MLS Off-Season Weekly: How MLS Cup Made Me Fear the Future, The U.S. Men, the Goodwill Bins Lottery

A depiction of how I relate to players. (Also, worlds collide.)

After a…was MLS Cup just last weekend, or is time running like those weird traffic patterns where it tightens and loosens for no obvious reason? For a visual, think what happens on I-5 around Nisqually sometimes – that’s as opposed to Tacoma, because the cause there is plain as day – but, to take today’s points chronologically, I’ll start with brief notes on MLS Cup…

I’m Worried About the Future, Barbara
Whilst live-tweeting MLS Cup, my partisan fever boiled over after the Seattle Sounders bounced an own-goal off Toronto’s Justin Morrow. “THEY DESERVE NOTHING,” I tweeted, or something to that effect, not least because TFC had looked better to that point, especially with the moments of tricky dribbling that forced shifts in Seattle’s defensive shape in midfield; Alejandro Pozuelo and Nicolas Benezet, in particular (plus a shout for Marky Delgado), kept Seattle within one mistake of giving up a goal for the first 60 minutes.

I hereby revise that tweet to say Kelvin Leerdamn did not deserve his goal (and that MLS’s website should fix it). The Sounders took over the game from that goal forward. Toronto never forced a telling mistake in Seattle’s defense, Stefan Frei stuffed the half-chances that came his way, and, as Seattle pushed its line of confrontation further up the field, Toronto’s attacks started to fail further from Seattle’s goal. The game ended when Seattle scored a deserved, and rather pretty, second goal. They'd score again, Toronto would salvage a little pride, but the 3-1 final score fairly reflected what happened out there.

Here, I have to raise my hand as one of the many self-appointed pundits who wrote Seattle off when Chad Marshall took his concussions and went home. The fact that they never put together an impressive run during the regular season obscured the strength of the Sounders’ homely-but-effective system, but, when you want to win a succession of one-off games, having a solid spine and an organized defense gets you over halfway there – and Seattle has enough talent to push that percentage past halfway.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Real Salt Lake: Recalibrating Expectations

Did we expect too much too soon from Fernandez...?

To briefly walk through my stages of doubt and faith, real questions about what would happen started bubbling up around the 40th minute. By the 60th, I’d more or less resigned myself to the result going sideways and started preparing the proper language for recovery during times of struggle.

Curiously, it was around the 85th minute when I drafted the tweet I tapped into the ether at the fizzling middle of the 96th minute. Verbatim too. I believed the Portland Timbers would hold on around the 80th minute, and I was all but certain of it by the 85th. As such, this little flurry – as well as the red card that proceeded it (not the dumbest of the day, fwiw) – registered as glitches in the matrix, signs of danger from an alternate reality, as opposed to the one in which the Timbers beat Real Salt Lake 1-0 in Portland, because that was how the game was always going to end.

The thought came from a place beyond knowledge, like the future breaking the fourth wall and whispering, “it’s gonna be fine” in my ear. To be clear, this has nothing to do with clairvoyance; point in fact, I didn’t send that tweet in the 85th minute precisely because I worried about tickling the cosmos and jinxing the result. Still, the Timbers just seemed like they had it tonight – or maybe it’s that RSL didn’t – and, ugly and hairy as it was, they did. That’s three points, an edge over the (actually) surging Sporting Kansas City next weekend…and now we’re at the “real talk” place in this post.

First, this was a great goddamn win. I appreciate that might be hard to swallow for anyone who just watched…I mean, of course, I saw all the “what the fuck is happening tweets” around the 88th minute, not least because I floated one of them. All the same, the relentlessness of RSL’s press/attack was on full display tonight. They won every attacking category tonight and Deimar Kreilach alone must have had as many clear shots as Portland as a team; moreover, they had Portland pinned through the first 30 minutes of the second half, at a minimum, and they still had Joao Plata (basically effective) and Sam Johnson to bring on as substitutes; moreover again, they had a clear chance at the death.

