Timbers Win! Timbers Win! (Just Take It)

Marv Gomez, actually gets us.

While I didn’t intend to post anything about tonight’s game, I did manage to see all the goals, failures and indelible mysteries that made the Portland Timbers 4-2 win over the San Jose Earthquakes end the way it did.

I had a handful of talking points, but they don’t matter. Some pointed to persistent issues, some flagged some new ones, but I doubt many of them will translate to the next opponent never mind the three, four after them. I won’t question anything (though I have some), discuss where luck met competence or when, or do the usual digging and nitpicking I usually do after a game..

In the here and now, the only thing that matters is that the Timbers won a must-win game. They had to win this one because, for all their strengths (and they have a few), San Jose is a shit road team with the worst defensive record in Major League Soccer. Portland did the job and as my personal savior, Marv Gomez, the Leatherman, once said: dancing, everything else is bullshit.

When things bounce your way, the smart thing to do is catch the ball and run with it.

That said, the one and only thing I want to point out is Portland’s second goal and, per a talking point posted in last week’s Portland Timbers Snapshot (branding!), note Jonathan Rodriguez’s role in it. To be clear, it wasn’t just him; all the things that led up to that goal - Kamal Miller playing a line-breaker, Evander making a run from the depths, etc. - are the sum of what the Timbers fail to do in the many times when they under-perform. As they have for most of 2024. Still, Rodriguez feels key to the equation because he's the guy who ultimately solves it.

Why this team needs halftime adjustments like visits to the chiropractor, I'll never know. Also, God bless the man and I love him, but never let Larrys Mabiala on the field again.

Till…I’m guessing some time in the middle of next week.

Portland Timbers 2-2 Austin FC: A Test of Character (& Budgeting)

The Portland Timbers’ 2-2 home draw versus Austin FC gored at least one theory, but otherwise felt like weights falling on both sides of the scale. To be clear, I hated seeing the damn thing balance as much as any Timbers fan...like I said at the top of last night’s game thread, this was an occasion where the Timbers didn’t want to do anything they wouldn’t later regret. And then they went ahead and started Larrys Mabiala....I kid, I kid.

I’ll get to something like a match report in the next – sorry, no, one two three paragraphs after - paragraph, but I want to linger on Larrys for a bit (note: that’s a good adult film title, right?). For all their faults – and this is literally one of them – the Portland Timbers have brought me to an understanding of the true nature of defending. Those “[___] Days Since our Last Accident/Accidental Decapitation” signs at your local light-industry warehouse offers the perfect metaphor: the whole thing is about avoiding the next mistake for as long as possible, only all while knowing the mistake will come. Typing as someone who got dumped into the defense far more often than made sense (I sucked at defending), I wholly, fully and unashamedly embrace the argument that defenses get faulted for their failure to never fail in a way that the attacking side of any team rarely does...good Lord, these things are getting confessional.

Anyhoo, and to finally get back to Larrys, his game last night had a familiar pattern: he was fine for large stretches of the game – he even cleaned up a mess than Juan David Mosquera handed to him on a steaming, stinking platter – and then, nothing like out of the blue, Austin’s Owen “Coach’s Son” Wolff finds a bunch of space on Portland’s left late in the game (but not for the first time) and curls a cross into the heart of the defense. Now, I want to ask everyone reading this post to stop here and look at the Austin equalizer that yanked two points from the Timbers’ grasping hands. The video geeks did well with it, for what it’s worth, giving you plenty of time to see that Mabiala kept pretty fair track of Austin’s Will Bruin, he knew where he was and all that, only to somehow get separated in the decisive moment. Bruin almost certainly bumped him, but Larrys just played that whole thing wrong – if in a way I visible in 20/20 hindsight. Still, one lapse equals one goal allowed too often to count and the Timbers still lost two points on one brain fart...or two, if you want to count the fact that either Wolff and Ethan Finlay had time to whip in that cross.

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Portland Timbers: That Hurt, but It's Over, Bring It In, Guys

Bad man, tenuous metaphor.

If you haven’t watched Peacemaker (which I'd call both specific and 2/3 recommended), and want to duck any spoilers, now is a great time to skip to the third (sorry!) fourth paragraph.

For those who have, you’ll recall that Peacemaker has this horrible, actual-Klan bigot of a father who raises his two sons on violence. They get along great, no clear sibling rivalry, etc. (stick with me through this stretch), but he still has them fight to, in the white supremacist tradition, “toughen them up” in service of the terrible idea that motivates such assholes. At any rate, one time he sends them into a pit he dug in his front yard (again, these are not deep thinkers) for another fight and he’s nakedly pulling for one brother over the other and, wouldn’t you know it, his favored child catches a punch wrong and dies...

...that’s less a perfect analogy than the latest pop culture reference I’ve read about obviously favoring one child over another and things going sideways.

First and foremost (and unlike the fight in Peacemaker), FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers put on a better-than-expected show tonight. They traded somewhere around the same number of blows, fought roughly as hard - though, to my surprise, Cincy out-muscled the Timbers – and deviate too wildly on the numbers. While the Timbers had their share, Cincinnati ultimately found the wider openings, held off something of a grabasstic (two “s’s” in that or...?) rally, and ultimately held on for what I’d call a by and large deserved 2-1 win. And, unlike that horrible bigot of a father, I still love and support both of my sons.

