Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Portland Timbers: So...What's to Be Done with the Wretch?

A wretch, in one extended universe.

In any other context, you’d pocket the Portland Timbers' 1-1 road draw at the Los Angeles Galaxy with a smile. In the context of a 2022 regular season in desperate need of a great, big goose on the bum, a little...more would have been nice.

I sat through the MLS in 15 to refresh my memory (and because I could; go on, girl, relive 1/6 of the pleasure & pain) and, apart from starting after two of the Galaxy’s early chances (22:41), they confirmed my overall impression of the game: about 90% of it happened between the defenses, a paucity of break-through moments, an afternoon of 20 gentlemen running aimlessly around a big field of green with two more standing in front of their goals, largely biding their time.

Still, Portland had their positives. Yimmi Chara made a cameo as the fastest man on the pitch with his blind-side run straight past LA’s Rayan Raveloson (who very visibly said, “fuck it,” after Yimmi bolted past), which gave Sebastian Blanco an easy diagonal for the assist. A bad touch from Yimmi could have pissed it all away, but he took an atypically soft and smart touch away from Derrick Williams (best player on field, fwiw) and slotted home near-post past Jonathan Bond. That one bright shining moment carried the Timbers to within two minutes (plus stoppage time) of bringing all three points back to Portland, and I’ll get to that, but let’s wrap up the positives.

Both Claudio Bravo and, especially, Josecarlos Van Rankin had solid games, and neither got sent off, so that’s a win. Timbers’ ‘keeper Aljaz Ivacic made a mix of good and lucky saves and generally looked comfortable back there (credit where it’s due, but I’d really like to see him yell more; I expect yelling from my ‘keepers)...and, yep, I just wrapped up the positives.

The Galaxy equalized, cruelly, almost immediately after the you-didn’t-know-you’d-miss-him-till-he’s-gone Felipe Mora made his 2022 season debut. When Dejan Joveljic gained a couple yards inside on Larrys Mabiala and finally placed a ball where Ivacic couldn’t reach and/or sit on it, LA clawed back two points they barely deserved, but anyone with eyes to see it and the stomach to stare disappointment in the face could see the Galaxy piling on those kinds of half-chance passes; neither team impressed with their xG numbers, but the little xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page matches what I remember. All it took was one Timbers defender switching off – i.e., Larrys didn’t seen Joveljic’s run till he was two yards past him – a tale as old as time. Especially for Portland.

Los Angeles Galaxy v Portland Timbers Preview: The Things You'll Settle For...

The Portland Timbers return to regular season and the unfashionable precincts of Los Angeles this Saturday afternoon where they’ll face a lately what-the-fuck Los Angeles Galaxy. I’ll flag some particulars shortly, but, first, some facts:

Los Angeles Galaxy
Record/Basics: 7-5-2, , 4-3-0 home; 17 gf, 15 ga, +2
Last 10: WWTWLWLTLW (5-3-2; 3-2-0 home)
Oppo: @ POR, @ LAFC, @ CHI, v NSH, @RSL @ ATX, v FCD, @ MIN, v HOU, v ATX

What We Know About Them
After starting the 2022 season as points-poachin’ 1-0 bandits, the Galaxy spent the whole damn month of May messing with Texas. The results came back mixed - more below – but, until they crumbled like so much apple-smoked bacon at home against Dallas and Houston, the Galaxy ranked among the most disciplined defenses in MLS. The attack, on the other hand, slowed down once the early-season hype-buzz around Chicharito wore off; The Mothership’s staff scribes want it a little too bad, sometimes. You’re not reading about any given Galaxy playing running away with anything because they haven’t – up to and including LA’s latest grasp at a household name, Douglas Acosta.

Notes on Recent Form
The home loss to Dallas ended before it started – and didn’t improve overly – but the Galaxy also coughed up an early goal to Houston, and I’d call scoring early, or at least first, the key to cracking LA's defense, but then they went and had that comeback win over Austin. And yet......the only thing I can see a Galaxy fan loving after this last stretch is Dejan Joveljic, but one wunder-game v Austin by one player does not save a season. The fact that Jonathan Bond bailed their asses all the way out in that draw at Minnesota lends further weight to the argument that LA didn’t do much better than survive May 2022. Despite playing three games at home – at least two against teams lower in the table – the Galaxy collected only three points of nine from a favorable layout. The road win at Austin at the head of the run softened the blow, and the late pile-on at home prettied up the Galaxy’s goal differential, but, on the recent evidence, teams from anywhere but Austin have some reason to think they can punch a point or three out of the Galaxy.

