Timbers overcome several obstacles to earn 2 to 0 victory over FC Dallas

Our very shy cat, Lucy, decided to watch soccer. I think she liked it.

It's very rare when my regular work world and my Timbers work worlds collide, but sometimes it happens and there's not much to do about it. When I'm not sitting behind a computer or on a phone talking about Timbers soccer and providing what I hope is thoughtful insight, I work in the financial world as a IT business analyst. It's not glamorous work, but it pays the bills and in the many years I've been part of the company, I have experienced some nice perks along the way. Imagine my surprise, however, when I was informed that our new weekend release procedures involved me having to get up at 4 AM Sunday morning to manage my code migration. If you understand any or all of those words, congratulations; for those that don't, let's just say that I got asked to do something really technical when most folks are still dozing and dreaming about whatever. The fact that this fell on the same weekend as the Portland Timbers - FC Dallas home match was unfortunate, but upon chatting with my wife and reviewing the potential weather forecast, we decided the smart play was to cozy up at home and watch the game on the big screen.

The fact that the weather turned out to be no concern and the rain stayed away was annoying, but the situation did allow me to watch the Timbers broadcast crew in great depth as they covered an intriguing matchup between 2 of the better sides in the Western Conference. The last time the teams met back on April 29 in Texas, it was a back and forth slugfest that eventually ended in a 2 all draw; many Timbers fans will remember this match as one where Portland had leads at 2 separate times and eventually defensive lapses cost them the full 3 points. With both sides missing several players for international duty - Portland was without David Guzman (Costa Rica) and Darlington Nagbe (USA) while FC Dallas was missing Kelly Acosta and Matt Hedges (USA) and Maynor Figeroua (Honduras) - it came down to which side could execute better using a mix of rotational players and key reserves. For the Timbers, it also came down to several in match adjustments due to injuries that could have crippled their approach, but instead, the players rallied around the rejuvenated Fanendo Adi putting up another brace to post an impressive 2 to 0 victory in front of another Providecne Park sellout. 

Adi has been struggling but he broke out in a big way.

FC Dallas held Tesho Akindele from joining the Canadian National Team until after this match, so FCD Coach Oscar Pareja was able to team them up with regular wing Michael Barrios and recent addition Roland Lamah, who had a hat trick last week versus Real Salt Lake. With Victor Ulloa and Carlos Gruezo manning their usual defensive midfield roles, FC Dallas effectively had their first choice attack available. With Nagbe gone, Portland again turned to Dairon Asprilla to team up with Sebastian Blanco, Diego Valeri and Adi to form the quadrant of attack. Without Guzman, Timbers Coach Caleb Porter would turn to Lawrence Olum to pair with Diego Chara in the defensive midfield in front of center backs Roy Miller and Liam Ridgewell with Vytas and Zarek Valentin as the fullbacks. The majority of this group put forth an inspired effort at home against San Jose on June 3 to post a 2 to 0 win behind a Valeri brace, but this match brought forth far more challenges than those faced versus the Earthquakes: battling a club with a vaunted offense with 21 goals and 11 allowed in 13 matches, Portland facing 4 matches in 13 days that start and end with matches versus the Flounders, and Porter using 3 different center back combos to finish up the victory due to injuries.

In retrospect, this was the most complete team victory that I've seen from the Timbers because everyone contributed to the overall outcome in their own way. Much of the attention would be heaped upon Adi, who broke out of a mini scoring slump of 5 matches as he hadn't scored since that April 29th meeting in Texas. The massive striker registered his 13th brace of his Timbers career with goals in the 32nd and 72nd minutes that pushed his overall goal total wearing the Timbers crest to 49 goals halfway through his fourth season in the Rose City. Amobi Okugo created a turnover in the 32nd minute and fed Blanco with a great pass in motion, and the Timbers midfielder laid a pass to Adi on the left portion of the FC Dallas box, and the striker was able to toe punch the ball past FC Dallas goalkeeper Jesse Gonzalez to put the Timbers up 1 to 0. Adi added his second in the 72nd when the Timbers caught FC Dallas forward, and the foursome of Chara, Valeri, Asprilla and Adi were able to spring forward. Valeri sent Asprilla forward with a lovely diagonal ball to the right corner heading towards the North End goal, and Dairon was able to run onto the ball and launch a cross into the box. Chara executed a lovely dummy run that caught several FCD defenders flat footed, and the ball instead ended up with Adi and only a sprawling Gonzalez between him and goal. A simple tap in was enough to register the brace, but Adi had several other close efforts that could have made him the first MLS Timber to score a hat trick in the MLS regular season.

Zarek Valetin came up huge for the Timbers all night.

