Derby matches between the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders always have an extra dimension, but it wasn’t enough to motivate Portland.
The Portland Timbers are keen on giving struggling teams a lifeline this year, as in recent weeks, San Jose, Atlanta, Montreal, and now the Seattle Sounders have picked up all points against the struggling Timbers.
Seattle managed to get three precious points against their Cascadian rival, after enduring their own difficult spell. With back to back wins and some favorable matches in the near future, the Sounders may have jump started their season after a disappointing start to their title defense.
You’re not in a slump
In a now viral interview, Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds said, “You never admit you’re in a slump.”
Whether or not Caleb Porter has seen the video where Rose discusses the six things for a batter to do when in a “lull”, he has certainly taken a similar stance with his Timbers now.
Caleb Porter said in the post game interview that, “It’s undeniable to me that we were the better team on the day.”
The stats back him up, as the Portland Timbers more than doubled the Seattle Sounders eight shots with 19. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however. The Timbers also had nine attempts off target and seven blocked shots, meaning that only three were on target.
“You look at every category, you know, in terms of chances, in terms of possession, in terms of…everything, every metric you want to measure, you know, we were the better team.”
Porter’s right: every metric that we use to calculate the game from a statistical standpoint indicates that the Timbers were as good or better than the Sounders in every area of the field.
Every metric, except for the one that matters most.
Minor tweaks, not wholesale changes
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In the aforementioned Rose interview, the former batter indicated that reinventing himself was never an option. Instead, both he and Porter believe in minor adjustments.
“This was the best that this team has played here,” Porter told the media after the game. “That means not a lot needs to change, we just need to make a few more plays.”
Certainly, there were a lot of plays that went unmade and unfinished. The Timbers conceded early, in just the 4th minute, when Seattle Sounders defender Chad Marshall deflected a corner kick to Christian Roldan. Despite Zarek Valentin holding him in a WWE style grapple, Roldan nodded home.
At the other end of the pitch, Portland forced Stefan Frei into some fine saves, and Diego Valeri was agonizingly close to finishing a sublime cross from Sebastian Blanco. As they say, however, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
This result has been the most dangerous that the team has looked in nearly a month, so there are positives to take away from the loss, despite how tired fans are of hearing that phrase. While the Timbers were wasteful with their chances, the chances were coming thick and fast, especially in the first half.
There’s a progression to all things: we crawl before we walk, we walk before we run. The same is true in soccer. We pass before we create, we create before we score. The Timbers were more creative, and while not necessarily the more dangerous of the two teams, Portland was pretty good at breaking down a very deep defense.
Looking forward
The Timbers’ luck last week in Montreal also carried over into this game. With two penalty appeals denied—one blatant, the other arguable—and two players elbowed in the head, any one of those decisions being called in favor of the Timbers changes the story of the game.
That’s not the story that the teams wrote, however, and it’s now a page in the history of dreary results on the season.
This stretch has been one of the hardest of the Timbers’ season, but things won’t get much easier: Darlington Nagbe and David Guzman will both miss several games because of national team duty. Couple that with the fact that the Timbers now have to welcome both San Jose and FC Dallas before a midweek matchup in the Open Cup against Seattle and that difficult stretch doesn’t seem to end.
One of the major issues for the Portland Timbers so far this year is their propensity to either leak or hemorrhage goals. So far, Portland has only kept one clean sheet, against the then-struggling Galaxy in March. The Timbers’ inability to get a deal for a new starting center back done during the primary window only compounds that frustration.
While Portland will have to wait until after July 10th to see the mysterious new center back suit up, they can announce the trade whenever the paperwork goes through, per MLS rules. Regardless of when the new player signs, the Timbers will need to muddle through with some key absences for the foreseeable future. An early season surge had given the Timbers some wiggle room prevented them falling too far down the table during this dire run, but in order to stay above the red line, they’ll need to pick up points.