Colorado Rapids 2-1 Portland Timbers: You Can't Always Get What You Want

Wants and expectations do a weird little dance toward the end of every American spectator sports season – and, let’s face it, the fact they unfailingly end in playoffs lumps them all into the same species. On the one hand, you know that your local team could really use the unlikely win…but doesn’t that adjective, “unlikely,” speak to the reality of the situation?

After a season of reducing the Colorado Rapids to a wholly-owned subsidiary of their very own, the Portland Timbers finally lost a game to the Rapids when it mattered most. The 2-1 final score hints at the respectably tight final outcome, but I doubt even one Timbers fan cares, what with Portland at the bottom of a deeper hole, seven teams above them, Minnesota United FC breathing down their necks and the already playoff-bound Los Angeles Galaxy coming to call on Wednesday…

…run-on sentences suggest urgency.

The Basics
What could have been, you know? Had Jonathan Rodriguez buried that first-minute breakaway, had the offside flag not gone up, if pigs could fly and sing “Hurdy Gurdy Man” as they whisked around the sky, maybe Portland gets that early goal and tees up an early Timbers lead. That’s how every meeting between these two teams have played out in their two games in 2024 and, oh, how that has fucked over Colorado at a 4:1 ratio. The early goal fell on the Rapids’ side of the ledger instead – more on that goal later - which left Portland chasing them for a change. It took just 10 minutes for the Timbers to catch them, and on a far better goal, and the game settled into a back-and-forth duel with decent chances falling on both sides.

Portland's best chances fell to Antony, Colorado's to Rafael Navarro: anyone familiar with either team can tell you how that panned out…I kid, I kid. Frustrated as he made anyone with green and gold in their veins, I won’t shit on Antony too hard – more on that later, too. When the goal came, it turned less on something special from Navarro than on Portland’s and/or Juan David Mosquera’s catastrophic failure to mark a player of his (demonstrated) quality on a set-piece.

Portland Timbers 2-2 Colorado Rapids: Hideous Bookends

I don't want the season to end like this.

I made my first visit to an embiggened Providence Park last night, returning to the same seats where I bought season tickets all those years ago (wistful for 2011, on so many levels). 210 was a standing section that season, and has been for every game I’ve been to since. People stood through the first half and took a seat at the half, per the custom, but, for whatever reason, everyone remained seated when the second half started. I attempted to reassume the (standing) position when the whistle blew to start the second half, as did (literally) two or three others, but the social pressure caught up with us, one by one. The guy who sat down the last man standing with a sweep of his hand to the rest of the fully-seated section…what can I say? He wasn’t wrong.

What caused the bad kind of funk – i.e., the old-school, deflating kind of funk, as opposed to the good funk with the dope beats and bulging bass that makes you want to shake your money-maker till you break it? Was it the deflation of the Colorado Rapids scoring its second goal of the game/the first one in its favor less than a minute after Tommy “OG” Smith put the Timbers in the lead (that was one of the finest own-goals I’ve ever seen; such power)? Surely it wasn’t Colorado’s late rally at the close in the second half, because didn’t Portland ‘keeper Steve Clark give these fans more than everything they could ask of him (certainly more than their sitting asses deserved)? I couldn’t poll them, as I’m accustomed to polling people in twitter (technology fails me, once again), so that will remain a mystery.

In the end, it took anger to make people stand. Seconds after Sebastian Blanco got chopped down while winding up for a shot (and Lalas Abubakar rather ungraciously barked at him where he laid, broken), Julio Cascante got sent off for a scissored lunge at Kei Kamara from behind and, with that, more formerly sedate section rose to its feet, raged foully, and remained standing for the rest of the game. Everyone around me spat words not safe for motherfucking print at that stupid son-of-a-bitch of a referee (Kevin Stott) for nearly as long as it took for Diego Valeri to score the penalty kick that followed from Abubakar’s hand-ball in Colorado’s area. And that started another avalanche of profanity and a full, ripened wheat field’s worth of middle fingers in Stott’s general (stupid, useless) direction.

All the above was a nice reminder of what makes live games worth going to. Oh, and the game ended 2-2 after Sam Nicholson beat (first) Renzo Zambrano, then Clark to equalize for the Rapids. It was a good goal, honestly, not much worse than the one Jonathan Lewis curled past Cascante to equalize for Colorado the first time. Truth is, Colorado played a solid game, certainly a better one than I expected, and I’ll absorb the totality of it all with due humility.

Portland Timbers 3-2 Columbus Crew SC: SUB VALERI (goddammit)

It's just right.

I want to start these notes on a, frankly, relieving win with an apology. Knowing full well that I had at least two full rows of Columbus Crew SC fans in front me, I yelled something very close to this somewhere around Columbus’ second (or third) shot on goal:

“Fuck it. Move ‘em to Austin.”

I don’t think it was just fans either. I think it was spouses and families. And they heard it. I saw the heads turn for the game of "Spot the Asshole." And...to anyone who heard that, I want Columbus to keep the Crew and get a spruced up stadium to boot...and I hope those aren't mutually exclusive. Just jokes…

A friend was kind enough to extend an invite, I got to watch this one live tonight and, honestly, the experience only continued my love/hate relationship with watching soccer live. The angle is never as good as you get on TV - especially buried deep in the southwest corner of the stadium - but, 1) I caught up with an old friend (invaluable past the age of 35); and 2) I had the best possible view of Andy Polo’s debut goal in a Portland Timbers uniform. It was by no means graceful and maybe a quarter planned, at most, but it was also welcome as Christmas morning, and, if I’m not misinterpreting Polo’s celebration, he had ample reason to thank his Lord and Savior for that one.

It was a night of firsts in some ways. David Guzman scored his first goal of his leggy 2018 season [Ed. - Correction: The author fucked up; that was, in fact, Guzman's third goal of 2018 and, as further penance, here is his first goal of 2018 (nice shot, too), and here's his second goal, Hail, Mary, full of grace, etc.], and Steve Clark played his first all-round sound game in a Timbers uniform…just fuckin’ with you, Steve. In all seriousness, hats off, Steve, not just for every free-kick you covered tonight, or every tough save you made, but for all the times you looked more upset than anyone else at every defensive failing. Respect.

Portland wound up winning this entirely vital game 3-2 - Niko Hansen scored his second of two goals (here’s #1) for Columbus, while Samuel Armenteros owes Lalas Abubakar a…let’s go with a Long Island Ice Tea for knocking his tight-angled effort past Crew SC ‘keeper Zak Steffen. In spite of a positively groggy start by Portland (Columbus families: This was my trigger! I’m usually very, very nice (I think)), the 3-1 that held for damn near 60 minutes of this game gives a more accurate read on its lived experience. As tricky as my view made it to read the game, I still believe I saw the Timbers defense round into shape between 25-30 minutes in (had a decent angle for that) and, once the Timbers switched from chasing Crew SC's attack to managing, I told my friend, maybe even before Polo scored, “I think Portland chokes this out.”

To anyone who doubts the MMA has had an impact on our culture…well, that one’s pretty benign, as it goes.