Timbers Win 0-0 in Salt Lake City

After a lengthy weather delay, the Portland Timbers drew (won) 0-0 in Salt Lake City. Since I attended this match, I would first like to do a review of Rio Tinto Stadium (no, it has no other name). 

Since I was still running on Portland time, I got to the stadium an hour earlier than I wanted to. Due to my scrambled time management, this meant I had an extra long opportunity to explore a rather underrated MLS stadium. When I was last there in 2016, there was a car drop-off lane right in front of the stadium entrance. Recently, they put in a little matchday plaza, filled with food carts and fun activities. It seems like they are really catering towards children and families. The food options were pretty good. I got a big bowl of Hawaiian food for 15 bucks with tax, and it wasn’t necessarily mind-blowing but it was definitely 15 dollars worth of food. Value is the key when it comes to stadium food, in my opinion. Especially with crazy concession prices so commonplace in this country. There really isn’t a bad seat in the house. The open-air ends of the stadium are very wide, so it doesn’t feel crowded. I am also going to take this opportunity to talk about TRAX, Salt Lake’s light rail network. It provided good accessibility to the stadium and is definitely my choice of transport to getting there. But there are also some very big negatives to Rio Tinto. Having an in-house DJ controlling the audio system is pretty commonplace in MLS, but JESUS CHRIST is it loud. The speakers are pumped up all the way and anyone in a half-mile radius can sing along to what the DJ is playing. The weather delay probably exacerbated my disdain for their DJ, as I got a massive headache after listening to 3 hours of nonstop deafening music. Now let’s talk about the atmosphere once the match actually started. There wasn’t a massive amount of Timbers fans in the away section, but what made it even more peculiar were several families seated behind us. Apparently, RSL had sold some of the seats to a school group. I can’t even begin to explain how wrong that is. Those were children, and everyone knows we eat children. Plus, a security guard came over to us several times for the naughty language we were using in our cheers. Apparently “you’re so shitty it’s unbelievable” is ban-worthy in Salt Lake. In addition, several home fans seated below us seemed to get upset that we would actually chant and cheer for the team that we paid money to go see. Real Salt Lake also has a pretty decent fight song (yes, I would call it a fight song) but they blast it on the speakers so you can’t hear any of the fans sing it. All their stadium PA needs to do is play the tune karaoke-style with lyrics on the video boards so fans can sing along. Unfortunately, you can’t hear any of the fans actually sing because the lyrics on the PA are so loud. RSL has been around for a very long time. Most fans probably already know the song, so let them sing it. Just a massive missed opportunity there. As a result, Rio Tinto Stadium boils down to a pretty manufactured environment that caters to families and children. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not a must-do away day. Unless you like to screw around with people who obviously don’t get the joke. 

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Onto the actual match, which featured both teams coming oh-so-close to breaking the scoreless tie that was the eventual final score. Giovanni Savarese started the same lineup he did against Vancouver, and he was probably expecting similar attacking prowess. The biggest question I have about this game is the weather delay. When the bad weather started rolling in, both teams were in their initial warmups. Players had just gotten warm, and then had to go shelter in their locker rooms while a miniature typhoon swept through the Salt Lake Valley. Two hours after they left for the delay, they kicked off. They did return to warm up a little bit, but the first bit of this match showed a lot of that rust. RSL had the more dangerous chances, but a masterful display from Aljaz Ivacic kept Portland in the game and secured this point. He made several key saves, including a quick reaction save in the first half that deserves Save of the Week honors. This was also Ivacic’s first clean sheet of the season, so I will give him Man of the Match honors. The whole back line was incredible, especially Claudio Bravo. Him and Juan Mosquera both did push up at the same time, but his early pressure off of turnovers kept RSL pinned in their own third rather than launching a counter. With the attack out of sync, limiting the Monarchs was the most important thing Portland could do to secure a result. Both Diego Chara and Cristhian Paredes also had great games. Paredes in particular was good in both the attack and in defense. His tackling ability has improved so much. He led all players with 4 tackles, and most were in his own box. Of course, there were a couple scares, but no goals conceded is no goals conceded. Especially in a midweek game with the same back four and central midfield starting. I really thought Noel Caliskan would make an appearance, but the eventual shift to a 4-3-3 put Evander back into the 8 role. Outstanding discipline and organization from the defense tonight. 

Many people will say that tonight was a winnable game. They are correct. However, that weather delay had a major impact on the attack. Both Evander and Santiago Moreno were trying to create chances, but for the entire game the attack was out of sync. Franck Boli in particular was off the pace. He did have a couple nice balls, but at no point outside of a Dairon Asprilla shot did I think the Timbers were scoring. RSL was also dealing with a largely out-of-sync attack, but their strategy of line-breaking runs was more effective than what Portland was doing. Evander continued to lead the counters, but there really wasn’t any point where he acted with urgency in a counter-attacking situation. Both exhaustion and altitude can be blamed for that, but it’s still something he needs to work on. 

There really isn’t much else to take away from this game. A midweek match at a tough place to play was always going to be a hard mountain to climb, but the Timbers definitely put together a solid performance. For those who watched on Apple TV, this must have been a very boring match. It wasn’t particularly exciting in the stadium, but I paid 9 dollars per ticket to get in. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

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