St. Louis CITY FC 0-0 Portland Timbers: Feeling Good (No, Really) Context-Free

A young Paul Giammati was the butt of the "wNbc" bit.

I don’t actually have a ton of blow-by-blow notes for the Portland Timbers' goal-less draw at St. Louis CITY FC (“wNbc!”), even though the game amounted to a series of isolated escapes from a general muddle. In all honesty, I’m mostly thrilled to see the Timbers keep their second clean sheet of 2024.

That’s not to say St. Louis didn’t come close here and there – e.g., Timbers understudy ‘keeper, James Pantemis, made a save on a Celio Pompeu shot through a thicket of bodies toward the end of the first half and Portland came within the width of Claudio Bravo’s lower leg of going down 0-1 in the 75th minute – and even that immediately followed Eduard Lowen hitting the right far post with a free kick. Tim Parker came close with a header at the 15th too (or thereabouts), Zac McGraw had to run down a through-ball (hat-tip to Joao Klauss for whiffing the shot!), but I doubt even the most rabid St. Louis fan would argue they stormed the castle. You’ll see nearly all of that in the highlights, but about 60% of the total run-time is devoted to dudes picking up yellow cards, with most going to St. Louis.

Portland had their chances – e.g., Jonathan Rodriguez’s shot to the far post around the 3rd minute (before he largely faded into anonymity) and another shot by Evander around the 17th – but their shooting statistics and lowly xG get the story mostly right.

And yet, even if this arguably counts as the Timbers least impressive attacking performance of 2024, it might count as something just as important: one of their more coherent playing performances. Unlike countless prior outings (well, not countless; they’ve played literally 18 games, so this can be quantified), Portland players looked generally connected and less like total strangers than they have across multiple halves of multiple games this season. Given how rare (more or less) wire-to-wire competence has been this season, I see that as something to celebrate.

Ayala's future in the best of all possible worlds.

I doubt I’m alone in crediting David Ayala for the lion’s share of that. St. Louis pressed less than I expected, which probably helped, but – and this goes against passing accuracy reported in the official statistics (see above, "lowly xG, etc." – Portland played fairly fluid football (smooth as that alliteration!) at times. A Timber got caught on the ball here and there – e.g., Evander, which led to a Klauss goal called back for offside, and a hospital ball from McGraw to Dario Zuparic (which, ironically, almost ended with Zuparic sending a St. Louis player to the hospital) – but, again, the composure was there, by and large, even if it didn’t always have the polish and production to go with.

Apart from some side notes – e.g., what happened to Rodriguez for 85% of tonight, and how much did McGraw need a (largely) solid afternoon like that? - that’s all I’ve got for general notes. Let’s put this puppy down (shit! phrasing!) with…

Three Talking Points
1) Did the Timbers Miss Diego Chara?
I ask that 1) knowing that St. Louis isn’t having the best season and 2) in all seriousness. If they did not – an argument I believe holds up tolerably…I mean, isn’t that a good thing? The Chara-less future isn’t quite here, but it’s coming, so no better time than now to prepare, yes?

2) Pondering Antony’s Next Step?
With Portland’s left looking like a blind alley the Timbers barely bothered to explore, a lot of the action went through Antony up the right. And he did…okay with that. He played a decent game, contributed to some moments, almost had a highly-comical goal of his own (e.g., when Roman Burki saved the shot on his breakaway, but almost bounced the rebound off Antony and into his own goal), and so on, but Antony also effectively passed on several opportunities that he could have pried open by, say, taking on a St. Louis defender or by doing something decisive on the ball. On the one hand, I get it: he’s young, going for glory can pratfall into a wasted opportunity, etc. Going the other way, Antony’s a winger, i.e., a player the Timbers hired into the team to make the most of those moments. It’s a fine line and all that, but I’d still like to see Antony take more chances than he did tonight.

3) The Blessed Relief of Having Options
Even with two “who the fuck are those guys” on the bench (e.g., Sawyer Jura and Kyle Linhares; yes, I know they’re T2 guys), and the rumors about Dairon Asprilla wanting out looking to have more than a rumor’s worth of traction (I mean, it made the broadcast, ffs), I take very real comfort in seeing real, (potentially) game-changing options on the bench like, for today’s game, Eryk Williamson and Felipe Mora. And, sure, more often that not (but also ideally) it’s Fogaca coming off the bench to spell Mora, but even then, Fogaca’s a different player than Mora and he can change the dynamic of a game just by virtue of forcing the defense to cope with a different style. I rate defenders as much as the next guy, maybe even a little more than that weirdo, but they are the rock on which wins are built as opposed to the guys who find the way to win, i.e., attacking players.

All in all, and mild disappointment at the fact they couldn’t steal three points aside, I’d call this a good result for the Timbers – particularly when you consider they picked up just their second clean sheet of 2024 with a somewhat rotated defense.

For good or ill, the Timbers have next week off before returning for a short week at the San Jose Earthquakes followed four days later by a home game versus the stubborn Vancouver Whitecaps. Despite (effectively) standing still, Portland gained some ground tonight courtesy of the Seattle Sounders road loss at Sporting Kansas City (ha, ha!). Sadly, every team above them in the Western Conference has at least one game in hand on them, thus a chance for some and/or further separation. Given where they are, that means the Timbers need to get more than two points out of the San Jose and Vancouver games. With that, let’s circle back in a couple weeks to kick around how they did. Till then…