I went into the game more worried about the Timbers, naturally, but I’d argue tonight showed them still progressing. They managed to pace more than one portion of the game – the start of both halves, mainly, and then the end after Cincinnati fully committed to the counter to close out the game. Cincy, meanwhile, took over longer stretches – particularly the 20-minute spell of the first half, when they clawed control of the game back from Portland and pressed and pressed until they broke through (hold that thought), and again after stifling the Timbers’ attempted rally at the start of the second – and all that feels like a good shorthand for the state of both teams. Portland’s improving, but Cincinnati has a capacity to stomp its foot on the game in a way the Timbers do not...

...have a mentioned how hard it is to focus on both sides of the ball yet? Which, as implied, goes against the concept of focusing? So, doing my best on the rest, with an assist from the highlights.

Sporting Kansas City 4-1 Portland Timbers: Are My Psychological Preparations Paying Off

Denmark smells like something crawled up its ass and died and brought a yeast infection along for laughs. Things smelled rotten three, four games ago.

Proof!

Here I was all primed to throw out a “I’ve written them off before” lifeline, one that included water‑wings that read, “if they put together a run, not only would that get them into the playoffs, it’d get ‘em there running” (they’re big water‑wings), and then I remembered that, in this season of fetid evil (aka, World Cup year, Qatar edition), the Portland Timbers have only seven games left to go. Between tonight’s result and the most basic math, a “run” would amount to them winning, say, five games of seven down the stretch. By any count, that means starting with a W next week...I mean, with the way the Sounders are playing...

About that result, the Timbers 0-3 road loss at the quite lowly Sporting Kansas City. Yeah, yeah, 1-4 road loss, but when the official webpage can’t get it right (see right/caught you, MFs!!), I feel all right calling the second half a 1-1 draw. Sebastian Blanco’s late consolation came four score minutes and four goals too late, sure, but had Portland played the first half like they played the second, well...we’d have something better to talk about, now wouldn’t we? The stats page backs me up on that too, especially the progress of the xG. Meanwhile, back in reality...

Because I was finishing off a really killer pork chile verde (nailed it), I couldn’t really drink in the details of each of the goals Portland’s allowed. Having just put my eyes and heart through them all again, I’d rank them as follows, the most egregious to the most forgivable: 3rd (all that standing?!), 1st (at least everyone pitched in on the fail!), 2nd (SKC got a bit lucky, but I’m giving an assist to the positively drugged defensive reaction), and 4th (shit happens when your pants go down). The simple story of this game goes something like this: after doing very little for 30 minutes, the Timbers fell apart for fifteen minutes. If I were the coach, I’d make the defense sit through the first and third goals 20 times between now and Friday night. I started the review tonight and I’d add on five more viewings any time the team complained.

Would to gods I had more than a couple positive things to say about Portland’s offense. To their very real credit, it took only a minute or two after the halftime whistle for the Timbers to create good chances; to his very real credit, SKC’s ‘keeper, John Pulskamp, stopped all the good ones. Portland added two more quality shots before the clock ran out – Dairon Asprilla got one, Blanco (who had a decent night after mo’ better support came on) got one more – but that still adds up to one slim shot more than SKC had goals.

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Portland Timbers: So...What's to Be Done with the Wretch?

A wretch, in one extended universe.

In any other context, you’d pocket the Portland Timbers' 1-1 road draw at the Los Angeles Galaxy with a smile. In the context of a 2022 regular season in desperate need of a great, big goose on the bum, a little...more would have been nice.

I sat through the MLS in 15 to refresh my memory (and because I could; go on, girl, relive 1/6 of the pleasure & pain) and, apart from starting after two of the Galaxy’s early chances (22:41), they confirmed my overall impression of the game: about 90% of it happened between the defenses, a paucity of break-through moments, an afternoon of 20 gentlemen running aimlessly around a big field of green with two more standing in front of their goals, largely biding their time.

Still, Portland had their positives. Yimmi Chara made a cameo as the fastest man on the pitch with his blind-side run straight past LA’s Rayan Raveloson (who very visibly said, “fuck it,” after Yimmi bolted past), which gave Sebastian Blanco an easy diagonal for the assist. A bad touch from Yimmi could have pissed it all away, but he took an atypically soft and smart touch away from Derrick Williams (best player on field, fwiw) and slotted home near-post past Jonathan Bond. That one bright shining moment carried the Timbers to within two minutes (plus stoppage time) of bringing all three points back to Portland, and I’ll get to that, but let’s wrap up the positives.

Both Claudio Bravo and, especially, Josecarlos Van Rankin had solid games, and neither got sent off, so that’s a win. Timbers’ ‘keeper Aljaz Ivacic made a mix of good and lucky saves and generally looked comfortable back there (credit where it’s due, but I’d really like to see him yell more; I expect yelling from my ‘keepers)...and, yep, I just wrapped up the positives.

