Timbers 1-0 Real Salt Lake: On Date Night and Silver Linings

Hmm...Movsisystem what dear?

I'm going to start this post by stating that I am happily married.

My wife and I go on date night every week, virtually without fail. It's a good practice, keeps us closer, attuned to one another in a one-on-one setting, etc. Most nights we do fine, some nights we fucking kill it, while other nights, well, they don't go so great. Maybe one of us enjoys it while the other one doesn't (a shit night of bowling/pinball does that), or maybe neither of us enjoy it and we spend the night staring glumly at the TV mulling over whether to say the thing that's really on our minds. No, not the thing I read in Cosmopolitan while buying groceries. The deep stuff...

Last night, when I tweeted/alluded that the Portland Timbers 1-0 win over Real Salt Lake left me less than thrilled, that's the vein I'm tapping. Yes, the Timbers won, and yes, that's a good thing. Honest to god, I'm happy, because sometimes a team just needs the result, because what's that but the chance to do it better the next time? That only gets more true in the post-season, and the post-season's coming. And that's good, and that's bad. I mean, we all know this by now, right? Right?

But that's what made the whole thing, well, kind of a shitty date night. Yeah, the Timbers won, yeah, they ran the gambit of "c" words on the way to getting there – e.g. capable, competent, composed, corpulent, crispy, CONCACAF, etc. – but the Timbers made only two clear chances (all half-chances besides), and they buried only one of those, and that was against an RSL that didn't pull much together. There wasn't a lot of threat coming toward Portland's goal, and Portland didn't do a raging lot going the other way, so, yeah, it was the soccer equivalent of a mediocre dinner, a brief, unresolved argument about what to do after, and the whole thing ending with getting stoned and watching something funny enough till you both pass out. #Bliss

I'm going to start the deeper dive with RSL, because how badly they sputtered gets to why it feels hard to get excited about this, a home win (more later). If you put a hand to someone's forehead and he/she couldn't sort out how to get around it, that's about where RSL was for most of last night (more later). Part of it was rotation – e.g. the decision to spell Javier Morales by starting Jordan Allen, or giving Chris Schuler (very good when whole) the start over [?] – but it came up short. Even when the right guys got on the ball – e.g. Joao Plata, Juan "Burrito" Martinez, and Yura "Cheatin' Heart" Movsisyan – they couldn't get clicking cleanly enough to do damage. They had a couple shots, they might have even "come on late" provided one defines that loosely enough, but, the cleaner narrative points to last night's win as a case of the road team defending pretty well, only to fall victim to one fatal (shockingly slow-motion) slip.

Look, Portland won. And I am happy. See? I'm smiling. Right now, I'm totally smiling. Grinning, even.

MLS Snapshot, 09 06 2016: Small Week, Larger Conclusions

It was a shrunken weekend in Major League Soccer (THANK GOD!), which leaves me with fewer variables to wrestle into some kind of coherent shape. One thing, though, before getting into everything.

First, I'm only realizing now just how idiosyncratically soccer allows people to view it. While this applies to every sport (eh, who'm I kidding? We're special!!), soccer's wide open enough that it can be played just about any way one can imagine. I'm not envisioning a team winning the league playing a 9-1-1 or anything, so much as I'm pointing to almost infinite variables even within practical constraints of the modern game...and, ugh, nothing’s more tedious than someone saying, "you need X in the modern game." That’s nonsense, and ridiculous. We know this because someone always comes up with the next thing. Or they play something throw-back, like New York City FC did early in the season when they (allegedly) brought back the "W-M." (Did they really? Maybe. It was just something I read somewhere, but not there, but same point.)

Anyway, just tinkering with the layout this week. Starting with...

Week 26: Results That Mattered (In Brief)
No, it wasn't close - it was almost embarrassing by the end (poor, poor Ken Tribbett; see below) – but the bigger take-away from the Chicago Fire's 3-0 win over the Philadelphia Union is that Chicago's rounding into one of those end-of-season nightmares for any team pushing for the playoffs; New York City FC continued its swashbuckling rip through the Eastern Conference with DC United slashing scimitars at their butts in a last-gasp(-ish) 3-2 win; it was the details (see #8 below) of the Los Angeles Galaxy's 2-1 "goal-too-far" win that made the day so utterly depressing for Columbus Crew SC's fans; finally, the Colorado Rapids' flailingly impotent attack tells the tale of their 2-0 loss at the New England Revolution, but could it also tell the tale of a late-season collapse/early duck out of the playoffs?

The Results That, Honestly, No One But Their Fans Give One Wet Shit About
Vancouver Whitecaps 0-1 Red Bull New York (because Vancouver is cursed/hapless/awful)

There might have been another result in there...oh, never mind. It must not have been important (!!!). Anyway, moving on...

Downed by Dallas: Some Cheap Hope and a Remedy

I call it Plan P. You WILL remember!

