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| Jaroslaw Niezgoda says "Hi." |
I’ll start with a confession: I didn’t get the usual granular [ed. - what? listen to yourself, man!] read on the Portland Timbers in their 1-3 loss at Toronto FC because I was catching up with an old friend (#WorthIt). Still, I think I saw enough to state that things did not go well, and with some confidence. Anyone who disagrees may speak now or forever hold your........no takers, eh? Small surprise. The box score reduces that reality into numerical values, none of them good; I remember seeing the shots distributed at 7 shots to 0 sometime during the first half and hoping that improved in some way...but nope. Jaroslaw Niezgoda sends his regards from the remote desert island you can see on Portland’s passing map....
As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...
I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.
Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.
As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...
I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.
Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.
