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.

Los Angeles Galaxy 2-1 Portland Timbers: Shit Happens & Mapping a Future

All I want to know: will I like the ending?

Give a team two pillow-soft chances, you give up two goals. Give a pig a pancake and….honestly, I have no idea, I’ve only seen the cover of that book.

Obviously, that was not ideal, but, for me, the whole thing had the feel of the Los Angeles Galaxy was due to win, the Portland Timbers were due a loss. As the kids say, shit happens, and the Galaxy wins at home 2-0. The Timbers had some points to burn, they’re not gonna catch the Seattle Sounders, the road ahead is pretty favorable, and so on. Pick, move on, and, for fuck’s sake, play Diego Valeri earlier if you’re gonna play him at all. Maybe try attacking defending with seven while attacking with three skilled players pushed way the fuck up for counters toward the end of a game. I don’t know. I only manage teams online and they do awesome. On toddler mode. And I digress.

Full disclosure, I only watched half that game, stared at some stats (where I saw what I wanted: fairly even for shots on goal and winning the duels), so take all notes below with due caution, etc. At the same time, these are mostly general thoughts about Portland’s stretch run - which, for the record, conncludes with: v Vancouver, at Colorado, v San Jose, at Real Salt Lake, v Austin FC. And, yes, I typed more of the names out to celebrate not forever operating under 280 characters. Some notes…and I mean beyond obvious stuff like, “Blanco RULZ” (and he does) or “mistakes hurt the Timbers tonight.” Wait…moving on…

Van Rankin Van Rankles
Because I saw Steve Clark make two saves (at least) that easily could have gone in (and yet two shit goals did), I’m comfortable accepting the Timbers had plenty of other ways to lose this one…but, Van Rankin. He hasn’t fulfilled my expectations on either side of the ball. He’s not an outright liability either, it’s just….yeah.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Minnesota United FC: Turns Out I Need More than 280 Characters...

Dreamin'...

Yeah, yeah. Twitter threads didn’t work - e.g., I couldn’t complete a thought on the racist taunt thing involving Diego Chara - so I’m back in this space. I’m keeping the concept, though: five thoughts and not much more than a page. Here goes.

Overall
The Portland Timbers lost a sweaty fucker 0-1 to Minnesota United FC. I watched the game live (can human sweat be repurposed to create renewable energy, if so…), but tucked low in a corner away from the Army. I didn’t have a great view, in other words. Minnesota looked the better from that angle - they created clearer openings, defenders in the right place, etc. - but the highlights gave me a better look at Portland’s chances. (No condensed game, dammit.) Based on what I saw and what’s in front of me, the game could have ended in a draw as easily as a 2-0 win for Minnesota. A Timbers win is the only thing I can’t pencil out of it. It was not a good week for the Timbers…

Five Thoughts
1) Racist Taunts and Getting Around a “He-Said/He-Said” Logjam
If I were running MLS’s investigation into the racist taunt at Diego Chara, I’d start from the fact that Chara has never made such a claim before (in my memory) and he’s been in MLS for nearly a decade. If any other player heard it, the onus for dismissing the claim would fall on Minnesota in my mind. My first question: why would he make this up now? Crime ‘n’ punishment-wise, you take the offending player’s denial into account - i.e., you can’t prove it one way or the other - and dish a punishment that, 1) makes it clear the league will punish that shit, and 2) don’t go as far as you would to punish a provable offense.

2) A Beer for Steve Clark, on the Defense
The Timbers defense got caught in rehearsal mode on the game’s deciding goal, but the Loons created two more wide-open looks that I would have forgiven Clark for missing. In those moments, he stood on his head to give the offense - no, the entire team - a chance to salvage a point or turn around the game. They did not. So, let’s look at that…

CD Marathon 2-2 Portland Timbers: Solutions & Problems

Almost this bad. No exaggeration...

If someone told me at 3:00 pm PST that the Portland Timbers would tie Honduras’ CD Marathon 2-2 in the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions’ League home-and-home series, I would have shaken his/her hand and said, "thank you very much." And, some really unnerving details aside, I’m still there. I’ll pass quickly over the caveats - e.g., Portland’s knee-deep in a long off-season, a playing surface composed entirely of divots lumped together, travel, nerves, age, etc. - and offer two big take-aways:

1) Portland did allright despite playing in the soccer equivalent of half-finished sentences; and

2) if the central defense doesn’t tighten the hell up, Steve Clark’s gonna need longer arms.

