The Calm in the Storm

The Portland Timbers have won 2-1 in St. Louis. It was a frantic, fast-paced game, but the iron resolve of Portland prevailed in the end. 

Both teams threatened in the first 20 minutes, but an early non-contact injury to David Ayala took the air out of the Timbers’ sails. Cristhian Paredes replaced him in an odd symmetry from the first St. Louis match, where Paredes got hurt early in the first half and was himself replaced. From that point on, St. Louis was dominant but couldn’t create any solid chances. The Timbers, with what little momentum they had, couldn’t create anything either. Zac McGraw ended up picking up a yellow card, which means he will miss next Saturday’s match against Austin FC. In terms of standout performers in the opening half, there really wasn’t any on either side. I guess you could say Eduard Lowen was getting into dangerous areas, but once again nothing came of it. 

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The biggest question entering the second half was how well Portland would handle the St. Louis pressure. The lads in green-and-gold ended up taking over the game. The question became when Portland would score, not if. Their golden chance came through Franck Boli, but he got tackled in the box by John Nelson. The tackle was clean, but Nelson’s handling of the ball afterward was not. Evander slotted home the resulting penalty cool as a whistle. Afterwards, St. Louis began to chase their equalizer, and finally got it after Tomas Ostrak made a run to the endline and played a ball right to Celio Pompeu’s feet. Pompeu slotted it home above Aljaz Ivacic, and CITYPark was rocking again. However, the Timbers were on a mission. More specifically, Yimmi Chara and Santiago Moreno were on a mission. Four minutes after CITY’s equalizer, Moreno played a wonderful ball to Yimmi, making his first appearance following his hamstring injury in the season opener. Himmi (I’m quoting the Timbers social media team, they are 100% correct) passed the ball into the back of the net from a difficult angle for the eventual winner. The remaining thirteen minutes saw St. Louis throw everything they had at Portland, but it didn’t matter. The Timbers have their first away win of the season.

The biggest takeaway from this massive victory is the demeanor of the team. Despite the crushing injury to Ayala in the first half, they kept the same level of intensity all the way until the final whistle. The defense in particular was outstanding. Steve Cangialosi (tonight’s play-by-play voice) couldn’t stop reminding the viewing audience that St. Louis led the league in goals scored. Well, even without their star striker, they still had plenty to offer in attack. The defense kept their shape throughout the entire match, and the goal the Raviolis scored was just well-worked and well-finished. The organization tonight was top-tier and it won us the match. Of course, goals win matches, and Portland’s attack continues to improve week after week. Evander kept his positive momentum, and the substitutes brought off the bench kept the energy going. As said by Giovanni Savarese in the postgame press conference: “I thought we put in a very mature performance. We had a plan in place, and we executed it. With this maturity, we can get good results.”

You might not be chronically online, but you could hear the complaints from St. Louis fans about tonight’s refereeing display. Most of that has to do with the penalty call. I’m here to tell St. Louis fans 2 things: PRO is just a bad organization and when a ref is bad he’s bad for both teams. Ismail Elfath certainly had a tough match to oversee, but there were multiple calls that could have gone either way (including a much more impactful call that I will get to later). They’re still new to the league, and if they were around in the Long Long Ago (2017) they probably would have been outraged that Baldomero Toledo was paid to referee games for a living. The refs are the refs, and St. Louis fans should be taking their anger out on a team that only managed one shot on target. 

Time to hand out the gold stars, and I have a few. Evander continues to put together good performance after good performance, and the team is slowly but surely getting on his level. As Yimmi Chara put it postgame: “He has a calmness that helps the team.” That calmness under pressure showed in tonight’s match throughout the entire squad. Yimmi himself had a wonderful return to the field, and will continue to earn more minutes. So far, Yimmi has 1g/1a in 59 minutes in 2023. He provides a massive spark to this team. Eric Miller is the first defender I’m going to mention, as he filled in admirably for Claudio Bravo. He drew 3 fouls and won possession 6 times while providing defensive solidity while Juan Mosquera bombed forward. An excellent start from the former Timbers U23 man. Mosquera was also great, and I don’t need to delve into how good he was. He is one of the most consistent players on this team, and he’s only 20. Santiago Moreno got better as the game wore on. Savarese said this on his young star in the postgame presser: “At some point he got tired but his second wind came in and he was phenomenal. He got to another level in the second half.” Yes, his finishing and decision making hasn’t reached the consistent level we saw last year. But it’s still relatively early, and he will keep progressing. It was interesting to see him move to the left following Yimmi’s entrance onto the pitch, and he did a lot of damage from that side of the pitch. Cristhian Paredes came in for Ayala, and ended up creating a team-leading 5 chances. There’s something different about him so far in 2023. He’s been a huge part of the attack in his appearances. He’s also developed chemistry with Evander, and that’s a huge plus. Zac McGraw is the last player on my gold star list. Besides a fairly consequential yellow (he got all ball, bad refs are bad for both teams) he is coming into his own as a potential Best XI-caliber center back in 2023. He plays with fearless abandon and he combines it with a fantastic ability to read the game. That yellow unfortunately means we will miss him next week against Austin, but he played his ass off tonight.

Tonight’s player focus belongs to Franck Boli. He is still gaining fitness, and he’s still lacking some sharpness. You can see the skill that he has. Strikers are very dependent on service, and that service will come. Don’t be impatient with him, because once he starts clicking he will be unstoppable. 

April has finally come to an end, and the Timbers can breathe a sigh of relief. The gauntlet that they just ran through is tough for any team to handle, much less a team with an injury list as long St. Louis fans’ excuses. It is worth mentioning that Dairon Asprilla did miss tonight’s match with a knee injury, and his status for the Austin match is uncertain. Unfortunately, it does look like David Ayala’s promising season was cut short tonight. You have to feel for the kid, and I wish him all the best in his recovery. The team as a whole is still getting healthier, no matter how hard it is for fans to believe that. Claudio Bravo also made his return to the pitch tonight after missing the Cincinnati match with a calf injury. I’ve already mentioned Yimmi, and Paredes seems close to full fitness after his hamstring injury in the first St. Louis match. The positives are hard to ignore if you tend to be negative about this team. The May schedule is incredibly favorable to Portland, with several home matches against struggling teams. Of course, this is MLS, so no game is a given. But the team seems to be clicking once again, and they will continue to get better with time. I feel like a broken record repeating that, but it’s true. Some will say that this is more impressive than the Seattle game, and I would say don’t compare them. Both are great wins in their own right. The Timbers have strung together three quality performances in a row. They are a good soccer team.

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