The Portland Timbers are going to the MLS is Back Tournament Final after taking down the Philadelphia Union 2-1 in a battle of the set-pieces.
Author: William Conwell
After a narrow escape against FC Cincinnati on Tuesday, the Portland Timbers looked set for another nail-biting match in the MLS is Back Tournament quarterfinals after going down 1-0 early.
It looked like the Timbers were well on their way to a 1-0 win over a bunkered in FC Cincinnati side Tuesday evening when, out of nowhere, goalkeeper Steve Clark made things interesting…
The Portland Timbers scored early and late in Thursday night’s 2-2 draw against Los Angeles FC, clinching the top spot in the Group F of the MLS is Back Tournament with the point over their recent rivals.
In a battle between two teams looking to outlast their opponent, wear them down, and catch them off balance, the Portland Timbers were the team still standing after 90 grueling minutes against the Houston Dynamo on Saturday night. In their second game of the MLS is Back Tournament group stage, the Timbers looked in control for most of the match as they fought their way to a 2-1 victory.
Although the Dynamo went down a man in the final minutes of the match after Alberth Elis picked up his second yellow card of the night, it was the Timbers’ ability to take their chances that played a deciding role in the match. Inch-perfect finishes from Jeremy Ebobisse in the 35th minute and Diego Valeri in the 61st minute put the Timbers up 2-0, giving the side the breathing room needed to see out the match.
Before his sending off, Elis did manage to pull one back for the Dynamo, earning a penalty kick in the 86th minute after putting a header off the hand of Jorge Villafana — who had an otherwise excellent game — and then stepping up to convert the spot-kick past Steve Clark to pull the Dynamo back within one with minutes left in the match.
In the heat and humidity of the Orlando summer, a major factor in the match against the Dynamo seemed to be the fresh legs of the Timbers’ substitutes.
Giovanni Savarese went to his bench early on Saturday, bringing on Andy Polo for Yimmi Chara in the 60th minute. He then made two more subs in the 69th minute, bringing on Marvin Loria and Jaroslaw Niezgoda for Eryk Williamson and Jeremy Ebobisse. Finally, Savarese capped off the night by bringing on Chris Duvall for Pablo Bonilla in the 82nd minute after the youngster absorbed his third hard foul of the night.
The Dynamo, on the other hand, made one sub in the 62nd minute, one in the 87th, and two in the 88th.
As a result of Savarese’s aggressive use of subs, the Timbers looked markedly fresher than their opponents during the second half even after having played with a man down for a big chunk of last Friday’s win over the LA Galaxy. With the Dynamo flagging, the Timbers subs were able to make a real impact on the match, quickly breaking up Dynamo attempts to get forward and winning the fifty-fifty balls that might otherwise have given Houston a chance to get back in the game.
Despite being subbed off late in the match, Saturday was a successful first-team debut for Bonilla who got the start over Chris Duvall at right-back, being granted the privilege of matching up against the Dynamo’s vaunted attacking trio: Alberth Elis, Darwin Quintero, and Mauro Manotas. Bonilla, a Venezuelan youth international signed from T2 exactly one month ago, was introduced to the MLS life by the Dynamo when in just the 7th minute he took a cleat to the thigh from Houston midfielder Maynor Figueroa.
Despite the rough treatment by the opposition, Bonilla acquitted himself well in the first half, providing solid coverage down the right flank and acting as an outlet for Yimmi Chara on his regular runs forward. In the second half the youngster continued his strong outing, getting further forward down the pitch as well as providing several clutch tackles when the Dynamo got forward on the Timbers’ right.
Most interesting was Bonilla’s play with Marvin Loria after the Costa Rican 23-year-old came on as a substitute early in the second half. After spending the pre-suspension preseason together with T2, Bonilla and Loria had clear chemistry playing together on the wing and combined for a strong chance on goal that Loria ultimately had blocked by a defender as he got his shot away.