I was able to believe that the Portland Timbers would find their way back into the game for quite a while. Until the 53rd minute, to put a number on it. That I felt like Portland had a chance against FC Dallas going in very likely had something to do with it; I mean, who doesn't want to see his/her hunches confirmed? And it's not like the Timbers didn't give people reason to hope: about five minutes after Dallas' opener a long ball from Liam Ridgewell found Lucas Melano over the top, who forced an error from Dallas 'keeper Chris Seitz, and one big enough to keep Dallas' defense dancing for a few full seconds. Even after Dallas raised the margin for victory to 2-0 at the very end of the first half, Melano meandered across the top of Dallas' attacking third, a move that, 1) threw off Dallas' defense and, 2) put him in position to later thunder a shot off the crossbar. It didn't go in, nor did Fanendo Adi's follow-up header. Still, think what drawing first blood in the second half could have meant to the contest. Or think what an answer to Dallas' first (soft) goal five minutes after it happened could have meant.

That paragraph above is loaded with a whole lotta what-might-have-been. Things felt decidedly over, sadly, once Walker "I Make 'O' Faces" Zimmerman blasted the ball over Jack Jewsbury's head and past Portland 'keeper Jake Gleeson for Dallas' third, final, and entirely sufficient goal in the ultimate 3-1 win (and with Steven Taylor clinging to Zimmerman's jersey like a damsel begging him not to leave). Zimmerman's goal launched the inquiry, basically, into what went wrong in Dallas this past Saturday.

I thought I had a pretty good narrative, one that I typed into my phone on the (long, almost interminable, really) train ride home. Those notes flagged details like a reminder of Portland's better days, back when the double pivot worked, germs of a theory on why Ridgewell and S. Taylor (goddammit, guys; sign fewer Taylors!) make for a lousy tandem, a belief that Dallas turned Diego Valeri invisible in the second half, and, finally, they argued that the Timbers have a "wing" problem. It all sounded very simple, basically.

MLS Snapshot, 09 01 2016: (Loose) Rankings, 10 Topics, Timbers v. FCD Preview

#Endorsed!

See what I did there? "Review" became "Snapshot," and instead of tying this post to Week [DON'T CARE!], I just typed in the date, today’s date. That one little change just freed me to post on MLS without thinking about the day of the week. I’ll still try to avoid stale content...just less neurotically.

Uh, what else? Generally, I won't talk much about specific results, not unless my timing lands just right, or if there's something that I didn't see or hear someone else pick up on (in my incredibly infrequent forays into the news) (A choice that totally rules out bringing up (for long) Toronto FC’s Game of Total Loss v. the Montreal Impact (see injuries) – but, while we're here, I think they'll weather it; Toronto survived Giovinco's scoring drought and Jozy's back besides; I think they're a little likelier for the Shield than they are for MLS Cup). In the end, I think most games possess a certain je ne sais quoi, res ipsa loquitur, so it's best to just assume that most people have clocked the results and watched all the videos they're going to by the time they find me. By and large, I want this to be a space for stretching the envelope (too far), conflating small data points into burgeoning trends, and Magical Thinking (e.g., creative, and ultimately pointless, leaps).

I'm kidding. I do my best to stay grounded, but I really do love playing with puzzle pieces, even the ones I can't actually get my hands on. With that in mind, here's what I hope, pray, and shall hereafter strive to achieve in these Snapshot posts:

Portland Timbers 4-2 Seattle Sounders: On the (Cleverly Disguised) Road Ahead

Wait...did they just score again?

I was lucky enough to get a late invite to today's game, and I couldn't be more thankful (thanks, anonymous person! You're the best!). I mean, how often does one get to live 45 minutes of happy incredulity, one of those moments where one can have a dozen coins in a row land on heads, and without being Professor Barnhouse?

It was a fascinating sequence, really: first, Vytas Andriuskevicius' goal eased the anxiety; Fanendo Adi's goal evidenced signs of the entire team's commitment, and, no less crucially, his; Lucas Melano scoring the third foretold either his personal redemption or the breaking of the sixth seal...wasn't entirely clear on that one; but, when Steven Taylor scored Portland's fourth goal and while standing on his feet, that's when a fog of sassified complacency sank onto the field to mingle with the afternoon heat.

To remind/inform, as the case may be, "sassified" comes from Clarence Carter's epic Strokin' (seriously, if you don't know this song, hit that link) and, as Urban Dictionary reminds us, it "[describes] the feeling following magnificent sexual gradification (sic)." (Guys, c'mon: it's "gratification". Does anyone even edit your copy?))

Things were going swell, I was smoking a cigarette, musing at the ceiling, etc., when a funny thing happened. That would be the Seattle Sounders scoring their second goal. Sure, there was one before that, but, in my state of bliss, that one only felt like Steven Taylor scored two goals on the day, one of them a helper for a brutally beleaguered opposition. When the Sounders scored that second goal, though, something changed. I haven't mentioned this yet, but I watched the game in the midst of Seattle’s fans. And, holy shit, does your body react when what you want to happen is the absolute opposite of what everyone around you wants to have happen. Put it this way, it borders on fight or flight, only without the irrationality.

