Rose City Review
The Portland Timbers claimed their third win in a row on Sunday night, taking down the Vancouver Whitecaps 1-0 at Providence Park in what was nominally a road game. An early goal followed by 85 minutes of tension and missed Vancouver chances were evocative of the Timbers’ Wednesday win against the Seattle Sounders, despite 6 changes to Giovanni Savarese’s starting XI.
The Portland Timbers came into Wednesday night’s match against the Seattle Sounders just three points behind the Western Conference leaders, but left it in joint first place after a stout defensive performance and an opportunistic goal saw them win out 1-0 at Providence Park.
The Timbers started the match on the back foot, absorbing pressure from the Sounders in the opening minutes and fending off a series of corner kicks from the visitors.
As has often been the case in this fixture, however, the team that started the match on defense was able to get forward in transition. After keeping the Sounders from any clear chances for 13 minutes, the Timbers pushed forward and snagged the opening goal on the counter.
A long ball from Dario Župarić, knocked down by a Seattle defender, fell to Jeremy Ebobisse in the attacking half. In the gap between the Sounders midfield and backline, Ebobisse played a weighted pass through the defense for a cutting run from Yimmi Chará into the box. Arriving at the ball ten yards from goal, Y. Chará was able to get a touch to it as Sounders keeper Stefan Frei rushed off his line, poking the ball forward and into the net for the 1-0 lead.
The Sounders came close to finding the equalizer in the 21st minute when a deflected ball fell to striker Raúl Ruidíaz in space in the attacking end. Looking up, Ruidíaz picked out Steve Clark well off his line and, with the Timbers keeper back-peddling, went for a chipped shot into the open goal. The ball arched past the desperate waving of Clark, but was not on target and bounced just wide of the frame.
Chances continued to come for the Sounders as the half progressed, with a number of dangerous balls into the Timbers box forcing the Timbers to scramble in order to maintain their lead. But, despite 11 first-half shots from the visitors, the Timbers were able to go into the half still up 1-0.
The second half continued with a physical tone as both teams looked to disrupt the attacking flow of their opposition. The testiness was typified by a 55th-minute flashpoint when Pablo Bonilla dragged Ruidíaz to the ground by his shorts in the Sounders end and the Seattle designated player responded by lashing out and kicking Bonilla in the leg, resulting in yellow cards for both players.
Chances continued to come for the Sounders through the second half, but few were clear-cut as they faced a packed-in Timbers defense. Despite regular forays forward, the Timbers were able to consistently return to their defensive shape and avoid giving the Sounders any good looks.
As the match ground on and the Timbers maintained their lead, Seattle increasingly through numbers forward and left gaps at the back, inviting the Timbers to break out in dangerous fashion. Although the Timbers were able to get forward regularly in the final minutes of the match, no more goals were on offer for either side.
The Timbers are away against the Vancouver Whitecaps on Sunday at Providence Park. Wait. What?
When I went to watch minor league baseball as a kid (let’s go Ems) they used to play this very corny song before the games which, for some reason, came to me vividly today as I waited for the Thorns to kick off. I think I had the thought, “wow, what a beautiful day for soccer,” and it took hold from there.
It was, honestly, perfect. It was the ideal temperature, the sun was shining off the turf, Prince was blaring from the speakers. I think the ball game song also captures the kind of borderline-unstable giddiness that results from going to do one relatively normal thing after six months of not doing anything normal. The singers sound faintly like someone is physically forcing them to enjoy things as much as they are, but believe me when I say the fun feels just as good regardless of whether it’s being forced upon you. First takeaway: soccer games are really great and I can’t wait for you guys to get to go to them again. Some of my other takeaways are below.
The Thorns made a powerful statement as they filed onto the field before the game, which I assume they’d been planning for what was supposed to be a nationally televised game against the Reign last weekend:
Breonna Taylor. Say her name.#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/cJmr9OPyZw
— Portland Thorns FC (@ThornsFC) September 20, 2020
“[159] days ago, Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, was fatally shot by police officers of the Louisville Metro Police Department. There has not been an arrest of her killers.”
The three Black players on the Thorns roster wore shirts reading “I am Breonna Taylor,” and the last two players onto the field wore the words “please vote.” The display echoed statements by WNBA players.