The win against the Dynamo guarantees that the Timbers will reach the knockout rounds of the MLSIBT and leaves the Timbers with a final group match against LAFC next Thursday that will at most affect the Timbers’ seed coming out of the group stage.
How the Timbers treat this match will tell us much about how they view this tournament and how they view the possibility of playing out the remainder of the season. These group stage games count as part of the 2020 MLS regular season, so it will be interesting to see if the Timbers view this last group stage match as a chance to get minutes to players that have mostly served as subs like Niezgoda or Andy Polo, to bring in some youngsters like Blake Bodily or Marco Farfan who have yet to see the pitch, or just another game to run out the regular starting XI, tournament be damned.
After four months without a match, the Portland Timbers returned to play last night in the MLS is Back Tournament. Before the opening whistle, cameras at the ESPN Wide World of Sports caught Diego Valeri in a smiling conversation with an LA Galaxy player.
Moments later, the Maestro and every other player on the pitch were kneeling in silence.
And moments after that, the whistle blew and the Timbers were once again playing soccer.
Despite a 75th minute red card to center back Dario Župarić, the Timbers were able to snatch all three points in Monday night’s up and down affair against the Galaxy––taking down the Californian side 2-1 in their first action since the suspension of the MLS season back in March. The match itself played out in four phases:
- First, the Timbers came out strong, taking control of the match and smothering a listless Galaxy side with purposeful possession.
- The Timbers took the foot off the gas late in the first half, giving the Galaxy a chance to re-enter the game but ultimately riding out the half and finding a chance to catch their collective breath.
- The Timbers, through skill, industry, and simply keeping their heads up when the Galaxy were not, grabbed a two goal lead.
- Finally, the Timbers managed to hold on for the win despite giving up a red card and, later, a goal.
It was that third phase that gave us the most exciting moments to hold on to when the Timbers opened the scoring in the 59th minute and quickly followed that up with a second goal in the 66th.
The first goal was a pure distillation of this Timbers side. Yimmi Chará started the moment with an impressive snap header on goal off a cross that looked over-hit, forcing David Bingham to palm the ball away with a quick reaction save. Then Diego Valeri and Sebastián Blanco combined brilliantly as the Maestro received the ball at the top of the Galaxy box and patiently picked out a long, curving run from Blanco in behind the Galaxy back line. And, finally, Blanco was able to turn on the ball and pick out Jeremy Ebobisse in front of goal, threading a pass through a handful of defenders for Ebobisse to knock home despite a defender firmly attached to his back.
The second goal was simply down to the sheer cussedness of Blanco. After a shot from Ebobisse was deflected off his foot and sent looping away from goal, it seemed certain that the Timbers attack was broken and the Galaxy would have a chance to clear. As the ball fell back to earth out on the wing, however, Blanco refused to let it die. Rushing forward, he got a head to the ball, catching a defender unaware and skillfully touching it toward goal where another Galaxy defender was waiting to make the tackle. Instead, Blanco was able to somehow push the ball through that second defender and into space in front of the Galaxy goal where he wrapped up the move by hamming home a shot from close range that left Bingham waving hopelessly at the ball as it flew by.
While Blanco and the Timbers attack grabbed the win for the side, the defense nearly gave the game away on two occasions before clamping down and securing the three points for the side.
In the 11th minute, on one of the first attacking moves from the Galaxy as they tried to escape a protracted period of possession from the Timbers, a deflected ball fell to Cristian Pavón twenty yards from goal. Approaching the top of the box, the Galaxy No. 10 let loose a shot that flew directly into the torso of Župarić, clattering off his arms and immediately drawing a whistle and a yellow card from referee Ramy Touchan.
Chicharito Hernández stepped up to the spot and, with Timbers hearts sinking, struck his attempt on goal. Steve Clark, however, had other ideas and, reading the Mexican international legend’s run up, dove the correct direction and stopped his shot. Then, scrambling, Clark did the splits to stop the follow-up from Sacha Kljestan before diving on the ball to end the Galaxy hopes of an easy opener.
