The Portland Timbers got a win at PayPal Park on Wednesday.
Five unbeaten matches. With the win away from home against the team at the bottom of the table, Portland is on a good streak again.
Not much went on
Although a win is a win no matter who the opponent might be, we can question how Portland got those three points. They didn’t show much teeth against the weakest team in the Western Conference.
Striker Felipe Mora is still going through a goal-scoring drought, but he wasn’t the only one who had a bland performance on the offensive side of things.
“It was a good win, but the performance was nowhere near the levels that we expect,” Timbers head coach Phil Neville said. “I’m disappointed in that. Maybe it was the ten days off and coming to San Jose against a team that the boys probably expected us to win easily. It wasn’t like that, and I thought we didn’t create much in the game.”
It was good that the players got time to relax a little bit—the season has been far from easy for them—but there’s always the danger of them forgetting how to play soccer after a much-needed break.
When we look at the stats, we can see that both teams tried a lot, but neither could put the ball on frame as much as they wanted. Portland forgot how to press, and therefore, they lacked intensity. Maybe that changed a little in the second half, but their play was far from the expected performance against a team they had beaten easily last May. It is always pointless to think about the ‘what ifs,’ but if San Jose goalkeeper Jacob Jackson hadn’t made the mistake that led to the Timbers’ first goal, maybe the spoils would’ve been divided at the end of the match.
“I only saw one or two movements that we have been working for and only one or two patterns of play that I thought were exciting,” Neville said of the second half. “Apart from that, we need a big improvement on Saturday.”
Evander’s world and the MVP run
After the game, the coach praised the work the Timbers’ designated players did, and rightly so. “The two DP’s [Evander and Jonathan Rodríguez] won us the game” Neville said, “which was nice, but I hope that was that kind of performance out of the way.”
However, we cannot help but think that this showed Evander carrying the team on his back all over again. He was involved in both goals, and the way he created them is worthy of a standing ovation.
In Portland’s first, Evander didn’t give up pressing the defender high and then chasing the ball when it was passed back to the goalkeeper. He was the only Timber pressing that high, and he got rewarded for it.
The way he put that ball for Jonathan Rodríguez for the second goal… the precision of that aerial ball to Rodríguez’s head was top notch.
From the capture above, we can see the Brazilian looking at his passing options. One second is all he needed to see Uruguayan raising his hand inside the box and make the assist. The play looked effortless, which shows the level of Evander’s skills.
So, while names of the likes of Lionel Messi, Christian Benteke, Cristian Arango, Luis Suárez and Luciano Acosta are mentioned among those who are being considered for MLS’s MVP award this year, I think the league would make a huge mistake by leaving Evander out. True, he is not playing in a top team, but that is also important because he is doing wonders in a team that pretty recently was struggling to not fall to the bottom of the table.
Look at his numbers compared to the aforementioned mentioned players. He totally belongs there.
David Ayala, please don’t stop being so awesome
Midfielder David Ayala keeps showing game after game that he can become one of the most important players for the Timbers this year. Since he came back, he hasn’t stopped impressing with his game vision, tenacity, and precision.
Look how quickly he sees and sends a pass to Mora that sets Mora up to shoot. Ayala’s runs are also good, recognizing the space available to receive the ball and shoot.
Ayala not only contributed to the match with quick passes to move the ball forward; he showed strongly on the defensive end of things, recovering balls in critical zones. As seen in the clip above, he helped to make a recovery in the midfield—but the chart below shows where else he made three of his six recoveries.
Those three triangles are in zone 14—the central zone in front of the opposition’s penalty area, which one of the most dangerous zones in soccer because it can provide a team with a lot of attacking potential. And that’s exactly where Ayala made half of his recoveries. He was also first on the team—along with Diego Chará and Santiago Moreno—in tackles with four.
The Timbers won, and Ayala was a big contributor to this win. And even though the overall team performance wasn’t convincing, they got the three points. Still, they’re going to need more todaywhen they face Vancouver.
