Alphonso Davies 2-1 Portland Timbers: Anatomy of a Gamble with a Big(ass) MLS Playoff Preview

thank you andres flores.

The Portland Timbers tipped their hands when it announced the starting eleven: getting rest for key players like Diegos Valeri and Chara, Sebastian Blanco, uh, Zarek Valentin, Liam Ridgewell, Larrys Mabiala…you should be sensing a pattern by now…probably even Jeremy Ebobisse; at any rate, the Timbers decided three points today mattered less than giving those players and a few more the best chance at being their best possible selves for Wednesday’s first-round playoff game at FC Dallas. (Halloween, guys, really? You’re gonna make fans choose?)

No one will know whether the gamble paid off until the final whistle blows on Halloween, but the Timbers’ understudies couldn’t hold up their end: they lost 2-1 to Alphonso Davies, who got a genuinely nice sending off from teammates and Vancouver Whitecaps fans after turning in a game-winning nearly-90 minutes at BC Place. As Davies sat on the sideline contemplating his personal reality, the TV flashed his career MLS statistics. Eight goals and 12 assists over 65 games. At first blush, you think, huh, thought it’d be higher. Bayern’s Munich’s decision to sign him only adds up when one clocks that Davies produced all of those numbers less one assist in 2018. The way he turned a seam into a tear to score his first goal explains the rest.

Portland's decision to field an army of stand-ins means there’s not a lot to say about this game beyond, guess that’s why they’re not starters. I’ll dig into the numbers down below, but I’m also going to come back later tonight to update this post with a broad-brush look at what the Timbers, and the rest of the teams who made the 2018 MLS Playoffs, look like heading into the post-season. That’ll take some research, but I should send that out into the world by the end of the night. There were some shocks across the league today, seismic, “two in the booter,” and so on.

Back to the Timbers, do I approve of the overall decision to rest, oh, everyone who has reliably proved to be someone this season? Yes, even though it meant Portland (effectively) threw away the chance to catch FC Dallas for the honor of hosting their first round playoff tie. Making that come off would have required a lot of things to go Portland’s way - e.g., Dallas losing at Colorado Rapids (check!) and Portland winning on the road by more than two goals. That’s not some pie-in-the-sky scenario - the Timbers beat RSL by three goals in Utah a few weeks ago - but that also meant giving up something as wholly tangible and valuable as well-rested starters. Add in the fact that Dallas lost its last three games of the season, and that they’d hardly been ruthless before that - 3-4-3 in the last 10 games, and those three wins came against at home against Houston and Orlando, and away to Vancouver - and the entire plan takes a step past safe toward cagey.

New England Revolution 1-1 Portland Timbers: Larry, You Magnificent Bastard

Yes, sometimes players need their rest. Even "sexy" rest.

The original title for this post read something like, “I Got What I Wished for and Everything Went Horribly,” but, with one magnificent, uncontroversially controversial shot (that shot is over the line; don’t play), team scapegoat/proximate measure for the Portland Timbers’ ceiling, aka, Lawrence Olum, scored the equalizing goal that his team always seemed destined to score. The Portland Timbers utterly frustrated the New England Revolution tonight, knotting them up 1-1 at the middle-of-nowhere they call Gillette Stadium (build a goddamn stadium, Bob; you’re rich and New England fans deserve better), and they did it with a team deep enough into the Bs to register as a B-, maybe even a C+. [ed. a bit of hyperbole, there.]

On a personal level, tonight was huge: the Portland Timbers finally rested some key players - something I’ve been shouting into this tiny megaphone since The Dog Days of 2018 (shit…”Tiny Megaphone,” gotta claim that name before someone else does) - most notably Diegos Valeri and Chara, and, in a welcome twist, they also sat Samuel Armenteros, aka, the only forward who is presently within a freakin’ mile of Portland’s starting line-up (more on that later). I got what I wished for tonight and, won’t lie, tonight also made a pretty good case for why I should not want this. This was a fan’s game, something that any sane neutral would turn off for C-Span, or the radar pattern they showed on the Weather Channel way back when (my dad watched that stuff for hours…probably should have worried about that a little more). I also think that suited the Timbers just fine.