Portland Timbers 0-2 Atlanta United FC: Narratives and Their Wrinkles

That is clarifying (apparently), but who sees it as such?

I loved this game for everything except the result. It was a fucking diamond, I tell you, in that it reveals different things when you hold it up to the light…

I didn’t like that the game ended with the Portland Timbers losing to Atlanta United FC 0-2 in Portland, obviously, even if I kinda saw it coming, or at least the outlines of it. To make a list of it, if you look at Portland’s last 10 opponents – @ MTL, v FCD, @ NYC, v COL, v ORL, @ SEA (ha!), v LAG, @ MIN, v VAN, v CHI – between talent and form, Atlanta presents as the most thoroughly leveled-up of the bunch. Sure, NYCFC looked as strong as Atlanta when the Timbers beat them in the Bronx, but the rest of all of those teams rolled into their game against Portland with some amount of baggage and pain, and that’s the line I’m drawing in this post: in Atlanta, Portland finally met a team with a similar kind/amount of talent and momentum and, the shocking evenness of the evening notwithstanding, it didn’t go great for the Timbers. They lost at home and with…a solid percentage of what most people seem to regard as its best team on the field. The only question I have is what percentage of Timbers fans found this result disappointing and what percentage see it as clarifying.

I’m borne for the latter camp (Team Clarifying!), even as it cuts against the record the Timbers compiled over their last 10 games; trust me, 20 points from 30 is fucking rare in this league, but that’s been Portland’s level. (Immediately relevant thereto, Atlanta has managed 19 points in its last 10 games, MLS regular season only, as in, not this game, or what the Mexican press thought of it.) At the same time, Atlanta has played well – sometimes very well - against MLS’s better teams – e.g., your NYCFCs, your LAFCs, your Galaxys (a fallen family, but still). Portland, to their very real and enduring credit, has done the proverbial business since finding their feet toward the end of its long, opening road trip; whatever I think of each of the ten teams listed below, wins in those games didn’t just happen and Portland posted some memorable wins during that stretch – there, wins over Seattle and LA stand out – but that doesn’t change the blunt reality that this resurgent, surging Atlanta teams was a different animal.

Before digging into details, sure, it could have gone either way last night…and that applies even if I think Atlanta created the better chances overall. As much as it’s fair to point out that Julio Cascante made the inexplicable decision that lead to Atlanta’s second goal (not sarcasm!), that wasn’t every reason why the Timbers failed to draw, never mind win, last night’s game. (Also, and because I ignored it entirely below, here's Atlanta's first goal.) They were not centered, they did not feel…

Seattle Sounders 1-2 Portland Timbers: Good, Slightly Dirty, Feelings

The same coiled buttocks, I tell you....

If there’s a soccer equivalent of telling someone they won a good-sized raffle only to tell them you read the name wrong one minute and fifteen seconds later, this was it. After applying too little pressure to notice for…more or less the entire game, the Seattle Sounders poached a goal off a Julio Cascante bungle to even the score at 1-1. In that tiny amount of time later, Sebastian Blanco earned his paycheck by feeding Brian Fernandez the inch-perfect pass that Fernandez would slip under Stefan Frei’s elbow and win the game for the Portland Timbers. 2-1 to Portland in Seattle, and all is forgiven for at least one of those home draws. Fuck it, both. Tonight has me in a giving mood.

Fernandez got the Timbers’ other goal tonight, a put-back on the kind of Jorge Moreira overlap ‘n’ drive that he’ll surely be patenting before too long (along with that brick of hair he sports atop his head). As much as the last 15-20 minutes made me want to crawl out of my own skin and read a book in a quiet corner, Seattle got the same kinds of chances when the Timbers laid back as they did all game, and that’s more or less the tale of the tape: Portland handled everything Seattle threw at them, and mostly without panicking. Moreover, when Portland actually played – as in tried to dictate what happened on the field and where – they were the better team tonight.