Two Thursdays ago when the Thorns held what was supposed to be their pre-OL Reign press conference, Emily Menges mentioned that one positive of the Fall Series is that the team gets to address some of the issues they had during the Challenge Cup right away. One of those issues was goal scoring. In Utah, the Thorns had just three goals in six games—the same number they scored in 90 minutes today. After today’s win, Mark Parsons noted that this swing isn’t quite as extreme as it looks on the surface: in Utah, the offense was better than that number made it look, and today, the attack improved, but not as drastically as you’d think from the scoreline.
For the most part, a lot of what worked well at the Challenge Cup worked well today, too. Except for a couple moments in the second half where they almost got caught in transition, the defense stayed organized. The basic concept of the midfield diamond is still a good fit for the available players. But Utah, spending much of the game defending low, was mostly able to limit Portland through the middle of the field, forcing them to play wide through Meghan Klingenberg (who was excellent), with Lindsey Horan and Christine Sinclair often popping up in wide areas, too. They didn’t often succeed in attacking centrally.
This is fine if it works, which it did today. It has to be said, though, that this is a tough time for the Royals. We learned on the broadcast today that head coach Craig Harrington had been placed on “a leave of absence” after the ongoing investigation in the wake of Dell Loy Hansen’s departure from the club turned up evidence he had made inappropriate comments to staff members. Amy LePeilbet has been serving as interim coach. Dealing with that, on top of the existing fallout around a reportedly racist, sexist team culture, has to have affected this team, and I’m not convinced this Thorns offense would pull the same thing off against a more organized opponent.
When I talk about being subjected to fun, this is what I mean:
.@SimoneCharley, a mood 😤
1-0 | #PORvUTA
Tune in now on @Twitch.#NWSLFallSeries | #VerizonCommunityShield pic.twitter.com/J8q0f26q6C
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) September 20, 2020
Hook this straight into my fucking veins. This is what I need to survive the winter.
On a more serious note: first, let’s just appreciate how much Simone Charley has grown in the last three years. She’s always had the guts and the desire to dribble, but she’s finally at the point where she can do this in a game and get away with it. As Parsons pointed out postgame, that’s all down to two seasons of relentless hard work, one of them unpaid.
Second, let’s step back and think about what this means for the team. The mythical goalscoring forward has long been prophesied for the Thorns, but never quite seems to materialize. Caitlin Foord and Ana Crnogorčević both disappointed in that sense. In Charley, they now have a player who’s just as hard-working as her predecessors but also capable of taking defenders on the dribble, both to open up space and take shots herself. Crucially, she also has a nose for goal. She’s still building consistency, but she just keeps getting better.
Speaking of goalscoring forwards: Sophia Smith!
It took six months longer than it should have, but the rookie finally made her professional debut, and she lived up to the hype. She scored just three minutes after subbing in for Charley, a gorgeous header off a recycled corner kick.
Everything I just said about Charley applies to Smith too, except at age 20 she’s already a polished professional-level player with a gorgeous touch and exceptional vision and decision-making. Smith could turn out to be the best Thorns acquisition since Lindsey Horan. Get excited.
The Portland Timbers brought home all three points from Saturday night’s road match against the San Jose Earthquakes, dissecting their hosts in a game that finished 6-1 to the good.
The Timbers started the match looking energized, taking advantage of the fresh legs in Giovanni Savarese’s starting XI to put the Quakes under pressure from the opening whistle. That pressure nearly paid off early on, as the Timbers were able to quickly create several chances off turnovers—including a Jeremy Ebobisse shot from the top of the box in the third minute that skipped just wide.
As things settled down into a pattern of fouls and disrupted passes, the Timbers lost some of their early advantages, but soon found a new avenue of attack through Bill Tuiloma and Julio Cascante carrying the ball forward from their positions at centerback and forcing the Quakes to lose their marks in order to step out and confront them.
With the match once again opening up for the Timbers, the visitors were quickly about to find a pair of back to back goals in the span of just three minutes.
First, in the 25th minute, off a corner kick Cristhian Paredes fought for control of the ball at the top of the San Jose box with Shea Salinas. In an attempt to touch the ball past the Quakes defender, Paredes popped the ball up into the air only for it to strike Salinas on the arm. Referee Rosendo Mendoza had no hesitation in blowing his whistle and pointing to the spot, and, despite the protestations of the Quakes, his call was upheld by the video assistant referee.
Diego Valeri, back in the XI after staying on the bench for the Timbers’ midweek draw against San Jose, stepped up to the penalty spot and hit a low, hard shot to the tight of Daniel Vega, beating the Quakes keeper for the opening score.
