Month: April 2021

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Four Takeaways: Portland 2, Tacoma 0

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

The Thorns earned their third victory of the Challenge Cup last night, a 2–0 win over OL Reign, which clinched their spot in the championship on May 8. A beautiful free kick by Lindsey Horan in the 17th minute and a weird chaos goal by Simone Charley early in the second half were the difference between the two teams. Here are a few of my takeaways from the match:

1. “I hope [my rose] never dies” -Crystal Alyssia Dunn Soubrier

Crystal Dunn made her long-awaited Thorns debut last night, and as promised, she’s getting a lot of freedom to roam and create. On paper, she slotted in at the No. 8 in the midfield diamond, but she played that role a little differently from how Rocky Rodríguez has been handling it. She was very much still in a box-to-box role, but tended to sit higher up the field in the attack, often swapping places with Christine Sinclair as she found space between the Reign’s lines.

We’ve been misled a little—Merritt Paulson said at least once Dunn would be playing at forward—but I love her in this position, especially since it lets both Sophia Smith and Simone Charley fit in the lineup. Mark Parsons’s attitude toward this role seems not unlike how he outlined Tobin Heath’s job; in short, get her the ball in possession and let her figure it out.

At times, Dunn, Smith, and Horan looked to not quite be on the same page as each other and the rest of the team, but that’s understandable given how little training time they’ve gotten since the international window ended.

2. The Reign didn’t really show up

The team formerly known as the Seattle Reign put up a pretty lackluster opposition last night. For a lot of the first half, they struggled to defend in an organized way, often giving the Thorns too much time and space, not choosing the right moments to press, and leaving players unmarked and passing lanes open. I am struck by this image of all of Becky Sauerbrunn’s passes, which shows how content the Reign were to let her make one particular entry pass into the final third over and over:

A map showing Becky Sauerbrunn's passes

When the Reign did apply pressure, they often focused on Lindsey Horan, and they did succeed in turning her back towards her defense a number of times. At other moments, though, she either broke through the pressure or combined with Sinclair or Dunn to keep moving the ball forward. On top of those players’ individual skill, Portland often had an overload in the midfield, with Natalia Kuikka and Meghan Klingenberg pushing forward and Smith dropping back.

The Thorns also found a number of chances on good old-fashioned balls over the top, as Sauerbrunn and Kelli Hubly were both given as much time as they wanted throughout the first half. Again, sometimes that didn’t matter—Hubly hit a few that were pretty aimless—but with Charley’s speed and dribbling ability up top, that route is a real threat for the Thorns.

The Reign switched on more in the second half, especially once Jess Fishlock and Megan Rapinoe came on. Those two players both looked to have some ideas going forward, and Fishlock in particular (no surprises here) provided defensive grit the midfield had mostly lacked. Nevertheless, Tacoma’s back line kept making weird errors, and their offense was unlucky on the handful of chances they put together.

3. Um?

Sort of a subsection to the last one: I don’t want to take anything away from Lindsey Horan’s free kick, which was gorgeous, but it’s not hard to see what’s about to happen here. I’m not sure why the Reign were set up like this:

A screenshot showing Lindsey Horan lining up a free kick, with an arrow showing the path the ball will take

4. Some highlights from the stats

Like they did against Kansas City, Portland significantly out-passed the Reign, with 79.5% accuracy at full time against their opponents’ 71.3%. Six Thorns starters completed at least 80% of their passes, led by Kuikka at 86.2%.

Charley had a record-breaking night:

And most remarkably, the Thorns as a group broke their record for most shots in a competitive match:

Categories
Soccer Timbers

Observations from Sandy: Timbers Drop All Three Points to Vancouver in their MLS Opener

Photo by Kyle Pinnell

The Portland Timbers started off their CONCACAF Champions League campaign with a bang, but began their MLS schedule with a whimper. The Timbers put five goals past overmatched CD Marathón on Tuesday; just five days later, in their season opener, they conceded a set-piece goal to the Vancouver Whitecaps, failed to find the back of the net themselves, and dropped all three points.

