Portland Timbers 1-0 Nashville SC: Malaise & Balance

Get out those sweaters people, and turn down the thermostat.

Unless I’m mistaken, the Portland Timbers’ 1-0 win over Nashville SC had exactly two defining moments. The first happened when Diego Valeri stumbled into the on-side pocket where Andy Polo’s more alert than good header found him; Valeri finished the moment in a manner befitting someone to whom a team pays the big bucks, and that was literally the game. The other happened when Steve Clark tipped Anibal Godoy’s rifle-shot around his far post. Between them, those moments provided Portland’s margin of victory, and, good God, no, it wasn’t fun to watch. Children fidgeted, I tell you...

If a person argued that nothing really happened on either side of those two moments, that person would not be wrong. That person is me. Sure, Walker Zimmerman came close at the very deathiest of the death, but he nodded the ball wide; at the end of the first half, and quite possibly in injury time once again, Randall Leal cut his way into an opening…and then he fired his shot so close to Clark that he didn’t even have to move to save it…

…with that, I believe I’ve covered all points of interest. Thank you for attending today’s tour, just promise that you’ll never speak favorably about it to anyone, any time, ever. Don't encourage this shit, for the love of all that's holy.

This was an awful game, from Portland’s POV in particular. They scored on one of three shots fired, and one of the two they put on goal. For their part, Nashville put up a normal and reasonable number of shots, but I’ve listed the only two that really counted above…and, dear god in heaven, can that really be it?

The grim reality is fairly straightforward: based on the available evidence, Portland will struggle to get even one point out of any game in which they allow the opposition to score. Nashville couldn’t score, and that let the one, beautifully fluky goal Valeri fired in stand up. My memory matches the box score perfectly, in that I can’t recall even one more decent move by the Timbers outside Felipe Mora’s…competent (but no better) shot on Nashville’s goal. To wrap up what I’m getting at, yes, the attack looks that bad right now.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Vancouver Whitecaps: An Easy Hazing

You need the neck, man. And the collarbones.

I’d made an agreement with myself to stop watching this one at the 80th minute until I saw the Portland Timbers pull a near-complete line-change. The Timbers were up 2-1, I knew how it ended and the Vancouver Whitecaps looked no more likely to steal the result than to earn it. All the same, if the preseason isn’t about watching the undercard talent, I don’t know why they do it. For better or worse – I’m inclined to better – the Timbers continued to pick off the Vancouver Whitecaps passes and generally keep the field tilted toward the ‘Caps’ goal after all those subs came on. Better, when the new guys came on, they seemed to hit the same angles on their passes and cut out Vancouver’s passes the same way; you might want a player with a different skill-set to come on to change the focus of the attack, but you want most of the team to play within the same system when they take the field, to look like they know how to play with others without thinking about it too hard. Portland did that on Sunday, and that’s promising.

Moreover, they could call in players like Jeremy Ebobisse, Julio Cascante and, yes, even Dairon Asprilla during that line change, guys with real MLS minutes and moments – and that’s before getting to semi-regular presences like Renzo Zambrano. Those late subs weren’t the first to come on – Marco Farfan replaced Jorge Villafana and Andy Polo replaced Yimmi Chara on the right at the half – and I think the Timbers need competition in those two spots as much as any other ones…now that I think about it, Portland has competition like that in a lot of spots, if with a fair number of clear favorites for each role.

Before going any further, I have a caveat about Vancouver: I don’t rate them for 2020, and I didn’t see anything in Sunday's game to change my opinion on that. Sure, they have some dangerous pieces: Ali Adnan (Jr.?) showed what he can do with a cross multiple times, including the one that created the ‘Caps well-worked goal. Several of their expected key players (e.g., Hwang Im-Beom, Markinovic and Lucas Cavallini) combined to make that happen, but outside that moment, they struggled to get the ball to Cavallini and the 'Caps struggled to get players around the ball anytime Cavallini had it. As much as Cavallini looked big, strong and effective, Vancouver seems to have found a head for its team (Cavallini) but without investing enough in a neck, or even a pair of collarbones. Even after that, the issues are global, whether it’s Derek Cornelius’ lightly bone-headed pair of gaffes (one of them, the penalty kick that Portland’s Felipe Mora had no need to sell to the ref), or the still impressive Yordy Reyna slicing through pockets of space (even if they lead to dead-ends). It’s not quite contempt, so much as an expectation that the Timbers will be one of several teams who will take advantage of Vancouver in the season ahead.