One final thought: it took me 2/3 of the game to remember that Marathon hails from Honduras, and not Nicaragua, and that realization took the edge off the panic a little. No disrespect to Nicaragua intended, but one of those nations is ahead of the other in real-world soccer terms. Now, some notes on the game…

First things first, I saw both combinations, and attempts thereof (thereto?), that will actually come off at Providence Park and that makes me more optimistic about the second leg. Even when Marathon’s defending forced a hitch in the momentum, Portland’s players generally had sound ideas about how to move the ball forward; the grass grabbed the ball like Velcro on passes and dribbles alike - so many scooped passes, so many stifled first touches, and for both teams, by the way - but the thought process came through. My one caveat on that follows from Marathon’s peculiar defending, especially in the first half: defending can come from either pressure or organization, but the Hondurans offered neither, and even seemed mildly surprised, when Portland played passes in between their lines. I’m not sure how much the Timbers will see that in league play this season, but, what the hell? Fingers crossed.

Drilling down, I saw hints of a couple problems in defense, neither of them good. Seeing Portland’s central defenders struggle that hard with literal basics like tracking runs - see Marathon’s first equalizer and the damn-near go-ahead goal from a disturbing similar spot not even 10 minutes later - puts very direct questions as to much necessary shit the central tandem has sorted out. Based on the highlights (which, son of a bitch, don't appear to allow you to select individually any more), you’d have to ask every player but Josecarlos Van Rankin to explain himself (Larrys Mabiala, more than the rest), but that was nothing less than a tap-in - a real gut-punch given that Portland had at long last broken through via Felipe Mora just…wow, four minutes earlier.

Los Angeles FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Running Through Hell to Glory

Ma tenders!

There was a lot to love about the Portland Timbers’ late, late (late, late, late, late) equalizer against Los Angeles FC tonight e.g., the way it felt like Portland looking at the right side of the mirror, for once, after they’ve looked at it from the wrong side too often this season, or the fluid beauty of the full faith and execution with which all the players involved found the right passes and made the right runs, not to mention seeing Diego Valeri drop the cross on a goddamn dime to Jorge Villafana’s back-post run. This was after 90 minutes into an exhausting duel and running on legs I’d given up on, frankly, too many seasons ago.

Personally, I most appreciated the aesthetic of the way it played out on my TV. I got only as far as “wai” into “wait, where’s that cross going?” before I spotted Villafana’s run. Watching the ball fly through the air as Villafana sprinted to meet it, seeing LAFC’s goalkeeper and defender pinch together to stop it - swear to God, it brushed the defender’s hair (who was it? no one important, just another victim) - and to see that it always could only land exactly where it did: ah, thing of beauty…

…what’s that? What about the 90 sweaty minutes passed before it? Yes, yes, LAFC pinged the woodwork like it was the object of the game - twice if byDiego Rossi, once if by Carlos Vela, and through disturbingly clear openings - but I’ve got caveats for days from Portland’s side of the “what ifs,” and Timbers fans got their fairy tale ending in a 1-1 draw that booked them a date with FC Dallas. In the grand scheme of everything, I’d call that result a steal worth not asking too many questions about.

First, either forget the box score (too even) or know that LAFC ran good-golly-gosh-darn riot for nearly all of the first half; hell, the Timbers could barely get out of their defensive third for the first 25-30 minutes. Portland settled down their affairs as the game continued, but I doubt even one dollar’s worth of the live betting shifted in their direction until the 80th minute. That said, the smart money would have started moving in the Timbers’ direction around the 85th, even if in search of a big payoff. They finally posted someshots and, I’m guessing, did most of the work to doing those last-minute revisions to the box score.

Portland Timbers 3-0 San Jose Earthquakes: GUYS....

Mood.

Was it a solid win? Absolutely. The first half fulfilled my pre-game prophecy - the prediction of equivalent of saying, “you will get sliced bread for dinner tonight” - but the Portland Timbers scored…was it even minute(?), into the second half. Diego Chara and Eryk Williamson worked something breezy up the right and Chara finished their work with a perfect cross to Jaroslaw Niezgoda, who finished with a header that I can’t imagine 95% of ‘keepers keeping out.

And, yes, San Jose forced a cold-sweat moment of doubt, one that sounded loud echoes of a dreaded relapse into one or two of the deadly sins - this was Tanner Beason’s put-back (speaking of, this kid looked good) - but Referee Guido Gonzalez, Jr. (badass handle, btw) called it back for handball or offside. Honestly, the Timbers leaned a little too heavily into the “most dangerous lead in soccer” trope tonight, but when Chara (yes, again; do they give medals for MVP?) floated another assist to Felipe Mora running naked at the back-post that put away the game and the jitters. The game ended 3-0, Portland over the San Jose Earthquakes…

…but let’s not speak of the Timbers’ second goal. And if the Timbers Army could turn this song into a chant, I’d be both happy and very, very impressed. Factually, you could squeeze that goal through the lens of San Jose ‘keeper, James Marcinkowski’s frayed second half. Who was it that he presented the open-goal opportunity to? That’s the kind of night it was: Portland could throw away gold tonight and it didn’t cost ‘em. Reminded me of the win over the Los Angeles Galaxy…and the obscured the memory of those dreary back-to-back wins over the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps.