Portland showed plenty of promise and ideas in the first half, only to resort to a more direct style of play after Vancouver striker Lucas Cavallini headed in the game’s only goal at the back post. For large stretches, it looked like a game between two teams playing a competitive league game for the first time in months. Both sides had ideas, but couldn’t execute many of them.

For the first time since March 2020, I watched the Timbers play with my own eyes, in Sandy, Utah. I also noticed some things that I haven’t picked up while watching games over television. So to recap the game, here are a few of those observations.

Van Rankin and Bravo will play important roles on a Portland team that wants to play out from the back even more.

The Timbers’ most dominant spells of play often came when they successfully built possession from the back line and linked with the midfield. In those situations, right back Josecarlos Van Rankin frequently appeared to be at midfield while the rest of the back line shifted to become more of a back three.

When Portland advanced the ball higher up the field, Van Rankin constantly made himself available to play quick one-twos down the right. Building out of the back with three defenders allowed the Timbers to get an additional player into attack even earlier, while the quick-passing progression—especially in the first half—yielded the visitors some of their best chances of the night.

Once the ball reached midfield, left back Claudio Bravo also advanced to add width further up the left side of the field, leaving the pair of center backs to possess the ball and start more direct attacking movements from the attacking half of the field. With both outside backs capable of carrying the ball forward or combining with midfielders to advance possession into the attacking third, they’ll both surely play an important role in coach Giovanni Savarese’s team this season.

“I thought they did very well, they have adapted very quickly, and we can see that they’re quality players,” Savarese said. “They understand the way we want to play and what we want to achieve on the field. I thought they did well, very similar to what they did in the past to CCL games. I’m very content with their performance.”

The Timbers’ fluidity in attack should yield positive results in the future.

On paper, Yimmi Chará started the game as a right winger, Felipe Mora occupied a central striker role, and Dairon Asprilla played down the left. And while those three players generally occupied those places on the field, it wasn’t uncommon to look up and see Yimmi central, Mora closer to midfield and Asprilla pushing from wide.

Portland looked at their best when they played with fluidity all over attack and players constantly interchanged with one another. Yimmi scored a goal that was called offside in the first half, but it came when the winger had an opportunity to come inside and play more centrally for a few seconds.

When Mora plays, Portland lacks a “true” number nine when it comes to a goal-scoring presence in the box. While that can provide issues when the team needs to rely on a singular player to score goals out of nothing, his ability to drop into midfield helps when it comes to the Timbers’ fluidity. On Sunday night, Mora helped open up some of that space that Yimmi or even Asprilla used to come inside by dropping toward midfield.

And speaking of Asprilla, the winger played on both sides of the field, where he looked to constantly run at Vancouver’s outside backs. In the first half, Asprilla put a rocket on frame that forced an athletic save out of keeper Maxime Crépeau. In the second half, he attacked in numerous one-on-one situations down the right before firing crosses into the box.

There were hints of that fluidity in midfield, too, as the Timbers tried (at least in the first half) to progress the ball all the way from back to front. At times, midfielder Eryk Williamson played all the way forward in the right half-space, almost like a winger, where he combined with Van Rankin. The Chará brothers also combined quite a few times when the ball came into the team’s attacking half.

The quick passing and fluidity, especially in the first half, moved the Whitecaps defense around and gave the Timbers more space to work with. It stretched a Vancouver team happy to get plenty of numbers behind the ball when it could. While it didn’t result in any goals on Sunday night, it provided an early example as to how Portland might look to break down opponents with possession in the coming weeks.

The Timbers tried some different things offensively, and then completely went away from them in the second half.

While they didn’t find a goal in the first half, the Timbers looked like a team with plenty of ideas. They played with possession and created some dangerous moments in attack with well-worked passing sequences and off-ball movements. 

It’s crazy to think that not even two seasons ago, this was a team that either took chances on the counter or played down the flanks only to play hopeful crosses into the box. Don’t get me wrong—Portland still wanted to attack directly against Vancouver—but it seemed more methodical. Players weren’t afraid to recycle possession along the back line, switch the point of attack, and pick out a better pass. 