Through the first half, Portland was disconnected enough to make me wonder whether they’d ever practiced this particular starting eleven. Things didn’t improve enormously in the second half, though they did improve. Maybe. Here’s the thing: on the one hand, I have loose memories of seeing Timbers players in New England’s half more often in the second; on the other, I can’t remember a single stand-out moment for any one Portland player. Instead, I see Alvas Powell making a miraculous run into the Revolution’s half, only to pass to some phantom into the right-side spaced he opened by cutting inside, and Lucas Melano making a similar run up the gut, only to shrug and shoot with a head full of doubt somewhere around the 80th minute.

The more remarkable thing is that I can’t recall many similar stirring moments for the New England Revolution, a team leaning fatally hard into the ropes right now. Cristhian Penilla dribbled through some puzzles early for the Revs. They almost broke the Timbers defense right away (seriously, both Jeff Attinella and Larrys Mabiala stayed down longer than even jaded Timbers fans should like), and Scott Caldwell finished off Kelyn Rowe’s strong shot to score the Revs’ one goal (against Steve Clark), but, overall, the Timbers defended well and attacked adequately…and that was enough against a New England team that, arguably, should start thinking real fucking hard about tomorrow, if only because today is unrelenting misery.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Seattle Sounders: It's Time to Talk About Larry

Third image under "idiot son."

I’ll keep this short. (Now, how many of you guessed that I’ve started scores of posts with that exact same phrase, only to delete it when the proof slipped straight out of the pudding? And...failed again.)

To start with the short version, the Seattle Sounders (specifically, centerback Kim Kee-hee) pegged an own-goal off the heel (probably) of the presently-struggling Julio Cascante. They’ve built their late streak on fluky/lucky goals, Seattle has, and that one goal allowed them to smuggle all three points out of Providence Park  last night. The ending 0-1 score-line in no way represented the action on the field - see the box score and the evidence of the eyes of all witnesses to this, just, gross injustice - and, so, to wrap up the short version, those motherfuckers…

The Portland Timbers (I haven’t even named them yet? seriously?) played the better game out there tonight and were, without question, the better team. I heard talk that the Timbers withdrew into the safety of the “Christmas Tree” formation for tonight and the contours of the match bore that out: the wretched cluster-fuckedness and missed marks of the last three games gave way to a solid shape and, by the numbers alone, an improved attack. I also saw Zarek Valentin and Alvas Powell push high enough (if somewhat ineffectually) to give said Christmas tree one fat fucking middle section, so I’ll just say that the Timbers played in some way that let Sebastian Blanco and Diego Valeri get on the ball a lot, but all while keeping fairly reliable shape. And that worked well, Timbers players looked like they had a good sense of where to go, and what to do, and that’s good.

It wasn’t enough, of course, and that’s now four straight losses (can I get a “huzzah”?) Moreover, it became even less immediately after Seattle scored their shitty, slop goal. I had to check the highlights to recall the Timbers’ best chance on goal - for me, that’s Samuel Armenteros’ lightly over-heated header across the grain off a (motherfucking) moment by Zarek Valnentin.

About those highlights, they open with this absolute gift of phrasing:

“89th all-time meeting between professional soccer teams calling themselves Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders.”

I can do nothing but applaud that man’s adherence to the strictest of accuracy.

Back to the gristly meat of the matter, there is not a lot of Portland shining in those highlights. Yeah, there’s the one shitty goal for Seattle fans to cling to (lo, it is their guns and religion), but this game otherwise played out as a futility collage, and with Portland trying more and suffering more disappointment for it. Worse, the Portland Timbers plus a slip into the permanent (frankly shameful) midnight of life outside the playoffs, and with the Sounders stepping on their shoulders to get into the light.

FC Dallas 1-1 Portland Timbers: Dancin’ with the One That Brung You

Delighted to have found this searching for "crippling brain-fart."

