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.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Sporting Kansas City: Say, That's Not Right (But It Is)

WWWWAAAHHH!!!!

First, some context: my wife and I had gone on a date prior to the game, and that put me about two sheets to the wind at kickoff. I made it through the game, and then some, but I think I wrapped myself in Sheet 4 or 5 somewhere in there and, in every sense except actually being asleep, called it a night. With that in mind, I’m going to approach this from an impressionist angle.

A feeling sums up the Portland Timbers’ 0-1 loss at home to Sporting Kansas City: a sense of vague yet persistent frustration. Every time a Portland player faced an obstacle, he did it knowing that another obstacle stood beyond that one, and so on to what felt like infinity for some damn reason (or maybe Sheet 3, but I digress). By game’s end, most Timbers players looked not so much tired, as weary*. Enervation in game form: that’s what Saturday’s loss felt like. Running, but never moving, Sisyphus putting his shoulder to the rock again, etc.

Something told me that Portland would never score. I can’t even peg the time this occurred to me – did that come to me before or after KC scored their goal? – but I think I’d experience the former as resignation and the latter as despair, and how far are those two things, really? No team in MLS has had much luck breaking down KC this season, but the Timbers seemed likelier than most teams to do it. Instead, we got a double-layered shit sandwich: a loss at home against a Western Conference rival and an indication that KC’s has both the system and the intent to put their opponents in a submission hold for the length of the 2017 season. They’ll choke off games, basically, and that’s boring, but effective. And boring.

I just sat through the condensed game to fan the fires of memory a little, and here’s where I pick up that asterisk. * Portland’s best chances came late, so my memory failed me a little on that detail (but is that timing issue relevant? you be the judge), but I still maintain there’s a reason my chief mental impression of the night featured Diego Valeri seeming to just scream at referee, Drew Fisher. From the looks of it, it just came out as “WWWAAAAAAHHHHHH!!” It’s like Valeri performance-arted The Scream live, on-field, only instead of wailing about the horror of existence, his felt more like "do you believe this fucking guy?" as a madman's bellow. At least that’s how I remembered it…

Philadelphia Union 1-3 Portland Timbers: Situation...Just Normal

We got a good thing going...

I just watched the condensed version of the Portland Timbers depressing (for some) 3-1 win over the Philadelphia Union (yeah, it’s those guys I’m talking about). I wanted to tour the details one more time, even as I don’t think anyone can bend, shape and squeeze them into any kind of revelatory permanence. By that I mean, this one’s all about the narrative, because the details don’t look to have changed all that much.

To quickly review those details, however, Darlington Nagbe scored, and that’s always nice; Fanendo Adi scored again (still nice, but less surprising), to become the Portland Timbers all-time leading scorer (just give him the damn ball, guys); after that, Diego Valeri did something lethally important, Jake Gleeson made (I think) a couple confident saves, and that’s good (even if I can only recall the one), I had a blast watching Adi battle Oguchi Onyewu, was it just me or did David Guzman finally look a little sloppy out there (and, holy shit, wouldn’t that be a big deal?), Philadelphia has some good pieces, sure, but they’re not fitting into the same puzzle yet, and, when it gets right down to it, isn’t that the difference between Portland and Philly right now? That sense of, to pick up another metaphor, of the dancers knowing their steps?

That’s where it ends: a better team beat one that’s still struggling (pulling for ya, Philly; I’m totally on part of your side), but isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? For all its silver linings, both old and new, yesterday….shit, Saturday’s (two days out, now) win doesn’t mean anything besides three arguably unexpected points for the Timbers. With the emphasis on “arguably,” because Philly has been grasping after nothing all season long. I’ll get to that in exactly two paragraphs, but, first, I’ve got to wrap up this larger thought on the Timbers.

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.

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: