Sporting Kansas City 2-2 Portland Timbers: Tumbling Dice

Feels disturbingly like the best option....go on, Dairon.

Full disclosure: I had to check out of the Portland Timbers 2-2 draw away to Sporting Kansas City around the 60th minute. I don’t use “had to” lightly either. You see, we enrolled late in this bowling league, but the week before we joined, a guy with two open spots invited two dudes to play with him and his girlfriend, only we bowled with the guy and his girlfriend in Week 2, but agreed that his invitees had first dibs, so we stayed home Week 3 to see what happened, only they didn’t show up, then we post-bowled the Tuesday after, at which point they told us they gave the guy an ultimatum that, if we showed up, we’re in (or something like that). So, with them holding that spot for us, and the guy’s friends kicked to the curb, how would it have looked had I not shown up? The disrespect would have broken the Bowler’s Code, which I assume is real, without investigation.

Real-world shit aside, my top-line comment about the Timbers is that they don’t look a whole lot better than Sporting KC, and look where they are. My second comment is, Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess. I’m not just talking about Alan Chapman’s officiating either, but the entire four-team mud-wrestling Battle Royale in a steel cage over a pit of rabid caimans that will cut the last two Western Conference teams from the 2019 MLS Playoffs. The Timbers have the edge, if only by virtue of having one more point (46) than FC Dallas (45) and two points more than the San Jose Earthquakes (44), aka, the team they can fuck up three ways to Sunday on “Decision Day brought to you by some company with hostile customer service,” but, sure, a draw at home against the ‘Quakes could see them through – it’d put San Jose at powerful risk, if nothing else - but wouldn’t you rather see your hometown team whip one of those wicked, Fast-and-Furious 180’s and drive into the playoffs with the car pointing the right fucking way?

I don’t see anything so stirring happening, either; Portland has been your biological dad taking you to the restaurant you loved four years ago for a couple months now. In the same vein, I’ve lowered my expectations for Portland to them showing up and trying, and seeing what that gets them. It’s been a lot of draws lately, and yet they’re still (narrow) favorites for the playoffs, which means the Timbers’ plan sucked a little less than the teams below them.

MLS Week 9, 10 Things, And How You Know About a Team

Went uplifting this time. See TFC? Basement trolls can be awesome!

Hello darkness, my old friend. (Also, Paul Simon and/or Art Garfunkel was a worse lyricist than you remember. Trust me.)

As advertised (I can say that now, right? I've been doing this long enough?), I’m still wrestling format to ground and feeling…just really pointless guilt about leaving things out. Can I be of service? (Please, let me be of service!) Per some number of the several pathologies that drive me, here are all the past week’s results, or the one’s I remembered to include:

Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0 Real Salt Lake

Atlanta United FC 4-1 Montreal Impact

Toronto FC 2-2 Chicago Fire

Philadelphia Union 3-2 DC United

Columbus Crew SC 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

New England Revolution 1-0 Sporting Kansas City

Minnesota United FC 2-1 Houston Dynamo

Los Angeles Galaxy 2-3 New York Red Bulls

Colorado Rapids 1-2 Orlando City SC

New York City FC 3-1 FC Dallas

Los Angeles FC 1-0 Seattle Sounders FC

I’m going to try to take all the above loosely and dedicate the “10 things” segment to expansions, details, theories and myths, that kind of thing.

This felt like the first decently predictable Week of the 2018 season. Or, better, I can offer either a detail or a narrative that reasonably explains every result above. The same goes for the opposite result in each case, and welcome to Major League Soccer, The League of Relativity, but the results make most sense in this timeline. For example, based on most data points you’d expect NYCFC to beat FC Dallas at home, and for Atlanta to beat Montreal at home, while neither anticipating how much Dallas would contain NYCFC (by 200-250 fewer passes, roughly), nor how long it would take Atlanta to unlock Montreal (70+ minutes, and trailing most the while).

MLS Week 8: 10 Things, Heavily Weighted Numbers, And Those Who Defy Them

Results don't often vary, but can...

For reasons of sanity, I’ve decided to cut the “2 Games” piece out of these weekly round-ups of Major League Soccer. “10 Things” are all I have in me…and this is how it begins. (No, no, darling Barbara. I love you. I would never leave…).

That doesn’t mean I didn’t watch the mandatory number of games (I mean, someone’s watching, and failure to comply will result in a report to proper authorities…right?) - I watched Columbus Crew SC draw 2-2 to the visiting New England Revolution and the Los Angeles Galaxy coughing up two goals and all three points at home against Atlanta United FC - but giving featured games the paragraph or two I’ve given them eats a lot of time and, swear to god, I think it chases traffic away. I mean, if somebody keeps telling me something they wrote fts. two teams I don’t give a shit about, I’m not gonna read it.