Had Sebastian Blanco failed to score his impressive goal (which I missed in real-time; Taco Bell run…for some damn reason), Portland Timbers fans would have little to hold onto on the attacking side of the game besides Alvas Powell making a series of bad decisions, before making his one clear good one - e.g., his late shot on goal. And even that decision only looked “good” due to Powell having better control of the ball and his body than he did on any of his other misfiring forays up field. He made a similar, clumsier run earlier and took a shot from the tough angle and he lost good runs by Fanendo Adi in both cases…thus we draw yet another line that divides good decisions from a bad ones.

I’d file Diego Valeri hitting a shot in frustration from over 30 yards out in the same binder: whatever it suffers on the decision side, it gains from winding up as a decent shot. Still, he scores that one time in 30 attempts, and that begs the question.

Blanco buried his goal, of course, and that lead to the fairer result because, all things considered, the 1-1 draw it ended in feels better for this game than a Dallas win would have. There, it’s worth considering whether another referee would have called a penalty kick on Cristhian Paredes’ late hand-ball in the Timbers area. (Was it a handball? I don’t recall at the moment who noted the ever-increasing complexity of what does and doesn’t constitute a handball in MLS at this point, but I am, and will always remain, a fan of the “porn” definition of a handball - e.g., I know it when I see it. To answer the question, yes, I would have called that one on the grounds that who knew where the cross would have traveled had Paredes’ arm not knocked it down. Call it the “trajectory theory” of handball.)

Regardless, I raise that point to raise the issue of thin margins. Because neither team could put away this game, never mind squeeze the proverbial last hand on the bat for dominance, this game hung forever in the absence a moment of brilliance and/or a crippling brain-fart (hmm….maybe that’s the inspiration for the image?). Both teams had singular moments of brilliance - e.g., Dallas’ Jacori Hayes sending Portland’s defense and midfield into retreat by running at them before dishing to Roland Lamah for the cool finish; Portland, meanwhile, answered with Blanco’s goal. Besides that, the game was just so much running around.

Truth be told, I’m pretty happy about that. Portland looked quite a bit better moving the ball forward in this outing than they have all season. Some as yet unmeasured part of me wonders about the extent Dallas allowed that; as noted in the preview I slipped into this post, I figured Dallas would leave space in the channels near the top of the attacking third for Valeri and Blanco to operate in, and they did (and, to empathize a little, I’d be shitting myself if I were a Dallas fan). I haven’t looked at the boxscore - and probably won’t till I wrap up the rest of this weekend’s (blessedly sparse) games, but I doubt Portland generated a ton of shots. Then again, Dallas didn’t either and, in the context of the 2018 season so far, that spells less relief than release - i.e., on par with coming out on the other side of a crippling bout of “stomach flu.”

Portland Timbers 1-2 Seattle Sounders: When Your Tifo Game Is Your Last, Best Hope

Our shared lives....

After taking in the (condensed) Hell of the Portland Timbers’ midweek loss to Minnesota United FC, and then enduring the auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong that Portland coughing up a late 2-2 draw to the Seattle Sounders, a moment that made a mockery of a truly wonderful tifo, I have several things to say/note, or that make me wanna go fetal…

First, see the title.

Second, I want to bury this idea about “bad defending,” because I view that as a too-broad argument for a more specific phenomenon. Generally speaking, the Timbers don’t defend badly as a unit, so much as they keep making horrific, this-will-make-your-mother-hate-you mistakes in defense, and, because they follow from bad decisions in the precise/specific/defining moment, those kinds of fuck ups are harder to remedy. There, I’m talking about Jeff Attinella coming off his line on Minnesota’s third goal and taking out not one, but two defenders, or the way not one single player in Portland’s defense tracked Clint “Fucking” Dempsey wandering into the space that opened up when all three of Portland’s last-line defenders dropped off on Seattle’s equalizer…the line was immaculate, then, if distinctly Maginot in nature and quality. Basically, the problems seem based less on structure than bad decisions by individual players.