That said, to continue from the title, GUYS, has anyone either noticed or commented upon the fact that every player Portland brought in for 2020 has worked, like, all the way out (so far)?? For instance:

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.

San Jose Earthquakes 1-1 Portland Timbers: Burner Game...But Can They Afford It?

Yeah, yeah, all good. You forget me, I forget you.

Honestly, my head is swimming after the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 draw away to the San Jose Earthquakes. Sweet Ginger Brown, where to begin?

Broadly speaking and specific circumstances notwithstanding, I will never understand why anyone expects happy revelations of any line-up that doesn’t involve some number of starers. The argument against is in the bare concept of “starter” - i.e., they’re first-choice for a reason. As such, a wholesale change to your local team’s starting Xi should be treated, and I mean this generally, as a “burner game” in the same sense drug dealers use burner phones - e.g., it’s not Plan A and/or what you use to call your family, or even your mistress.

After that top-line thought, things get really complicated…

I want to start with San Jose because, based on what I’ve seen, the current standings and/or their league-leading goals against record - 2.45 goals against, y’all - this is not a good team. I hadn’t seen the goal Jordan Morris scored against them (early) in the Seattle Sounders’ 7-1 demolition of them two, three games ago (for San Jose), but that’s a why are you even in this league moment. Getting beat by the soccer equivalent of the end-around is down-right shameful. Regardless of the specific alignment they chose for tonight (but it looks starter heavy), that’s the team Portland’s reserves played tonight and, frankly, it wasn’t encouraging. Going the other way, that means San Jose either couldn’t bury Portland’s B-team at home - where they haven’t won since August 31 of 2019 (and they lost six straight through the rest of the season) - and while rarely looking anything like goal-dangerous, despite having number heavily in their favor. To the credit of exactly one man (Valeri Qazaishvili, aka, Vako), they scored the one goal they needed tonight earn the draw...if just to avoid shame. And even that barely went in. Look at the box score and weep, San Jose fans.

They had quality shots, though, that, but for the grace of God and Steve Clark’s left or right shoulder (c’mon, do you care?) could have turned the game into a runaway - and at various points throughout. Suffice to say, starting Diego Chara in a sea of newbs had its consequences and the Timbers were fortunate to survive all that, and for as long as it went on (which is to say, Cade Cowell hit the wood work at the 82nd minute and Clark had to bail out Portland again and damn-near the death). In case I haven’t hammered this home enough, there’s a transition coming down the pike for the Timbers and things are looking…again, complicated.

Portland Timbers 1 (4) -1 (2) FC Cincinnati: Training Wheels & Breaking the Brick Shit-House

Thomas Jefferson's, apparently...

Sorry for the delay. I poured my sorrows quite the sea to swim in last night…

I have this tactic I use when thumb wrestling, one that has no purpose beyond annoying my thumb’s opposition. With my fingers still laced with the other person’s, I extend my palm to where they can’t reach my thumb. Because there is no draw to play for a thumb wrestling, it isn’t anything but a joke…I think you see where this is going…

It took a penalty shoot-out to make the pain go away last night. But for the second worst decision in Steve Clark’s…very rich career, one of the least satisfying tactical battles in sporting history would have ended in regulation. What happened? Maybe Clark was bored as the rest of us? Whatever caused him to hoist himself onto the high-wire of making that clumsy, stupid touch instead of doing the right and simple thing may never be fully known. Regardless, that moment of sheer idiocy and resulting, well-justified penalty kick (scored by Jurgen Locadia) very nearly undid 67 minutes of the soul-sucking work of looking for a way into the brick shit-house FC Cincinnati built in front of its goal, a choice that was every bit as annoying, and ultimately pointless, as my go-to thumb-wrestling technique. The Timbers finally slipped around the back (and, Lo, what a mighty fortress it was) when Sebastian Blanco found a backdoor behind the defense, one left open when a pair of their defenders strayed too high on their right. Cincy’s central defenders scrambled to snuff Blanco and Jaroslaw Niezgoda slipped into the pocket (yes, that guy; not Diego Valeri; still correcting a bad tweet) to two-time a goal into Cincy’s net. With that, echoes of “FC Cincinnati, come out to play-ay” rang over the stadium. And they responded in their way: first came the massive assist that, had the Timbers not won the, apparently, divinely-ordained penalty shoot-out, would surely would go in the history books as Clark’s Cock-Up ™.

I suppose I shouldn't over-sell Cincinnati's attacking feebleness, because they had enough moments for the upset, up to and including scoring what looked like the OG go-ahead goal, only to see that called back for offside (good call, too). They damn-near bagged a winner when Clark (who, swear to God, gets all up in his own head) bumbled a late attempt (no video, dammit; I don't get to choose these things); Locadia also skied what should have been . Valeri came just as close either before or after (after, says the highlights round-up), and that takes us back to being playthings of the gods

Thankfully, and honestly for all concerned outside the greater Cincinnati media market, general operating assumptions reasserted themselves during the penalty kicks: Portland swept them, and Clark even found a little redemption when he stopped Locadia’s shot; Kendall Waston sealed the deal by leaning waaayyyy back and skying his shot, frankly, way over the crossbar.