Because it’s preseason, I don’t need to dig too deep on anything, so kindly file all the above away as I tick through a handful of bullet points to close out.

MLS Off-Season Weekly (12/4/19): No News Is...[For Both Teams] & (Night) Moves Around MLS

My idea of a good time. Just add bourbon.

Another week, another MLS Off-Season Weekly. As always, I’ll start this (hopefully) short little spin around MLS with the two teams I follow…in the order in which new developments have occurred. Which makes the starting point fairly obvious.

No News Is…The Soggy Status Quo
Spare me your forced analysis of the Portland Timbers defensive depth, The Mothership (and damn you!). Fans and pundits can’t know how Dario Zuparic will do, or whether Bill Tuiloma and Julio Cascante will improve, until all of them either do or don’t. Beyond adding the new guy, the state of the Timbers defense is unchanged till further notice.

That said, I got a little grist on Jorge Moreira out of that post. First, he has only six months left on his loan, but the organization is looking to extend, and for several seasons (please, please, PLEASE! More Ira is fun as ejector seats and boomerangs!). It sounds like the deal is done to add a “young right back”(Pablo Bonilla still?), but that’s it for excitement around these parts. Oh, and I will miss the “safety first” feel Zarek Valentin provided when the Timbers wanted a little less swashbuckling up the right side, but that bird’s flown to Houston (and Jordan Morris exposed that Plan B somethingawful the last time it was tried).

In substance, there is only waiting to learn what’s up with Diego Valeri. And whether the team will get another DP. (Again, please, please, please!).

No News Is…Cause for Full-Blown Panic
Another website asked me to write-up a snapshot of where FC Cincinnati stands at this point in the off-season, something I just forwarded for review. I’ll let that post speak for itself when it goes up – and I don’t want to preview too much of it here – but I will say, it’s hard to appreciate just how fucking messy Cincy’s roster really is until you delve into the mechanics.

The Short Version: FC Cincinnati has more needs than options, or at least that’s how I see it. As much as I think next season will be better than last, I expect neither greatness nor enjoyment for Cincy in 2020.

Portland Timbers 2-2 New England Revolution: A Must-Win You Don't Win

Is that a curtain you can walk through or just a set?

I’ve never seen extended comments from Jeremy Ebobisse, so that post-game interview was a personal first. I’m not entirely sure how to describe the moment, but to call that the last honest interview I’ve seen. Still waters and all that.

That’s what felt good on a night that ended with a kind of bitterness that it would take eating, like, ten whole grapefruit rinds to fully experience. Ebobisse scored a beautiful goal, one that came after a couple minutes of pressure from the Portland Timbers had the New England Revolution defense scrambling badly enough to lose him. He later scored what can only be described as a dumb goal, a sort of lunge-sprawl toward an incoming ball that looped in off his extended right foot. For all that I think he followed through consciously, Ebo couldn’t score the same goal again in 200 tries – one’s body simply doesn’t do…that in the normal course of coordination (honestly, if the rest of us so much as attempted it, we’d just collapse to the ground and wet our pants and cry) – but that only made up for the increasingly creative ways he’s found to fail to fire a shot toward (or next to) goal in recent games (the touch he gets in that highlight reminds one of the insane shit he does periodically). Well, Ebobisse found the goal tonight – and twice. And then everything else fell the fuck apart.

The Revs equalized on a late, deserved penalty call when Larrys Mabiala’s shirt-tug invited Wilfried Zahibo to very theatrically fall down. With that – plus an earlier (ominous) goal from Gustavo Bou – those two goals cancelled out Ebo’s brace, and the game ended 2-2. Larrys did, in fact, have plenty of shirt (saw the stretchy that proved it), so the only suspect thing about the call was the timing – i.e., the earliest phases of the 95th minute, after referee Jair Maruffo called for just four minutes of stoppage time. I don’t think there’s an argument to win in there, but feel free to make one. I wouldn’t have blinked about the clock running to 96 minutes, but for the Revs’ goal. If memory serves, New England won a corner right around the 94th, then another immediately after that, so it wasn’t crazy letting it run that high. It just ended with shit hors d’oeuvres for an entire fan-base who’s eaten their fill of them.

OK, that’s the end of jokes involving bodily functions. Last one. Promise.

Portland Timbers 1-0 FC Dallas: The First Thing, You See, Is to Get Your Foot Planted

Like this, but with just one yellow card.

Dear God, if that wasn’t a cage match. Referee Allen Chapman blessed the whole thing with professional indifference but, in the end, no limbs were lost and no real crimes committed. The Portland Timbers came out of the rough and tumble with one goal more than visiting FC Dallas. And that felt fair, at least where I live (Portland, OR, so…), but a 0-0 wouldn’t have exactly insulted justice. Dallas gave as good as they got. That’s as much for me as it is for you, because I don’t know what the hell to make out of that goddamn team…

To dust off some clutter, Portland beat Dallas 1-0 last night at Providence Park and not one damn thing about that came easily. At the same time, I thought I saw the unveiling of the Timbers’ broad attacking approach to the game in the stretch between the 5th and the 10th minute: believe that every pass will connect, so try everything, and ruthlessly hunt down anything that tells you differently like the damned lie it is. At the precise time I sketched that note onto my pad, Portland was merrily marching up the field by flailing the ball from one side of the field to the other. It looked a little desperate and more than a little low-percentage, but it generally came off, while definitely confusing Dallas and throwing them off. The (highly relative) success of the whole “swinging for the fences” strategy didn’t last for long, and Dallas came back into the game and, generally put up a real fight…

…but, in one blessed/curs’d moment, every cog in the Timbers game-plan, and broad theory of roster construction, meshed together to steal a goal out of a game seemingly sworn to give up no goals. And I think that’s the real story of last night’s game.

Both of these teams took similar approaches to the game. When I tried to phrase it last night, I started with “defending aggressively” – by which I meant chasing down the ball and/or passer at some point on the field, as opposed to keeping your shape and making him break you down. Both Portland and Dallas assumed that general position, but they started at different parts of the field. In their better moments, Dallas rasied a bristling line of confrontation at the center stripe – i.e., anything that crossed it got swarmed like piranhas on whatever the hell is dumb enough to walk into the Amazon. During one truly fascinating phase, the kept both of Portland’s centerbacks and Sebastian Blanco trying to force their way inside that line; Blanco, specifically, could drop out of it, but he couldn’t go back in. Given that Blanco is, or has been, a major piece for Portland getting the ball moving forward, maybe Dallas studied some video and adopted that strategy to nip his usefulness in the bud.

Portland Timbers 2-3 Los Angeles FC: Do It for Tiffany

I'll do anything, girl...

What was the most important part of last night’s game: Jeff Attinella’s colossal, opening-10 fuck-up, or the series of aggro-pointless skirmishes that tripped one over the next for the last five minutes of regulation? For me, that depends on one’s willingness to see each of those moments in symbolic terms.

To lean into controversy early, I don’t want Attinella to start until Steve Clark gets injured, Attinella’s nerves calm down, or Clark has a collection of episodes that evidence some equal or greater measure of nerviness than Attinella’s. I think Attinella is a damned good goalkeeper; I also think he’s set up a long-term campsite in his head and, until he packs out of that fucker, I’d rather see Clark start. Mind, this isn’t some kind of “Jeff Out” campaign; I’m just noting it as a big deal for scale.

Attinella owns just one of last night’s goals – and Los Angeles FC scored three of ‘em on the way to the 3-2 win they stole out of an…engorged Providence Park (let me have it; just this once). Other Timbers fathered LAFC’s other two goals: Jorge Moreira for dozing off and letting Diego Rossi slip past him to score their second goal, and (probably) Jorge Villafana for failing to track Latif Blessing’s second run to knock home their third. LAFC put up plenty of shots – like this one, for instance, which should’ve deepened Portland’s hole (because LAFC was on a roll; but it’s not like they’re dipping SKOL/Bandits) – and the fact they didn’t gives LAFC something of their own to think about. As well they should, the bastards…

…look, LAFC is the soccer team equivalent of the rich, new kid who shows up at your high school, and he’s better than you at sports, he just humiliated you in debate club warm-ups, and now you’re worried about a bunch of other stupid extemporaneous shit because of all the insecurity that follows from those realities, but it’s cool. You just need to get your head on, and your shit together, because that kid is soft…somewhere. It’s just…you haven’t figured out where, but you will. Or, rather, you have to, or Tiffany might dump you for him…I mean, she’s always been out of your league…

Columbus Crew SC 1-3 Portland Timbers: A Delightful Response...to Everything

Not the Wes Anderson-inspired image I imagined, but still solid.

