Playing Soccer is Hard Sometimes

It’s time to tick off a spot on our annual Timbers bingo card. Usually a loss in Texas will come, but this one is historically bad.

After Claudio Bravo gave away a pen in the 5th minute, there was no other option for this first half. By FIFA rules, a forfeit would've resulted in a 3-0 loss. Using that logic, the Timbers forfeited this game before the 15th minute. The Timbers responded by failing to complete passes and leaving themselves woefully exposed to free runners in the midfield. A 4th right before halftime was a deserved way for the half to end for the hosts.

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The second half started with 4 changes as the team shifted into a back three. Boli, Yimmi, Dairon, and Bravo came off and Mabiala, Mora, Blanco, and Miller took their places. While the team looked marginally better, they still were feckless in attack. The cherry on top for Houston was Steve Clark connecting with former Sounder Brad Smith for a long touchdown to give the Dynamo a devastating 5-0 victory. Jaroslaw Niezgoda was the final sub for the Timbers, but left the pitch 2 minutes after coming on with a non-contact knee injury. The Timbers finished the match with 10 men, but didn’t concede again. 

There are so many things that went wrong tonight in every phase of the game. Normally there are a few things I can take away, but this game is better left to the ash heap of Timbers blowout road losses. This is the worst one in 2023, and that’s saying something. I touched on the Timbers’ horrendous road form in my preview of this match, and now they’ve outdone themselves in the worst possible way. That 1-5-6 record away from Portland is now 1-5-7, but the record isn’t even the worst stat I could pull to illustrate just how bad the Timbers are when they’re out of state. While possession and xG can point towards how well a team is playing, goals have to be scored. In 13 road matches this season, the Timbers have only scored 9 times. That’s not good in any sense of the word. So that explains the one win, because the Timbers on average are getting shut out away from home. But that’s not the ugliest stat. 26 goals conceded in 13 road games. That is an exact average of 2 goals against per game on the road. Keep in mind that FOUR of those road games ended in 0-0 draws. So that’s actually 26 goals conceded in 9 road games, which is almost an average of three. The Timbers don’t just lose on the road, they emphatically die on the road. Those early season road results seem like ages ago, mostly because they are in terms of a soccer season. There have been new additions and the squad has gotten healthier. But this team hasn’t scored away from home since May in Kansas City. The problem with that is that one goal was buried by four goals for the home team. In the 5 road games since, the Timbers are 0-3-2 with a -8 goal differential. The total road goal differential in 2023 is -17. Pitiful. 

I also mentioned in the preview how the Timbers desperately needed to score the first goal. Unfortunately, Apollo blessed me with the gift of prophecy tonight.

Asking this team to find an equalizer of ANY KIND is a task that would make Satan shudder. This isn’t just limited to road games, but home games as well. In 24 MLS matches so far this season, the Timbers have scored a total of FOUR equalizers. The Timbers have been down a goal in 12 matches. To add further fuel to this disgusting dumpster fire, they have conceded consecutive goals within a 10 minute span SIX TIMES in 2023. LAFC away, SKC away, twice in Minnesota, and twice tonight in Houston. I would’ve included Atlanta away, but two Atlanta goals happened within 11 minutes, and I’m a stickler for my own rules. Including Atlanta, that means the Timbers are statistically more likely to concede again within 10 minutes in a road game than score an equalizer at ANY POINT DURING THIS SEASON. Their home games this season have been plagued by late winners from opposition teams, but aside from that Minnesota loss at home they tend to put up a fight until the final whistle. This team is generationally bad on the road in 2023. 

In the post-game press conference, Giovanni Savarese said every player and himself were to blame for tonight’s result. However, I thought Dario Zuparic made the best of a bad situation again. He definitely showed the most fight out of anyone on the pitch. However, Savarese has a lot to answer for tonight, and he knows it. In Thursday’s press conference, he stressed how the extended break gave him and his staff ample time to prepare for Houston in a tactical sense. So I’m going to break down each unit and how they collectively failed tonight.

