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.

Fewer Questions: The Portland Timbers, The State of Things

Stepdad 1. World 0. (C'mon, you'd be impressed. Or sufficiently confused.)

In a post last week, I hit a piece in The Oregonian from an angle. That article-show (you see, when an article loves a slideshow very, very much) put 11 Questions to the Portland Timbers for 2017. If Portland answers them right, they win! More often than not! (In case you're wondering, yes, accurate.)

As noted then, 11 questions feel like checking every side street instead of just driving straight to the destination. To pick an example (#2), if Portland lands on an effective center back pairing, a few other items (let’s go with, #4, #7, #11, #13, and #14), get answered either loosely (e.g. the presence or absence of “an effective center back pairing” behind David Guzman will go a long way to determining how he plays); by answering itself (e.g., if, say, Rennico Clarke seizes the starting job, the young players made an impact by definition); by the same logic (e.g., the team, and the back-line, will either have good chemistry or it won’t); directly (e.g., if the Timbers have “an effective center back pairing,” they will win more games on the road); finally, and again, directly (e.g., if they win more games, steal some others, they will make the playoffs).

Look, I’m not just shitting on The Oregonian’s copy. This is more about highlighting/addressing the big issues (personnel) and then tuning the machinery to get it firing optimal. Call it Formula 2015, or come up with something better, it’s about the same thing: getting the most out of the players the team has at any given moment. And, now that I’ve completely incorporated the Supporters’ Shield into my universe of goals, what’s possible in any given moment should influence how the team approaches each game.

To frame that from the longest distance, playing for the Shield should mean putting out your best team every time you can, because maximizing points every game means operating on a very much live for today mind-set. If, however, you’re most focused on the MLS Cup – and I think this is viable, even wise, for some teams from the start of the season, but, even more, as your options run out during the season - you can, say, risk dropping points in order to rest players (especially on the road, and in tough venues), and give your back-ups more first-team experiences, because that builds repetitions, therefore on-field partnerships. This isn’t a clean contrast, either, because FC Dallas threw their youth to the lions a couple times last season (I think; eh, maybe), but still won the Shield. At the same time, how much did wear on their team, and Mauro Diaz in particular, doom their Cup hopes? Just sayin’, people make choices alla time…

On a related note, and to see if I finally can’t get it right, I’ve been trying to understand why the Timbers winning MLS Cup in 2015 never quite satisfied me. Because the Timbers did the consistently inconsistent thing for most of the year, winning the Cup felt like your divorced dad, after an entire year of blown promises and blowing you off, absolutely fucking nailed your birthday party. That probably has something to do with 2016, but let’s stick to the task at hand.

The Late Tackle 01 18 2017: On Deploying Porter's Boys, Hot Teams and a Hot Prospect

You'll get there, tiger!

In case anyone hasn’t spotted it yet, I want to draw attention to a little something to the left of MLSSoccer.com’s home page. See it? Portland v. NY Red Bulls, January 27, 2017, Preseason. That’s just over a week away. Next Friday, in fact. Bastards better at least stream that one, because jonesin’.

Of which, with an eye to cutting down on bar costs (he told his wife), I picked up the cord-cutters version of cable, Sling TV. I’ll let interested parties know how I feel about it.

Back to that first preseason game, I’m just now thinking about the kind of team I want to see Caleb Porter field for that preseason opener, and I find myself torn. As much as I want new/younger players and the T2 call-ups (e.g., Rennico Clarke…and there’s no “e” at the end, right?) to get real tryouts during the preseason – especially in defense, and especially if Portland hasn’t added new personnel by then – but I think I’d rather see Porter at least start what he envisions as his starting eleven for this first game, to just sort establish an average for the season (as in bowling) and to figure out how to beat it later. I’ll be providing input all season long…even if it goes unheeded…pearls of wisdom, spurn’d and unclaim’d.

That’s the “first time” for the 2017 season, but the U.S. Men’s National Team’s friendlies against Serbia and Jamaica follow shortly thereafter, too, and I’m actually interested in the friendlies this year, feel like they’ll be building toward something less irritating than under Jurgen Klinsmann, etc. Then fer-reals real preseason starts with the month of February. We’re sliding into home, people, the regular season that, at times, seems like it’ll never end, even as it feels like it started years ago.

Eminently-mockable as MLS’s regular season is, it’s precisely the length of the thing that makes it feel like “normal.” By that I mean I feel a little antsy, even weird, during the off-season.

On to other things of note…

The Late Tackle 01 05 2017: On Roster Rebuilds, Youth, and The Bruce's Penultimate January Camp

Another day, another post, some trades, some U.S. Men’s National Team crap…

Leoardo, Roy. Roy, Leanardo

Whenever I felt bad about the Portland Timbers’ chances last year, I could look south, then a little east…no, more, where I’d see the Houston Dynamo. In those dark minutes (don’t like to dwell), I could tell myself, “hey, it could be worse, I could be a Dynamo fan.” These flashes of superiority lasted right up to the moment when Portland tripped over the same red, velvet rope as Houston, the one that keeps teams out of the playoffs.