Notes on Past Meetings of 2022
The 1-3 loss in Portland contained a lot of the Timbers’ 2022, honestly: a fullback getting sent off (Pablo Bonilla, who, like nature, finds a way to go where he must), a glorious Bill Tuiloma free-kick, and an unhealthy helping of too little and too late. And, without knowing them like their fans do, it seems to represent the 2022 Galaxy too – i.e., a sort of bland, half-anonymous stability waiting on a something special from two or three players. In this case, a Raheem Edwards cross (he’s their leading assist-man, btw) found Chicharito, who had lost Portland’s defense (so, so easy) and that shipped all three points to Los Angeles.

Portland Timbers 3-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: Struggle. Horror. Stroll.

It only looks innocent.

Huh, maybe I should title all these things in three word descriptions. Beats repeating cliches like, “a tale of two halves,” right?

The game started cagey, it took a moment of horror - and, arguably, a substitution - to change it, but, once the ball got rolling, gravity did its thing and Portland Timbers coasted to a 3-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy at home.

LA’s Derrick Williams brought the horror, and by way of what might have been a drunken-headed tackle a couple minutes before half-time that knocked Portland’s Andy Polo out of the game and off the field for gods know how long. It left LA and everyone associated with them blushing instead of complaining - a rarity in soccer - and Williams got a straight, justified red for it; fines and a couple more missed games should be coming as well. Regardless of whether Williams had a concussion at the time, that kind of tackle all but obliges you to make amends. Visit Polo to apologize, buy him a box of chocolates (the good stuff; not that See’s bullshit), maybe gift card to Dave & Buster’s with $200 on it, and that’s at a minimum. Williams’ tackle was the house-guest equivalent of shitting in the middle of someone’s kitchen; mens rea doesn’t even come into it.

That came just before the end of the first half, and the Wheels of Justice turned quickly from there. Less than two minutes after the second half whistle, Josecarlos Van Rankin dropped a dime into an arm’s length gap between LA’s Daniel Steres and (maybe) Julian Araujo for Felipe Mora to nod into the goal - and the Timbers…well, they didn’t quite never look back, but they took care of the game in one of the weirdest and most passive ways I’ve seen in a while. Allow me to explain…

Looking at the summary, I see that just 13 minutes passed between Mora’s first goal and his second - a head-on-a-swivel-alert put-back on a nice bit of collective lock-picking by Portland, in which a strong shot by Claudio Bravo set up Mora’s put-back - but something truly peculiar made that dozen-plus minutes pass slowly. For one, the Timbers did something familiar after going ahead: they let up. That could have followed from a conscious choice to drop back, stay compact and absorb, but it had the effect of giving the Galaxy, not just possession, but time to pick at the edges of the Timbers’ defensive third. While I don’t recall anything super dangerous during that time - related, I just confirmed that Logan Ketterer didn’t make a lot of saves, but that’s still three more than I remembered - LA had the ball in an area where control becomes chaos in the blink of an eye.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 1 Review: The Expected, the Noted and the Holy Shit, What?

Think one of those set ups in volleyball. #Goals.

And…yes, I’m attempting a form of global coverage of Major League Soccer. Again. Fear & Self-Loathing in Hillsboro, etc.

The approach turns on the gap between expectations versus results, and with a strong emphasis on the results gained in the actual time/space dimension we all occupy. The mechanics are also pretty straightforward: 1) I check who’s playing who each week and, based on what I think/know, take a stab at what seems likeliest to happen in each game and post it on the twitters (and the dozens of notepads littered around my house), and 2) note what actually happened in these weekly posts. And, once I have said results in hand, I’ll sort them into the following categories:

Expected
Noted
Holy Shit, What?

That, only in reverse order. The meat of these posts will dig into three (3; and only three) of the “Holy Shit, What?” results, which games I’ll review through the MLS-in-15 videos, box scores and anything else I can think of besides post-game interviews because, dang me, are those things as worthless as a White House press conference. I’ll start the post with those three, continue through the “Noted” results - i.e., games with something that feel worth flagging for future reference - and wrap up with the “Expected” results - i.e., the ones that follow expectations. My notes on the latter two groups won't take that long, honest.