Although he was bailed out by Clark, that yellow card would come back to haunt Župarić in the 75th minute when he took down Pavón just outside the Timbers box, prompting an easy second yellow from Touchan and leaving the Timbers down a man for the rest of the game.
While the Galaxy would eventually find the back of the net in the 88th minute when Chicharito momentarily showed off some of the predatory instincts that made him such an effective player throughout his career, they were stymied time after time by the Timbers backline stepping up for an offside trap or swarming the ball to take advantage of a loose touch, or simply knocking away cross after cross that the Galaxy sent hopefully into the box.
With the MLS is Back Tournament set to kick off less than a month from now in sunny Orlando, Florida, there are still questions to be answered about basically every aspect of the league’s return to play.
How will MLS cope with spiking COVID-19 cases in Florida as the country struggles to implement the proper measures necessary to fight the pandemic? Who will broadcast the games and make them available to soccer-starved fans? After a four-month layoff, will teams be able to put together anything approaching a coherent game of soccer?
But before all of that can be addressed, there is one question that looms above all others: how the hell are you supposed to abbreviate the “MLS is Back Tournament”?
Look, nobody calls it Major League Soccer; we all call it MLS. Nobody calls it the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing; they call it NASCAR. Nobody calls it the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament; they call it March Madness.
The abbreviation is the name, and the abbreviation for the MLS is Back Tournament is a freaking mess.
So, let’s explore our options.
***
MLSiBT
- Pros: This is as close to an actual abbreviation for the MLS is Back Tournament as we have gotten so far.
- Cons: A mouthful. A mushy, incoherent mouthful.
***
MiBT
- Pros: Possibly mistaken for “Men in Black Tournament.” Slightly increased chance of a Will Smith appearance.
- Cons: Men in Black is a Sony property and it seems unlikely that they are going to get involved with a tournament being run on Disney turf.
***
EPSOT
(Experimental Prototype Soccer of Tomorrow)
- Pros: Futuristic.
- Cons: But in a very 80’s kind of way.
Folks complain that I don’t tweet about Epcot anymore even though it’s been closed for weeks and the only thing happening there is skunk vine growing like crazy and taking over the whole place.
— Epcot Centre (@EpcotCentre) May 14, 2020
***
MitSASLBT
(MLS is the Second American Sports League Back Tournament)
- Pros: True and accurate.
- Cons: Even more of a mouthful than the MLSiBT. And if we are striving for accuracy it should probably be the MLSitSASLBTAtNWSL.
How many times am I going to have to retweet this? C'mon folks. This isn't hard. https://t.co/1fomMGxOSl
— Anne M. Peterson (@AnnieMPeterson) June 19, 2020
***
The Tournament
- Pros: Bold. Stakes a claim.
- Cons: Prone to confusion with the other strange formats that American sports are adopting to cope with their shortened schedules.
***
The MLS Returnament
- Pros: Portmanteau. Has the name of the league in it to avoid confusion.
- Cons: Hard to take seriously for those who, you know, care about that sort of thing.
***
Copa Morada
- Pros: None, really.
- Cons: Ask the Copa Verde
@timbersarmy as long as the team keeps paying the termite control bill pic.twitter.com/TRNpgOjeRu
— Keith Palau⭐️ (@kpduck) October 22, 2014
***
[repeating video of Josef Martinez saying “Orlando”]
- Pros:
Josef Martinez is just openly trolling Orlando at this point. #ATLUTD #ORLvATL pic.twitter.com/I1XjSEPPUn
— MLS Buzz (@MLS_Buzz) August 7, 2019
- Cons: Atlanta.
Categories
Thorns Sith Names, Ranked
It is a well-established fact that the Thorns are not Sith. This is a good thing for all of us—particularly the younglings.
But if they were Sith, there would be a real disparity in the quality of Sith names throughout the Thorns roster. Adding Darth to your name is great when you are going by Vader, Sidious, or even Revan, but modern-day, real-life names lend themselves somewhat less to the intimidating air preferred by the adherents of the Dark Side.