I’m not saying Portland’s defense doesn’t blow the fundamentals from time to time – see the pocket that Christian Ramirez settles in to score Minnesota’s second goal (yes, keeping a good line is fundamental) – but everyone’s in some reasonable approximation of where they should be for Minnesota’s first (Okugo just got a bad touch, and the resulting own-goal; then again, where’s the reaction to that overload?). The same goes for Joevin Jones’ opening goal on Sunday: Portland’s defenders were in decent position – and I’m not saying that a couple player didn’t react like corpses (looking at you, Alvas Powell, Lawrence Olum) – but, honestly, Jake Gleeson’s rebound went straight back into the natural progession of Jones' run, who didn’t so much follow up as found the ball rolling lazily into his stride, and that’s just the gods tickling the odds in one direction or the other. As suits their fancy, the whimsical bastards…

Bottom Line: set aside the details and Timbers fans get the same outcome: every Timbers game now amounts to an exercise in anxiously turning the crank on a Jack-in-the-Box and waiting for that fucker to pop and scare the shit out of you/ruin your day.

Colorado Rapids 2-1 Portland Timbers: It Was Sebastian Blanco’s Birthday, Then Everyone Fell Asleep

Anyone got tape? Maybe we can stick this damn thing to "on."

Once they settled into the first half against the Colorado Rapids, the Portland Timbers played some of the most polished soccer of the season, good let-the-ball-do-the-work passing, great, alert first touches on the ball – especially from Diego Valeri and Darlington Nagbe, who both wrong-footed a succession of defenders in midfield; on the right Dairon Asprilla and Zarek Valentin managed possession with smart, almost casual interplay that suggested comfort and a shared confidence in the project. When the whole thing fired just right, Colorado wasn’t even chasing the ball; they could only reorient their lines of defense to the next threat.

Even better, the day dropped hints that Portland had finally figured out how to get attacking impetus out of Sebastian Blanco, who made dangerous runs into curiously open seams at least a couple times before and after burying the goal that gave the Portland Timbers the early lead. The rest of the half continued like that and, somewhere in there, it occurred to me that yesterday felt like Blanco’s birthday, the day when everything he touched would come out all right and that we would walk off the field the hero, with his teammates buying his rounds and reminiscing of his moment(s) with a twinkle in their eye that said, “yes, we will always remember this day.”

By the time the second half started, I had this middle-aged electrician from Michigan marveling at the madness of the Trump presidency on one side; maybe ten minutes later, this guy from Ethiopia sat on my other side, and I just could not stop asking questions about and country, and just tripping over the idea that I was talking to a random guy from the other side of the world in a random Hillsboro, Oregon bar. The game would take care of itself, Sebastian Blanco would get his birthday beers, maybe even birthday sex…

…it later occurred to me that I have no fucking clue when Blanco’s birthday is. The whole thing was based on a fantasy. (The guy from Ethiopia was real, though, and fascinating. He was happy to talk to someone who didn’t think Ethiopia was in Europe. He told me people have asked if he was from somewhere near Italy. “I mean, look at me,” he said. “Do I look like I’m from Italy?”) As it happens, the more relevant bit of foreshadowing came when a super-loose Roy Miller back pass gifted Dominique Badji two consecutive shots on goal, either of which he really should have buried.

Portland Timbers 2-0 FC Dallas: On Good Problems to Have

Die, motherfucker!

Let’s face it: attrition loomed large tonight, as one Portland Timber after another threatened to limp off the field. Only two did in the end…the team’s starting centerbacks. No big whoop…

So, yeah, both Liam Ridgewell and Roy Miller left the game, to be replaced by a Tetris-esque shifting of players/positions, and Timbers fans endured scares here and there throughout the game – whether it was Fanendo “Brace, Y’all!” Adi hurting (was it?) both ankles or Diego Valeri lying on the ground for two minutes that felt like five games’ worth of no one knowing how to make the Timbers’ attack work – but Portland hung (hanged? nah, think I got the verb right) on for the 2-0 win against visiting FC Dallas, aka, the team most likely to (what? win the league? be broadly awesome? prove the reality of The Youth Movement?). And, while that win was mostly encouraging, caveats attach to this thing like remoras that suck blood and eat happy thoughts…

…still, good win. This was my best-case scenario, so, hell yeah, I’m happy. It’s just that…I know stuff that lets me (makes me?) look at this game, and Portland’s last, with the coldest, deadest eyes since zombies.