Just two minutes, later the Timbers were once again back in the attacking end, and again they struck in the aftermath of a spot kick—this time a free kick served in from long distance by Diego Valeri that was not properly cleared. After the ball was headed away from the box, Paredes played it back to Jorge Villafaña in space, and the Timbers fullback hit a curling cross into the box. As the ball dropped at the back post, Ebobisse rose up above the crowd and hit a skipping header off the pitch that bounced off the pitch and past Vega before nestling into the back of the net.
Of course, it would not be a Timbers game without opposition chances late in the half.
A pair of chances for the Quakes called Aljaž Ivačič into action during his first start for the first team. First, a chipped ball into the Timbers box found Carlos Fierro lurking between Cascante and Tuiloma for a snap header from inside ten yards. Ivačič was equal to the moment, though, and came up with a fantastic reflex save to palm the ball away before sticking out a leg on the follow-up shot to deny Nick Lima as well.
In the 44th minute, however, the Quakes opened their account. A low cross from Salinas out wide on the Timbers’ right found the run of Fierro entering into the box. The Quakes midfielder took the ball in stride, hitting a swerving first-time shot that blew past the dive of Ivačič and splashed into the back of the net to pull the scoreline to 2-1.
Early in the second half, the Timbers reclaimed their two-goal lead. In the 58th minute, Diego Chará pounced on a loose ball in the Quakes’ end and cut an angled ball back toward the top of the box. As a group of players scrambled toward the ball, it was the late-arriving run of Valeri that got the Maestro to the ball first. Valeri hit the ball on the run, powering a shot into a crowd of defenders that pinballed off two pairs of legs before wrong-footing Vega and rolling over the goal line to put the Timbers up 3-1.
The Timbers further extended their advantage in the 70th minute when they capitalized on another moment of confusion in the Quakes’ end. After a turnover deep in the San Jose half, Ebobisse got on the ball at the top of the box and, after creating space for himself on the dribble, hit a low shot along the turf that forced Vega into a diving save. The San Jose keeper got a hand to the ball, but it was Yimmi Chará who was first to react, dashing forward past the Quakes backline and tapping home a side-footed shot from point-blank range.
As the match wrapped up, the Timbers grabbed another. After D. Chará took the ball into the corner and was fouled in the 85th minute, Valeri stepped up to the free kick and served an out-swinging ball into the box. The service was perfectly weighted for Cascante, who had pushed forward for the opportunity, and the Costa Rican center back outjumped his defender to put a nodding header down off the turf and past Vega for goal number five.
Now facing a thoroughly demoralized San Jose side, the Timbers scored their sixth in the 87th minute to close the match out. A string of passes through the Quakes end carried the Timbers into the box and it was D. Chará who played a square ball into the path of Jarosław Niezgoda ten yards from goal. Jarek swept a shot forward that deflected off a defender and over Vega for the final goal of the night.
The Portland Timbers went to California with the upper reaches of the Western Conference within striking distance, but left stuck in seventh place after another disappointing performance saw them stumble into a 1-1 draw against the San Jose Earthquakes. Despite going up a goal in the first half, by the end of the match, the Timbers looked lucky to be bringing anything home at all from their trip down south.
Despite starting Sunday night’s match on the front foot, the Portland Timbers were sent reeling by LAFC late in the first half and never recovered, losing 4-2 to the Californian side.
Playing on the conspicuously wet field at Banc of California Stadium, both sides seemed hesitant in the early going. While the Timbers weathered some early pressure from LAFC, they were soon able to settle into their familiar low defensive block, leaving the more adventurous play to the home side who had struggled to score in their previous two matches.
Chances were scarce for both sides until the Timbers opened the scoring in the 25th minute. After running on to a ball down the left flank, Diego Valeri cut a pass back to the top of the box where Felipe Mora was lurking. Rather than taking a shot into a pack of defenders, Mora spun and continued the progress of the ball across the field, rolling a pass into the path of Eryk Williamson on the left. With space in front of him, Williamson drove toward goal before juking an LA defender and slotting the ball past LAFC keeper Pablo Sisniega for the score.
The goal was enough to energize LAFC and the home side responded with a flurry of attacks that the Timbers struggled to contain. A series of balls into the Timbers box asked questions of Steve Clark and his backline, with the ball even winding up in the net once only to have Diego Rossi’s finish called back because he was in an offside position.