I ended my preview thread for this game with one thought – e.g., the question of whether Seattle is (or was) 10 points better than Portland, as they were in the standings at the start of the day. The current answer is seven points, which is the number of points that separate the teams right now; the question is if/when Portland will overtake the Sounders in the standings. To pick up something noted in the same thread, Seattle has built their vaunted home record by stealing lunch money (big fan of that phrase suddenly) – i.e., winning games against weaker opposition in favorable circumstances. I still rate the Sounders a good bet for the playoffs, but I don’t see the current team roaring into the post-season as they have over the past three years. This isn’t the same team, not without Osvaldo Alonso and Chad Marshall. Losing a spine tends to have consequences…

Portland, on the other hand, looks like they’ve got another year with its main components intact and firing right: Diego Chara showed what he’s all about when he ran down Joevin Jones with his first touch of the ball; Brian Fernandez did the same by trading jabs with Roman Torres…pretty much all game; and, for as long as they pressed the game, the usual suspects, Blanco and Diego Valeri, found a succession of pockets from which to prod Seattle’s defenses. For as long as all that holds up – and for as long Portland can recruit and maintain a sound defense behind it – the Timbers will be competitive in MLS. And, with Larrys Mabiala anchoring that line and Steve Clark playing like his own number one fan behind him, I’m not worried about that part. Portland will always be at its best when it can get its animal spirits running free, and they pulled it off tonight and at the best possible time and place.

Portland Timbers 1-1 Orlando City SC: Birds in the Bush

They are in the bush. They are not yours.

I’ve got another game to watch/write about (or, rather, I feel compelled to watch another game and write about), so I will try (and arguably fail) to keep this short. (Eh, I've done worse.)

Given the relative promise of each team, and the fact Dom Dwyer was suspended, Nani was home barfing (or something), and Ruan was God knows where (and whatever the hell else happened with Orlando’s regular starting set-up, e.g., Sane), and the fact that Orlando rarely defended beyond its own attacking third, yeah, I’m willing to call the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 draw at home against Orlando City SC the worst-case scenario. The result doesn’t mean anything and/or everything, there are other games (there will always be other games, won't there, James?), but there’s also a time and place for picking up points, and Orlando and Colorado at home is (are?) that time and that place. Goddammit.

As I hinted in the preview thread, all Orlando needs is one goal. Part of me guessed it would take just one mistake, and that gets to what I didn’t say in the thread, and what I could never have foreseen: Zarek Valentin switching way the hell off on a single play. It took impeccable timing meeting a soft clearance for that that shot (one of two for Orlando) to come off, but sometimes soccer’s a sadistic mistress (and, if I’m being honest, that’s probably why I like it) and a team operationally undeserving of a goal gets the first one and comes perilously close to making it count for three points.

Thankfully, Jeremy Ebobisse came on, (arguably) loosened up Orlando’s defensive brick, and scored the second-bite equalizer that salvaged what would have been watching a gymnast fail to stick the landing 26 damn times (and only really coming close on four of them). I’ve got a question that follows from that, and it breaks in (at least) two directions: is Portland better off with Ebobisse out there instead of Andy Polo? Whoops, I just found the third direction on that question. (hmu if you wanna know the three directions, just don’t expect me to remember them.)

Portland Timbers 1-0 FC Dallas: The First Thing, You See, Is to Get Your Foot Planted

Like this, but with just one yellow card.