First, the bad news: this is not The Best Possible Version of FC Dallas. I’d actually argue that, for a team without Walker Zimmerman, Matt Hedges (who is…just holy shit good), and Kellyn Acosta, Dallas played above their available level. God knows they made Portland labor to score – even as both goals resulted from the kind of fuck-ups that drive coaches to drink and/or early retirement. All in all, Dallas defended well enough tonight, but, when Adi stumbles just so, and after the kind of lucky bounce that only happens when a team presses allows Sebastian Blanco to feed him the simplest of passes, and when the other goal comes off another complete collapse, you credit the team that scored first, and ask what exactly went wrong for the other team very shortly thereafter.

Seattle Sounders 1-0 Portland Timbers: That Little Bit of (Fucking) Quality

The "little red man." (At least you're as creeped out as me.)

Well, I had big plans to watch the condensed version of the Seattle Sounders FC narrow, weird win over the Portland Timbers before posting thoughts on it. Postponed writing about it a day – killed some brain cells, lost some memories in the meantime (plus, another day older; gets more relevant all the damn time) – to give MLSLive time to post the condensed version…which they have still yet to do. And, no, there’s no way in Hell I’m sitting through that whole game all over again.

With that, you’re stuck with my lousy memory, or just taking a pass on reading this. As always, no judgment…

This happens more often than soccer fans like to admit – i.e., games that feel like a lot of things happen, while, at the same time, not a whole lot actually happens. The boxscore for this one proved as revealing as I expected it to: the Timbers topped the Sounders in many of the key categories – attacking stats, most notably (fun little sidebar: Portland ended the day with 19 shots, but they’d fired 15 of those by around the 50th minute; hold that thought) – but one number should jump out, and on two levels: both teams put just three shots on goal. On the first level, sure, Portland out-shot Seattle 19 attempts to 8, but, if you’re wildly flailing shots at goal, what good are Portland’s 11 more attempts toward the plausible vicinity of goal, really?

Second level: that’s what I mean when I suggest that not a lot actually happened yesterday. From Portland’s point of view, they managed to turn in a better performance than they did in recent road games against the San Jose Earthquakes and Montreal Impact (a good thing), but those three paltry shots on goal tell a pretty clear tale: Portland didn’t have much luck penetrating Seattle’s area, the Timbers mostly played around the defense, and not through them and so on. A lot of credit for that goes to Gustav Svensson and Chad Marshall, in central defense, and gadfly Osvaldo Alonso and gadfly-in-waiting Cristian Roldan playing in front of them. Portland’s shots from range weren’t terrible on their own; they’re only bad in the sense that they were the start and end of what Portland could generate for offense.

Columbus Crew SC 3-2 Portland Timbers: Slow Reflexes and Broken Ladders; MLS Week 4 (Hangover)

David? Darling?

True story, I failed the oft-tricky Eastern Time v. Pacific Time test this past weekend, so I missed catching the Portland Timbers v. Columbus Crew SC live. Whatever. It was a short, stupid weekend regardless, so the whole thing felt half-assed, and I’m going all over the record on this point:

MLS Week 4 is not over until at least the majority of Major League Soccer’s teams have played their 4th game of season. So, no, this was not MLS Week 4, this was farce dry-humping a charade, and I refuse to have any part of it.

Except now, when I talk about it. At some length.

By the time this post goes up, I’ll probably be, oh, an hour, maybe an hour and a half, after finally sitting through the full 90 minutes (plus stoppage) of the Timbers weird, but not crushing, 3-2 loss to Columbus. I’ll spend the balance of this post going over what I saw in that game, but I’m going to start with this weekend’s – let’s call it what it is – smattering of MLS Results during what this shite…I mean, site (hmm) has decided to officially call MLS Week 3 MLS Hangover .