Finally, in the 37th minute, LA got their equalizer. A corner kick whipped in by Brian Rodriguez found the run of Bradley Wright-Phillips at the near post where the journeyman goalscorer flicked the ball on with his head. The helpful touch perfectly evaded the Timbers defense and fell at the back post just as Mark-Anthony Kaye arrived for a straight-forward touch over the line.
The hosts’ second goal of the night came from the run of play but was no less well worked than their first. Breaking down the pitch and into the Timbers’ end in the 41st minute, Brian Rodriguez played a diagonal ball from the center of the pitch to Rossi making a darting run inside from the Timbers’ right. Timing his run perfectly, Rossi received the ball in behind the defense and, as Clark rushed out to close him down, hit a curling shot past the keeper for a simple, smooth finish.
With the Timbers still reeling and unable to recover, LAFC kept the pressure on and, in the first minute of first-half stoppage time, the hosts scored their third. After a dangerously placed free-kick was knocked down in the Timbers box, Rodriguez got on the ball and played a square pass across the face of goal to Wright-Phillips. Unmarked, Wright-Phillips had no trouble putting a boot to the ball and knocking it over the line to take a 3-1 lead.
In the final minute of first-half stoppage time, however, the Timbers snatched the momentum back. Pushing quickly down the pitch, Jorge Villafana hit an early diagonal ball into the LA box that dropped into the path of Jeremy Ebobisse. Rising up to the ball, Ebobisse nodded it forward; dropping the ball over Signiega, under the bar, and over the goal line to pull the Timbers back within one.
The Timbers came close to pulling even in the 62nd minute after Diego Valeri was tripped up at the top of the LA box. After earning the foul, Valeri stepped up to the free-kick and hit a cutting ball through a gap in the wall onto to see it sting off the woodwork and fly away from goal.
The remainder of the second half was less promising as the Timbers struggled to get the ball into the attacking end with any sense of purpose. Despite flashes of skill from the attacking group, the Timbers could not find an equalizer in the final half-hour of the match.
Adding one final insult, LAFC grabbed an insurance goal in the 95th minute when Kaye played substitute Danny Muovski in on goal for a one on one finish around Clark that sealed the deal for LA and sent the Timbers home without a single point.
Last Monday morning, it was summer, and then in the space of 20 minutes, it became not-summer. The blue sky was gone, and suddenly it was windy and there was a sickly yellowish pall over everything. The evacuation notices started coming in a few hours later. I know three families who have had to flee their homes.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had smoke like this. In the summer of 2017, I lived on the poorly insulated third floor of a hundred-year old house. There was always a week or two in the summer when the temperature would get to 90 or 100° and the apartment became almost uninhabitable, and in a vain attempt to keep the temperature down, we’d leave the windows open and the curtains closed all the time. One morning I woke up to a fine layer of ash filtering in onto all the windowsills, and we simply had to shut the windows and leave. I slept in a friend’s basement.
Maybe this is the worst it’s ever been. I’m not sure. In some ways, it’s an improvement over that summer in 2017, in that the smoke is keeping the temperature down. The ash was thicker that year, too. You couldn’t go outside without it getting in your eyes, which stings like crazy.
Supposedly, a Thorns game is happening on Tuesday. It was supposed to happen on Saturday, but when you can’t see across the Willamette and the sun looks like a perfect orange disc, I hear that’s a bad time to run around outside for 90 minutes. The Thorns didn’t train outside last Thursday, when they held their press conference, and I’d be surprised if they’d done so since. An NWSL spokesperson tells me that if the AQI is above 200, games are cancelled automatically, but an on-the-ground decision can be made below that level. I have not asked anyone, but I don’t think the league has an automatic cutoff for collective existential dread.
One of my dad’s friends lives out near Marcola, east of Springfield, and had to evacuate. He used to throw a big party every summer, which I didn’t like very much because everyone there was an adult and most were adults I didn’t know. My brother and I would wade in the creek and look for crawdads. The sun landed on the forest floor in a patchwork that shifted with the breeze.
The thing I’m not sure people outside of Oregon understand, hearing every summer about wildfires in the west, is that this corner of the state isn’t supposed to burn—not like this, anyway. I’ve lived on this side of the Cascades my whole life and I can’t remember a single fire here, certainly not a bad one, until the one in the Gorge three years ago. We’re on the wet side of a rain shadow, the part where the clouds coming off the ocean wring themselves out.