This team’s attack is built from back to front, so I have to start with the defense before I can get into why the attack failed to do anything of note tonight. Houston was lethal in transition, as they usually are, because the backline failed to progress the ball. I thought Miguel Araujo would be able to show off some of his passing chops, but I can’t name a single noteworthy progressive pass that he made. Claudio Bravo and Juan Mosquera tried their hardest to get the ball forward, but this was the worst game I’ve ever seen from both of them. And they had two weeks to prepare for it. Bravo gave away the penalty early, which was a mind-numbingly bad tackle to even attempt. Mosquera kept getting caught higher up the pitch and left his side completely vacant for any Dynamo runner. Araujo proved that he isn’t suited to playing as a center back in a back four. I like his aggressiveness and his willingness to come off his line to try to make a tackle, but if he misses, there’s a city block of space behind him. Pretty OK if you have cover behind you, but one of those gambles led directly to a Houston goal tonight. I’m not worried about him in the long run, but he’s not a plug-and-play partner for Zuparic. Mabiala is still better suited for that, but Araujo had to make his debut tonight. Aljaz Ivacic has been the unluckiest man on the planet. For every single Houston goal, he was the last line of defense, and tried his hardest to prevent the goals. It seems to be a common theme that he’s been hung out to dry in games this season. Every single road blowout has come with him in net, and while he’s not entirely blameless, sometimes his backline just abandons him. I don’t know if that results in anything positive for David Bingham, but Ivacic is not completely at fault for a lot of these massive road losses. He’s still trying his best, and even if his attitude might rub you the wrong way, he’s still the best option the Timbers have at preventing goals. 

That’s a lot of words on the backline, but today’s match was lost in the midfield. Cristhian Paredes was given the armband and a new partner in Bryan Acosta. Diego Chara’s absence is always felt, but his suspension wasn’t the reason we lost today. It was incredibly easy to play through the Timbers’ midfield. At times, Houston would just carry the ball with no pressure up to the Timbers’ 18-yard box. Awful. They also couldn’t connect to the attack in any meaningful way. Both Paredes and Acosta didn’t have the energy they needed for today. It was Acosta’s debut, and he showed why he’s a backup option for games just like today. I don’t think today’s performance is indicative of his quality as a player. Just a bad outing at the worst possible time. Paredes was harsh on himself in his post-game interview, saying that he didn’t do the necessary jobs he needed to do as captain. He’s also not completely broken, but it was his worst performance of the season at, you guessed it, the worst possible time.

Moving on to the attack, and there was only one player who was on the field for the entire 90. Evander tried to get things going, but his rust was really showing. I thought he had a couple decent balls, but his corner kicks and free kicks were wildly off target tonight. I’m not concerned about him in the long run. Some are pointing out a possible attitude problem after a late scuffle following a hard (but clean) challenge in the dying minutes of the game. I see that as passion and not him losing his head. He’s been on the field during this entire awful match in the stupid hot Houston weather and couldn’t do his job to the best of his ability. It’s completely natural for him to get hot-headed, but I don’t think he was out of line. All the players who exited after the first half weren’t good. Dairon Asprilla and Yimmi Chara were both making bad decisions, but at least Franck Boli was hustling. His exit at halftime wasn’t as deserved as Asprilla or Yimmi’s, but I can understand Savarese’s thought process behind it. After halftime, the formation switched to a back three, and the Timbers looked a little more competent. Blanco was a breath of fresh air, even if he still had a bad game. Mora became invisible because the ball couldn’t get to him. Niezgoda, bless his heart, became the latest victim of Houston’s pitch. I can’t confirm how bad his injury is, but if you saw it, you know that he’s probably going to be out for a while. The attack continued to sputter, and chasing a massive deficit so early definitely did them no favors. To end these thoughts on the attack, here’s our shot map from tonight. None of these were on target.

Ultimately, you can’t plan for giving away a penalty in the first five minutes of a game. I would imagine that Savarese’s gameplan ran into challenge after challenge tonight, and he could only do what he thought was best. Playing down a man for the final 15 minutes after his last substitute got injured is just another cherry on top of tonight’s shit sundae. Many people are calling for his firing tonight. I understand those calls completely. Coming out of a two week break and losing 5-0 is a failure of all proportions. Questions will be asked at the end of the season, but now is not the time for it yet. I keep harping on the late-season run that he’s become known for, and that needs an entire season for it to happen. Do I expect it to happen? Not really. I do expect this team to be in the playoffs just based on talent alone. My expectations of a playoff berth haven’t changed and won’t change as long as there are 9 playoff spots per conference. None of these Western Conference teams around our points total are explicitly better than us. We are also not better than them, especially if we continue to bounce from catastrophe to catastrophe on the road. Another three match week is on the horizon. Two of those are at home, with Vancouver coming to town next Saturday and RSL visiting a week from this Wednesday. But the big one is coming on Saturday, September 2nd up north. The Seattle Sounders are REELING. They lost 2-0 to Atlanta at home tonight. That is the game that could decide our season. Until then, losses are not tolerable. It’s a shame that we are about to enter another really tough stretch of the schedule, but that’s the way the league set it up. Just have to win those games. That is a tough task coming off of any stinker, but tonight’s 5-0 loss is the worst one of Savarese’s tenure in Portland. I don’t think the locker room tuned him out, but I can’t conclusively rule it out either. Either way, it’s time to put this in the past and focus on what’s to come. It’s also time to follow my own advice and just end this.

We’re on to Vancouver. 

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