Timbers Top SKC: Holding Together the If/Then Equations

Hold on...making my point when this cuts through a tomato cleanly.

Thoughts going in: big game for the Portland Timbers, and with a stubborn, and stubbornly ugly opponent between them and all three points.

What Happened
Until Diego Valeri slammed home his one-touch rising rocket past Alec Kann, this game had goal-less, go-home-frustrated afternoon written all over it. It looked all but certain, in fact, around the 30th and 35th minute: when the Timbers’ Diego Chara got sent off for a stupid piece of frustration stupidly early in the game (12th minute, Diego; how did you get that pissy in that little time?), that left Sporting KC 78 minutes to do the laboring lover thing – e.g. 78 minutes of fairly useless groping that impresses no one. And pleases no one.

The Hell of it was that Portland really needed those three points. With that thought merely in play, season-turning moments attached to Chara’s red card. As much as Portland looked like they could stop KC from scoring all day long that still left them needing to score against a defensively aggressive team and without an equal number of options for pushing the attack. Unless I’m not totally clear on Major League Soccer’s tie-breaking procedures and/or codicils, and those codicils’ various sub-codicils, the resulting (implied) draw would have left the Timbers even on points with the Vancouver Whitecaps, but still on the wrong side of the lush, red velvet rope that, in MLS, as with everywhere else in the world, separates member of polite society from the relatives that members of polite society never mention and who they would just as soon forget.

As it happened, KC’s Soni Mustivar went in dumb ‘n’ reckless against Valeri’s (I think) right leg, a moment that went from yellow to red – and correctly. The one thing I can’t figure out: was it just a few words and a stern look from Adi that made that happen? I swear Baldomero Toledo went from front pocket to back in the split second that Adi glowered at him...so, what does Adi have on him? Regardless, I found both red cards perfectly justifiable. More to the point, karma/shit balanced out in the end, so...we’re good, right?

The Portland Timbers And Their Eternal Transition. And Sporting KC.

AAUGGH! Connor Hallisey!

[Each week I (try to) watch three full, 90-minute games. And I write ‘em up. Part 2 of 3, for Major League Soccer’s Week 21.]

Why This Game? Because I watch the Portland Timbers every time they play. Sporting Kansas City just sort of tagged along...

And the reports that feature the Timbers games will wind up giving somewhat short shrift to their opposition, but I will try to give those teams at least some of their due.

On the Result

“Yeah, yeah, they almost just scored. I still think that watching Sporting KC attack is like watching a toddler paint.”
- Conifers & Citrus Official Twitter feed during the game

“what does that say about the Timbers then!?”
- ik3, some hours after the game.

Just about everything you read below weaves in, out and between of the above exchange. I honestly don’t think that much of SKC, a strappingly, stupidly stoned-on-athletics team that only hits the broad side of the barn because they run headlong and relentlessly into the people standing between them and the barn. They’re unsubtle, inaccurate and, to my mind, mostly containable...and yet, there but for the grace of Jake Gleeson, the Timbers barely contained them. Portland came very close to forcing a draw at the end – twice, too – but they owed that opportunity to Jake Gleeson, the man who parried a ten-minute shelling with everything up to and including an artless flail-slap. The game ended at 1-0 to Sporting, and it's har...rather, it's pointless to argue with that.

Even if they got an assist or two from Good Fortune – more on this in the section below on SKC –the Timbers didn’t cough up naked chances all day or anything, and the team played all right in a broad sense. I don’t mind the goal that won it: Amobi Okugo was in reasonably good position, Jacob Peterson just got the better read on the ball, and hence contact, hence goal. And Portland’s late chances were good; Jack McInerney’s attempt would have been the more satisfying finish (is that citrus?), while Fanendo Adi’s felt like the surer, if graceless, chance (no easy to find video; sad!). Lucas Melano’s brain-freeze returned, so the Timbers lost a couple promising chances, but, all in all, the team created chances and they defended all right...and I’m pleased that the Timbers held their ground against one of MLS’s more brutish teams. And there it is, an unremarkable and acceptable result in every sense except the missing points and timing. The Timbers have only eleven games left to get everything rolling on the right track (or 15 games if you view the Timbers’ upcoming CONCACAF Champions’ League games as chances at figuring their shit out as opposed to a program designed to fatigue your team’s players). That puts a pretty simple question in play: how close is Portland to getting everything rolling on the right track? I’ll get to it...first, let’s look at SKC.