Having heard whispers of a “total rebuild” down in Dynamo-land, seeing them add Leonardo from the Los Angeles Galaxy reads like going cheap on parts. So, in the context of “total rebuild,” I dug a little deeper, spotting two more names in the report on Leonardo, Alberth Elis and Romell Quioto. They’re both young, Honduran attackers, not exactly the hottest names in the transfer market, plus, how many young players come to MLS only to flame out? In search of where the there is here, I finally dragged my lazy ass over to the Dynamo’s current roster, where I found still more names: Adolfo Machado, Juan David Cabezas, even Eric Alexander, who might not be the best player MLS has ever seen, but he’s smart, reliable depth, and a gamer with the right people around him.

Even if you think Portland’s in a slightly shinier boat than Houston heading into 2017, the Dynamo appears well ahead and seeing, and addressing, the need for repairs. If this were just a case of weighing Leonardo as a pickup versus Portland’s latest, Roy Miller, it’d be one thing. Sure, every one of the Dynamo’s reinforcements might go bust, but I wouldn’t count on it. So, yeah, pick it up, Portland.

The Late Tackle 01 04 2017: On Rumors, Roy Miller, and Robot Referees

VAR, working prototype...

I’m gonna kick off this post with a standing rule for these posts: when it comes to rumored movement of players, I only care about those involving the Portland Timbers. With the rest, I’ll note only actual arrivals and departures and, unless I’ve actually watched the player in question, I’ll withhold judgment till I’ve got something to work with – e.g. Columbus Crew SC signed defender Jonathan Mensah (at the DP rate), Sporting Kansas City picked up a winger named Gerson Fernandes, and Real Salt Lake picked up Slovakian midfielder Albert Rusnack.

That is all. Elsewhere…

Some Speculation = OK

In the world of harmless (non-specific) speculation – which, here, I’ll just file under “the more you know” - MLSSoccer.com’s Greg Seltzer compiled a list of 11 potential targets for ambitious MLS clubs. For Timbers fans, some guy has a similar running series over on Stumptown Footy (The Mystic Forest Scouting Report, Part 1 and Part 2). Between the three posts, the only names I can pick out are those connected to either MLS or the U.S. Men’s National Team. Still, thought I’d provide the service, because some names might mean something to all y’all.

Portland’s New, Old Defender

While Portland’s signing of former New York Red Bull, former Deportivo Saprissa, former…other Costa Rican defender Roy Miller has hardly set #RCTID twitter on fire, the Timbers DO need depth in defense, and Miller should provide coverage – perhaps even at central defense (news to me, but keeping an open mind). As noted in an earlier tweet, I have some vague recollection of Miller as something other than a lock-down defender, so I did a little follow up (very little). Once a Metro offered a grade that reads (roughly) in the B/B- range, but it also closed on this comment:

Major League Soccer 2016/17 Reset. Yeah, All of 'Em, I'm Doing All of 'Em!

Mentor. Enemy.

When it comes to Major League Soccer, I pretty much lose every year. So does everyone else, really – handicapping the league is horse racing and cat herding rolled into one and that’s often chalked up to “MLS being MLS.” That’s quitter talk, though, because by reducing the probabilities against their inverse occurrences, and cross-referencing those against statistical anomalies, then overlaying all that with a graphic representation of OPTA graphics, we can predict which team will win both MLS Cup and the Supporters’ Shield within a margin of error that most 2000s-edition computers would envy if they weren’t stupid boxes of stupid wires…

…or I watched Sherlock a couple nights back and cribbed that idea, plus four or five words (or three; or two) from one of the several monologues Cumberbitch gave in the episode. Which wasn’t bad.

I’m actually getting at a knot I’ll be pulling at all season – e.g., how to best look past all the predictions about what should happen to think more clearly about what is likely to happen, a subtle, probably false distinction, but I’m holding onto it with both hands for now. I’m not saying I’ll pull it off, but I feel like I took a baby step toward a better, clearer noise-versus-signal approach toward the end of 2016, and hope to take another step this year. And, like most babies, I will have my face-plants (hopefully, without any trips to the E.R.).

One thought I’ll be emphasizing, at least till the 2017 season kicks off, is that I will treat both Cup and Shield as separate but equal trophies – and, yes, your own opinions on that (and the dubiousness of that phrasing) be damned. Much, much more on this later (elsewhere, actually), but, broadly, of course every team in MLS will say they’re out to win all three (real) trophies (as in, if you care about the rivalry cups, you, sir or madam, are one cheap date), but a time will come when the Shield is out of reach and, as I see it, a team in that situation should shape their approach to the regular season with clear, cold eyes to winning the Cup.

What I want to do, here, today, with this post, is reset the conversation on all 20 MLS teams to what we know – e.g. to re-center to what happened last year. I’ll do that by posting links to whatever looking back/forward pieces (e.g. 2016 season reviews, plus any “Our List of Needs” posts) I found on some relatively easy-to-find soccer sites (SB Nation blogs and Last Word on Soccer, who turned out to be crazy easy to find). As for trades, transfers and acquisitions, I’ll be treating them as unknowns, even as I’ll be referencing The Armchair Analyst’s permanent floating roster construction article throughout. I’m relying more on links than my own commentary for the simple reason that all those fan sites watch their own team way closer than I do. I’ll add notes and arguments where appropriate.

As to the order of teams, there’s no significance to it. It happens to follow how I bookmarked each of SB Nation’s teams sites, when I did that last year. True story.