The Galaxy equalized, cruelly, almost immediately after the you-didn’t-know-you’d-miss-him-till-he’s-gone Felipe Mora made his 2022 season debut. When Dejan Joveljic gained a couple yards inside on Larrys Mabiala and finally placed a ball where Ivacic couldn’t reach and/or sit on it, LA clawed back two points they barely deserved, but anyone with eyes to see it and the stomach to stare disappointment in the face could see the Galaxy piling on those kinds of half-chance passes; neither team impressed with their xG numbers, but the little xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page matches what I remember. All it took was one Timbers defender switching off – i.e., Larrys didn’t seen Joveljic’s run till he was two yards past him – a tale as old as time. Especially for Portland.

Red Bull New York 1-1 Portland Timbers: Through Wind, Through Rain, Through Bull, etc.

It is called showing up to work. Dammit.

To offer a metaphor, the Portland Timbers road game at Harrison, New Jersey, compared to the experience of walking to the mailbox in a windstorm. It feels impossible when you first step into it, but, foot by foot, you figure out how to stand up, then you figure out how to walk, and, finally, you get the mail. Mission accomplished.

Sure, the wind still knocked you into a face-plant on the way back, but also, you got mail!

To set aside the metaphor, the Timbers poached a point from Red Bull New York, and stole two of theirs in the deal. No one wanted the 1-1 draw it ended on, but, returning to the metaphor, Portland found their feet tonight, and it was good. With few exceptions, either for players or in moments, they looked neither flustered nor too casual, and nearly every player in green grew into the game. Even if the result itself wasn’t good, it was good for morale. Die with yer boots on, if you’re gonna go down, take a good swing before the stars come out, etc.

To expand the commentary(/switch metaphors), playing Red Bull amounts to an effort in treading water - i.e., keeping your head up long enough find a safe harbor where you can get it together and get out of the situation. And, after a shaky start - and Pablo Bonilla and Marvin Loria stood out in that regard - the Timbers did that. In a nice bit of chemistry meeting in the middle, they collectively picked up the pace on the passes and provided options to make them happen. The way Red Bull plays makes it hard to get far out ahead - and, if you love the Timbers don’t look at the xG (because it wasn’t far wrong) - but Portland chose a moment to try to get something out of the game and pulled it off. I’ll have more on that later - due to some specifics I want to pull out - but, after three games after fairly uncompetitive soccer, just the idea of rising to an opponent plays like a choir of angels.

The Red Bulls got back into the game, of course. It took them about five minutes after the Timbers’ go-ahead goal (wait for it) for them to scratch back into the game, and only 10 minutes (or so) after that for Aaron Long to put back a second ball off a corner kick, but, a (heavy) flurry on the fringes of Portland’s back-line aside, the home team didn’t create a lot of opportunities. Moreover, when a great opening bounced their way, one that saw Omar Fernandez wide open and way up the field on Justin Rasmussen’s side and with young Justin on walkabout, the further he pushed up-field, the lonelier he got. That happened around the 82nd minute; the legs just weren’t there, something that has long struck me as the risk side of RBNY risk/reward system. I wouldn’t say they had an actual bad night; it’s more that when you shoot a little wild, as they do, you don’t hit a lot.

MLS Cup 2021. Dammit.

Always rooted for him too.

You go through a soccer season, sorting out the players you can trust, developing a sense and/or set of beliefs about how far the local team can go, calibrating it from one week to the next by a combination of on-the-ground realities, personal biases, and outright daydreams. You get moments of clarity here and there, times when all those things come together and add up well enough…

…and then your local team has a night like tonight, a night that makes you feel either stupid or hubris-drunk depending how you read 120 minutes’ worth of tea leaves and a debacle of a penalty kick shootout. To finally pitch the headline, the Portland Timbers lost to New York City FC tonight, in Portland, and with the penalty kicks ending quickly enough to confirm an uneven night for the home side. You can play every game you get invited to, but you can’t win ‘em all…

How to describe that? Climbing a mountain, reaching the peak, then falling off the other side? Finally getting multi-ball, only to let all three-to-five balls slip away down both alleys and up the gut before you hit any of the jackpots? Having a tire go flat, discovering you have a spare and putting it on, only to realize you put the patches on wrong? Like playing euchre and having a solid hand when the bid ends in screw-the-dealer, only to get euchred by bad distribution? I’ll add other metaphors as they come to me, but it’s possible that’ll be the only one. two. three. four.

MLS Cup 2021 didn’t serve up a big corpse to dissect. There’s definitely a body on the slab - the Portland Timbers’ - but the time and cause of death seem straightforward enough. By my math, New York City FC looked the better, more (ruthlessly) organized team for…more or less, the first 80 minutes, then the Portland Timbers came too life with…yes, exactly enough time to spare, damn near down to the second, and they carried that momentum through the first half of extra-time. NYCFC got past the shock, regrouped over the second half of extra-time, and rallied to win their first major trophy on penalty kicks. And with breathing room. Hence the thing about falling off the other side of the mountain.