The game ended 4-2 to the Portland Timbers in the end. After Jordan Morris nodded home from an unacceptably open space far too close to Portland's goal (and with Nicolas "Freakin'" Lodeiro  standing ready to play in the pass in the middle of a pasture with enough time to contemplate the meaning of his shot for each of the world's religions), the Timbers took a deep breath, re-centered, and like any good team (*****), they proceeded to play cool, possession soccer with an eye to bleeding the stamina out Seattle's legs.

Timbers Top SKC: Holding Together the If/Then Equations

Hold on...making my point when this cuts through a tomato cleanly.

Thoughts going in: big game for the Portland Timbers, and with a stubborn, and stubbornly ugly opponent between them and all three points.

What Happened
Until Diego Valeri slammed home his one-touch rising rocket past Alec Kann, this game had goal-less, go-home-frustrated afternoon written all over it. It looked all but certain, in fact, around the 30th and 35th minute: when the Timbers’ Diego Chara got sent off for a stupid piece of frustration stupidly early in the game (12th minute, Diego; how did you get that pissy in that little time?), that left Sporting KC 78 minutes to do the laboring lover thing – e.g. 78 minutes of fairly useless groping that impresses no one. And pleases no one.

The Hell of it was that Portland really needed those three points. With that thought merely in play, season-turning moments attached to Chara’s red card. As much as Portland looked like they could stop KC from scoring all day long that still left them needing to score against a defensively aggressive team and without an equal number of options for pushing the attack. Unless I’m not totally clear on Major League Soccer’s tie-breaking procedures and/or codicils, and those codicils’ various sub-codicils, the resulting (implied) draw would have left the Timbers even on points with the Vancouver Whitecaps, but still on the wrong side of the lush, red velvet rope that, in MLS, as with everywhere else in the world, separates member of polite society from the relatives that members of polite society never mention and who they would just as soon forget.

As it happened, KC’s Soni Mustivar went in dumb ‘n’ reckless against Valeri’s (I think) right leg, a moment that went from yellow to red – and correctly. The one thing I can’t figure out: was it just a few words and a stern look from Adi that made that happen? I swear Baldomero Toledo went from front pocket to back in the split second that Adi glowered at him...so, what does Adi have on him? Regardless, I found both red cards perfectly justifiable. More to the point, karma/shit balanced out in the end, so...we’re good, right?

The Portland Timbers And Their Eternal Transition. And Sporting KC.

AAUGGH! Connor Hallisey!

[Each week I (try to) watch three full, 90-minute games. And I write ‘em up. Part 2 of 3, for Major League Soccer’s Week 21.]

Why This Game? Because I watch the Portland Timbers every time they play. Sporting Kansas City just sort of tagged along...

And the reports that feature the Timbers games will wind up giving somewhat short shrift to their opposition, but I will try to give those teams at least some of their due.

On the Result

“Yeah, yeah, they almost just scored. I still think that watching Sporting KC attack is like watching a toddler paint.”
- Conifers & Citrus Official Twitter feed during the game

“what does that say about the Timbers then!?”
- ik3, some hours after the game.

Just about everything you read below weaves in, out and between of the above exchange. I honestly don’t think that much of SKC, a strappingly, stupidly stoned-on-athletics team that only hits the broad side of the barn because they run headlong and relentlessly into the people standing between them and the barn. They’re unsubtle, inaccurate and, to my mind, mostly containable...and yet, there but for the grace of Jake Gleeson, the Timbers barely contained them. Portland came very close to forcing a draw at the end – twice, too – but they owed that opportunity to Jake Gleeson, the man who parried a ten-minute shelling with everything up to and including an artless flail-slap. The game ended at 1-0 to Sporting, and it's har...rather, it's pointless to argue with that.

Even if they got an assist or two from Good Fortune – more on this in the section below on SKC –the Timbers didn’t cough up naked chances all day or anything, and the team played all right in a broad sense. I don’t mind the goal that won it: Amobi Okugo was in reasonably good position, Jacob Peterson just got the better read on the ball, and hence contact, hence goal. And Portland’s late chances were good; Jack McInerney’s attempt would have been the more satisfying finish (is that citrus?), while Fanendo Adi’s felt like the surer, if graceless, chance (no easy to find video; sad!). Lucas Melano’s brain-freeze returned, so the Timbers lost a couple promising chances, but, all in all, the team created chances and they defended all right...and I’m pleased that the Timbers held their ground against one of MLS’s more brutish teams. And there it is, an unremarkable and acceptable result in every sense except the missing points and timing. The Timbers have only eleven games left to get everything rolling on the right track (or 15 games if you view the Timbers’ upcoming CONCACAF Champions’ League games as chances at figuring their shit out as opposed to a program designed to fatigue your team’s players). That puts a pretty simple question in play: how close is Portland to getting everything rolling on the right track? I’ll get to it...first, let’s look at SKC.