Then the second half started, and everything that I mentioned above just slowed down. Once Cavallini scored in the 49th minute, the Timbers became even more desperate as they began to chase the game. In the first half Portland appeared calculated in their direct play. In the second 45 minutes, there were too many moments where the visitors tried to play long ball after long ball over the top. As players grew more tired—thanks especially to Utah’s high altitude—those long balls turned into one wasted opportunity after another. 

Portland also began to bypass their midfield, making it easier for Vancouver’s already compact defense to deal with any dangerous opportunities. Instead of playing quick-passing soccer, the Timbers continuously attempted to play diagonal balls from deep in midfield to the right wing. Sure, it allowed Asprilla, and eventually Marvin Loría, to attack defenders in one-on-one situations, but that strategy never looked effective.

“We did a lot of good things; we were in a lot of good areas inside their box,” Savarese said. “We did have a lot of chances, we did have a lot of moments where we could have capitalized, but we just have to make sure we are better in those moments to get those points.”

As cliché as it is, the 1–0 loss to Vancouver proved to be a tale of two halves. The Timbers showcased elements of a promising attacking in the first half, only to revert back to more desperate direct play in the second. Together with the altitude and conceding the first goal to a Vancouver side content to sit back, that was never going to be a formula for success.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Four Takeaways: Chicago 0, Portland 1

Photo by Nikita Taparia

The Thorns played the Chicago Red Stars to a 1–0 win in Bridgeview, Illinois last night; Morgan Weaver, fresh off a cleared red card that probably should’ve only been downgraded to a yellow, scored the lone goal of the match off Portland’s only shot on target.

About 30 minutes into the game, my roommate came into my room and asked who I thought would win. I said Portland, 1–0, and that it was going to be an otherwise unexciting game. For the most part, I was right.

1. We did watch a first half of soccer

I was pleasantly surprised by how the Thorns played for most of last Friday’s match. They looked sharp and energized and direct and not like a team playing their first game since October; having Riveters in the stands for the first time in over a year probably helped. Which made last night’s performance—full of sloppy passes and a lack of offensive… anything in the first half—stand out a little more than it would have as the second game in any other season.

After the match, Kelli Hubly said the field was bumpy and made the Thorns “a little bit weary of [our] passes and our touches.”

Portland ended the first half with a 64.2% passing accuracy, which, in my mind, sums up the overarching feeling of those 45 minutes pretty well.

2. Marissa Everett-Tyler Lussi

“Second half, we really went out there and proved to everyone that we had the energy and we were going to win this game,” Weaver said, and Tyler Lussi’s 52nd minute shot was the first hint of just that.

On its own, it was a great run from Lussi. She did well to make the most of her opportunity and hit a left-footed shot. Red Stars goalkeeper Cassie Miller was caught watching as the chance—unfortunately for Lussi and fortunately for Miller—deflected off the crossbar.

But I also want us to take a second to sit back, relax, and (re)watch this absolutely wild curled ball in from Marissa Everett to set up Lussi’s strike:

3. Honorable mention: Natalia Kuikka

I’m not sure that I took all that much away from watching this game live, aside from the aforementioned points. Not that the rest of the match was uninteresting: the Meghan Klingenberg as a No. 8 experiment continued, we got to see Emily Menges take the field for the first time this year, and Meaghan Nally made her Thorns debut (at forward!).

But—while I don’t know that I have anything to say beyond what Katelyn’s already written on her—the 20 minutes we saw of Natalia Kuikka at right back were incredibly fun, and I’m excited to watch her play out wide as Portland’s defense returns to full strength.

4. A note on the pre-game proceedings

The Red Stars didn’t play the national anthem before the match. Even if it only happened this time because fans weren’t in attendance, I hope the organization makes note of the support they’re getting for doing that, acknowledges the song’s racist history, and chooses not to bring it back when people are allowed to return to the stands.

Categories
Not Soccer Thorns

Editorial: PTFC Must Stand by its Commitment to Racial Justice

On Friday night, the Portland Thorns posted a video of the incident between Morgan Weaver and Kristen Edmonds with the words “Morgan Weaver is innocent.” Both fans and media called them out, pointing to the fact that framing a white woman as “innocent” in an on-field altercation with a Black woman perpetuates racist stereotypes that frame Black women as aggressors and white women pure and incapable of harm.