Sure, the Timbers got a couple bubbles under their butts from about the 25th minute only to have Valentin “Taty” Castellanos pop them when he broke wildly free at the back-post (didn’t I mention the back post?), to both nod home the opening goal and unsettle whatever game-plan the Timbers had run to that point…and that’s where I have questions.

Portland Timbers 3-1 Minnesota United FC: Weird, Good and Glorious

My people call it Sebastian Blanco.

Does anyone else think that Portland Timbers fans just witnessed something parts weird, good and glorious? To take the adjectives in turn:

Weird: Did anyone else see as much walking as I did, and from both teams? That note speaks to the second half - specifically, after Sebastian Blanco slipped in his first, deciding dagger - and also covers the time when I thought Minnesota United FC would push the game, if for no better reason than they had to. Related thereto, how many Timbers counters, 1) started about 20 yards from their own goal, and 2) started with Dairon Asprilla either winning the ball or getting it at that place, looking at a wide-open field ahead of him and starting up with a look that said, “this shit again?”

Good: Because, before Blanco scored the dagger described above and the, no, please, after you, insurance goal that Minnesota gifted him, the possibility that he wouldn’t continue, never mind finish the game, looked like a real possibility. I mean, how many of you fretted to sweating about the Timbers’ post-season chances in any shape when you saw Blanco on the ground rubbing his back/ass?

Glorious: Because the Timbers overcame an early deficit against a team who has always given them trouble, pushed through a heavy dose of chippy shit (that was six cards by Minnesota, and one of them should have been red and had damn well better earn a date at Studio 54 (aka, DisCo should review that and fine or otherwise punish Franco Fragapane for that straight-up shitty lunge at Diego Chara)), and had the comfort of seeing Steve Clark cover every piece of, admittedly, weak shit that Minnesota managed to fire on goal.

I won’t lie: I had ample and frequent questions about the choices and posture of the Timbers, and on both sides of the ball, but they still ended the night 3-1 winners over perhaps their fiercest bad match-up in MLS, and looked oddly comfortable once they got back in it. Up next, the Colorado Rapids and 4,000+ more feet in elevation. First, however, let’s drink it in, shall we?

First question, how the hell did this happen?

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: Free Points!

So filthy.

I’ll start with a note to anyone who runs the game, whether in the front office or from the coach’s bench: soccer is one hell of a lot more fun between two teams who want to win; the visuals fall apart when you throw in one team that doesn’t want to lose. The Portland Timbers and the Houston Dynamo FC played it right tonight, so credit to both teams. That was fun!

Moving on, how do you spell G-R-A-V-Y? Three points at home while resting your starters. Just in fewer letters.

Gods in heavens, where do I begin?

Due to general enthusiasm, my notes on the Timbers 2-1 home/understudy win over Houston read (in general terms) as, “oooh, did you see that?!” As such, I’m going to do two things in this post:

1) Address the game in general terms; and
2) pass out player grades (or comments) for every Timber who played tonight.

So, I’ve never done player grades (at least that I can recall…hiccup!), but, given that Portland decided to lead with its depth (classic weak-hand trump game strategy, btw), going that route feels appropriate for this one. As we all know, there’s a long season ahead and that points to the wisdom of Portland priming its cover in every position possible - and, based on tonight’s result, progress looks good. I’ll get to that before digging into the player ratings, but first, let’s talk general terms.

The Game
There was no question as to who came out to win and who came out to contain early - that was Portland and Houston, respectively, and almost to a puzzling extent given everything that followed. The Timbers scored very early, and through what I thought (or what I sold to myself as) a Yimmi Chara dummy off a, frankly, brilliant move by Pablo Bonilla move/cross from the flank, only it wasn’t a dummy. Yimmi missed it, but Dairon Asprilla smartly played the odds and followed the play to slice home a pedestrian goal (by his standards). The Portland Timbers irregulars moved the ball smartly all over the field and all was right with the world….until it wasn’t.

Portland Timbers 2020 Retrospective: The Season I Let Jesus Take the Wheel...and How the Car Wound Up in the Ditch

I still feel good overall. (Nailed it!)

Fucked up year, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just thinking that reminds me of the ads at the beginning of the lockdowns when all the commercials included some perfunctory spin on the phrase, “as we go together through these [random adjective generator for new/difficult] times.”

It’s fitting there, though, because for the first time I can remember, I more or less shut down the critical capacities in my brain fairly early into the 2020 season and just decided to believe everything would work out just fine. Maybe that goes back to some lizard-brain coping mechanism of basically going limp in the face of danger (e.g., the way I quietly muttered, “oh well,” as my car slid into a ditch just before last Christmas), but I think something simpler suggested the choice.

I’ve insisted that either or both Diego Chara’s or Diego Valeri’s legs would give out “this year” for longer than I should have - and it’s always been Valeri’s that set off the most agist-predictive concern. I didn’t recall what numbers Valeri posted in 2020 till I checked (8 goals, 7 assists) and, sure, they had to manage his minutes, but the former came in higher and the latter didn’t stop him from continuing to serve as both key cog and inspiration for the Timbers - and his set-pieces (corners, in particular) have never looked better. Chara, meanwhile…maybe he can keep retirement eternally at bay by tackling that shit before it sees him coming.