The whole thing (and the backstory as to how I cocked up catching the Timbers game) kicked off with the U.S. Men’s 6-0 win over Honduras in a World Cup qualifier that brought the U.S. soccer community ten fistfuls of Rolaids worth of relief. I tweeted a couple thoughts that aren’t novel enough to repeat here, but my personal bottom line is that, if Arena…wait, hold on. Shit. OK, I have another embarrassing announcement to make: my head is so far up the ass of someone who is very, very far away from the CONCACAF qualifying schedule that I didn’t really fully realize how loosely people were apply “must-win” to the Honduras match.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: A Parade of False Flags

Early season stupor. Also, unfamiliar.

Tonight, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people of good, clear insight. The Portland Timbers picked up their first road win since 2015 when they beat the Los Angeles Galaxy 1-0, and that’s a big deal. Something else slipped past me, given my anxious state, but the Timbers also kept a clean sheet today. So, thanks to @cobolsky and @brioe162, for being wiser men than me.

Still, that “anxious state” followed me home, and it revealed itself in the way some sort of invisible safety net left the game when David Guzman walked off, holding his left arm all funny. Guzman jacked his shoulder, as we all know now, even as we don’t know how badly, on what wound up being a second-yellow challenge from the Los Angeles Galaxy’s Jelle Van Damme. I watched that specific replay often as they showed it, and I’m still not 100%-clear as to whether Van Damme hit Guzman at knee level, or whether Guzman hurt himself on a leap/dive to get around Van Damme’s lunge. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme, I mean, Guzman will take the same amount of time to heal, whether fair or foul, and that’s my biggest take-away from this game.

Things went some form of haywire after Guzman stepped off. Portland’s central defensive arrangement has functioned like a triangle through preseason and Game 1 2017 – e.g. Liam Ridgewell and Lawrence Olum, and with Guzman running in front of them in defense, and dropping between them when Portland had possession. Basically, Guzman really has (near as I can tell, and I can’t promise proximity) played as pure a No. 6 role as Portland will allow, and, once he went off, Portland reverted to Olum and Roy Miller (Ridgewell’s sufficiently creditable replacement) behind Ben Zemanski and Diego Chara, who receded to the back line in order to protect the lead, and the win. The sweet, sweet road win. Smells like honeysuckle on a June night, I tell you…

That was nice, right, sweet reverlry? Now, back to the panic…

Portland Timbers 3-3 Real Salt Lake: Technology and Actually Promising Things

The fouls can see him too! Trippy!!

I’m going to start this with the elephant-sized talking point that squatted all over that game. Yeah, Video Assiste…fuck it, VAR. The specific acronym doesn’t matter, but I'm talking about that video review thing that just happened, that we all endured.

It’s not what happened on the field that bugs me. On a different day with a different angle Soren Stoika (right?) would have called that red card first time, and things would have ensued as they did – at least provided that Joao Plata’s foot kissed the ball in just the same way. Today, though, Stoika missed it and…I dunno. So, what I guess? Was getting justice really that much more satisfying than a blown call? Yura Movsisyan kept playing so Diego Chara’s contact with…whatever couldn’t have been that savage. Still, Chara does lead with the elbow a lot, and that’s a risk.

Bottom line, though, I think I’d confine VAR to goal-line tech. I’m fine with using the Discipline Committee to mete out justice after. And I’d consider putting a little more length on their levers. Think something between the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and the Spanish Inquisition. The broadcast team spoke like party-line puppets (guys…hyperbole), calling the stilted moment of video decision, “drama-filled and impactful” (which running dog swine uttered those words?!), and I think that’s what made me angry tweet. Then again, every day is a trigger…

OK, the game, the game, the game. The Portland Timbers tied Real Salt Lake into a big bow of 3’s and called it Thursday. I’m going to dig into a couple particular fascinations, maybe try to inflate them into something bigger. They were both goals and Portland scored both, but one of them said something very specific about RSL. So’s I can end big with the Timbers, I’ll start with the one that gets at RSL.

The Timbers first goal contained some good elements. Alvas Powell put in a good cross, Mattocks wrestled through some traffic to get off his shot, and Diego Valeri found that clear shot on goal as reward for following the righteous path of continuing the play, wherever it leads you. Or, to re-write the script, great cross by Powell, and, of course, Darlington Nagbe didn’t shoot, and Darren Mattocks followed that up by scuffing the shot, as is his habit, and thank god for Diego Valeri.