Portland Timbers 1-3 Philadelphia Union: The Tale of a Stubborn Middle Block

Or maybe just lost in suburban Philadelphia.

The Portland Timbers new DP forward, Jonathan Rodriguez, nodded home a flawless header late in last night’s game. His movement in response to the cross bears noting, because he kept his run on Olivier Mbaizo’s blind-side and timed his attack on the ball to, more or less, go through Mbaizo’s back. Despite being with the team less than a week, Rodriguez’s made smart runs and found useful pockets of space throughout the game. Encouraging stuff, in other words, so maybe hold that in your head as you read the rest of this, because it won’t be gentle reading.

I didn’t worry too much about the first goal the Portland Timbers gave up last night. On the hand, sure, one of the talking points from my scouting report on the Philadelphia Union was “Set Pieces, Set Pieces, Set Pieces” and the Timbers' response in that moment was “excuse me, what was that talking point again?” followed by “oh, shit!” On the other hand, it had a “shit happens” feel to it in real time and, maddening as it was to review the tape and see the defense leaving Julian Carranza unmarked in the heart of the area, Portland had just wrapped a good attacking moment on the other end five minutes prior – incidentally, one that featured Rodriguez finding a great spot on a recycled cross. He hit the post on that one...ah, what might have been...

A vague doughty optimism held, not just for me, but among the people around me in the stands up to the point when Philadelphia scored their second goal. It was at that point that a collective understanding that something was Very Wrong took hold. As an aside, I have missed the mob mentality one can only get from catching a game live; nothing like having the hive-mind buzzing in your ear for 90+ minutes…

The game ended 1-3 to Philadelphia and under a cloud of numb disappointment. That followed less from anything that happened during the game, than from the overall framing of the game. Again, the Union played this game without several key players – e.g., Daniel Gazdag, Jose Martinez, even Jack McGlynn(?) – and barely enough in reserve to populate the bench. That felt like big enough news that it counted as a major premise of my scouting report…so maybe that overall framing was a mix of delusion and hubris?

This is, indisputably, GRRRReeattt!

While we’re on the subject of things my scouting report got wrong, the Union didn’t defend high, never mind press, but instead settled into a compact middle block that invited – nay, that dared – the Timbers to play through it. Hell, maybe Phil Neville expected the same defensive posture I did, because Portland rarely cracked the Union defense. The Timbers never really got hold of the game and, whatever explains it (e.g., hubris, delusion…other), that counts as the great frustration about this loss. To paraphrase Tony the Tiger, home games against depleted teams are for winning. (Trust me, tiger is a very efficient language.)

Wholly related to that, giving up that second goal didn’t change the game in any meaningful way. It just raised the already high for Portland getting back into it. That speaks to a second discomfiting truth: the Timbers gave up two soft-shit goals, three if you count the first one (yeah, why not?). While I don’t entirely blame the defensive midfield for not closing down Jeremy Rafanello – though, factually, he seemed surprised too – what can one do but blame Eric Miller for napping while former child actor Quinn Sullivan slipped past him to clean up James Pantemis’ spill? And the third goal…Jesus Christ(!), the third goal! Every player on Portland’s left and center nodded off on that one. And that, kids, is how the two forwards flagged in the scouting report combined for the tap-in that put the game out of reach.

For reference, Rodriguez’s goal came thirteen minutes after that…gimme a “P”! Gimme an “O”! Gimme an “R”! etc.

The game ended at the 67th minute, basically, just after the Union’s third. Neville made his subs after the second goal – some weird, some good (hold that thought), the sum of them kinda (appropriately?) desperate – but, between that stubborn middle block and the clock ticking inexorably up to 95 minutes or so, the game never looked like ending any other way than it did.

Beyond saying, fuck up less, I don’t have much to add about the defense. Pantemis made at least two more saves than I would have liked (he made four, fwiw, and Philly’s Oliver Semmle six), but I still have faith in the personnel. More to the point, I doubt anyone needs to remind Miller that he screwed up on the second goal. Here, I think it’s helpful to think about the last time you screwed up at work and your boss reminded you that you screwed up, and was that conversation in any way enlightening, or did you just think “yeah, yeah, I screwed up”? Sometimes that’s as far as something like that can go, at least until it happens over and over again, at which point you lose faith in the personnel and with good cause. As for the rest of the team…

This motherfucker.