It absolutely didn’t hurt that every player Portland signed ahead of 2020 worked out well or better. Felipe Mora never looked like much, but maybe that’s the same voodoo he uses to lull defenses asleep (and does he double in size when shielding the ball? And do defenders’ eyes somehow see the same thing?) I remember Jaroslaw Niezgoda looking on the verge of passing out after scoring his first goal for the Timbers (what? he came in with a heart issue), but, until his knee blew up toward the end of the season, he showed he could score all kinds of ways and his combination-play added still more fluidity to a much smarter and trickier Timbers attack. Yimmi Chara looked like a miss at the start of the season, but found both feet in time to hold Portland’s attack together as a succession of injuries took one player after another out of the team. On the other end of the field, and no disrespect to Bill Tuiloma, Dario Zuparic gave Larrys Mabiala his missing partner in central defense…also, hold that thought…

Los Angeles Galaxy 3-6 Portland Timbers: A Dream-Logic Romp

Ooh, better than my metaphor...

That was weird, right? Fun, for sure…but weird.

No question surrounds the game’s decisive factor: the Los Angeles Galaxy’s defense, which fucking s-s-s-s-s-sucked tonight. I’m going to check something, but I swear I’m not peaking. How many shots on goal did the Portland Timbers post tonight?

Ah, off by one. I was almost certain the Timbers had as many shots on goal and they had goals tonight, but that still makes the same point: Portland put just 10 shots on LA’s goal tonight, and that’s a rarefied strike-rate, six to ten. Or the indication of a defense - and a back-line, in particular - at odds with itself. When Portland broke down the Galaxy’s defense tonight, I damn near shattered - see here and definitely here. How many things had to go wrong, all the way down to LA’s defense almost miraculously keeping Jorge Villafana onside for the knock-back to Eryk Williamson (right?) - and, like most miracles, you don’t want to look too closely (fuck off, VAR!) - for that goal to come together? And yet, the Galaxy still had a couple more fuck-ups in ‘em, and on that one play, God bless ‘em.

That takes nothing away from Jeremy Ebobisse’s hammer of a short-range free-kick (and I’m always shocked when they go in clean from that close), or Diego Valeri’s cross-body, seeing-eye lob over LA ‘keeper, David Bingham, who probably didn’t even know he was exposed until he watched the ball sail over his head. In true Timbers fashion, they gave fans reason to doubt they’d hold a succession of leads, but they held on for what, when you add it all up, was a solid 6-3 win. And, for those not keeping track, Portland has built an impressive road record since coming back from Orlando. That kind of resilience serves a team well in playoff systems.

LA fought sporadically but fought hard when they did. For stretches of the game, they pushed the ball back into Portland’s half as if sending wave after wave of fresh players at them (it’s good; it was just the same eleven dudes). And congrats to Julian Araujo on his first MLS goal, because breaking your duck that hard sticks nicely in the memory, but it captured the essence of LA’s attack tonight: if you take away Christian Pavon’s final attempt to throw his team a life-line, something about the Galaxy attack felt over-improvised. I held out Pavon’s goal because, going from memory and broadcast-booth chatter, he tries that same move all the time. At times, LA took a basketball-style approach to Pavon - e.g., give him the rock and let him loose.

Vancouver Whitecaps 0-1 Portland Timbers: Road Games & Resources

The perverse reality of the road at home.

You shouldn’t look like the road team at home, not even during a pandemic, but the Portland Timbers did that through the long…interminable, really, middle passage of their…let’s call it loosely-justified 1-0 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps, at home, in Portland, Oregon tonight. Holy shit, that’s a lotta commas. Now, more ellipses…

First, externalities are key to understanding this game. The Timbers just played five games in 14 days, and with the first three of those games on the road. That, obviously, points to the second externality - e.g., the fact that Portland had no choice but to rotate a lot of the squad tonight. It wasn’t second-team top-to-bottom, of course, by which I mean you can make arguments about who would start at fullback for your best possible Starting XI for the Portland Timbers in 2020 (fwiw, tonight was 50/50 for me), but Steve Clark in goal, with Dario Zuparic and Larrys Mabiala in front of him, and Diego Chara in front of them is Portland’s starting set, if only until Chara’s scarcely comprehensible retirement. In a key sense, then - in the key sense, for my money - the Timbers made the correct gamble tonight.

While that opinion wasn’t quite “proved” by the final 15 minutes of the game - i.e., when Jeremy Ebobisse and Jaroslaw Niezgoda came in for Christian Paredes and Felipe Mora, respectively - it posited a powerful argument against the team that started for the Timbers tonight. Explaining why that is requires going back to the beginning.

Felipe Mora nodded home the game’s one and only goal not just early in the game, but during the first stage of Portland’s early period of dominance. The Timbers had the Whitecaps over a barrel for the first…I’d say 25 minutes of the game. That period culminated in Eryk Williamson hitting a Mora chest-bump-pass first-time toward…what’s his name’s goal (fine; Bryan Meredith), but that was a solid stretch for Portland. They looked comfortable, confident, not just in defending, but in moving the ball forward.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Orlando City SC: Your Asterisks Can Fuck Off

A holy grail.