Real Salt Lake 2-1 Portland Timbers: A Mirror to 2019

On seeing what I didn't want to see.

I don’t how many of you shifted in his/her seats in anticipation of extra time Saturday night, but I know I did. Sure, Real Salt Lake had absorbed the kitchen sink the Portland Timbers threw their way, but they didn’t show any meaningful signs of breaking through either. The play that won the game – i.e., RSL isolating Joao Plata on their left – had been tried before, and with just as many Timbers defenders buzzing around to cut off options. In the telling moment, however, Plata poked the ball across the top of Portland’s 18, Albert Rusnak had the wit ‘n’ savvy to leave the ball for Jefferson Savarino, and those split-second decisions put the sword to not just one of Portland's better recent spells, but also to the Timbers’ 2019 season.

That’s how it ended – 2-1 in RSL’s favor. With that, their season continues, while Portland starts facing the tough questions they could only push off for as long as they had games left to play. 2019 wound up as a…fairly fucked up year. Even if Timbers fans can't agree on what exactly went wrong, I think most people would agree that, Jesus preserve us, what a fucking mess. I’ll review the entire season later this week (Saturday?), and I’ll close this post with some questions that I hope in that review. To preview that, the second half of the 2019 season posed all kinds of questions to the future of the Portland Timbers team and/or franchise. I’ll do some reading and/or reminiscing and try to come up with something useful, all without promising that I can, but, I want to continue this wrap up of their final game with a question:

How the hell does a team of professional athletes forget how to do their collective jobs for 45 whole goddamn minutes?

I credited a couple Portland players for robustly stand-out starts – e.g., Cristhian Paredes and Bill Tuiloma both made a pair of stellar solo defensive plays each during the first half – but no one in the Timbers starting eleven looked prepared to do anything but disrupt and tackle over the opening 45 minutes. If any Timber found the proverbial friend during that first half, I either missed it or it didn’t matter. That failure lead to an avalanche of pressure falling on the Timbers defense (a decent example), and they handled all they could until Deimar Kreilach ghosted behind Larrys Mabiala’s shoulder and ahead of a ball-watching Bill Tuiloma to tap a free header past Portland’s ‘keeper, Steve Clark, who, to fill in all the blanks, played an aggressive (and intriguing) sweeper-‘keeper role, and to the point of stranding himself once or twice. RSL didn’t actually give him a ton to manage – too many of their shots dropped right into the ol’ breadbasket – but they had him dead to rights on both goals, and only the first one hurt real, real bad, even if they all count the same, 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.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Real Salt Lake: Recalibrating Expectations

Did we expect too much too soon from Fernandez...?

To briefly walk through my stages of doubt and faith, real questions about what would happen started bubbling up around the 40th minute. By the 60th, I’d more or less resigned myself to the result going sideways and started preparing the proper language for recovery during times of struggle.

Curiously, it was around the 85th minute when I drafted the tweet I tapped into the ether at the fizzling middle of the 96th minute. Verbatim too. I believed the Portland Timbers would hold on around the 80th minute, and I was all but certain of it by the 85th. As such, this little flurry – as well as the red card that proceeded it (not the dumbest of the day, fwiw) – registered as glitches in the matrix, signs of danger from an alternate reality, as opposed to the one in which the Timbers beat Real Salt Lake 1-0 in Portland, because that was how the game was always going to end.

The thought came from a place beyond knowledge, like the future breaking the fourth wall and whispering, “it’s gonna be fine” in my ear. To be clear, this has nothing to do with clairvoyance; point in fact, I didn’t send that tweet in the 85th minute precisely because I worried about tickling the cosmos and jinxing the result. Still, the Timbers just seemed like they had it tonight – or maybe it’s that RSL didn’t – and, ugly and hairy as it was, they did. That’s three points, an edge over the (actually) surging Sporting Kansas City next weekend…and now we’re at the “real talk” place in this post.

First, this was a great goddamn win. I appreciate that might be hard to swallow for anyone who just watched…I mean, of course, I saw all the “what the fuck is happening tweets” around the 88th minute, not least because I floated one of them. All the same, the relentlessness of RSL’s press/attack was on full display tonight. They won every attacking category tonight and Deimar Kreilach alone must have had as many clear shots as Portland as a team; moreover, they had Portland pinned through the first 30 minutes of the second half, at a minimum, and they still had Joao Plata (basically effective) and Sam Johnson to bring on as substitutes; moreover again, they had a clear chance at the death.

Minnesota United FC 1-0 Portland Timbers: On the Psychiatrist's Chair

(Just probing you for weaknesses...)

