Real Salt Lake 3-3 Portland Timbers: A Tale of One and a Half

The boy who cried wolf as an angsty teenager.

Portland Timbers fans have been invited to a transcendentally ridiculous party this season. What can we do but accept the invitation?

Very much related, the Timbers’ wild 3-3 draw at Real Salt Lake defies rational explanation. It was what it was and is what it is. It was necessary to endure the first half, experientially, in order to understand the full import of the second, it is always darkest before the dawn, and on every bloody morning after, one tin soldier will ride away.

Game Notes
The Timbers were very bad in one half, and just good enough in the second to smuggle one point out of Utah. Call it a Tale of One and a Half. I’m sure RSL fans feel aggrieved at the result, for a variety of reasons, but I’d peg one key moment as a shorthand for how/when the game went off the rails for them.

You could see RSL’s ‘keeper, Gavin Beavers (great name, no notes), scrambling to get his defense organized ahead of the corner kick that led to the Timbers’ first and fairly shitty goal. It recalled the boy who cried wolf barking at the villagers when shit got real, at long last, and it went just as well. The cross came in, Eric Miller nicked it more than he met it, but chaos ensued, and the ball rolled to Antony and he, for lack of a better verb, bumbled the ball into the net. At that exact moment, “the most dangerous lead in soccer” went to high alert.

The punchline to the whole thing: RSL had every reason to ignore that boy crying wolf. Their defensive shape and movement had Portland flustered to where they couldn’t connect more than two passes that didn’t go backwards. The Timbers midfield, in particular, didn’t seem to trust one another on either side of the ball; support failed to arrive on the attacking side, leading to wingers getting isolated and Felipe Mora operating in a void, and no one had a clear grasp on how to pass off players and rotate into cover on the defensive side. Between a defense as disarrayed as the Democrats and an offense that barely got off the couch (the Timbers’ official xG in the first half: 0.09), Portland looked doomed to a blowout.

If I have to credit the turnaround to anything, I’d go with just one of the 54th minute triple substitution – Cristian Paredes coming in for David Ayala. To be clear, this not a call for Paredes to start over Ayala ever, but a hard lean into a personal theory that Ayala and Eryk Williamson don’t work in central midfield. It could be more complicated than that – e.g., RSL didn’t play through those two, so much as force them to figure out how to manage/defend balls into one channel, then back across into the other one (not that either of RSL's goals came from that, but that tactic generated the pressure/imbalance...arguably?) – but the Timbers struggled to catch up to the pace of the game until that time in the second half, or thereabouts.

He is more than "Bazinga." Probably.

The deeper truth is that the Timbers never got all the way into the game. Portland’s attack never really connected and, by a similar token, RSL’s defense didn’t lose control of the game, so much as they lost control of moments. This gets to why “The Gavin Beavers Moment” noted above strikes me as pivotal. About ten minutes after Portland spent 5-10 minutes losing their collective minds, RSL couldn’t stop coughing up fouls, corner kicks and free kicks in their defensive third. All those slips in discipline paved the way for tonight’s decisive intervention: Evander’s, frankly, incredible free-kick/equalizer. The Timbers can connect like long-lost friends, as demonstrated just last Wednesday, but the beautiful thing is that they don’t need to so long as they have a magic wand like Evander to wave around.

To wrap up the game, and to get ahead of anyone questioning what I went with for tonight’s decisive moment, Jonathan Rodriguez’s second, game-tying equalizer tapped into a different kind of magic, even if it followed the same script. Lord knows how Miguel Araujo got so far up RSL’s left, but I started wondering when Rodriguez would crash into the frame (about 10 seconds into this clip, fwiw) the second Araujo floated his half-desperate cross to the back post. It was the soccer equivalent of waiting for the stock phrase from a beloved sitcom character. The ball comes in from Portland’s right to the back-post and Rodriguez says “Bazinga” only you enjoy it instead of trying to drink Jim Parsons out of existence (through no fault of his own; he was just doing his job).

Bottom line, Timbers fans could have asked for a better result, but not with the Timbers playing like that. That doesn’t make the attacking talent on this team any less worthy of celebration, even panegyrics, but it goes some distance to explaining why they have claw their way into the playoffs.

And now…

Talking Points
1) Eryk and His Discontents
At some point in the first half that I may or may not have read accurately, Evander was on the ball, wrestling with some RSL defender attached to his hip. As he struggled to play the ball forward, Williamson stood less than 10 yards behind him waving his arms for the easy drop. I have no idea why Evander didn’t take that option – Williamson had a great view of the field ahead and the closest defender was the guy attached to Evander – but I’m choosing, now, to read a novel into that moment.

I don’t think anyone knows what to do with Eryk Williamson. Discuss.

2) Something That Very Much Follows From
Whether justified or not, I felt more comfortable when Diego Chara came on for Williamson at the 76th minute. Some of that had to do with the half-unconscious belief that Paredes and [not Williamson] behind Evander would have been a better option than the Ayala/Williamson pairing that I simply don’t trust – and, yes, I think this has come up before. Where that thought goes from there…if only I knew…

The "My So-Called Life" of Its Generation.

2a) But Here’s a Stab at It
While I’d call Williamson the biggest square peg on the team (i.e., he doesn’t fit anywhere there isn’t someone better for the role), I don’t think Paredes has the chops to play as a league-competitive, never mind league-elite level as either a No. 6 or a No. 8. From where I sit, and I think this is a comparatively common point of view, the Timbers best central midfield set-up has Chara and Ayala playing behind Evander. And, personally, I don’t like the idea of waiting until Chara’s legs crap out entirely before making a change to shore up that area of the field. The time is right fucking now, basically. Moreover, I believe this will require a new signing in midfield and not in defense. Maybe the Timbers can orchestrate an intra-league trade where they swap Paredes or Williamson for a(nother) reliable (enough) defender and that staunches the bleeding?

3) Get Well Soon, Mason Toye
I was very sad to see Mason Toye hobbling around and sincerely hope those 15+ minutes of forcing himself to stay upright through what clearly looked like a spasming lower back doesn’t affect his recovery time.

4) re Antony
Patience. That’s all I’ve got. For what it’s worth, I see more upside for him than I ever saw in Marvin Loria. Based on the substitution patterns, I think Phil Neville agrees.

That’s it for this one. I plan on posting another league wrap-up (like this, but truncated to the teams that affect the Timbers and otherwise matter) on…going with next Thursday. Till then, may the deep dish bless you, and keep you…any other fans of the QAA podcast on the line?