Dear God, if that wasn’t a cage match. Referee Allen Chapman blessed the whole thing with professional indifference but, in the end, no limbs were lost and no real crimes committed. The Portland Timbers came out of the rough and tumble with one goal more than visiting FC Dallas. And that felt fair, at least where I live (Portland, OR, so…), but a 0-0 wouldn’t have exactly insulted justice. Dallas gave as good as they got. That’s as much for me as it is for you, because I don’t know what the hell to make out of that goddamn team…

To dust off some clutter, Portland beat Dallas 1-0 last night at Providence Park and not one damn thing about that came easily. At the same time, I thought I saw the unveiling of the Timbers’ broad attacking approach to the game in the stretch between the 5th and the 10th minute: believe that every pass will connect, so try everything, and ruthlessly hunt down anything that tells you differently like the damned lie it is. At the precise time I sketched that note onto my pad, Portland was merrily marching up the field by flailing the ball from one side of the field to the other. It looked a little desperate and more than a little low-percentage, but it generally came off, while definitely confusing Dallas and throwing them off. The (highly relative) success of the whole “swinging for the fences” strategy didn’t last for long, and Dallas came back into the game and, generally put up a real fight…

…but, in one blessed/curs’d moment, every cog in the Timbers game-plan, and broad theory of roster construction, meshed together to steal a goal out of a game seemingly sworn to give up no goals. And I think that’s the real story of last night’s game.

Both of these teams took similar approaches to the game. When I tried to phrase it last night, I started with “defending aggressively” – by which I meant chasing down the ball and/or passer at some point on the field, as opposed to keeping your shape and making him break you down. Both Portland and Dallas assumed that general position, but they started at different parts of the field. In their better moments, Dallas rasied a bristling line of confrontation at the center stripe – i.e., anything that crossed it got swarmed like piranhas on whatever the hell is dumb enough to walk into the Amazon. During one truly fascinating phase, the kept both of Portland’s centerbacks and Sebastian Blanco trying to force their way inside that line; Blanco, specifically, could drop out of it, but he couldn’t go back in. Given that Blanco is, or has been, a major piece for Portland getting the ball moving forward, maybe Dallas studied some video and adopted that strategy to nip his usefulness in the bud.

Portland Timbers 2-3 Los Angeles FC: Do It for Tiffany

I'll do anything, girl...

What was the most important part of last night’s game: Jeff Attinella’s colossal, opening-10 fuck-up, or the series of aggro-pointless skirmishes that tripped one over the next for the last five minutes of regulation? For me, that depends on one’s willingness to see each of those moments in symbolic terms.

To lean into controversy early, I don’t want Attinella to start until Steve Clark gets injured, Attinella’s nerves calm down, or Clark has a collection of episodes that evidence some equal or greater measure of nerviness than Attinella’s. I think Attinella is a damned good goalkeeper; I also think he’s set up a long-term campsite in his head and, until he packs out of that fucker, I’d rather see Clark start. Mind, this isn’t some kind of “Jeff Out” campaign; I’m just noting it as a big deal for scale.

Attinella owns just one of last night’s goals – and Los Angeles FC scored three of ‘em on the way to the 3-2 win they stole out of an…engorged Providence Park (let me have it; just this once). Other Timbers fathered LAFC’s other two goals: Jorge Moreira for dozing off and letting Diego Rossi slip past him to score their second goal, and (probably) Jorge Villafana for failing to track Latif Blessing’s second run to knock home their third. LAFC put up plenty of shots – like this one, for instance, which should’ve deepened Portland’s hole (because LAFC was on a roll; but it’s not like they’re dipping SKOL/Bandits) – and the fact they didn’t gives LAFC something of their own to think about. As well they should, the bastards…

…look, LAFC is the soccer team equivalent of the rich, new kid who shows up at your high school, and he’s better than you at sports, he just humiliated you in debate club warm-ups, and now you’re worried about a bunch of other stupid extemporaneous shit because of all the insecurity that follows from those realities, but it’s cool. You just need to get your head on, and your shit together, because that kid is soft…somewhere. It’s just…you haven’t figured out where, but you will. Or, rather, you have to, or Tiffany might dump you for him…I mean, she’s always been out of your league…

Philadelphia Union 1-3 Portland Timbers: The Day the Road Trip Ended Well

I just feel really good about tonight. Get over it.