So, on the scale of Darth Val to Darth Maul, where do the Thorns fall?
I took a look at the Thorns roster and tried to pick out the best Sith name for each player: Darth followed by their first name, last name, or nickname.
24. Darth Charley – As someone with two first names, Simone Charley was always going to struggle in a ranking that is about a combination of intimidation and hard consonant sounds.
23. Darth Ellie
22. Darth Hubly
21. Darth Sophia
20. Darth Kat
19. Darth Everett
18. Darth Franch – I want to put Franch higher on this list mostly because she is one of the players on the Thorns I can best picture wielding a lightsaber (it is probably her haircut), but at the same time I just can’t get around the fact that her name doesn’t really let you sneer properly as you pronounce it.
17. Darth Westphal
16. Darth Rocky
15. Darth Salem
14. Darth Menges
13. Darth Ogle
12. Darth Heath
11. Darth Britt
10. Darth Seiler – Any name ending in an “r” is much easier to imagine Emporer Palpatine growling in warning.
“You will not fail me again, Darth Seiler.”
9. Darth Lussi
8. Darth Weaver
7. Darth Cel
6. Darth Bella – The Sith of the extended Star Wars Universe have a long history of using Latin-ish words as their names. Tyranus, Iratus, Nihilus, and Rictus have all graced the Galaxy far, far away, and Bella, the plural for war in Latin, fits right in with the theme.
Of course, if Bella Bixby had stayed Bella Geist, she would have been an easy contender for the top ranking on this list.
5. Darth Kling
4. Darth Horan
3. Darth Sinc
2. Darth Broon
1. Darth Pogarch
I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone that, given the state of the world, I have been struggling to collect myself and write about the good, good game. Still, when the Timbers’ re-aired their first-ever Major League Soccer home game, I vowed to shake off the malaise that had settled over me and write something about it.
It didn’t go great.
I struggled to watch the game, let alone write about it, and as the hours passed with no movement I decided to record snippets of what was going through my head.
*
I can’t even think about soccer right now.
Attempts to think back about the beginning of the Timbers’ season are met in my mind by a white void, full of nothing but static and anxiety.
I try to focus on the Timbers’s second match of 2020—their last match before all this took hold—and I know it was a 1-0 win. As I try to summon the match more fully to mind I find myself staring at my gloved hands, still glistening with a sheen of evaporating alcohol from the wipe I just used to disinfect my desk after a co-worker borrowed my workstation.
“I’m not sick,” he said.
“That’s not how this works,” I replied, exasperated.
It eventually comes to me. Diego Valeri on the volley. Sixty minutes of compact, defensive soccer. A reasonable fear of Walker Zimmerman at the back post. Three points.
**
Executive Order No. 20-12 has been announced.
Work has slowed to a halt and I find myself listening to podcasts as I wait to see how many more people I have to interact with today. I clean and count product, losing myself in the repetition and in the podcasts that play through the one earbud I have in.
Every soccer podcast that I listen to has become a movie review podcast. It is fine.
***
When I get home I sit on the couch and time passes swiftly.
Hummus and pita as something flickers on the television.
I know should watch the rebroadcast Timbers game, their first home match since joining MLS. I should rouse myself. I should write something.
More sitting. More screens.
Tonight, this is as close as I get.
****
I remember Jorge Perlaza’s goal.
Not so much the goal itself, although through repeated viewing over the last ten years it has been seared into my mind, but my feelings at the moment that it occurred.
Standing in the North End, drunk, after hours in line. Waving a flag too long. The rain.
The wild elation when Perlaza slots past Sean Johnson. Jumping up and down like a maniac. Hugging my best friend on one side. Hugging a stranger on the other.
*****
It is two days later and I am finally watching the match. My eyes are heavy from a combination of stress and allergies, but as the game begins I perk up.
