Sporting Kansas City 2-3 Portland Timbers: Conditioned to Believe

You are my God, there is no other.

Where to begin? With the ass-clenching anxiety of the final 30+ minutes, the beside-myself joy, or empathy for Sporting Kansas City for having the year they had and, yeah, Zarek Valentin probably really should have been sent off for a second yellow…

…then again, I’m good with that so long as you are…and, clearly, I’m only addressing persons outside the greater Kansas Citys, MO/KS and/or Seattle, WA metro areas. That was fucking incredible, right, a miracle on frosted grass (they play on grass in KC, right?), and a smoldering tribute to the lately infectious power of positive thinking?

As alluded to in the penumbra between the words above, the Portland Timbers advanced to MLS Cup 2018 on the back of a 3-2 road win in Kansas City, MO. Exactly two teams of 18 left Children’s Mercy Park with a win in all of 2018, a fact that threads garish neon threads around Portland’s accomplishment for tonight. And, for the record, I’m entirely serious about sparing a thought for everyone involved in the Sporting Kansas City organization and fan base (except the assholes who threw shit on the field after Portland’s second, stumbling goal; and, while I’m on it, has anyone else ever seen a coach step out to appeal to his crowd’s better angels like Peter Vermes did tonight (#StockRising)?). They believed every bit as inordinately in SKC’s odds of victory as Timbers fans believed in their own going into tonight (i.e., most of the hiccups in faith were my own), but that surely dissolved the second after Diego Valeri sank to his knees in disbelief after he scored his make-your-own-luck header (e.g., the "second, stumbling goal" noted above). I’ve never felt as close to him as I did in that moment (I'm buyin' the rounds, Diego!). And then Valeri got another one, and off the counter that would always follow so long as SKC pressed too high and the Timbers had available outlets…

…sorry, pausing again. Does this feel like ecstasy to anyone else? I mean the drug, not the state of mind. I’m just really, really happy right now, and on the grounds that, holy shit…the Timbers did it. They did all of it. Three fucking goals, in Kansas City, which, for what it’s worth, equals exactly 1/6 of the goals allowed in Kansas City during the regular season. (In the event I’m phrasing that badly, SKC allowed 18 goals at home during the regular season (the source of my math), and three goals tonight.)

I’m grasping at quantity because it’s tangible. But there’s nothing tangible about Sebastian Blanco’s equalizer, aka, the goal he seemed destined to score since 2018 started. That shit is permanently transcendent, just like Dairon Asprilla’s equalizer against Seattle about a month ago; it’s lore for the fan-base, a permanent, defining “where were you moment” that people will share – something that goes double if the Portland Timbers manage to claw their way all the way to the top, aka, hoisting MLS Cup to the sky for the second time in the franchise's short history.

Sporting Kansas City 0-0 FC Dallas, aka a Tense Inter-Generational Indie Comedy

I shit you not, Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming is EXCELLENT.

What Sporting Kansas City v. FC Dallas lacked in heightened moments - ended knotted in zeroes again; like SKC wanna be this year's Colorado - it more than made up for in framing. Call it the bone-dry coming of age comedy to the action movie experience we all expect from spectator sports, but that we get less often than we’d like to admit.

All in all, Dallas had the better game – and not in the way that Sporting’s color commentary kept bitching that they did. Yeah, Dallas played conservative, maybe even safe, but they played the better game: they consistently had defenders where they needed them and they created the best, cleanest chances.

The other subplot in here is the one alluded to in the first paragraph. Dallas…hold on, but, true story, I’m looking at the graphic line-up for the first time (sorry, people on twitter; I just checked the names, not where they lined up), and now where I saw specific players totally makes sense, for all that, continuing, Dallas didn’t just play back-ups; they played first-year players and a freakin’ 17-year-old kid, Paxton Pomykal. And that’s the thing: KC played veterans, plus a couple guys who, by broad consensus, rate in MLS – e.g. Benny Feilhaber, Dom Dwyer, Roger Espinoza, Matt Besler, etc. Now re-read paragraph 2. And Pomykal? He looked just fine. Even cleaned Benny's clock around the 43rd. So, yeah. Fuck off, old people. Look, even if you think I’m crediting Dallas too much, it’s remarkable that the equivalent of a Dallas B-side played KC to a draw at home.

OK, moving on to talking points now…

DC United 0-0 Sporting Kansas City: Professionals, Grimly at Work

5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock...

[This ties in with something I plan to post either tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how god’s willing, and in which way. He’s cagey…]

DC United versus Sporting Kansas City, a game that knotted in fairly dreary zeroes, was on the TV the entire time I was in the same room, or a room adjacent thereto. I’m solid from about the 30th minute on, but I was preparing what turned out to be a pretty disappointing pot roast up to that point. So, that’s the disclosure portion out of the way…

Both DC and KC field solid professionals – aka, players who don’t fuck up a lot – so disciplined performances all ‘round, both Saturday and generally. Not a lot of daylight to be had between them, then, and this game felt pretty goddamn technical as a result, but for all the wrong reasons.

The name didn’t so much lack for highlights – KC’s ‘keeper, Tim Melia, saved both the shot and a rebound on a penalty kick, fer crissakes – as the ones it provided delivered on the defensive side. To hit this game solely from DC’s perspective, they handled just about everything KC could throw at them, up to and including an imbalance in possession, but a larger distinction showed up on the attacking side, where DC looked just…slower than Kansas City. I mean this last point in a “running in mud” kind of way: every KC player appeared able to run down any DC attacker in three or five strides.