After a first half that saw the Portland Timbers two goals up and playing pretty soccer, nothing short of an injury and/or electro-shock therapy could have made me call tonight’s game a bad result. That the Philadelphia Union playing pretty goddamn well has a lot to do with that. After pulling back a truly one-of-those-nights-weird goal at the very start of the second half, Philly piled on 15-20 minutes’ worth of relentless pressure, picking the ball off Timbers’ toes and swallowing up everything that got inside their half. That only leaves me more impressed with how Portland handled the so very many things that Philly threw at them all night. The game ended 3-1 after a Diego Valeri goal of Platonic simplicity put the stuffing back into Portland’s two-goal cushion.

Even if Portland stole two, or even all three, goals tonight, they stole some gems: Andy Polo’s cross on the first demands “exquisite” as a qualifier; 80% of what happened on Portland’s go-ahead goal* was perfect; and, after surviving the soccer equivalent of Leningrad, Valeri scored that glorious, sling-shot of a winner. And all this happened against a good team, playing well, and at home. Tonight’s win over Philly confirms the eye test of the past 5-6 games: Portland, 1) still has viable (healthy) talent, and 2) has its shit figured out. At this point, the Timbers sure as hell look like they’ve got another genuinely competitive season in them, and can I get a huzzah?! (* I just have to note that Diego Chara's touch was long; he didn't "draw out" Andre Blake, but he did hear Fernandez charging over his shoulder, thank God).

Because the rest of this post will probably swim with turns of phrase that will have people saying “jesus, get a room,” I want to close out my thoughts on the Union up top. Based on everything I’ve seen, this is a very good team that got, first, beat by a great cross, then undone by having to chase too much of the game. The teams largely traded blows in the first half, the only difference was Portland landed theirs; Philly threw the more promising punches and dozens more of them. The adjustments the Union made in the second half should send shake the spines of every Eastern Conference team; between Ilsinho coming on and twisting the Timbers’ defensive left into knots and, so far as I’m concerned, Haris Medunjanin forever having too much time for dissection, and too many Union players finding openings, the Union pried at gaps in the defense. It took a series of interventions and straight-up heroics from Steve Clark to let Portland hang on.

And, on that glass-shattering high note, Portland’s 12-game road-trip comes to an end. Assuming I got the math right in last week’s FormGuide ULTRA, they collected 14 points over 12 road games. As someone I watched with tonight pointed out, that’s over a point per game as an average, and I guess he pointed that out because it’s good thing, I do not know. What I do know is that Portland has played well for a while, they seem strangely impervious to meaningful injury (who’s Cristhian Paredes? I’m kidding!), and I’m more concerned with that than a 4-6-2 record, or 14 points. The fact they’re now 4-1-1 over the last six games, and that’s all on the road, all against credible teams (e.g., Toronto, Real Salt Lake, and…Columbus Crew SC, and now, Philly tonight), well, that gives a man leave for a couple huzzahs.

Houston Dynamo 1-1 Portland Timbers: One Good Point and Choice Paradox

Work to do...

That was a good draw for the Portland Timbers and all that, on the road against the Houston Dynamo, and with the new (expensive) kid (calmly) scoring Portland’s equalizer only thickens a pot that’s already viscously boiling. The game ended in an earned 1-1.

All the same, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking (wait, are you? serious question), I think the Timbers are about to change. I have faith in the long-term project – not least because it’s necessary (and I have a lot of premature opinions on that) – but, full disclosure, what I saw from Brian Fernandez tonight…well, if it didn’t tear up the script, that fucker came back covered in red ink. Let’s dig into the guts…second hand, because I don’t know what the highlights will show for this (answer: so very little, and where are you, condensed games? a victim of corporate corner-cutting?).