I learned a thing or two, of course, and formed opinions, even if not closely held ones - e.g., I rate New England the better team, especially when both teams are gunning, and head coach Brad Friedel looks to have a good head for subs (and good subs to use); Atlanta never once left the driver’s seat, and a ton of that was down to Miguel Almiron (again), but I still somehow got it in my head that the Galaxy will end 2018 in the Top 3 in the Western Conference.

There’s more, lots more, pages upon pages of notes made on highlights, boxscores, and even a couple from the comments to the recaps (a guy posting as “Morningside Park” had some solid notes on New York v. Chicago. I don’t touch on everything down below, and can’t, really, but these are 10 comments on sights and sounds from MLS Week 8.

Toronto FC 2-2 Atlanta United FC: A Report (With Big Digressions on Video Review and the High Press)

Hoplite. Before and after.

I’ll start this one with a statement: MLS, and soccer as a sport, needs to figure out how they want to cope with the rise of video technology – specifically how much they want to let it into the game. Yeah, I sound late to the party, but I think it’s live more now than ever, and more subtly. Of course I’m referencing the sending off of Atlanta United’s Yamil Asad for knocking Eric Zavaleta in the back of the head in Atlanta’s 2-2 road draw at Toronto FC. The lag was long enough to make it look like the referee flashed red only after a chorus of rage rained down from the crowd, maybe even after he caught video of Asad’s dubiously raised elbow.

I know video technology is coming, but I still think its introduction begs questions that are more dichotomous than its advocates want to admit. Assuming yesterday’s ref (David Gantar (clearly from Planet Awesome)) responded to pressure from the crowd, what does that detail, specifically, mean to the larger problem (yeah, I see it as a problem) of video review? I think there’s a lot of ambient faith that soccer fans get pissy when someone interrupts their collective flow. Maybe, that’s all I’m saying. What I’m arguing is that, the more people bitch about every last failure that any given referee will inevitably make, the more readily those gripes translate as pressure to “clean up” more and more parts of the game, Dr. Frankenstein didn’t want to create a monster, etc. (come, there’s a slippery slope to ride down!)

The underlying logic to video review gets at a symptom: the unspoken desire for a perfectly officiated game. Consider, however, the incentives. Once video review for certain circumstances comes into play, a referee has every reason to just blow the whistle and let video sort it out momentous decisions. The trick is, the referee has to patrol the rest of the game relying entirely on his own judgment and, personally, I think the mindset of relying on video will bleed through

I’ll be the first to admit this makes for a two-step argument, but I think it holds, so here goes: the second greatest service that any referee can bring to any game is consistency in the way he/she calls fouls, and generally handles shit (The first greatest: barring violence from the game to the extent possible). It is my strong belief that anything that causes a ref to second guess himself undermines said second greatest service.

But enough of that…to the game!

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:

Timbers Ship Two Points North with Vancouver

Actually, I kiss your mom with this fucking mouth!

The ref for last night's game between the Portland Timbers and the Vancouver Whitecaps sure pissed off a lot of people. At least that's what I gathered last night from a glance or two at twitter. Otherwise, and per personal tradition, I haven't read a thing about that game that one time, when the Vancouver Whitecaps came to visit the Portland Timbers and took two points home with 'em. One goal each, one point each. Ah, what could have been...

Twitter also told me about Will Johnson's post-match red card. I’m guessing it was dissent that caused it (and, like most of you, I've exhausted my imagination as to what Johnson might have said, but, having read nothing, I know nothing, still), and a lot of Timbers suffered possession by the same evil spirit: Rodney Wallace a couple minutes before, and Liam Ridgewell as much as a half hour earlier. The ref did go a little weird from time to time – see, the wild sequence that started with Vancouver's Steven Beitashour splaying himself across Rodney Wallace's path, which didn't earn a call, and ended with the 'Caps Jordan Harvey lunging after a lost cause and into Diego Valeri's ankles/lower legs, which foul did earn a card...

...speaking of, this entire season will entail some amount of anxiety every time Diego Valeri gets clattered, yeah? No avoiding it? Damn. Anyway, Harvey earned all of that red, for me; Diego Chara, on the other hand, picked up a baffling yellow for a clean tackle. (NOTE: Goddammit! They quality of these "key moment" videos is really declining; replays revealed more.) Yeah, the ref was sort of all over. All the same...seriously, Major League Soccer fans really should have internalized the level of refereeing by now. The players need to get there, too, even as they have cause for alarm by way of their livelihoods being at stake. But that's another post for another day.

MLS Week 19: The Half-Rack (e.g 12 Thoughts/New Feature)

Still undecided. That's half a half of whatever, goddammit!

Well, I didn't promise promise I'd stay away from Major League Soccer. In fact, I think I've landed on something more satisfying than damn, dirty power rankings (not least because, as argued in the Week 18/Season End Rankings, I don't anticipate much meaningful change in terms of how MLS's clubs stack up against one another till the end of the season).