For your own benefit, drop the phrase “or so it appeared” at the end of every sentence below, and send a thank you to the profit-grubbing partnership of Major League Soccer and ESPN for instituting a black-out policy that forced me to watch this game with one less eye than usual. (Which says so very much.) That’s your caveat for the post below and, crikey, I’ve never used the phrase “I’ll just fucking walk away” about soccer in my life. Well, except that one time I shut down this site. I really did forget about that…

That’s to say, the only version of the Portland Timbers’ 3-1 (three?) win over Columbus Crew SC was the 20-minute one, e.g., the condensed version available exclusively on the app I was compelled to download (GRUBBING BASTARDS! OK, it’s out of my system, but do insert the magic phrase after every sentence). With that, I’ll start to talk about the game…instead of cable TV’s cadaverous grip on what’s left of their profits…sorry. For real this time.

“Again, I really like the response from Portland.”

- Columbus Broadcast-Booth Guy, I think

I totally agree, Columbus Broadcast-Booth Guy! As much as I can only have a head-full of disconnected thoughts on this game, I was delighted to see every Timbers player flying into every 50/50, and in every frame. They didn’t play hungry, the played starved – as well they should have given the start. Even if this loss dimmed their star – perhaps more than a little – Columbus is a 4-3-1 team, with a 3-1-1 home record (no less significantly, do the math on the number of games the Crew have played at home). Given Portland’s record coming in – and their defensive record as much as anything else – this projected as a win for Columbus, maybe even a chance to knock a couple teeth out of Portland.

It went the other way, obviously. The question is why.

Phoenix Rising 1-0 Portland Timbers: From Paraguay, WIth Some Confusion

Not in Paraguay...

Knowing that was Phoenix Rising’s first team out there tonight was the only thing that kept me from turning off that game at the half and donating my eyes to science ahead of schedule. (Thereby teaching the next generation how astigmatism; I am a hero.) A wiser man would have followed the instinct, but some online trickster, a Windy City Loki, lured me all the way through all 95 execrable minutes of that nightmare. I felt less frustration watching my toddler trying to tie her shoes the first time around.

Now (speaking of!), put yourself in Jorge Moreira’s shoes. Imagine flying in from Argentina (or Paraguay; does it matter in this case) for your first game of the rest of at least 40, and watching those first 45 minutes. Speaking for myself, I would have called my agent immediately and refused to get on that…disgusting field. The first 38 minutes of the Portland Timbers' 0-1 loss to Phoenix Rising (you lost to that awful slogan as well! Shame!) was nothing more or less than a crime against competence and good taste, an assault to eyeballs, spirit and aesthetics.

Fortunately, the result didn’t matter. Moreover, it’s not Moreira lit it up out there. He had a fauxssist (TM….don't touch it, it's mine!!) on what looked like Cristhian Paredes game-opening goal, but it took me less time to figure out Andy Polo was offside than the ref. (Serious question: what’s with the dramatic pauses? Can we get a little more of “get your ass over here and rubber-stamp the fact he was off” and get on with the goddamn game with VAR?) Outside that shining moment and one particularly cool, calm moment when he shepherded a ball out of a tricky situation with two dudes on his shoulder, you would have thought Moreira was a trialist based on tonight, what with all the USL talent (named Junior Flemmings) making him look like something less than a threat to Zarek Valentin’s one and only day job.

I’m not worried about Moreira (yet…nah, just messin’). This was his first game, new league, new country, that’s just a lot to take in. Also, a good USL team is nothing to sniff at. For instance, after watching Solomon Asante play a full 90, and thinking about all those MLS teams in search of a winger…well, it makes you wonder, if nothing else. (Then again, seriously, will a time come when the influx of talent to North America gathers enough steam that a player like Asante will go to USL as a stepping stone to MLS?)

Given that this game meant less than nothing (aka, Saturday, against the New York Red Bulls 1.5), I don’t want to spend too much time on it. I’ll start with some general thoughts about each of the “Three Units” (e.g., 0-38, 38-79, 79-90), then go through what I’ve seen from the more marginal/contingent crowd on the Timbers line-up. In other words, my comments on Jeff Attinella, Diego Valeri, Diego Chara, Sebastian Blanco, Larrys Mabiala, Jorge Villafana, and even Zarek Valentin, Dairon Asprilla, and Andres Flores start and end with “stay healthy, fellas!” Yes, even if they're not all starters. Just to note it, did Flores pull the “single white female” thing on Lawrence Olum (e.g., unlikely replacement on at least one level that everyone seems to buy)? I’ll get to (marginal) personnel later; let’s talk about each of tonight’s shift.