Seattle Sounders 2-2 Portland Timbers: We'll Always Have the Laugh

[DRAMATIC MUSIC!]

I’m going to start this post with two observations brought to mind by too much time on social media and too many years of staring at some version of the same thing one week after another.

Fans should appreciate perfection when they see it, as opposed to expecting it from any player. Because that’s just the world/humanity works, we’re none of us, etc. This mind-set is one of several reasons why I can’t coach. (“Hey, sometimes you just fuck up. No biggie. Love you, man.”)

Once (most) people make up their mind on a given player, he/she is either the shit or total shit. Once they think he/she is bad, all they see are the mistakes and once they think he/she is good, it’s nothing but the good stuff. It’s damn closer to binary. Swear to God.

As for the game, the high-comedic 2-2 draw between the Seattle Sounders and the Portland Timbers up in the frosty climes of the Puget Sound, I have more questions than I have answers, by which I mean I have only one real answer: I’d say about 75% of the success the Sounders had over the first half followed from the way they nipped at Portland’s collective heels over 2/3 of the field. Once they lost that, courtesy of a second yellow to Seattle’s Leo Chu, all you had left was two teams a year or two removed from their best days fighting over scraps. Hyenas versus vultures, basically.

To acknowledge something, Seattle got screwed hard by that sending off. Chu picked up his first yellow for one of the most randomly puritanical rules of the modern game – e.g., the shirtless goal celebration (WHY IS THIS A THING?) – and his second for, I shit you not, getting the worst of running headlong into Portland’s Zac McGraw. It takes so, so very much for me to agree that a referee’s decision decided a game, but Jon Freemon (a referee I do not know) cut off Seattle’s clearest path to success with an excessively legalistic reading of the rules and....just a bad call.

Don't get me wrong: knowing how pissy and bewildered Seattle fans are this morning is just the best. And that is what will have to pass for satisfaction on a night when the Timbers more or less stalled in their attempt to make the 2023 playoffs. Now, some more detail...

Portland Timbers 1-2 Chicago Fire: Playing to Their (Damned) Level

Spinderella vibes.

What in the sweet, sweaty balls of Chubby Checker was that? A 1-2 loss at Providence Park to a team that is both historically and currently bad, obviously, but...well, how the fuck does that happen? Yes, even in a fucking “transition” season.

To recap, the Portland Timbers failed to capitalize on a glorious opening - one carried to potentiality by the divine wind of the gods (or gremlins in the turf tripping the Chicago Fire’s last defender), I might add – due its latest (literal?) record fucking signing losing the ball in his feet at the critical and yet somehow eternal moment (I yelled “Boli! Boli!” to no one in particular for felt like a full minute; in here somewhere, or least it should be), and then the Fire score a soul-stealer of a winner – what? – ten minutes later. To paraphrase a prescient, and now-curs’d man on twitter, “now watch [Kei Kamara] rise like a salmon to score.” And so he did.

Short version, the Chicago Fire (the Fire!) beat the Timbers 2-1 tonight and, to paraphrase a great Dan Savage bit, this is not the match review I wanted to type tonight. Like I say to the dentist every time, let’s get this bullshit over with.

I didn’t see any clear reason why Chicago won tonight. Sure, they started the first half well, and the second, but, as suggested by The Mothership’s xG graph (which is to say I agree with it, and scroll down), no flashing red lights announced either team’s intention to score. Will Robinson was not in danger. My anxiety about the Timbers generally and damnable lolly-gagging bubbled over into the game thread about five minutes after I felt it; the time had come to push the game, push it real good...

...and that’s the story, isn’t it? This current – a word I mean in the hyper-present tense* - simply doesn’t have it in them to push the game, never mind real good (Don’t talk about the win over Seattle...not now). The grasping at straws continues – and full credit to Marvin Loria, a player I pick at every time I mention his name, for finally showing some kind of urgency with his stoppage time shot and forcing a corner kick, but that showed up 20 minutes past too fucking late. Just four, five minutes prior, I watched and wondered when I’d see any Timbers player show for the ball in a way that felt like a demand. I can’t name one player who showed a clear, unflinching willingness to take charge of this game.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Sporting Kansas City: A Win in March (or February) and Everything That Was Wrong with It

If I had to declare a star for the evening of the Portland Timbers’ season-opening 1-0 win over Sporting Kansas City, I’d go with the opening goal. I mean, that thing felt like the first kiss after love after love at first sight, something that left you dreaming of all the great things to come and believing they’d come true.

And then the rest of the game happened and, just like that, that same young couple is sitting at the back of the bus marveling at how all that frisson fizzled out.

There isn’t much to say about this game in either a short or long narrative. Once you take away a couple hiccups of excitement here and there, after Juan David Mosquera effectively willed in the game’s one and only goal – and by playing both sides of the ball in the same move, mind you – the game settled into an unwelcome pattern.

In a phrase, every good thing Portland managed to get going wilted over time. While that mostly took form of one Timbers player or another doing good things and leading a charge to somewhere promising, the malaise had a kind of global feel about it – say like someone running up a hill, heart bursting with courage screaming, “who's with me?!" only to realize he's leading, at most, a two-man charge. Or, to reach for another metaphor, the whole game felt like a metaphor for autumn, only some place shitty instead of, like, New England where leaves on the trees pop like fireworks in October (and with less of a fire risk; good stuff).