First, and this may be exaggerated, I can’t remember the last time the Timbers played that many long balls looking for a runner – and getting rewarded for doing that (as they did on Fernandez’s equalizer) will keep that tactical choice going for a while. Speaking for myself, I was more excited about Fernandez’s involvement in two other plays. To take them in reverse order, after the long-ball failed a couple times, Fernandez drifted to the right to become play-maker. He spotted a lane into a space where Tomas Conechny was sprinting unobserved toward the penalty spot and he rolled the ball in; Conecnhy failed to connect but Fernandez looks like he's got good eyes. It’s an earlier play that really has me wondering about how Portland plays going forward: while I don’t remember who the short feed came from (think it was Diego Valeri) in came from Zone 14 and rolled into the box with Fernandez chasing; the ball went inside – i.e., between the defender and the goal – but Fernandez drifted to the opposite shoulder and came damn close to catching up to the ball for a clean shot. The point is, Fernandez is both versatile (e.g., he can move around in-game) and he’s a quick little fucker to boot; sort of everything as advertised on the basic attributes. He nearly beat that defender while covering 30-50% more ground. So long as he can finish, that kind of speed is…just, holy shit.

On the grounds that only fools need saviors (my school, right or wrong), I’m going to render unto Fernandez what he does for the Timbers, and render unto the rest of the team what they do for the Timbers (pretty sure I mixed a couple metaphors in there). Because I came into the game late (circa 18th minute), my version of the first half saw Portland’s heels slowly sinking into the earth as Houston forced them down. From the 30th minute forward, the Timbers backed off – a lot like they did against Vancouver in the second half of the first half last Friday. To pick on Renzo Zambrano a little, one of the first things I saw him do was receive a pass in midfield, and then smartly fight the ball sideways, looking for either a foul or a pass all the while (he got the foul! Ding! Ding! Ding!). He followed that up with getting caught, at least semi-horrifically in possession a couple times, and then becoming increasingly more like a vaguely floating presence as the half moved on. The whole team slipped into a reactive stupor right along with Zambrano, somewhere between the 30th and 35th minute. And then the same guys mostly made it right.

The Portland Timbers Spend Some Money: Preliminary, Speculative Thoughts on Brian Fernandez

That said, some very successful people do it...

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I’d do it in a thread, but I just want to blah, blah, blah about the Portland Timbers signing Brian Fernandez for (reportedly) $10 million (and some as yet unrecorded length of time), and without wrestling my many thoughts into 280-character nuggets – even if it means fewer people will read it. Regardless of how the method of delivery, this signing contains a lot within it.

First, I don’t expect anything from any given player based on a resume – something that’s more significant with Fernandez, who has scored enough, and in enough places to make him look like a good bet to succeed in MLS. Snippets of his finer moments and his resume mean nothing: he’ll set his own bar with how he plays for Portland (Necaxa is over) in MLS.

Just to note it (largely because it’s basically impossible to avoid), Fernandez’s signing gives long-suffering Lucas Melano his first real chance to skulk away from serving as permanent cautionary tale in Timbers history. I wouldn’t count on it, obviously – not given a player who has performed well in more talent-laden leagues – but all kinds of things could trip up Fernandez, e.g., failing to adjust to the travel, or a new country/culture; he could just be a massive asshole that poisons the locker room (and I close with this).

Whatever kind of player the Timbers got, paying that much for a player says plenty about the front office’s perception of what it takes to compete in Major League Soccer – and probably starting in 2018. On that level, Fernandez’s signing stands out on two levels for me. First – and this was why I obsessed so much on the length of his contract – his age (24) suggests they didn’t buy him to flip him; unlike what, say, Atlanta did with Miguel Almiron, Fernandez doesn’t look like an investment signing, a young, promising buck the team would play, fatten up a little (metaphorically), and sell to a richer club in a bigger league. To be clear, my relentless “just the results, ma’am” approach leaves me close to functionally ignorant of the international transfer market, but, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me it’s too late to develop a player…well, I’d probably still be doing this shit for free, only with a lot more money in my bank account. Second, and on the most basic level, this signing still strikes me as a significant sunk cost, a kind of all-in gamble on Fernandez being “the guy” who has to produce real numbers. Even though they have delivered like beautiful motherfuckers, I’d argue that not even Diego Valeri nor Sebastian Blanco came in with that much expectation.