As much as I don’t trust a central midfield built around Evander, Eryk Williamson and Diego Chara/Cristhian Paredes – and, to be clear, I do not – this felt like a good game for a live test. A younger, largely untested midfield (credit to Jim Curtin, though, for playing Alejandro Bedoya as an elder statesman) looked ripe for bullying, but Philadelphia wisely avoided a midfield-to-midfield fight through the device of (again) that stubborn middle block. I didn’t see Evander and Williamson get in one another’s way so much as I saw two players trying to do very similar things in roughly the same space on the field; think using two wrenches to fasten a bolt, when maybe one makes more sense. Things loosened up a bit when Williamson started to drift wide right to find space in the minutes leading up to Philly’s second goal, but you have to wonder what that does to the overall balance, i.e., would that be sustainable over 90 minutes? Finally, and to loop back to something excused above, letting Rafanello wander loose in the attacking third does factually amount to losing a skirmish in the midfield battle, and a key one. All that gets to why I don’t trust a Williamson/Evander/[No. 6/8] midfield: it’s combative as a bear cub, maybe even a freshly-tranquilized one. For me, both players lack the bite and mind-set for actually controlling the midfield space. Maybe it’s something Neville goes to when Portland’s chasing a game, but I won’t trust it until some performance gives me a reason to.

A second issue – and this is one that looked clearer watching the game live from Section 210 than it did after watching chunks of the game this morning – was the general failure to trouble that (again) stubborn middle block. Timbers players played into the teeth of the thing over and over again; players showed for the ball and made runs across and inside that small space, leaving Union defenders free to further collapse it: Portland made the set up more effective, basically, by playing in a way it is designed to thwart. Moreover, they got worse about it as the game went on. I spent most of the second half psychically urging any Timbers player to play a ball over the top just to make Union defenders spare half a thought to the space behind, but it rarely happened. Worse - and Section 210 gives a great view of this – the Timbers persistently failed to stretch the field when potential transitional moments opened up. The space was there for the taking time and again – and at fairly low-risk – but I saw Antony (in particular) and others curl back to show for the ball instead of attempting to stretch the field and Philly’s defense vertically. Even when the Union’s defense compacted, they left vertical gaps that begged for an overload/give-and-go to get behind it. I’d call it a failure of the imagination if it didn’t seem so obvious…then again, maybe this is a moment to embrace the humility I should have learned from turning in a scouting report that wasn’t worth the paper I typed it on and say, maybe it’s not so obvious as it looked from the stands.

Now, and in closing (sorry, turns out this is the penultimate closing), Neville went for broke on the subs – particularly at the 65th minute when he replaced Diego Chara with Felipe Mora and Eric Miller with David Ayala. By my count (and yours may vary), that left just Zac McGraw and Dario Zuparic as true, outright defenders and some combination of Antony(?) and Ayala(?) to help them keep things away from Pantemis. If the goal was improving Portland’s forward momentum, it had no discernable effect – though I was happy with some of Ayala’s long-range passing and Mora pulled off some of the sneaky-shit magic he does so well (of which, noted). I’d argue the Timbers attack didn’t appreciably improve until Dairon Asprilla came on for Juan David Mosquera at the 75th minute. Now, it’s possible Asprilla benefitted from running against tired legs, but, whatever caused it, the Union’s left looked more vulnerable than it had all night. I don’t know what to call that besides food for thought.

Some players had good games – Zuparic goes here, as does Chara and Dairon Asprilla, and, per the intro Rodriguez had a promising debut – but playing so much through Mosquera yielded damn near nothing, Evander spent too much time admiring his own reflection (dude, pass the ball), and too much of the attacking play went into the teeth of that (again) stubborn middle block. There’s still plenty of season to play, obviously, and the team will almost certainly get more out of Rodriguez as his teammates get used to him, but this makes two losses in a row (what, ho! The Form Guide’s back!). Here’s to hoping the coaching staff takes a smarter look at the drawing board for the game against the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Till the next MLS Wrap Up and the next (probably useless) scouting report...