If there’s a plus side to this whole thing...guys(!), the Timbers kept a clean sheet! And, yeah, I get the impression that he’s popular as a narc as a high school party with a lot of Timbers fans, but stand-in ‘keeper David Bingham deserves a real share of the credit for that. He came up with saves big, double and good at the 24th and 77th minute. Bingham didn’t do it all alone, happily: Zac McGraw and his rippling physique knocked out the aerial threat time and again – one second-half intervention made it look like he has license to chase the ball across the area – and he got one of those long, sturdy (deep breath) legs in the way of one of SKC’s better attempts at a final ball. Mosquera deserves a ton of credit for making Portland’s right side hell to play down or through and I count both Justin Rasmussen and Dario Zuparic as fully present and entirely serviceable...

Nashville SC 2-2 Portland Timbers: Improv Without a Prompt & a Bit o' Luck

I feel good, I do...just keep the damn thing on, for now.

What lies all but inertly for long stretches of time, only to come to and get to business?

The answer could be Jaroslaw Niezgoda or, in this game and, best case, the season, the Portland Timbers. It could be both, it could be neither: that’s my way of signaling I won’t even start getting ahead of myself.

After slipping down to somewhere between doomed and rock-bottom, the theretofore irrelevant Portland Timbers nabbed two straight brass rings on their way to a 2-2 draw on the road at Nashville SC on the back of (yet) a(nother) brace from the theretofore irrelevant Jaroslaw Niezgoda, at which point you have to ask yourself, is it all just a metaphor waiting for the big director in the sky box to whisper...action?

Again, good sense and more than a few visuals from tonight make a strong case for walking along the bandwagon to see what happens before you run ahead of it shouting promises of beer, wine and trophies. Best not say reckless things, and so on. If only the next word were “but.”

Leaving points on the table has become a house specialty for Nashville, for one, even against lower-rated teams that the Timbers. While I’d argue they never looked dominant tonight (confident might even be a stretch), you could feel the nerves of both team and city rattling the second a pair of their errors gifted Niezgoda the penalty kick. Penalty kicks being what they are – which Dairon Asprilla did his bit to sign, seal and deliver the Timbers to within one goal of one point – those two moments could have served as a wake-up call to Nashville or a rallying flag to the Timbers.

Fortunately for the visitors, momentum had already tilted Portland’s way courtesy of Eryk Williamson coming on for the valiant, sometimes-limited, yet clearly kaput, Yimmi Chara. [Ed. - I’ll defend him as a player (though probably not a DP...and is he still?) more than most; if they held a Utility Player of the Year Award and they gave me a vote, Yimmi would get mine, but I digress.] I also doubt any Timbers fan would seriously argue that Portland didn’t have a better second half. I’ll get to that, and Eryk’s role in it, but a word about the first half first.

Portland Can't Find a Way Past San Jose...which is true of that city generally (a mess, I tell you).

San Jose's defense. I mean, how do you get through that?

Somewhere around the 60th minute (think it was the 58th, but not checking), the ball squirted out to Darlington Nagbe, who stood just outside the Portland Timbers' 18. With the ball under control, Nagbe looked up to find his options. Inside one second, unable to find an option worth passing to, Nagbe raised his arms in clear "fuck-it" frustration; by the time the full second had passed, Chris Wondolowski had poked the ball off Nagbe's foot and the San Jose Earthquakes took one more run at the Portland Timbers' goal. This was just one reason today's game ended 2-1. San Jose frustrated the holy shit out of Portland.

It wasn't always that kind of day, though. The Timbers largely dictated the opening. Right up to the 30th minute, really. That’'s when Wondolowski "did Wonolowski things," as Fox Sports' commentating team put it, this time breaking past Jermaine Taylor inside Portland's (sacred and inviolate!) six-yard box to meet a cross to the near post. So, there was that, a goal. Before that, Portland's Lucas Melano pinged a ball off the crossbar; Diego Valeri rode a tackle and put a seeing-eye toe-poke on goal, only to have San Jose's 'keeper, David Bingham, tip it to the outside of the side netting. Making matters worse, the ref missed it and awarded the 'Quakes a goal kick afterwards. In a replay of that shot later in the game, the video followed long enough to capture Valeri looking Bingham in the eye and saying, "tell him." With "him" here being the referee...and, yeah, even as I type that, I'm surprised Valeri bothered. Well, not so much surprised that Valeri bothered as I'm surprised to think he thought it would matter. Then again, of course Valeri would think that. It's not for nothing the man reads devotional literature...

For the first 30 minutes of this game, Portland attacked San Jose's defensive third in a way that promised an inevitable breakthrough. Wondo scored, of course, but the Timbers picked up after it, probing their way to San Jose's goal, and everything looked set to follow a narrative in which the question would be whether or not the Timbers could equalize. And, if so, where things would go from there? And so on.

It didn't turn out that way. In one awful (at most) five second sequence, Quincy Amarikwa – remember him? the guy who's finishing I questioned? – picked up the script, blow his nose on it, mic-dropped that sucker to the floor, poured gasoline on it, and set that fucker to flame. With that, and for the second year running, Portland again find themselves an early favorite for being the team on the receiving end of a Goal of the Year (memories...). If you didn't see it, do yourself a favor and watch Amarikwa's goal - which is even more impressive for the stuff that came before it. A lob over Adam Kwarasey from at least 40 yards out, it is a thing of perfect beauty. It also came right before the half and, arguing from the second half, it just plain freaked-out the Timbers. Even when Portland pulled back a hearteningly impressive consolation goal (sure, it's too little, too late, but that at least means Portland has ideas on how to score one of those elusive buggers), the Timbers' approach play presented as more desperate than methodical. Desperate can work, of course, but "methodical," by way of being controlled, typically works better.