To lead with the unpopular opinion, whether or not that was a handball by Larrys Mabiala – and I’m of the opinion that it was – he took one hell of a risk flapping both arms high in the air and goal-side of the player he was marking. That moment of stupidity capped a game that, between extreme heat and terrible aesthetics, all concerned parties wanted to end. Losing 0-1 on the road to a good team – e.g., Minnesota United FC – only rises to the level of a crime because the Portland Timbers play the same team in just a few days’ time and the same venue in the U.S. Open Cup with a shot at the final on the line.

That shifts the frame, in my mind, from the meaning of the loss to the question of whether one team or the other gained a psychological edge from this game, no matter how narrow. An answer (“the answer” is a high bar, y’all) circles back to the starting premise for this match-up – i.e., the Portland Timbers played a good team on the road. There’s a massive mitigating variable in this particular mix as well because, after a first half in which the Timbers looked like some version of its better self – mostly on the passing side – the game played out as if they’d downed some shots at the half and during the hydration breaks, as opposed to sugar, water and electrolytes. A late flurry from Brian Fernandez (et al., obviously) aside, the passes stopped connecting and got a little more wild and ambitious (and lazy), and the Timbers collectively tailed off as the game progressed.

One open question is, why? Was it fatigue? The heat? Did a second-half shift in Minnesota’s structure fluster what had been, to that point, the high standard of Portland passing? Did Giovanni Savarese direct them to dial back the intensity knowing that that most of those players would take the field again in just three days? Answer those according to your personal theories; they’re mostly rhetorical fodder, and is it possible that only the sports bras these guys wear truly know the answer to any of those questions? (Are those things micced up? Do they hear/feel pep talks from the coaches?)

We do, however, have the base-line facts on hand: 1) Portland stopped connecting passes with any consistency in the second half; 2) they pushed Minnesota to the wall in their own house. It took a penalty call that over half the people on my twitter feed crapped all over for Minnesota to win the game, at the death, and with Portland ‘keeper, Steve Clark, guessing right on Ethan Finlay’s shot. That’s one thin goddamn line, and enough for me to render my final verdict:

Seattle Sounders 1-2 Portland Timbers: Good, Slightly Dirty, Feelings

The same coiled buttocks, I tell you....

If there’s a soccer equivalent of telling someone they won a good-sized raffle only to tell them you read the name wrong one minute and fifteen seconds later, this was it. After applying too little pressure to notice for…more or less the entire game, the Seattle Sounders poached a goal off a Julio Cascante bungle to even the score at 1-1. In that tiny amount of time later, Sebastian Blanco earned his paycheck by feeding Brian Fernandez the inch-perfect pass that Fernandez would slip under Stefan Frei’s elbow and win the game for the Portland Timbers. 2-1 to Portland in Seattle, and all is forgiven for at least one of those home draws. Fuck it, both. Tonight has me in a giving mood.

Fernandez got the Timbers’ other goal tonight, a put-back on the kind of Jorge Moreira overlap ‘n’ drive that he’ll surely be patenting before too long (along with that brick of hair he sports atop his head). As much as the last 15-20 minutes made me want to crawl out of my own skin and read a book in a quiet corner, Seattle got the same kinds of chances when the Timbers laid back as they did all game, and that’s more or less the tale of the tape: Portland handled everything Seattle threw at them, and mostly without panicking. Moreover, when Portland actually played – as in tried to dictate what happened on the field and where – they were the better team tonight.

I ended my preview thread for this game with one thought – e.g., the question of whether Seattle is (or was) 10 points better than Portland, as they were in the standings at the start of the day. The current answer is seven points, which is the number of points that separate the teams right now; the question is if/when Portland will overtake the Sounders in the standings. To pick up something noted in the same thread, Seattle has built their vaunted home record by stealing lunch money (big fan of that phrase suddenly) – i.e., winning games against weaker opposition in favorable circumstances. I still rate the Sounders a good bet for the playoffs, but I don’t see the current team roaring into the post-season as they have over the past three years. This isn’t the same team, not without Osvaldo Alonso and Chad Marshall. Losing a spine tends to have consequences…

Portland, on the other hand, looks like they’ve got another year with its main components intact and firing right: Diego Chara showed what he’s all about when he ran down Joevin Jones with his first touch of the ball; Brian Fernandez did the same by trading jabs with Roman Torres…pretty much all game; and, for as long as they pressed the game, the usual suspects, Blanco and Diego Valeri, found a succession of pockets from which to prod Seattle’s defenses. For as long as all that holds up – and for as long Portland can recruit and maintain a sound defense behind it – the Timbers will be competitive in MLS. And, with Larrys Mabiala anchoring that line and Steve Clark playing like his own number one fan behind him, I’m not worried about that part. Portland will always be at its best when it can get its animal spirits running free, and they pulled it off tonight and at the best possible time and place.

Portland Timbers 2-2 Colorado Rapids: Hideous Bookends

I don't want the season to end like this.