Focusing upon Adi, however, would ignore several other contributions. Asprilla, filling in for Nagbe, again executed flawless forward runs and provided some great offensive support in both halves, even after he and Blanco switched sides for the second half. Blanco was a warrior in pouring forward, and earned his third assist of the season for his efforts. Valeri was the orchestrator for the offense, and earned his team leading 5th assist on Adi's second goal although he didn't add to his goal scored mark, leaving he and Adi now tied in goals scored in 2017 with 8. Olum filled in well with Chara in the defensive midfield for the first 26 minutes of the match, but when Ridgewell had to leave for a leg injury, Olum moved to center back alongside Miller as Okugo replaced him in the center midfield. Okugo found himself moving to the backline in the second half when Miller, injured in a collision in the 1st half with Urruti where the former Timbers striker rolled up his leg, couldn't continue, and so Ben Zemanski came on for him in the 61st minute to push Okugo back to center back with Olum. While it was impressive to see Portland negotiate 3 separate center back tandems - Ridgy & Miller, Miller & Olum, Olum & Okugo - for the match, Chara worked seamlessly with Olum, Okugo and Zemanski to provide cover in the middle all night.

The Timbers also received tremendous support from their fullbacks, and if I had to choose men of the match, I would give the awards to Vytas and Valentin for their work. In the 22nd minute, FC Dallas got forward and Barrios found Lamah six yards from goal with a cross, and while Gleeson was able to deflect the shot away, it kept spinning towards the inner left post towards goal. Valentin, keeping his wits about him, was able to orient himself and clear the ball as it was nearing the goal line, thus keeping it from being a goal. This wasn't his only solid work as Valentin was able to keep the myriad of FC Dallas wings busy, but perhaps the best defensive work of the night belongs to Vytas. Barrios is quite simply a handful, and the fact that his influence was severely limited to a few meaningful crosses and two shots was impressive. FC Dallas only registered two shots on goal for the night, a figure that was one of their lowest of the season, but Portland was helped by the efforts of FCD substitute Cristian Colman, who entered in the 57th minute for Akindele. On two separate occasions, Colman had a clear path and shot on goal and on both efforts, Colman launched near vertical shots that weren't even close to being on frame.

2 matches, 2 clean sheets. Not bad.

Luck wasn't the biggest component of this result, as simply stated, Portland executed a tremendous team approach where they got meaningful contributions from their starters and bench. They cannot relish this result too much, as the team travels to Starfire Soccer Complex for their opening round U.S. Open Cup match on June 13 to play the Sounders FC. Portland is going with a youth approach for this match, calling up 9 members of the Timbers 2 side on short term loans to play in this date as Portland also faces 3 league matches within the next week - June 17 in Colorado to battle the Rapids, June 21 in Minnesota to play expansion side Minnesota United FC, and their second of three Cascadia Cup regular season dates with the Sounders in Portland on June 25. It doesn't get any easier as Portland travels to Kansas City to play Sporting KC on July 1 and the stretch ends on July 5 when the Timbers host the Chicago Fire before there is a break in fixtures. Nobody is going to feel sorry for the Timbers about the pileup in dates, but honestly, if Porter can elicit this type of effort each and every week, this group will be just fine.

Wednesday Analysis - Looking Back at Timbers v. Revolution

Darlington Nagbe dribbles. But does he shoot? (J.Kesgard)

Back in my days before sabbatical, I was responsible each week for a post about Timbers player evaluations. The original thought behind this was to drive thoughtful comments and discussion about player performance and thus have people visit the site regularly. Admittedly, it worked for a long time, especially when my scoring system was rather harsh in the beginning. I can look back on previous years of evaluations and determined that I made it nearly impossible to score a perfect 10, yet I gave several players a 1 for completely imploding. As I put many times in responses to interested parties, I'm only going off the observations from the match in general and I did my best to confine thoughts to a specific player and match, but that often proved difficult.

As much as soccer has tried to put analysis and statistics together in a way that makes sense, Bruce Arena was more right than he realized in his smug way (my judgement) that the only stat that matters in soccer is the score. In the nearly 10 years I've covered Portland in one capacity or another, I can point to dozens of matches where the numbers would show pure dominance with the exception of the score. Possession, passing completion, shots on goal, turnovers - those are all great numbers for a team to show a plan is working to create chances for a side, but it matters little if those chances don't create actual goals. For me, the most recent match against New England seemed to emphasize this point - the Timbers led in many statistical categories and I thought the team played very well in the first 30 minutes or so to garner a lead, but Portland undid the great work and eventually conceded the leveling goal off a glaring mistake. That's part of the nature of soccer - one of its greatest attributes but also one of the cruelest - is that a single play, a minuscule bounce or a a missed tackle can be the difference between a positive and negative result. While I think that's true in other sports to an extent, it's more prevalent in soccer because of the limited scoring chances, and I feel this is a result that the Timbers will look at and rue giving up points later in the year.

David Guzman drops the ball back to Roy Miller (J.Kesgard)

I'm not saying that to curse the team or throw unnecessary fire on the effort, but in a closely played match, the margin can be quite small and there's a ton of difference in earning 3 full points and gaining confidence at home versus earning 1 for a draw and then questioning the reason for the breakdown. My attempt in this segment and for future Wednesday analysis is to provide 3 things I liked about the Timbers' most recent match, 3 areas for improvement and quick evaluations for those that appeared in the match. Using the 5 point rule as a 5 player does his job on an average basis with nothing bad happening but nothing extraordinary either, I go on the 10 point scale from epicness to dumpster fire of ineptitude. I don't want to belabor performances in other matches either, unless I see a trend that is arching up or down accordingly, the scores are based upon my observations. While I've been at this for many years, I do realize that others will notice things and point them out, and I'm great with discussions as long as they are kept courteous, insightful and with backing facts or opinions to support the case.