First, how was that so satisfying? In form, the Magical World of Major League Soccer, aka, #MWoMLS, aka, #MLSIsBack, felt closest to the distilled version of the U.S. Open Cup that I’ve been psychically willing into existence since 2010 (if only low-key). On the other hand, like any playoff arrangement that (so long as you make it) washes away the sins of what came before (if only to an extent), this tournament felt like any other set of playoffs, only with a three-game “regular season” before it, which left precious little time for the finding of feet and the sorting out of issues for most teams involved.

Put in that last, specific contest, it’s less of a surprise that an experienced - or, in a more clarifying phrasing, a grounded - Portland Timbers team kept their collective heads in a refreshingly back-and-forth final 2-1 over a highly-deserving Orlando City SC that I expect we’ll all hear from in the near-future…long-term looks trickier, but their path looks surer than it did before this tournament.

There’s no question in my mind that having the more familiar set of assumptions won the game for Portland. And that’s where the urge to credit Orlando really kicks in: Diego Chara and Eryk Williamson never dominated the midfield like they had over some past games in this tournament. Both the Timbers’ game-plan and the way Orlando plays made putting pressure on the ball a game of laying traps, especially where the space gets tighter, and exploiting them. Some teams - LAFC springs to mind here - seek to overwhelm the opposition by throwing more players and passes at them than they can manage. Orlando, meanwhile, ran in a couple gears tonight: it was mostly methodical prying for openings - see the fucking crazy disparity in passes/possession - but they showed a pretty decent capacity to bull-rush players into Portland’s penalty area down the stretch (e.g., the only example from the highlights, but there were more); the general level of control was impressive, basically, and Orlando looked as likely as Philadelphia did to tie the game late. The way I see it, Portland fans have seen their team cough up enough leads to truly appreciate the occasions when they don’t do it. That detail alone made the Magical World of Major League Soccer a little more magical for Timbers fans than for anyone else in MLS…and people are already slagging this trophy, aren’t they? Yes…I can feel the energy seeping into my consciousness as I type. Bastards…

I have a couple more notes on Orlando before moving on. First, if you’ve looked into their history at all, you’ll know that defense has killed them for as long as they’ve been a(n MLS) franchise. As such, seeing them look as solid as they do during the run of play - not just tonight, but throughout the tournament (insofar as I watched them) - could be the brightest sign for their future. They look like they have something in Robin Jansson and Antonio Carlos, and credit to them for that…but, as a midfield obsessive, between received reputation and having seen Mauricio Pereyra over a full 90, I think Orlando has landed one hell of a player. He looks to have Diego Chara’s stamina and ball-hunting instincts, plus what looks like a slightly-elevated attacking skill-set. The headlines might go to Nani - and deservedly based on what he’s done in this tournament - but Pereyra feels more like the franchise player, especially given that he’s only 30.

New York City FC 1-3 Portland Timbers: Good as Advertized

C'mon on in to The Church of Happy, MFs!

Turns out it takes just one goal to improve one’s opinion on a team’s chances.

I expected a close game tonight. I even expected one team or the other to go up a goal during regulation. To clarify the thought, given the quality in both teams’ attacking personnel and/or general capabilities, no universe exists in which either the Portland Timbers or New York City FC does not score during regulation. Tonight, it was NYCFC, and through a penalty kick they earned more in spirit than the moment - i.e., New York was applying most the pressure, but most refs wouldn’t call what Larrys Mabiala did to Jesus Medina (right?) a foul in the middle of the field, never mind the area. Doesn’t matter, Medina buries the penalty kick and NYCFC goes up 1-0 at the 27th minute. So that’s that, they scored the inevitable, in-regulation goal…the real question was how the team that gave up that first goal would respond.

The Timbers answered inside the first half, building a goal from the back and out of trouble, more or less totally in control from their defensive third into NYCFC’s. The one time they lost control saw Jorge Villafana’s cross ping off some body part or another from a New York defender and into the path of Sebastian Blanco, who only had to feint and fire just so to put the Timbers back on level terms; the move as a whole, however, put NYC on notice. Full credit to New York, because they had Portland chasing from…something like the 10th minute to something like the 30th. Still, the Timbers showed they could break NYCFC’s lines nearly every time they could get their heads up; New York just made that hard for a while. This was a fun game to watch, full stop, a chess-match built of positives, where both teams left space for the game to move in either direction. There are few pleasures greater in soccer, perhaps even in sports generally, than watching two teams that believe they’re the better one. Both teams underlined that claim with scattered incidents of minor violence. No soccer players were injured in the filming of this documentary, etc.

I expected something from NYCFC tonight, something I’d expected from earlier games in the MLS Is Back tournament, but, point of interest, did not see: they tend to out-pass teams, pace the game, and generally manage possession. Here’s the thing: after failing to do that against Orlando City SC and Inter Miami CF (wait a tic…both Florida teams), NYC reverted to their familiar “high-usage” formula, where they boot around the ball probing for openings…at least that’s what 200 more passes and lots of aimless television told me. All that time got wasted because the Timbers also reverted to type: give them the ball and space to play in, they will string you like a dazed fish. And that brings us to Portland’s second goal…

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: Good and Good Enough

You taste it after. Trust me.

