of that followed from Houston playing headless (e.g., without a No. 9) because that shaved real weight off of the attacking pressure, but Portland handled their biggest threat (shots from the top of the 18) pretty well and, hard as it is to believe, they ended the game with more shots and a higher xG than Houston. It takes a little stretch of the memory to remember them, but Evander skied a great opportunity at the 49th, then teed up a solid shot for Moreno just five minutes later, and Antony wildly shanked another half-chance in stoppage time. Again, Houston defended really well, but the Timbers still had those chances. The point of all that: Portland didn’t need a new flashy DP  last night, so much as they needed to execute in the moments they had. Zero points notwithstanding, this wasn’t such a bad outing.

And now…

 

Beast Mode, apparently...

Some (Though Not All) Talking Points

1) Is There a Next Level for Evander?

This is less about what I thought about his game – though, for what it’s worth, I found it lacking – than to pose the question, does Evander have an “anger mode”? While he clearly has a playmaker’s ego, does he have the raw desire to put the team on his back and carry it, or is he more about yanking the odd bit of magic out of his keister (e.g., last week’s winner)? Or, to hit it from another angle, can Evander make the players around him better, or is he mostly a soloist? Watching him play for fouls through much of the second half - and he got a couple (or a few?) - but each of those strikes me as a soloist’s approach and that's...fine. I guess. At any rate, just thinking about that now. Oh, and is anyone else worried about him getting Dis-Co’ed (sp?) for that late swipe at Dorsey? (I do.)

2) Antony, the Good and the Bad

It was good to see Antony and/or the Timbers collective reprieve the move that discombobulated the Colorado Rapids’ Keegan Rosenberry bloody – i.e., stretching the weak side fullback up the channel – which put Antony in a great position to do damage. His decision-making failed him pretty much every time, though, and that boiled down to Portland’s best attacking moves dying a premature death. In the context of the praise for Houston’s defense up above, that’s not so surprising - i.e., it's easier to play the killer ball when you have options - but making the most of great positions is literally Antony’s job, good defense or no. He's young and I'm more impressed with him this year than last, but...still.

2a) Speaking of Defense

Antony had some excellent and savvy defensive moments tonight. So did Moreno. Having wingers (or “wingers”) that put in that defensive work is a win, full-stop.

3) Nope, Not Doing It

I will not be drawn into a Dario Zuparic v Zac McGraw debate, not based on just one game, not based on anything, really. Outside of Zac’s massive aerial presence I’m not even sure I have a preference between the two of them.

At the end of it all, I read this game as the more complete incomplete team getting the better of the less complete one. Poorly as I phrased it, I do believe that having a new DP – specifically, Jonathan “Cabecita” Rodriguez – will change the way Portland plays; hell, just Claudio Bravo starting over Eric Miller will change the way the Timbers play…and that’s for good or ill, in Bravo’s case. Assuming Rodriguez does sign (I mean…it’s done, right?), and assuming the Timbers keep more or less healthy, I want to think they have a higher ceiling than the best present form of Houston. We’ll see how that plays out, but that’s what I want to think. Till the next one….