The Thorns organization also responded to a tweet from Sarah Gorden, who criticized the initial tweet, saying “the intent of [their] post had an unintended impact.” That’s an acknowledgement that the post caused harm—to whom or how isn’t made clear—but nothing more.

The club deleted the initial post this morning, but has yet to apologize for the language it used.

The intent of the tweet may have been simply to support Weaver as a Thorns player and to dispute the official’s decision, but it became clear shortly after it was posted that the choice of words had an unintended but very real impact on Black players and fans. Language matters, and good intentions don’t absolve us of responsibility.

The Rose City Review is calling on the Thorns organization to issue an apology for the language they used in Friday night’s tweet. Deleting a post after five days of fan pushback—and dismissing those who called it racist during that time—is not good enough. Last summer, when conversations about race in America were in full force, the club repeatedly expressed its commitment to racial justice. The first part of such a commitment always has to be listening to and believing those harmed by racism.

We stand with the Black players, fans, and media of the NWSL and will always strive to hold ourselves accountable to this same standard.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Three Takeaways: Portland 2, Kansas City 1

Photo by Kris Lattimore

The Thorns kicked off their 2021 Challenge Cup last night with a 2–1 win against the nameless team from Kansas City, thanks to goals by Rocky Rodríguez and Tyler Lussi. What was mostly a routine and successful first game by a Portland team missing a number of players to international duty and injury turned sour toward the end. Danielle Chesky issued a record-setting four red cards, one to Mark Parsons, and a mass scuffle broke out between the two teams. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Things started well and were mostly normal

Up until the last three minutes of this game (more on that later), it really felt like the story was going to be that this was a solid first outing for a short-staffed Thorns side against a brand-new Kansas City team that looked to still be finding their feet and struggled to dictate the game.

The Thorns started a few players in new positions—Rodríguez at the No. 6, Marissa Everett at the No. 10, and most delightfully, Kling at the No. 8 (again, more on that later)—but stuck with the 4-4-2 diamond from last season and deployed a game plan we’re used to seeing. They mostly defended well, working to keep KC out of the center of the field and looking to trap them on the wings. Offensively, they found success on set pieces and through direct attacks in transition, as well as using combinations between Kling, Rodríguez, and the overlapping runs of Madison Pogarch and Christen Westphal to break lines of pressure and get into dangerous areas.

Kansas City, meanwhile, often looked to trap Portland centrally. It sometimes worked, but more often ended either in a foul or with Kling or Rodríguez breaking the pressure and sending the ball into empty space between KC’s midfield and back line. In the second half, the visitors started to find more success defensively—while Portland’s defensive structure sometimes broke down—but the Thorns held on for the win despite a second-half goal by Amy Rodriguez shortly after Portland’s second. At the end of the game, one stat painted a clear picture of the gap between the two teams: Kansas City had just one player with a passing accuracy of 80% or higher, center back Rachel Corsie, while Portland had five, including Rodríguez.

All in all, it was a strong debut for Portland—not without some miscommunications and errors, but fewer than we might expect in a more normal year.

2. Meghan Klingenberg had a big day

Much of the Thorns’ offense last night went through Kling, who translated her status as a leader in the locker room into a shift as team captain—playing in central midfield!

I never would have anticipated this move from Mark Parsons, but as the game played out, it made sense. For one thing, Kling has always been an attacking-minded player, both as an outside back and at UNC, where she did shifts on all three lines. In addition, this Thorns formation involves the two No. 8s spending a lot of time out wide, something that added a new wrinkle to Lindsey Horan’s play last year. In that sense, her role last night shared similarities with her usual spot at left back: she linked up with Po to create wide overloads, sent in crosses, and defended the wing.