I like this team. Captain Jack. Kenny Fucking Cooper. Futty. Rodney. Kalif.
But it is not just the RCTID folk heroes that bring a smile to my face. There is future Chivas USA survivor Steve Purdy; rock-solid Eric Brunner, whose career was cut short by concussions; and Jorge, the Timbers’ first Colombian.
Even James “Non-soccer Reasons” Marcelin and Jeremy “no-nickname-found” Hall warm my heart.
******
Ten minutes in and Cooper is dancing around Chicago players as though he weighed no more than a feather. This is the Kenny Cooper that we forget.
Moments later that dribbling has lead to nothing as Cooper fires a shot or a pass or maybe just an ill-timed muscle spasm off the leg of a defender and up into the air. This is the Kenny Cooper that we remember.
*******
Twenty-five minutes in and I am struck by how comforting it is to have a team full of imposing players.
In the 2011 home opener, the Timbers starting XI averaged just over 6’1”. In the 2020 home opener, the Timbers starting XI averaged a smidge over 5’10”.
The difference is stark on every contested header.
********
Twenty-nine minutes in and the goal comes. It is everything I wanted it to be.
Rodney to Kalif to Jorge. Cut inside. Pass the ball into the net.
I watch the cameras panning over wildly celebrating fans and pick out my best friend, waving a scarf in the air. He is just on the edge of the screen, but I can still make him out and I can tell that the one arm projecting from behind a waving flag: that is me.
*********
Thirty-one minutes in and Timber Joey is cutting his first slab off the log in the MLS era. Except, it looks like it might turn out to be a wedge rather than a slab.
**********
Thirty-eight minutes in and Rodney Wallace scores the goal that should have announced his presence to everyone in the North End. But in 2011 Rodney was playing left back and we all knew that left back goals are not repeatable.
***********
Forty-seven minutes in and Jorge Perlaza has scored his second goal of the night. He will go on to score only four more for the Timbers before being traded away midway through the 2012 season.
That is a bummer.
My god, it is raining hard.
************
Sixty-five minutes in and Kalif Alhassan looks so much worse than I remember.
He has so very many ideas and so little chance at executing them. Here he takes a shot on the volley that if he could connect with it would instantly be in the running for the best goal a Timbers player has ever scored. (Sorry, Darlington. Sorry, Diego.) But he never connects.
*************
Eighty-one minutes in and Marco Pappa scores that goal that Kalif wishes he had scored.
Pappa would go on to score once more against the Timbers: two years later for the Seattle Sounders during the Timbers’ abysmal 2014 season.
**************
Eighty-four minutes in and Futty scores the most 2011 Timbers goal possible: a flailing, stumbling, possibly double hand-ball that somehow emerged from the midst of no less than five defenders to end up over the line.
That is the 2011 that I remember.
***************
Eighty-seven minutes in and Darlington Nagbe has been on the pitch for several minutes now. He is only 20. He looks so little as the Timbers Army chant “Fools Rush In”.
****************
Ninety minutes in and the Timbers Army are singing “Tetris” but they are not Tetris-ing. This makes sense as Tetris-ing was not yet a thing in 2011, but there remains something strange about not seeing a mass of people bouncing back and forth as the song is sung.
The little differences like this are adding up. 2011 was a long time ago.
*****************
The game is over and I am left with a little bit of sadness.
In a year’s time, this team would be largely unrecognizable going into the hellmouth that was the 2012 season. And by the end of that year, only a handful of the players that were there at the beginning would remain. Now not a single player from the 2011 Timbers home opener is still on the roster.
The first years of every expansion team are full of upheaval. Everything comes and goes as the club struggles to figure out who they are.
In April of 2011 the Timbers were a team fueled by the crowd and the rain and the smell of fresh sawdust.
Well, that was some bad timing.
On Wednesday night, full of optimism about the start of the Thorns’ preseason camp and also willing to talk about the start of the Timbers’ season, we held our first question and answer thread over on our Discord server.