My man of the match for the Portland Timbers 2-1, get-on-to-the-next-round win over the Houston Dynamo was Larrys Mabiala. The reason: as born out by the box score, Houston set up the penultimate ball over and over again - and they posted 24 shots (over Portland’s 13), and crossed into the area 22 times (to Portland’s eight, a refreshing detail) - but one Timber or another got in the way of damn near everyone of those shots and crosses. The Dynamo’s four shots on target attest to that. Mabiala didn’t cut out everything that flew into the area, but he cleared more than his share, and I think Portland owes the win to its defensive core.

Before going on, I simply have to share my delight at hearing ESPN’s Alejandro Moreno talk about the staggering end of the Houston Dynamo dynasty, the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cup teams that “succeeded” by playing the grinding brand of soccer that fans enjoyed and neutrals endured, maybe even suffered. A throwback to the Bobby Boswell/Geoff Cameron juggernaut was a moment for a guy who marched through the first 20 years of MLS history (e.g., me; for the record, Moreno was on the much more compelling 2006 MLS Cup-winning Houston team).

Back to the present, Moreno dredged up that history in the context of the Dynamo’s shaky recent history - e.g., missing the playoffs, and badly, for four out of the past five years (and they finished 10th in 2017, the one season they made it; grim shit). The question was posed as a trade-off - pleasure versus success, enjoying watching your team versus reaching a final - and, as an argument, it manages to be fair and irrelevant in the same breath. Those early 2010s Houston teams took bigger risks on attacking talent (e.g., legit MLS legend Brad Davis getting enough out of Will Bruin and Cam Weaver), while Houston’s more recent editions looked to the best attacking talent Honduras has to offer - e.g., Alberth Elis, Mauro Manotas, and, until this season, Romell Quioto - often at the expense of a good defense, on the grounds they’d run over the opposition.

With more money coming into the league [Ed. - This is too loose], Houston has been able to hold on to its Honduran talent (Quioto excepted, who, incidentally, did all right for Montreal this week) and build up its defense a bit. They’ve still struggled a bit over past couple seasons, coming in over average, but not heavily, for goals against, but they’ve also attempted to cure by calling in Aljaz Struna and Matias Vera in 2019, then ripping the fucking heart out of Timbers’ fans by swiping up Zarek Valentin for their 2020 roster. All the same…surely, I’m not the only one who saw Houston try to win this game by pressing Portland, right? Especially after they went down at the 35th minute by way of a straight-up glorious striker’s goal by Jeremy Ebobisse.

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-2 Portland Timbers: Freelancing and Foundations

It's easier, basically, with certain advantages...

As I look back on the wide wonder that just happened, I want to start with the Los Angeles Galaxy and caveats related thereto. As noted during the in-game commentary, and despite having the firsttwo best chances to get a go-ahead goal, both of them through their latest prize-pony, Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez (and one of them a penalty kick that forced a double save out of Steve Clark), the Galaxy played like they couldn’t tell one end of the field from the other. Don’t take that literally, by any means, I’m just arguing that LA had an aimless air about them, something that looked more like faith in some vague notion that everything would all work out, as opposed to belief that it would. Taking action toward making it all work out didn’t seem to occur to them until they were two goals down and one man up (fine, that happened sometime before, but I’m riffing), so call that piece of information as something that, as a Portland Timbers fan (probably), should internalize as you digest what just happened tonight.

The game ended 2-1 in Portland’s favor and, it bears noting that Chicharito pulled back LA’s lone goal, and with a run that I don’t think I see all that often in MLS. As they called the game from the broadcast booth, John Strong and Stu Holden hinted at the notion that Guillermo Barros Schelotto didn’t seem to provide a frame for what LA did, particularly in the attack – i.e., their thought was that he told his team to take the field and figure it out. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know that several Galaxy players put in good shifts tonight – e.g., I saw good, consistent work/ideas from Rolf Feltscher, Emiliano Insua, Sacha Kljestan, and Cristian Pavon (especially this guy, aka, Diego Chara's kicking post). I also saw a roster that shares the fatal weaknesses as LA’s worst teams – i.e., the loosely-competent (e.g., Perry Kitchen, Daniel Steres, arguably Sebastian Lletget) serving a star (again, Chicharito).

I bring all that up as a caveat, because I’m about to get way the hell over my skis on this one.

I was impressed by what I saw from the Timbers tonight – especially with four relative noobs in the Starting Xi (that’s the “starting Xi” not that Starting XI), in which I include Marvin Loria, Chris Duvall, Eryk Williamson and Dario Zuparic. For what it’s worth, I think Duvall and Williamson did great – the latter, in particular, but they both impressed me – and Zuparic was…more or less fine until that second, deserved yellow card. (Loria, meanwhile, gets filed under “if you can’t say something nice, shhhh, say nothing.) Given how open the question of who’s depth and who’s a starter feels right now, I’ll take that as an operating assumption for the rest of this post…moving on…

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.

