Portland Timbers 4-1 Nashville SC: Maybe We Can Have Nice Things?!

IYKYK

Just not hat tricks. Hey-OH!

Jonathan Rodriguez’s failure to top the brace he’d built through the middle of the first half with a hat trick turned to slapstick by the end of the game. Fuck it. So long as the Portland Timbers win enough games without them, I can lay down for my final rest with nothing left to check in that particular box.

For those who didn’t watch, the Timbers straight-up ran over Nashville SC tonight with a 4-0 win at Providence Park. If I had to name a defining moment for the night, I’d go with the “HOLY SHIT” huddle Nashville ‘keeper Joe Willis called after Portland’s fourth goal went into the (or his) bottom left corner for the second time.

The only real question to ask about tonight: at what precise moment did the point of analyzing this game leave the building? After the third goal? The fourth? The (holy shit, justified!) red card? (Which is in here somewhere, or better be.) If there’s a story besides the game slipping away from Nashville five three-to-four minutes at a time between the game’s 18th and 35th minutes, I couldn’t name it.

It was fun and all – which was genuinely nice, not to mention fresh – but, no, the only thing to talk about is how hard Nashville fell on their faces. To wit…

Portland scored its first goal on a turnover and by capitalizing on a literal 4-v-2.

Daniel Lovitz/Nashville gambled everything on cutting off Juan David Mosquera’s escape and, failing at that, the Timbers scored their second goal in a 4-v-3 with Eryk Williamson with all of time and space to command from the right.

FC Cincinnati 3-2 Houston Dynamo: Tortoise and Hare Metaphors, Strained

Knew I wasn't the only one who mixed that metaphor....

To start with the big question, what the hell just happened out there? If I’m allowed a follow-up (yes, go ahead), did I like it?

The answer to that hinges on what I really think about the Houston Dynamo’s apparent decision to sit out the first 50 minutes of the game. Could head coach Wilmer Cabrera really have sent them out under instructions to cool their heels through 50 minutes, even if hell and high-water washed over it all, and that they’d start playing then and only then? I don’t want to take anything away from FC Cincinnati, who won every header and clogged even more passing lanes over the same period, and they absolutely deserve credit, both for that and finishing their chances (Rashawn!) on their way to a 3-0 lead (not that one, this one). All the same, Houston struggled to build out of the back, and with lack of trying front and center. Midfielders played the ball backwards over and over again throughout the first half, and without any visible pressure around them; both of their d-mids, Juan Cabezas and Matias Vera, dropped centrally to act as an outlet, but Houston’s defenders bypassed that option again and again, in favoring of shoving the ball up the wings. And Cincinnati’s midfield players – led by Emmanuel Ledesma – chewed that shit up every time.

The Dynamo applied its first (remotely useful) spell of pressure around the middle-50s, when they finally pinned Cincinnati into its defensive end and set up a siege that, ultimately, came very, very (very, very) uncomfortably close to forcing a draw, or…let’s just call it God forbid. The thing that undid Houston was ‘keeper Joe Willis letting a weak shot to roll between his legs just as Houston got its momentum going (see "this one," above). There was no reason to assume that would prove the difference when it happened – honestly, I expected Cincinnati to score one more until about the 80th minute – but Houston flipped a pretty big switch once they found it. When the Mark (probably) Gantor (probably; no offense; I love referees) blew the final whistle, the game ended in a desperately-needed 3-2 win for FC Cincinnati. I call this a great result, and without reservation. After the worst loss in franchise history any win is an unqualified good thing, don’t look gift horses in the mouth, and mind where the Pope has a shit, and so on. (Wait…I always get the thing with popes and bears turned around.)