 |
| Closest I could get given the search... |
The point is, the game wasn’t boring, predictions of an incompetent Portland attack slap-fighting a dour Houston defense that barely noticed them held their own sad disco in my head as opposed to crossing over into and ruining the real world. I got a couple things wrong in my Scouting Report on Houston and I couldn’t be happier about it. Time to pick through the guts!
About the Game
The Portland Timbers got off to an electric start on their way to a 3-1 home win that looked like it could have ended 5-1 before the halftime whistle. After a ball squirted forward out of a tackle on Antony (probably) Jimer Fory broke down Houston’s right with everyone in orange furiously back-pedaling in time; his cross to Santiago Moreno actually found Daniel Steres first, but, per one of several themes that repeated/rhymed across the first half, he poked his clearance to Moreno, who fed Felipe Mora, who (probably) announced his wife was pregnant (everyone seemed happier than usual) after scoring Portland’s first goal. I know I wasn’t the only Timbers fan with dreams of jelly drops and a blow-out win dancing in my head over the next (literally) six minutes because Houston handed Portland at least two more tantalizing transition opportunities between the opener and Houston’s equalizer. There’s not much to say about the latter than why is Fory (barely) defending two players and great cross by Jack McGlynn (which means I got some things right in the Scouting Report), but it didn’t take long for the game to revert back to the Dynamo panicking and Portland taking advantage. Once Antony started and finished his run up the right for the Timbers’ second goal – tied together by an inch-perfect pass by Mora – it felt like the only question left to ask was how many more Portland could score. As it happens, the answer to that question was one. The Timbers scored just one more goal between the halftime whistle and the one that called the game – it involved the same players too, Mora and Antony – and that made for a gently nervous start to the second half. Assuming I’m not mashing them into some kind of omni-clip, I counted at least four times over the second half where Houston meticulously played the ball to the edge of Portland’s 18, and even got their toe in it, before the last, desperate shot went wide or smacked into Kamal Miller, Fory, of (most likely) Finn Surman. Houston head coach, Ben Olsen, added Erik Sviatchenko at the beginning of the second half, prompting the first of several “wait, why not start him?” questions, and that got the Dynamo’s feet under them for almost 25…vaguely menacing minutes. If I oversold Houston’s competence in the Scouting Report (I did), this was the place: this team works the ball up the field as well as any team in MLS – particularly when they heed Olsen’s pleas for “CALM” – but the end-result amounts to driving a freshly-paved highway that dead-ends into some Houston neighborhood built off-code and well beneath a flood-plain. A result can be lost in one bad moment – I get it – and, by the same token, any of Houston’s long progressive possessions could have ended with a second equalizer. Back in the real world, they didn't. Moreover, at least eight of them ended with four to five Timbers running at three to four Houston players prioritizing getting back to their own goal, by necessity, because the onslaught didn’t give them the luxury of setting up the optimal match ups. Carrying the point forward…