I made my first visit to an embiggened Providence Park last night, returning to the same seats where I bought season tickets all those years ago (wistful for 2011, on so many levels). 210 was a standing section that season, and has been for every game I’ve been to since. People stood through the first half and took a seat at the half, per the custom, but, for whatever reason, everyone remained seated when the second half started. I attempted to reassume the (standing) position when the whistle blew to start the second half, as did (literally) two or three others, but the social pressure caught up with us, one by one. The guy who sat down the last man standing with a sweep of his hand to the rest of the fully-seated section…what can I say? He wasn’t wrong.

What caused the bad kind of funk – i.e., the old-school, deflating kind of funk, as opposed to the good funk with the dope beats and bulging bass that makes you want to shake your money-maker till you break it? Was it the deflation of the Colorado Rapids scoring its second goal of the game/the first one in its favor less than a minute after Tommy “OG” Smith put the Timbers in the lead (that was one of the finest own-goals I’ve ever seen; such power)? Surely it wasn’t Colorado’s late rally at the close in the second half, because didn’t Portland ‘keeper Steve Clark give these fans more than everything they could ask of him (certainly more than their sitting asses deserved)? I couldn’t poll them, as I’m accustomed to polling people in twitter (technology fails me, once again), so that will remain a mystery.

In the end, it took anger to make people stand. Seconds after Sebastian Blanco got chopped down while winding up for a shot (and Lalas Abubakar rather ungraciously barked at him where he laid, broken), Julio Cascante got sent off for a scissored lunge at Kei Kamara from behind and, with that, more formerly sedate section rose to its feet, raged foully, and remained standing for the rest of the game. Everyone around me spat words not safe for motherfucking print at that stupid son-of-a-bitch of a referee (Kevin Stott) for nearly as long as it took for Diego Valeri to score the penalty kick that followed from Abubakar’s hand-ball in Colorado’s area. And that started another avalanche of profanity and a full, ripened wheat field’s worth of middle fingers in Stott’s general (stupid, useless) direction.

All the above was a nice reminder of what makes live games worth going to. Oh, and the game ended 2-2 after Sam Nicholson beat (first) Renzo Zambrano, then Clark to equalize for the Rapids. It was a good goal, honestly, not much worse than the one Jonathan Lewis curled past Cascante to equalize for Colorado the first time. Truth is, Colorado played a solid game, certainly a better one than I expected, and I’ll absorb the totality of it all with due humility.

Portland Timbers 1-0 FC Dallas: The First Thing, You See, Is to Get Your Foot Planted

Like this, but with just one yellow card.

Dear God, if that wasn’t a cage match. Referee Allen Chapman blessed the whole thing with professional indifference but, in the end, no limbs were lost and no real crimes committed. The Portland Timbers came out of the rough and tumble with one goal more than visiting FC Dallas. And that felt fair, at least where I live (Portland, OR, so…), but a 0-0 wouldn’t have exactly insulted justice. Dallas gave as good as they got. That’s as much for me as it is for you, because I don’t know what the hell to make out of that goddamn team…

To dust off some clutter, Portland beat Dallas 1-0 last night at Providence Park and not one damn thing about that came easily. At the same time, I thought I saw the unveiling of the Timbers’ broad attacking approach to the game in the stretch between the 5th and the 10th minute: believe that every pass will connect, so try everything, and ruthlessly hunt down anything that tells you differently like the damned lie it is. At the precise time I sketched that note onto my pad, Portland was merrily marching up the field by flailing the ball from one side of the field to the other. It looked a little desperate and more than a little low-percentage, but it generally came off, while definitely confusing Dallas and throwing them off. The (highly relative) success of the whole “swinging for the fences” strategy didn’t last for long, and Dallas came back into the game and, generally put up a real fight…

…but, in one blessed/curs’d moment, every cog in the Timbers game-plan, and broad theory of roster construction, meshed together to steal a goal out of a game seemingly sworn to give up no goals. And I think that’s the real story of last night’s game.

Both of these teams took similar approaches to the game. When I tried to phrase it last night, I started with “defending aggressively” – by which I meant chasing down the ball and/or passer at some point on the field, as opposed to keeping your shape and making him break you down. Both Portland and Dallas assumed that general position, but they started at different parts of the field. In their better moments, Dallas rasied a bristling line of confrontation at the center stripe – i.e., anything that crossed it got swarmed like piranhas on whatever the hell is dumb enough to walk into the Amazon. During one truly fascinating phase, the kept both of Portland’s centerbacks and Sebastian Blanco trying to force their way inside that line; Blanco, specifically, could drop out of it, but he couldn’t go back in. Given that Blanco is, or has been, a major piece for Portland getting the ball moving forward, maybe Dallas studied some video and adopted that strategy to nip his usefulness in the bud.

Portland Timbers 2-3 Los Angeles FC: Do It for Tiffany

I'll do anything, girl...