Portland Timbers 2019 Season Review: A Requiem on a Season...Ahead of a Complicated Season

In the top 20 for "end of an era" and it's exactly as shapeless as I want it to be.

“I’m not expecting glory, but I’m also not bracing for disgrace. The goal Portland scored tonight shouted loudly back to the team that punched five, ten feet over its weight through the 2018 post-season. This team at its best really is something – and it has been for years. The concern is that it’s been too many of them.”
- Notes from a 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy in LA, and 4h game of the season.

“As I see it, Portland Timbers 2019 never turned into a team to get excited about; it’s a team to support in the hopes of giving guys like Diego Chara, Diego Valeri, and, sure, Sebastian Blanco, and maybe even Jorge Villafana another happy memory before they check out.”
- Notes from the 2-2 road draw at Sporting Kansas City in the 2nd to last game of 2019.

A lot of games came, went and exhilarated or disappointed in the space between those two quotes, and the specifics about each of those games probably undercut whatever point I’m about to make, but it makes sense to me, so I’m rolling with it. The first quote above comes out of a match review of the third game in a five-game losing streak, one that happened at the very start of the season. The second quote comes out of notes on a third draw in three games of the not-doing-nearly-enough that typified the end of the Portland Timbers’ 2019 regular season. The first quote reflected a sort of conventional wisdom that the Timbers, a 2018 MLS Cup team with most of the same starters returning, would find their feet in the middle of a, frankly, awful fucking start to the 2019 season, and so everyone waited and, crucially, believed. The second quote came from the second-to-last game of the 2019 season, which gets at how long it took for people (including me) to accept that the Portland Timbers 2019 would not end in glory. Sebastian Blanco turned in one of his better performances of the latter half of 2019 in that game – all the regular performers did - but the Timbers as a whole couldn’t bring it home. They fell short at a time when they should have been doing the exact opposite.

If you put your money on the Portland Timbers to win MLS Cup (or even reach the semifinals) at any point after mid-September of this season, you’re the author of your own emotional damage; the writing was on the wall by then, and damned lurid. By which I mean, it was so obvious at that point that the only open question was when the Timbers would check out, not if.

Portland Timbers 3-1 San Jose Earthquakes: The Best of All Possible Worlds, Emphasis on Possible

VAR, as I understand it.

The Portland Timbers lunged into the 2019 playoffs with the kind of result they were supposed to have stacked up like Benjamins over the course of, like, 50 home games in the second half of the 2019 season (was it long for you too? serious question). Key players showed up today, the mainstays really, and that defined the game. Larrys Mabiala, the Timbers’ biggest set-piece threat, scored after staying high on a recycled corner (and on a forward’s goal to boot). With the weight of carrying the attack on his shoulders, Sebastian Blanco delivered an energetic, even commanding performance; he polished it off with the free kick that stamped San Jose’s defeat, but I’d argue Blanco had his, and the Timbers’, best moment in the 53rd minute when he, 1) reversed a counter that could have spelled trouble for Portland, even doom; and 2) he capped it off by whipping a dangerous shot on goal.

Those two goals were enough to carry the Portland Timbers to a 3-1 home win, and into a first-round playoff bout, on the road against Real Salt Lake. The venue and opposition could be worse, really, given that Portland has won every single regular season game against RSL, home and away, for the past two seasons (yeah, yeah, it’s just four games, also, 10 gf, 2 ga in Portland’s favor), and I’ll take a longer look at all that during the preview. To get back to the game just played, Dairon “Mr. October” Asprilla, scored the goal that broke San Jose, and that, along with Mabiala’s night/goal and Blanco’s night/goal, is literally what the Portland Timbers need to get anywhere near a memorable season in 2019.

Part of me wants to attribute it all to a mind-state, one summed up in Blanco, who represented the Timbers at their best – i.e., defending, sure, but mostly attacking. That showed up, dramatically, in the boxscore, and mostly in combination. For instance, San dominated possession (nearly 6:4), but their comparatively low number of shots (they’ve posted much better numbers lately) answers the question of how much good all that possession did them. Personally, I recall some shots from San Jose, but nothing scary, certainly nothing sustained (i.e., all the sustaining went in the other direction), and the Timbers played the second half on the front foot – for which, notably, Diego Chara set the tone by single-handed cutting off two Earthquake attacks before they could develop (the man reads minds).

Before wandering aimlessly into Portland for an hour or two, I have some thoughts on San Jose. I didn’t see them find the same kind of openings that I saw them finding in those MLS-in-15 highlight clips…which means, that the Timbers cut that shit out. That's more more about Portland than the ‘Quakes, I guess, but good job, Timbers, regardless. Second, and this is what really decided the game, all it took to scramble San Jose was playing through that first line of pressure; even the goddamn broadcast booth noticed it. Based on what I saw in the highlights of their past four games, they scramble fairly capably when that happens - something that could mean that Portland’s better than your average team any time they can exploit space and momentum. In other words, sure, the ‘Quakes have lost a lot lately, but this loss still looked different, more NYCFC than Philadelphia, and so on…

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.