But she also did some things I’ve never seen her do with my own eyes. She dribbled and passed through the center of the field, broke through pressure from Kansas City, and worked to set up chances centrally. She looked confident under pressure and set a lot of Portland’s attacks in motion. It was strange to watch, like seeing your school librarian at the grocery store, but also very fun and on the whole pretty successful. When I asked her about it after the game, she had this to say:

“Well, Katelyn Best, I think that, you know, that happens to me all the time in practice, and now everybody just gets to see it in the game [laughs] You know, in rondos and all these different things, I’m asked to handle pressure from all sides… I’ve been asking for years to play in the [No.] 10—give me a shot, give me a chance, Mark, give me a tryout! And I finally got one, so hopefully I lived up to the tryout… I think last time, I talked to Anson [Dorrance] this morning because it’s his birthday. And I told him that I was going to be playing in the [No.] 8 and he’s like, ‘oh, you’ll be fine. You played there for for us in college.’ So it made me feel better about it.”

3. Uhhhhhh

After a mostly straightforward 89 minutes, things got weird. There’s no need for me to rehash what we all saw, but I do want to say that multiple things can be true, and these are some things I believe to be true:

  1. Danielle Chesky has a bad reputation for a reason; she’s already officiated games that turned ugly, she missed a number of clear calls in this one, and she probably should not be working at this level anymore. The quality of refereeing in the women’s game is a real issue and reflects a disparity with men’s soccer.
  2. Morgan Weaver deserved a yellow. She clearly wrapped her arm around Kristen Edmonds’s waist, which seemed to be what caused them to both fall down. She then very clearly shoved Edmonds. That’s not nothing! Obviously Edmonds escalated and deserved to see red for that, but it defies reason to say Weaver did nothing wrong.
  3. We’ve all been guilty of using language that seems innocuous to us, but might be loaded for other groups for reasons we don’t see in the moment. It’s a crucial skill for those of us with privilege—whether that’s based on race, gender, orientation, whatever—to be able to listen to marginalized people and admit when we made a mistake.
Categories
Not Soccer

Opinion: PTFC Partnership with the Portland Business Alliance Is Hypocritical

Earlier this week, the PTFC front office released a combined Timbers and Thorns scarf with a heart pattern and the words “here for Portland” on each side. It’s a cute design, and plenty of fans will probably buy it, especially since a portion of proceeds will go to support local small businesses. But the scarf isn’t just PTFC merch—the team designed it in collaboration with the Portland Business Alliance, the powerful business advocacy group whose board of directors is chaired by Timbers President of Business Operations Mike Golub.

As many readers are aware, the PBA has a long history of taking positions on important issues that place it at odds with PTFC’s loudly progressive fanbase. Worse still, some of the causes the PBA has championed directly conflict with the club’s stated values.

Climate Crisis

The area of most naked hypocrisy when it comes to PTFC’s partnership with the PBA is the issue of climate change. The club lists the environment as a focus area of “Stand Together,” its philanthropic arm. It notes that its “Score a Goal, Plant a Tree” program, a laudable partnership with Friends of Trees, has resulted in the capture of 171,120 pounds of carbon dioxide since 2011. Providence Park’s 2019 expansion received a LEED gold certification. Merritt Paulson has talked about his concern about climate change multiple times, in one tweet calling it “the defining global human issue of our time”—a stance I agree with.

Yet in this context, the club’s public alignment with the PBA is troubling. The business group has historically opposed local and regional legislation aimed at curbing climate change. In 2018, the group sent a letter to a federal regulatory agency indicating their membership’s support for the proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas terminal.

That project, which is still sitting in regulatory purgatory, would involve a “100-foot-wide swath of slashed-and-burned, chemically maintained, plantless dirt (2,000 acres) from Malin to Coos Bay and trespasses over the lands of hundreds of private property owners without their consent,” according to Street Roots. It would also pass under 400 streams and five rivers, using horizontal drilling, a technique that can leach drilling fluids into waterways. The terminal is also located in a liquefaction zone, which will turn into quicksand in the event of a major earthquake; a leak would be enormously destructive to oyster farms and fisheries. And this project is an export terminal, meaning that the gas—produced by hydraulic fracking, which is a nightmare all its own—wouldn’t even be put to use by Oregon businesses.

