Portland Timbers 5-0 CD Marathon: Exploring the Meaning of "Stacked"

Poor CD Marathon...

To start with the biggest take-away, the Portland Timbers will roll into the 2021 regular season immediately after steam-rolling CD Marathon 5-0. Now, that is how you want to roll into a regular season. Some clammy little fretting aside (which I’ll bury for now), I’ve got nothing but positives about how the Timbers played tonight, so time to get after it.

I keep seeing loose talk about the Timbers being “stacked” at most positions (or "absurdly deep") - especially from pundits circling the orbit of The Mothership - and, in all honesty, that drives me a little batty. I mean, fully armed, equipped, and with the Y-fronts thrown on right (i.e., with Sebastian Blanco, Jaroslaw Niezgoda, and Jeremy Ebobisse whole and healed), sure, Portland is stacked on the attacking side. The central defense, on the other hand, is…not stacked, not unless Zac McGraw shows something when he gets the chance. Moving further up the field, things look better than swell so long as Diego Chara and Eryk Williamson can start - the latter, in particular, show a positively Darlington-Nagbe-esque capacity to play out of pressure in the defensive and defensive side of the middle third tonight - but, every time I read about Portland’s depth, I keep wondering how much time those commenters have spent watching Cristhian Paredes, or whether they’ve seen Octavio Zambrano actually play in some alternate universe I haven’t visited yet. And, sure, you can expand that out to, say, Marvin Loria, even Andy Polo: the under-studies didn’t exactly slay 2020, which leaves me wondering what the hell those people saw that I didn’t…

…and, no, that’s not the clammy little fretting. Wait for it…

This insight doesn’t cut too deep - the broadcast booth picked up in it late in the opening 45 minutes, fer crissakes - but, if Dairon Asprilla can regularly contribute even 2/3 of what he delivered tonight? And if Yimmi Chara’s 2021 matches the second half of his 2020, the Timbers really are stacked, if only in the offense. And that's several miles far from nothing.

Getting at how strange and delightful that concept really is takes some thinking. By that I mean, step back and think about how many conversations you’ve had or read about Portland’s depth over the past…say, four-five years. Once you’re there, ask yourself this: how many times has Asprilla been a real part of that conversation? Now, hold that thought in your head and think about everything a fully-fit version of this Portland roster could throw at the opposition; think of a well-rested Diego Valeri, Blanco and Niezgoda with time to fully recover; think of the possibilities with Ebobisse just about anywhere in that attack. It’d be a like a hydra that grows back two heads for everyone you cut off. (Also, if that’s the way the hydra really works…look, just don’t embarrass me, I’m sensitive.)

CD Marathon 2-2 Portland Timbers: Solutions & Problems

Almost this bad. No exaggeration...

If someone told me at 3:00 pm PST that the Portland Timbers would tie Honduras’ CD Marathon 2-2 in the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions’ League home-and-home series, I would have shaken his/her hand and said, "thank you very much." And, some really unnerving details aside, I’m still there. I’ll pass quickly over the caveats - e.g., Portland’s knee-deep in a long off-season, a playing surface composed entirely of divots lumped together, travel, nerves, age, etc. - and offer two big take-aways:

1) Portland did allright despite playing in the soccer equivalent of half-finished sentences; and

2) if the central defense doesn’t tighten the hell up, Steve Clark’s gonna need longer arms.

One final thought: it took me 2/3 of the game to remember that Marathon hails from Honduras, and not Nicaragua, and that realization took the edge off the panic a little. No disrespect to Nicaragua intended, but one of those nations is ahead of the other in real-world soccer terms. Now, some notes on the game…

First things first, I saw both combinations, and attempts thereof (thereto?), that will actually come off at Providence Park and that makes me more optimistic about the second leg. Even when Marathon’s defending forced a hitch in the momentum, Portland’s players generally had sound ideas about how to move the ball forward; the grass grabbed the ball like Velcro on passes and dribbles alike - so many scooped passes, so many stifled first touches, and for both teams, by the way - but the thought process came through. My one caveat on that follows from Marathon’s peculiar defending, especially in the first half: defending can come from either pressure or organization, but the Hondurans offered neither, and even seemed mildly surprised, when Portland played passes in between their lines. I’m not sure how much the Timbers will see that in league play this season, but, what the hell? Fingers crossed.

Drilling down, I saw hints of a couple problems in defense, neither of them good. Seeing Portland’s central defenders struggle that hard with literal basics like tracking runs - see Marathon’s first equalizer and the damn-near go-ahead goal from a disturbing similar spot not even 10 minutes later - puts very direct questions as to much necessary shit the central tandem has sorted out. Based on the highlights (which, son of a bitch, don't appear to allow you to select individually any more), you’d have to ask every player but Josecarlos Van Rankin to explain himself (Larrys Mabiala, more than the rest), but that was nothing less than a tap-in - a real gut-punch given that Portland had at long last broken through via Felipe Mora just…wow, four minutes earlier.