Well, that’s the program. If that doesn’t make sense, just look at this Week 1 review as an open hand in cards. The concept will (or should) make sense by the end. Let’s roll - and, the link to The Mothership's Buffet of Easy Data shows up as a link in the score of each game. I'll throw in the odd fitting link, but the rest is up to you.

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-2 Portland Timbers: Freelancing and Foundations

It's easier, basically, with certain advantages...

As I look back on the wide wonder that just happened, I want to start with the Los Angeles Galaxy and caveats related thereto. As noted during the in-game commentary, and despite having the firsttwo best chances to get a go-ahead goal, both of them through their latest prize-pony, Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez (and one of them a penalty kick that forced a double save out of Steve Clark), the Galaxy played like they couldn’t tell one end of the field from the other. Don’t take that literally, by any means, I’m just arguing that LA had an aimless air about them, something that looked more like faith in some vague notion that everything would all work out, as opposed to belief that it would. Taking action toward making it all work out didn’t seem to occur to them until they were two goals down and one man up (fine, that happened sometime before, but I’m riffing), so call that piece of information as something that, as a Portland Timbers fan (probably), should internalize as you digest what just happened tonight.

The game ended 2-1 in Portland’s favor and, it bears noting that Chicharito pulled back LA’s lone goal, and with a run that I don’t think I see all that often in MLS. As they called the game from the broadcast booth, John Strong and Stu Holden hinted at the notion that Guillermo Barros Schelotto didn’t seem to provide a frame for what LA did, particularly in the attack – i.e., their thought was that he told his team to take the field and figure it out. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know that several Galaxy players put in good shifts tonight – e.g., I saw good, consistent work/ideas from Rolf Feltscher, Emiliano Insua, Sacha Kljestan, and Cristian Pavon (especially this guy, aka, Diego Chara's kicking post). I also saw a roster that shares the fatal weaknesses as LA’s worst teams – i.e., the loosely-competent (e.g., Perry Kitchen, Daniel Steres, arguably Sebastian Lletget) serving a star (again, Chicharito).

I bring all that up as a caveat, because I’m about to get way the hell over my skis on this one.

I was impressed by what I saw from the Timbers tonight – especially with four relative noobs in the Starting Xi (that’s the “starting Xi” not that Starting XI), in which I include Marvin Loria, Chris Duvall, Eryk Williamson and Dario Zuparic. For what it’s worth, I think Duvall and Williamson did great – the latter, in particular, but they both impressed me – and Zuparic was…more or less fine until that second, deserved yellow card. (Loria, meanwhile, gets filed under “if you can’t say something nice, shhhh, say nothing.) Given how open the question of who’s depth and who’s a starter feels right now, I’ll take that as an operating assumption for the rest of this post…moving on…

MLS Off-Season Weeky (01 25 2020): Welcome to the Weird Season! (Plus Some Moves)

Preseason.

Ah, preseason, the heady days when teams across MLS can nurse delusions of grandeur – whether Real Salt Lake claiming they’re “not that far from competing for the title” or Dax McCarty pretending new kids Nashville SC won't do the soccer equivalent of a flex-arm hang from the playoff line in its inaugural season.

The Chicago Fire (the rebrand didn’t run off with their OG name, right?), meanwhile, stung by a lost decade, takes the sober course: “I can guarantee them that we will work hard every day.”

We will try, the city of Chicago, they say. That’s really all any team can say ahead of any given season. To flip the script, Los Angeles FC can talk about a title all they want, but no promise can stop them from another stumble in the playoffs. At any rate, what will be will be. And some teams have already taken their first steps toward their 2020 fate.

Preseason, MFs!
I’ll clock some playa moves below, as well as what’s going on with the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, but I wanted to start things off with actual preseason play.

Does it matter that (weird) Atlanta United FC beat the (weird) New York Red Bulls 2-1 in hot MLS-on-MLS action yesterday, or that the (weird) Seattle Sounders dropped their first preseason game to Uruguayan giants, Penarol? Nah. Everyone’s knocking off the rust (no matter what the copy says about Josef Martinez) and the regulars knock off after the first 30 minutes, and a bunch of randos come on to replace them: the silly season continues, but welcome to the “weird” season. (Related: I’ll be placing “(weird)” in front of every team’s name until either real games come around or when a given team plays some version of its expected first team in the late-stage preseason.)