In 2018, the PBA opposed Measure 26-201, the Portland Clean Energy Initiative, which proposed “a one percent business license surcharge from businesses that make at least $1 billion annually, and use it to fund environmentally friendly projects like weatherizing homes, training people for green jobs, and upping the city’s use of clean energy,” according to the Portland Mercury (the measure passed). The group physically locked its office doors to avoid talking to three faith leaders who wanted to deliver a letter urging them to drop their opposition to the measure, rather absurdly citing staff safety concerns.

And in 2017, the PBA successfully sued the city over a local ordinance restricting the construction of facilities for the transfer or storage of fossil fuels. The city later appealed the decision and won.

Housing

If the club has been less vocal about the housing crisis, this is no doubt still an issue of concern for many fans. Portland, like other west coast cities, has a housing shortage of staggering proportions. One study from PSU found that “in a one-year period, nearly 40,000 people in greater Portland experienced an episode of homelessness and 105,000 households faced housing insecurity.” This is Portland’s most visible issue, and its most urgent. It is a human rights disaster, and it should be the shame of every city government for the last 20 years that a solution has not been found. It should also be said that since homelessness affects Black Portlanders disproportionately, this is also a race issue—and the club has made a visible effort on that front.

The PBA, like other Portlanders, professes concern about homelessness, but that concern has generally emphasized the unsightliness of homeless encampments and their supposed impact on business, favoring camp sweeps as part of the solution to homelessness.

In one incident, they pushed the city to crack down on a group serving free meals at Director Park—which they referred to as “feeds” in communications with parks employees—on the basis they did not have a permit to do so.

But most visibly, the PBA runs Clean & Safe, a taxpayer-funded organization that picks up trash downtown and, less innocuously, pays an armed private security force to patrol the area and keep houseless people away from business entrances. Those security guards, according to the Mercury, seem to be completely unaccountable to the public. Even the Portland Police Bureau has a process for reporting officer misconduct; the security staff on Clean & Safe’s payroll are supposedly accountable to the police commissioner (Mayor Ted Wheeler), but an audit “finds no evidence that this has ever happened.”

As the Willamette Week reported earlier this year, even some downtown business owners are unhappy with Clean & Safe. That unhappiness largely stems from the fact that the fees that businesses pay the group go, in part, to pay salaries and overhead for the PBA, not to pay for any actual services.

It’s worth noting that the PBA has, in the past, urged support for more shelter beds. But to people who study the issue, emergency shelters are a stopgap solution, at best, and are often rejected by the people they’re intended to serve for very good reasons.

Takeaway

This is just a cursory look at two of the issues the PBA is most egregiously wrong on. They’ve also opposed a mandate for bike parking in new construction, supported discriminatory sit-lie laws, and voiced weirdly fierce opposition to the Better Naito project, and are generally anti-tax, even opposing taxes that Portlanders have voted for in order to fund needed services.

In short, this is a group concerned with the bottom line of their members above all else. To me, that’s at odds with the way PTFC has positioned itself over the years, and with much of the truly commendable work the club has done in the community. Fans on Twitter were upset about this announcement, and I believe that anger is justified. If the club professes to be a community-centered organization, this partnership calls that into serious question.

Categories
Soccer Timbers

Portland Tests its Possession Game in CONCACAF Champions League Opener Against CD Marathón

Photo by Craig Mitchelldyer/Portland Timbers

Portland coach Giovanni Savarese understood the task at hand before the Timbers even touched down in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions League series against CD Marathón.

He knew that Marathón, a team that’s won just two of its first ten league games in the clausura season, wanted to make the most of a fresh start in a new competition. That they would be comfortable sitting back before springing into attack.

Earlier in the week, Savarese talked about the directness and individual talent Marathón possessed, and acknowledged that the opening game would be a good time for his team to test their mettle, especially with the ball.

In many ways, that’s exactly what played out on Tuesday in Portland’s 2–2 draw at the Estadio Olimpico Metropolitano. The Timbers finished the game with 58% of the possession, outshot Marathón 16–12, and completed 107 more passes.