Since then, the sporting situation in Portland and around the world has changed drastically. Still, how Kyle feels about Eryk Williamson or how we all feel about Amandine Henry will not change just because some dumb virus is reshaping society as we know it.
With that in mind, here are a few of your questions from Wednesday’s Q&A on the Rose City Review Discord.
(Some of the questions and answers have been edited for clarity.)
Which former Thorn is the most likely to return to the team?
Do not take this as a prediction or as actual reporting, but I know the Thorns would love to have Amandine Henry back. The question is whether she has any reason to ever come back to the States (or, as we’re calling it now, STATES). It’s probably not impossible, but don’t get your hopes up.
-Katelyn Best
I would say probably Haley Raso still, just because of her connections here. But I don’t see it as being particularly likely that anyone is returning.
-Tyler Nguyen
Who is your favorite player on either team who may not necessarily be the best or see regular minutes?
For me, that has to be Marvin Loria. I am convinced that Loria has what it takes to be a starter-level player in MLS. He is fast, creative, and a hard worker. Of course, he is also injured pretty regularly, which is why we rarely saw him later on during the 2019 season.
Loria may never get the chance to regularly start for the Timbers, as the team has been pretty dead set on using their DP slots on wingers and forwards, but I could certainly see him making an impact off the bench or in spot starts and either getting traded within the league or (more likely) sold outside of it. To me, the latter seems even more likely now that MLS has increased the amount of money that teams get from selling players on.
Of course, I would also be happy just having him stay with the Timbers and doing dope stuff like this.
-Will Conwell
I think for me, that answer is Eryk Williamson. He seems to be on the bubble between the first team and Timbers 2. I watched quite a bit of T2 last season and he was arguably the best player, controlling the game, and I think was in the top half of USL in assists a season ago.
In what I’ve seen of him when he gets first-team minutes, I think he has a lot of potential. He is smooth on the ball, and I believe would be a good creator. He can play as a No. 10 in the middle of the action, but he can also play as a connector in the No. 8 slot, which is what he told me that he envisions himself being.
I think we might see more of him in the future when it comes time to rest Diego Valeri during condensed stretches of play in the summer. If anything, his defense might need the most improving, but creativity wise he could help the Timbers when it comes to breaking down low blocks and be an overall asset to the first team.
-Kyle Pinnell
I’m super partial to Marissa Everett this year because of her skill set and the fact that she’s a Duck. I think fans should be into that stuff. She’s a smooth-passing forward, and there’s no reason that she can’t be a bench player on the Thorns for a long time.
-Tyler
Is the Thorns’ youth movement perfectly timed or exquisitely timed? Which of the Thorns’ young players should I be frigging stoked for, and which will need some time or never contribute?
Take a huge grain of salt with this because I watch zero college soccer, but my understanding is that we should all be pretty fucking excited about Sophia Smith. She scored a bunch of goals at Stanford, but reportedly her intelligence, for a player her age, is off the charts. She might really be the mythical goal-scoring forward Thorns fans are always begging for—as well as having the technical skill and athleticism the Thorns coaching staff wants up top.
As far as timing? I’m not sure. As I’ve said in a few other places, the whole league is in a kind of purgatory right now as we wait for expansion to blow everyone up—that, plus Sinclair’s eventual retirement, is going to necessitate a rebuild within the next few years. That could mean Portland builds a new roster with their existing young players, or—possibly more likely—it could mean they trade them away post-expansion for some star power. Or, y’know, a mix of both.
-Katelyn
The youth stuff is funny because, yes, the Thorns are getting young in offense, but they’re also getting older on defense, and this club is constantly trying to refresh its roster. The new shit is that we have youngsters with pedigrees. That’s weird.
It will be great to see if we can have even better results teaching blue-chip talent instead of doing the usual miracle work with players who other teams didn’t see the value in
-Tyler
Who is Chris Duvall’s backup?
This is a good question and one that the Timbers seem far too likely to need to answer to at some point, given the early-season injury history among their defenders.
