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| Everything in its place. Step One. |
A kind of muddy result overall, if you ask me. The Portland Timbers created an advantage, yet struggled to exploit it; meanwhile, the San Jose Earthquakes have a decent argument that they can survive without some key starters – to be clear, that’s survive, not thrive.
A 0-0 draw by any other name, basically.
To credit a coaching staff that doesn’t often get it, Gio et. al. set up the team smartly, all the forks in the right places, and so on; to keep the credit flowing, they gambled on an approach and it paid off – handsomely, even. Given how much San Jose works up both flanks, playing four at the back made sense and starting Eric Miller, a purer defender than (the admittedly absent) Juan Davis Mosquera, neutralized Cade Cowell – at least until the ‘Quakes had him drop deeper to where he could receive the ball and attack the space in front of Miller. The gamble came with defending San Jose way up to their defensive third and, for what it’s worth, I believe Portland has a team that can do that in a way they haven’t in years. Italics in the word “defending” because I saw Portland collapse space as opposed to hunting the ball. That limited most potential over-committing, a good thing under most circumstances. One thing I want to note about that, both about tonight and going forward...
I rate Judson highly enough that I didn’t expect much falling off on seeing San Jose’s starting roster tonight versus last week's, but the sum of the game begs the question of how much Carlos Gruezo and Jamiro Monteiro make the ‘Quakes tick. A midfield three with those two and Jackson Yueill has plenty of bite, plus some good ideas about how to get forward...which points to a real question about tonight’s li’l joust.
To highlight my biggest takeaway from tonight’s game, and I noted this in tonight’s game thread, the Timbers played the best full-field team defense I’ve seen them play all season. The optimist wants to believe that happened because the Timbers collapsed space with the tidiness of an in-prime K-pop act; the pessimist wonders how different that would have looked with Gruezo and Monteiro on the field: the eternal question of cause and effect lurks somewhere in the middle of all that, therefore I don’t feel like we really got an answer to the question, have the Timbers turned a corner of, gods forfend, actually improved?
A 0-0 draw by any other name, basically.
To credit a coaching staff that doesn’t often get it, Gio et. al. set up the team smartly, all the forks in the right places, and so on; to keep the credit flowing, they gambled on an approach and it paid off – handsomely, even. Given how much San Jose works up both flanks, playing four at the back made sense and starting Eric Miller, a purer defender than (the admittedly absent) Juan Davis Mosquera, neutralized Cade Cowell – at least until the ‘Quakes had him drop deeper to where he could receive the ball and attack the space in front of Miller. The gamble came with defending San Jose way up to their defensive third and, for what it’s worth, I believe Portland has a team that can do that in a way they haven’t in years. Italics in the word “defending” because I saw Portland collapse space as opposed to hunting the ball. That limited most potential over-committing, a good thing under most circumstances. One thing I want to note about that, both about tonight and going forward...
I rate Judson highly enough that I didn’t expect much falling off on seeing San Jose’s starting roster tonight versus last week's, but the sum of the game begs the question of how much Carlos Gruezo and Jamiro Monteiro make the ‘Quakes tick. A midfield three with those two and Jackson Yueill has plenty of bite, plus some good ideas about how to get forward...which points to a real question about tonight’s li’l joust.
To highlight my biggest takeaway from tonight’s game, and I noted this in tonight’s game thread, the Timbers played the best full-field team defense I’ve seen them play all season. The optimist wants to believe that happened because the Timbers collapsed space with the tidiness of an in-prime K-pop act; the pessimist wonders how different that would have looked with Gruezo and Monteiro on the field: the eternal question of cause and effect lurks somewhere in the middle of all that, therefore I don’t feel like we really got an answer to the question, have the Timbers turned a corner of, gods forfend, actually improved?