In their first competitive game since the first round of the 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs, Portland was given both the ball and the onus to do something with it against a compact opponent. While known more as a counter-attacking team in the Savarese era, the Timbers will face games where they need to break teams down with the ball. A season ago, the team showed progress in that facet of their game––hey, fewer hopeful crosses is always a good thing––and received an early opportunity to test themselves in possessional play this season.

“I thought it was very competitive, and I thought that we did a lot of very good things, especially in the first half,” Savarese said. “We created chances. Unfortunately, we couldn’t capitalize a little bit more on the chances we created.”

The Timbers started the match on the front foot and found themselves with multiple scoring opportunities early. Yimmi Chará continuously attacked Marathón left back Luis Vega down the right wing, which created danger right away. Winger Dairon Asprilla later bodied off a defender to get a shot off in the box that he dragged wide by a good margin. In the 27th minute, midfielder Eryk Williamson nearly pulled off a moment of magic with a side-footed shot that keeper Denovan Torres did well to save.

Then, in the 35th minute, Portland found its breakthrough when striker Felipe Mora brought down the ball in the box and squeezed the ensuing shot under Torres’ outstretched right hand.

The goal, while not flashy, perfectly exemplified the Timbers’ effective possession play. With the team in their attacking third, right back Josecarlos Van Rankin slowly made his way from the right side of the field to the left half-space where he received the ball from left back Claudio Bravo, beat two defenders, and chipped a ball with his left foot to Mora, who found the back of the net.

Van Rankin’s addition into the attack provided the Timbers with an offensive wrinkle in possession, which helped them break down coach Hector Vargas’ compact side. The right back’s presence in that left half-space drew Marathón center back Mathías Techera away from Mora for a split-second, which allowed the striker to control the ball and get a shot off. While there are potential drawbacks to that type of cross-field run––say the ball turns over quickly and that entire space is vacated––the addition of Van Rankin into the attack proved crucial in Portland’s first goal of 2021.

Savarese also asked Mora to drop into midfield from time to time to help the Timbers create numerical advantages in central areas while in possession. With wingers Yimmi Chará and Asprilla tasked with stretching Marathón’s defense, Mora had plenty of room to work with when he dropped back and combined with midfielders Diego Valeri or Eryk Williamson. While Mora seemed to tire near the end of 90 minutes, his ability to drop into   midfield and also finish opportunities in attack will certainly prove useful for Portland this season.

Savarese said the team went into the game with the aforementioned goal of stretching Marathón out, especially between midfield and defense, to create more space in possession. He felt like the team did that, especially early.

“I think that the balance that we have with Diego Chará and Eryk [Williamson] in the middle was very, very good,” Savarese said. “The defense handled the long balls really well, and going forward we were patient enough to find the right moment to keep the ball or to get behind to create opportunities.”

Valeri thrived in the additional space created in midfield. The Timbers star scored the (own) goal of the game from a free-kick taken from yards behind the box and constantly popped up in vacant midfield spaces. The Argentinian played a large role in both finding and creating the “right attacking moments” that Savarese mentioned.

“He was phenomenal today,” Savarese said. “He was very active and found a lot of good spaces to give us the chance to be able to be vertical.”

While Portland looked effective in possession through large stretches of play, it wasn’t all perfect. The Timbers failed to capitalize on multiple golden opportunities. In the 57th minute, Yimmi Chará had a great opportunity on a corner kick that fell into his path in the box with nobody around him, but he didn’t put enough power on the ball and shot it straight at Torres.

Marathón’s deeper formation also enticed Portland to creep further up the field, which opened up new spaces for the very direct Central American side to attack through. That’s what happened in the 68th minute when midfielder Kervin Arriaga found plenty of room between the Timbers’ lines to drive into before delivering a well-weighted pass to forward Marlon Ramírez who leveled the score 2–2.

“Arriaga found moments to dribble and become a little more dangerous,” Savarese said. “Then they found some corners and more dangerous crosses.”

On Tuesday, Timbers fans got their first look at what Savarese wants his team to look like when forced to play with the ball. In just under a week, some will see it first hand when the team returns to Portland with a 2–2 result to defend and everything to play for.

“We’re not satisfied with this result,” Savarese said, “but scoring two goals away is very important.”