To my mind there are three different approaches that Gio and company can take here:
1. Flip a left back: just figure out which of Farfan or Villafana have a better right foot and move them on over.
2. Convert a center back: send Julio Cascante out there. He has done it before (I think). If he was not injured already, Bill Tuiloma would be another possibility in here, but as a left-sided player, playing him on the right would kind of fall back into category No. 1.
3. Get a little crazy: play a Chara at wing back. Or try out Renzo Zambrano out there. Why not?
Really, though, my bet would be Cascante.
-Will
Does Providence Park or the training facility have super low doorways, or are there other reasons our team [the Timbers] is so damn short?
It is Diego Chara’s fault.
And, in a way, Kris Boyd’s.
Chara was the Timbers’ first big signing and, ten years in, is their most influential player. His success—followed by Boyd’s failure—has heralded an approach to player signing from Gavin Wilkinson and company that focuses on technique and ball retention. For Chara, his ability to win the ball, pivot on it, and take it around a defender with a simple juke are all amplified by his short stature, low stance, and somehow subterranean center of gravity.
Plus, the Timbers just signed his brother, who is actually even shorter. That can’t have helped their average height.
-Will
Does Gio-ball actually exist and did they play it at Cosmos? If so, was it because of him or despite him?
My understanding of Gio-ball is that it’s the kind of front-foot, attacking, high-press soccer we’ve seen glimpses of from the Timbers over the last month. Specifically, the first 30 minutes or so in the opener felt a lot closer to how I’ve always thought Gio wants to play than we’ve seen from the Timbers before. Obviously, it’s not an easy style to master because, as we saw, the defense has to be very disciplined to not get caught way out of position, but with more and more signings during the Gio era, one would imagine the team will continue to progress in that direction.
-Zach Kay
Is Andy Polo the fastest Timber? why don’t we EVER play him into space?
He’s definitely fast, and while I appreciate what he does in the middle third, he’s definitely shown that he doesn’t consistently have a killer instinct or top-quality decision making in the final third. Putting someone into space is really only useful if they can turn that advantageous position into a goal or an assist, so until he’s doing that on a regular basis, it makes more sense to use his athleticism for other things.
-Zach
I agree with a lot of what Zach said. Polo is fast, but he also only has one regular season goal in over two seasons which is not… ideal considering he takes up one of the attacking spots. He does need some better decision making in the final third like Zach mentioned because, ideally, wingers in a sit-back-and-counter setup would help combine and unlock the opposing defense, and if he is not able to do that often, the Timbers lack an advantage at one of their attacking options.
What has piqued my interest over the past month is how Gio is using him in the offense. In preseason, Gio played him in midfield a lot, which, as you mentioned, doesn’t take advantage of his pace or the space afforded. The wingers have also been tasked with playing an entire sideline. For example, Blanco and Yimmi both seem to be playing in the defensive third as much as in the attacking third, which takes focus away from what they are best at. This actually benefits Polo, as he is a decent defensive option, but on the offensive end, he is most important as an attacking winger, and that’s a facet of his game that he needs to work on.
-Kyle
Will Renzo Zambrano and Marvin Loria disappear again, or will they take another step this year?
I hold a ton of Zambrano stock, and (up until Polo started playing more in central mid this year) I’d been excited for him to be the first-off-the-bench CDM. The times he played next to Paredes last year really sold me on those two next to each other being the future of the Timbers central midfield. Obviously, there’s still some growth that needs to happen before then, but I would be very disappointed if he doesn’t get significantly more minutes this year. Zambrano also happens to be my answer to “who is your favorite player who may not see regular minutes”.
-Zach
I made it out to training today, and Gio mentioned Loria as someone who, when he returns to the team from his time with the Costa Rica u23s in Olympic Qualifying, would make an impact for the side. I take that, along with my general enjoyment of his style of play, to mean that he is in the Timbers’ first-team plans this year.
-Will