Three Things I Liked: (1) Sebastian Blanco is my new favorite Timbers player.  I saw glimpses of what Blanco could add to the offense with his vision and pace during the Timbers preseason matches, but we didn't get a great extended look at Sebastian until the MLS season started. His ability to stay wide and force teams to defend the width of the pitch is impressive, but Blanco has been extremely steady at tracking back to aid his defense regularly. When the midfield wing can track back and help the defensive line and not get in the way, it's a huge asset for a team and Blanco excels at this. (2) Marco Farfan will make Caleb Porter's job very difficult soon, if not already. At 18 years old, I was mostly worried about completing homework, trying to find dates and contemplating my future in college, not chasing around professional athletes for a living.  Farfan is still completing his senior year at Centennial High School, but with Vytas injured and Zarek Valentin struggling slightly, the youngster has played 2 matches in defense and not looked out of place in either affair. For an organization that has struggled to find home grown talent and play them regularly, this is a huge win for Farfan and what T2 is doing for the whole organization. (3) Diego Valeri is playing on a completely different level from everyone else. We are witnessing one of the greats in MLS at the peak of his talent, and I couldn't be happier for him or the team at this point.

Marco Farfan was very good for the Timbers. (J.Kesgard)

Three Things I Didn't Like: (1) Where was Darlington Nagbe? I love Nagbe's game because there are few players that came move from box to box so fluidly and quickly with a soccer ball at their feet than him. But I also feel like he disappears at times, and we saw this version for most of the second half. I am not sure if this was due to being tired (2 home matches in a row with no subs), but it was a troubling trend (2) Why no subs? I've heard over and over about our improved depth and strength in the roster, and we've seen it to fill our side due to injury or absences before the match starts, but for 2 matches in a row, we played our starting 11 for the full match. I get this for Houston somewhat because everything was clicking, but when we were struggling for energy versus the Revs, perhaps a sub might have helped. (3) What Are You Doing, Jake? As a shot blocking goalkeeper, Jake Gleeson is one of the best keepers in MLS bar none. As for the other skills needed to be a top flight goalkeeper, Jake is middling at best. Versus the Crew, he made several questionable decisions to leave his line that contributed to goals for the other side, and the goal for New England was conceded when he failed to catch a shot or block it away from the middle of the goal. I get that the defense didn't help him at points, but at the same time, our keeper needs to be better in those situations.

Evaluations:

Jake Gleeson - 3:  Made several good blocks and punches at points, but distribution was spotty and spilling a ball in front of goal cost the team big time.
Marco Farfan - 9: My man of the match, Marco routinely kept Revolution forward Kei Kamara occupied while moving forward to help the offense. I'm still flabbergasted he's only 18 and hanging with MLS caliber players like it's nothing.
Lawrence Olum - 5: Did his job reasonably well without too many glaring errors.
Roy Miller - 5: I would like to mark him up for some offensive support, but it would be cancelled out by some marking errors and questionable positioning at points.
Alvas Powell - 6. If Alvas could even learn to put a cross in a good spot regularly, his career would skyrocket. Instead, we have a player that makes mistakes but covers them up with recovery speed.
Diego Chara - 4: While I talked about Nagbe being MIA, I thought you could say the same for Chara as well. I didn't notice his influence as much in this match, whether that was due to the Revs neutralizing him or Chara just being out of position, but he was more effective at certain points.

Nagbe was very good at passing, but not much else (J.Kesgard)

David Guzman 6: I liked his game and it would have been awesome for him to net another goal, but I did feel his effectiveness wasn't as good as we've seen in previous matches. Perhaps it was rushed passes or the midweek return after international play, but I thought we saw Guzman at about 70 percent. Still good, but not enough to completely control the midfield.
Darlington Nagbe - 3: See above.
Diego Valeri - 8: His goal was amazing, and he created lots of chances with creativity and pace. We are seeing greatness each time he takes to the pitch, and I'm just waiting to see what more he can do for this team each week.
Sebastian Blanco - 7: Did well for the limited chances that came his way, but did have issues linking passes to  others, but I credit New England with influencing this as much as anything.
Fanendo Adi - 4: Had his chances, but rushed more that a few shots on the day. A patient Adi is a dangerous Adi, and we like it when Fanendo is dangerous.
New England - 7: They played feisty and physical with only getting 2 cautions. Nobody got hurt and they earned a point late off a sloppy play by the Timbers defense. What's not to like from a road match where you get points?
Timbers - 5: Offense was solid in the first half, passive in the second; defense was able to stay organized in the first, and then got out of sync in the second half. The draw was disappointing, but it was likely the most fair result for both sides.
Snarktography - 10. The return of something really awesome? Okay!