The only time I ever caught a fish was up past the Leaburg Dam when I was maybe eight. The fog was as thick as the smoke is right now. The hills up there, rising out of the river and dense with trees, look black, but if you walk into the forest it’s bright green and spacious. My dad and I ate lunch at Ike’s Pizza, which may or may not have burned to the ground this week.
“First of all, Kath Reynolds, who was carrying a small injury, then came on and took another injury… Kath Reynolds will not be available in the Fall Series, she’s opted out—carrying an injury into the Challenge Cup, then got injured again once she got back. I think she just needs a little bit more time, she’s doing great. She needs a bit more time to think about what she’s going to do going forward. We have Celeste Boureille on loan in France. We’re going to announce Meaghan Nally going on loan to Germany. Tobin has made the commitment to sign in England until next year. Becky Sauerbrunn’s returning from injury. We think she’ll be available to get minutes in this first game. Sophie Smith’s returning from injury; we expect her to be available for some minutes this weekend. AD and Bella both have medium- to long-term injuries; they will not be available for the Fall Series.”
I remember when I was 11 or 12, we had a few days of smoke, and it was such a novelty that on the first day, my friend’s mom said that upon waking up and smelling it she went around and checked every room to make sure the house wasn’t on fire.
I remember riding an Amtrak train out of Portland one year recently—can’t remember which—and seeing this crazy sunset where the clouds were layered behind the smoke in translucent layers like different-colored lighting gels, all orange and pink and purple. I was disturbed by how beautiful it was.
Something I am ashamed of is that when things aren’t so bad where I am—when we have a summer where the smoke never really reaches Portland, or the temperature never really spikes—I let myself believe in that moment that things aren’t so bad, generally speaking. I know this to be untrue, but at the same time as I know that, I let myself feel unworried. It’s a basic flaw in the human brain when it comes to functioning as part of a society; we simply don’t have the energy to experience problems as realistically dire unless they’re literally surrounding us, filling the air, blotting out the sun, chasing us out of our homes. Even then, once they go away, we relax. We have to do this. We don’t have the energy not to.
“So we’ve had to talk about this a lot as a team, and everyone’s in all different places. So you have the players who are back from injury who are just raring to go and want to get back out there, get games in. You have some players who might need a little bit of a mental break and that kind of thing. But I think we’ve kind of understood as a team that we’re in such a unique situation, because we’re one of the only teams that has basically our entire team here… You rarely have the opportunity directly after a season to then reflect immediately, and kind of build off some of the things you wish were better during that season. You usually have a five-month offseason… We’ve looked back at a couple games in Utah, against Houston, against Carolina, and just been able to pick out those key moments on what we can build on, what we need to do better if we’re going to win the championship next year… We’re not wasting this time.”
Every time a fire season happens, I think, I can handle this, I’m used to it now, and every time there’s some new detail that reassures me, no, you can’t, and yes, the world really is ending. This year, it was the very palpable feeling that I and everyone I know in this state might need to evacuate and literally have nowhere to go. Each of the three cities in the Willamette Valley has its own personal fire, each of which was, until a couple days ago, barreling down the hills at us.
If you’re reading this right now from somewhere other than the west coast, I want to make sure you’re crystal clear about this: Portland, Salem, and Eugene, which have a combined population of about 3.5 million, all came within about thirty miles of getting engulfed in flames. The wind was so bad that firefighters weren’t even trying to contain the fires, just to move people out of harm’s way. Sooner or later, whether it’s here or in California or Washington, a fire is going to reach a major city, and many thousands of people will probably die.
“Yeah, unfortunately that is kind of the state of the west coast right now in general, and it’s something that is really disappointing on a lot of levels, whether that’s a national level or a global level or a state level. Climate change is real, and we need to talk about it, and we need to make big strides in creating a world that we all want to live in, and a world that will continue to support life on this planet.”
This theoretical soccer game against OL Reign is at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. You can stream it on Twitch.
I’m still skeptical it’s happening, but even if it does, that won’t mean everything is fine. I can’t foresee a time when things will be fine. This is going to keep happening, and we’re going to keep putting up with it, because what else can we do? Next time, when the wind doesn’t shift at the last minute, where will we go?
The Portland Timbers travelled north on Sunday night to take on the Seattle Sounders at CenturyLink Field, their first match played away from the confines of Providence Park since returning from the MLS is Back Tournament. Coming off a three-game winless streak, the Timbers needed a result to break out of their post-tournament funk and they got one, beating the Sounders 2-1 in a performance that looked like a return to the form that carried them through the knockout rounds in Orlando.
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