Time constraints being what they are, I sat through only condensed versions of every game in MLS for Week 19 (well, except Vancouver v. Sporting KC, which isn’t up, condensed-style, at time of writing). It looked like a great week based on those snippets, lots of goals, lots of bad defending, some wacky refereeing – i.e. one's daily diet of madness, basically. And huzzah!

Because branding is everything in these teenage years of the 21st century, I hereby introduce the Conifers & Citrus "Half-Rack": the 12 comments that came to me as I watched, in this case, all those condensed games. They're not talking points, even if as I view each of them as segues to larger conversations, and, ideally, I'll stray away from flagging the obvious. Even as I will sometimes fail, as when I point out that, holy shit, is that Sebastian Giovinco kid really goddamn good.

Last part to the preamble: was "half-rack" an East Coast or West Coast term? Not trying to start another rap war, but I spent enough time on both coasts, and have put enough mileage on my brain, that I can’t remember where I lived when friends (and, yes, family) asked me to "pick up a half-rack" on the way to this or that event, or when they just asked for a half-case.

At any rate, 12 Points, Comments, Ideas...Things unfold below...starting with a quick hit on my beloved, yet misbehaving, Portland Timbers.

MLS Midweek 3 X 5: Small Montreal's Mad Night and the Ballad of Eddie Johnson

Yea, let him fumbleth the ball.

Time to wrap up Major League Soccer's Week 7 with some deeper observations of trends, teams, and realities. Think I'll call it "MLS Week __, 3 Big Ideas, Five Small Thoughts." The goal is to add this to the weekly post rotation, which, happily, is finally taking shape.

Before getting into those, I do get in a little reading during the week, plus a couple podcasts. The insights I pick up in those readings serve as a nice corrective to my Divine Comedy/Rankings posts, which I very deliberately (or at least very deliberately intend) to post before taking in other people’s thoughts and opinions. It’s sort of an external bullshit detector. With that in mind, I’ll kick off this post with...

The Department of Corrections
Most of my blown calls reside where I do – e.g. the Pacific Northwest. First, Vancouver: a league-leading record and near-universal good opinion strongly suggests that my resistance to their early-2015 success has tip-toed into perversity. A couple podcasts (ExtraTime Radio's and SBI's) pointed out the obvious: in basic terms, the 'Caps play more conservatively on the road and open it up at home like, uh, all smart teams do; in other words, see the win over the Los Angeles Galaxy for their top-end and take keep those four road games (three of them wins) in perspective. Speaking of perspective, the Portland Timbers. My Portland Timbers. Why that win over New York City FC – again, "that win" - got me on the ledge (i.e. prompted me to "abandon all hope," as I did in the Week 7 Divine Comedy) I'll never know. Several people with a little more distance had the perspective to observe that a win, no matter how ugly, works like a savings account. Those three points your club barely earned will still be there if/when the results pick up because, say, a key player comes back from injury and gets the attack going, or maybe the defense full incorporates two new players in crucial positions. So, yeah, I got a little unhinged. The rare feedback I got (I don't get a lot) tells me I'm not alone in my frustration, but, yes, I over-reacted. To a win.

OK, on the main event!

MLS Referees: Blown-Calls and Big Boards

Uh...penalty? Offside? No, corner kick!

I'll admit it. I kinda like it when referees fuck up. Broad exceptions apply, of course – e.g. failure to dish cards to keep games from degenerating into brawls, and related lapses – but, an unjust red card, a penalty that even the "fouled" player hesitates to claim, a phantom offside call that denies your side a game-winner: all of those help jack up the drama. And, sometimes, bring the comedy.

And. like most normal people, I don't like referees; as with most authority figures, they're only likeable as the butt of the joke.

Per that preamble, let us pause to both celebrate, and meditate upon, the virtuoso slapstick sequence of blown calls made by MLS Pro referee Fotis Bazakos, in the course of "managing" New England Revolution v. Colorado Rapids last Saturday.

The highlight in question turns on a penalty denied to the Rapids (start watching about 2:40). Before reviewing the tape, keep in mind that Bazakos had awarded a penalty to the Revolution's Charlie Davies for a little bump in the box only minutes before (it's in the highlights, too). Now, tune in and count the errors: 1) missing a clear hand-ball with no meaningful hand-to-ball/ball-to-hand distinction, which should have stopped the play; 2) awarding the penalty kick for what looks like a pretty clear foul on Gabriel Torres, which should have stopped the play, besides giving the Rapids a much-needed bump on breaking their 2015 duck; and 3) finally stopping play upon noticing the linesman's offside flag and proceeding to call the play offside even though the offside infraction occurred after the penalty kick.

The aftermath didn't make the tape, but the whole thing started with Bazakos glowering dismissively at all the players pointing frantically at The Dicks' Big Board and pleading for reason and ended with the booking of Marcelo Sarvas, for his wholly reasonable dissent, and ejecting Rapids coach Pablo Mastroeni from the game for his less-well-reasoned escape from his technical area. That, my friends, is fucking up as art. It also provides a striking image of the referee mind and mentality.