What was the most important part of last night’s game: Jeff Attinella’s colossal, opening-10 fuck-up, or the series of aggro-pointless skirmishes that tripped one over the next for the last five minutes of regulation? For me, that depends on one’s willingness to see each of those moments in symbolic terms.

To lean into controversy early, I don’t want Attinella to start until Steve Clark gets injured, Attinella’s nerves calm down, or Clark has a collection of episodes that evidence some equal or greater measure of nerviness than Attinella’s. I think Attinella is a damned good goalkeeper; I also think he’s set up a long-term campsite in his head and, until he packs out of that fucker, I’d rather see Clark start. Mind, this isn’t some kind of “Jeff Out” campaign; I’m just noting it as a big deal for scale.

Attinella owns just one of last night’s goals – and Los Angeles FC scored three of ‘em on the way to the 3-2 win they stole out of an…engorged Providence Park (let me have it; just this once). Other Timbers fathered LAFC’s other two goals: Jorge Moreira for dozing off and letting Diego Rossi slip past him to score their second goal, and (probably) Jorge Villafana for failing to track Latif Blessing’s second run to knock home their third. LAFC put up plenty of shots – like this one, for instance, which should’ve deepened Portland’s hole (because LAFC was on a roll; but it’s not like they’re dipping SKOL/Bandits) – and the fact they didn’t gives LAFC something of their own to think about. As well they should, the bastards…

…look, LAFC is the soccer team equivalent of the rich, new kid who shows up at your high school, and he’s better than you at sports, he just humiliated you in debate club warm-ups, and now you’re worried about a bunch of other stupid extemporaneous shit because of all the insecurity that follows from those realities, but it’s cool. You just need to get your head on, and your shit together, because that kid is soft…somewhere. It’s just…you haven’t figured out where, but you will. Or, rather, you have to, or Tiffany might dump you for him…I mean, she’s always been out of your league…

Portland Timbers 3-0 Real Salt Lake: Expectations and Getting High on Personnel

Steve! Steve Clark! C'mon, buddy!

My guess is that all the great revelations about the Portland Timbers’ 3-0 home win over Real Salt Lake have already dropped. Given that, I’m going short, laser-focused and bullet-y.

First, and as noted on Friday, I expected the Timbers to win this game with the silent, ass-clenched anxiety of a parent who sets a low bar and expects his (of course, supremely gifted) child to clear it with ease (WHY DO YOU DISAPPOINT ME?!). With that in mind, I went into the game with a general view that, if Portland drew it, I’d worry, and I’d shit my pants a little (just a little) if they lost. Portland cleared the bar, they are playoff-bound, and they could finish as high as…third? Maybe? Unless FC Dallas lets the Colorado Rapids run up the score (HA!), Portland would have to beat the Vancouver Whitecaps by enough goals to erase Dallas two-goal advantage in goal differential. Dallas losing is Step 1 in that process - right along with Portland beating the Vancouver Whitecaps, of which, why not? Vancouver has been bad against good teams at home lately (guess we'll find out, right?) - and, even on the road, a draw feels like the likeliest poor outcome for Dallas, and a draw puts them beyond Portland's reach. Again, that’s against Colorado at home. If Dallas wants to roll into the playoffs with any kind of hope, a draw feels like the most indulgent bar imaginable.

Back to the Timbers, and this game…

Second, watching the first half of this was enough to make me question how this win impressed even the most anxious Timbers fan. RSL looked more interested in a Portland win during the first 20 minutes than Portland did. They didn’t menace for the rest of the 1st half either (Kyle Beckerman's header viscerally excepted) and, again, that was a mystery…until the second half started. Holy shit and thank God for Steve Clark’s positioning/shot-stopping. The list of things for which I thank God involving Clark end there.

Third, thank God Portland got something out of that opening spell. Larrys Mabiala’s 15th minute goal made the later rope-a-dope possible. Even if it wasn't pure rope-a-dope (or rope-a-dope at all), the Timbers needed the breathing room. As for what changed, my first guess is that Mike Petke’s halftime speech was searing and hideously personal. RSL put the Timbers under incredible pressure from the second half whistle to, by my loose estimation, the 65th minute. Anything could have happened over that period, and that should be sobering, and not just in general. RSL is a worse road team than almost all the East (Orlando City clearly excepted, a couple others are close) and only marginally better than all the teams in the Western Conference who stopped mattering a couple weeks ago. Some patterns matter like laws of nature, and that's one of them.

Fourth, the 2nd and 3rd goal explain why RSL is one Los Angeles Galaxy win away from an early off-season (golf, guys, stoned golf). It also makes a case for why Timbers fans shouldn’t get to giddy about the score-line. Portland will not get looks on goal in the playoffs like the one RSL coughed up to Diego Chara, at least not against teams that matter. Just…RSL, on the road, perspective.

Portland Timbers 3-2 Columbus Crew SC: SUB VALERI (goddammit)

It's just right.

I want to start these notes on a, frankly, relieving win with an apology. Knowing full well that I had at least two full rows of Columbus Crew SC fans in front me, I yelled something very close to this somewhere around Columbus’ second (or third) shot on goal:

“Fuck it. Move ‘em to Austin.”

I don’t think it was just fans either. I think it was spouses and families. And they heard it. I saw the heads turn for the game of "Spot the Asshole." And...to anyone who heard that, I want Columbus to keep the Crew and get a spruced up stadium to boot...and I hope those aren't mutually exclusive. Just jokes…

A friend was kind enough to extend an invite, I got to watch this one live tonight and, honestly, the experience only continued my love/hate relationship with watching soccer live. The angle is never as good as you get on TV - especially buried deep in the southwest corner of the stadium - but, 1) I caught up with an old friend (invaluable past the age of 35); and 2) I had the best possible view of Andy Polo’s debut goal in a Portland Timbers uniform. It was by no means graceful and maybe a quarter planned, at most, but it was also welcome as Christmas morning, and, if I’m not misinterpreting Polo’s celebration, he had ample reason to thank his Lord and Savior for that one.

It was a night of firsts in some ways. David Guzman scored his first goal of his leggy 2018 season [Ed. - Correction: The author fucked up; that was, in fact, Guzman's third goal of 2018 and, as further penance, here is his first goal of 2018 (nice shot, too), and here's his second goal, Hail, Mary, full of grace, etc.], and Steve Clark played his first all-round sound game in a Timbers uniform…just fuckin’ with you, Steve. In all seriousness, hats off, Steve, not just for every free-kick you covered tonight, or every tough save you made, but for all the times you looked more upset than anyone else at every defensive failing. Respect.

Portland wound up winning this entirely vital game 3-2 - Niko Hansen scored his second of two goals (here’s #1) for Columbus, while Samuel Armenteros owes Lalas Abubakar a…let’s go with a Long Island Ice Tea for knocking his tight-angled effort past Crew SC ‘keeper Zak Steffen. In spite of a positively groggy start by Portland (Columbus families: This was my trigger! I’m usually very, very nice (I think)), the 3-1 that held for damn near 60 minutes of this game gives a more accurate read on its lived experience. As tricky as my view made it to read the game, I still believe I saw the Timbers defense round into shape between 25-30 minutes in (had a decent angle for that) and, once the Timbers switched from chasing Crew SC's attack to managing, I told my friend, maybe even before Polo scored, “I think Portland chokes this out.”

To anyone who doubts the MMA has had an impact on our culture…well, that one’s pretty benign, as it goes.

Houston Dynamo 4-1 Portland Timbers: The (Highly Specific) Curse of Manotas

"The machine" ain't what it used to be.

The thing about science is that the whole damn thing falls apart any time one fails to subsume all the goddamn givens. Sure, a person could assume that refers to the Portland Timbers on-call ‘keeper, Steve Clark - and, yes, he was anything but a pillar of calm and stability tonight - but I’m talking about something that exists beyond the rationale, outside the bounds of science.

The Houston Dynamo’s Mauro Manotas has Portland’s motherfucking number, that’s all there is to it. He scored his first ever hat trick against the Timbers in 2016, another goal in July 2017, and then a brace in tonight. Sure, you say, that’s just six goals. But what if I told you that was six goals out of 27 goals all-time in Manotas' MLS career? That sounds pretty serious until you see that, however vigorously the Dynamo suck as a team, he’s having a pretty good season. His best in MLS, in fact. So let’s get back to blaming Clark for this one, OK?

I kid, I kid. For all his shaky moments (well, hello, X factor!), I only blame Clark for Houston’s third goal; I get the circumstances of the moment, but I also know that any team with any goddamn sense looks for a ‘keeper who handles crosses, etc. better.

So, what to make of this shit? The hyphenated word “must-win” has a lot of meanings. At the top-line, literal level it means a team must either win the game in question, or be cast into perdition. Another meaning holds that, if you want to lurk in the minds of your opposition going into the post-season, you have to win a game like Houston away late in the season, a team that, prior to Saturday, had sputtered through at 0-7-3 in its last 10 games (while scoring only nine entire goddamn goals). That assumes Portland keeps their date with the 2018 MLS Playoffs, and that they aspire to something more than being the team a better one steps on on its way to the next round.

The Timbers didn’t win tonight, obviously. They lost 1-4, in fact, and to a team that (read between the above lines) has been fucking terrible since mid-July. Portland didn’t even score a goal tonight, at least not without a ricocheted assist from the opposition (thanks, Alejandro Fuenmayor!). No matter how you slice it, that’s a terrible look for a team with any ambition. Unless they’ve changed the template (and I don't think they have), the Timbers would have to survive, first, a knockout game as an away team, then a home-and-home against higher-seeded opposition. And, wow, can I just note how much more I like their chances in a Western Conference semifinals match-up than I do in a knock-out road game? Or at least that's how I feel after tonight.