As bad as Wednesday’s streak-busting collapse against the Vancouver Whitecaps was, the Portland Timbers’ 2–0 loss to the Colorado Rapids in Commerce City on Saturday night was equally limp.
With Sebastian Blanco and Dairon Asprilla out of the lineup, the Timbers’ typically lethal counter attack was muted, and soft defending on the wings and in the box meant that they never stood much of a chance against one of the league’s most competent sides.
The LA Galaxy’s home draw with Dallas and Minnesota’s home draw with LAFC means that the Timbers’ no-show didn’t cost any ground in the Western Conference standings. They’re still on track to host a home playoff game in November. But home playoff game or not, this performance dumped another glass of cold water on the notion that the Timbers might challenge the West’s elite to get back to MLS Cup.
The Rapids don’t have Portland’s pop, nor do they have a single player with the pedigree or ability of a Blanco or Diego Chará. But they are, in many ways, the Timbers’ antithesis—a team stacked from back to front and front to back with solid, proven MLS players. Acquiring talent within the league, on a budget, steadily over the course of three years, has pushed the Rapids back into the upper echelon of MLS.
On Saturday night, with the Timbers dragging in the altitude, they went about their business with relative ease. The game settled into a slow, stolid pattern after a period of early Colorado pressure, with the Timbers set up in their patented late-season defensive banks of four and trying to play on the break through a re-called Diego Valeri making his first start since the end of July.
But with Blanco and Asprilla on the bench, the Timbers lacked verticality, while the Rapids struggled to muster either the creativity or the energy necessary to break Portland down.
Colorado had few chances apart from an early corner, content to swing the ball languidly around their midfield, but as the half wore on, they began to work their wingbacks into space on both sides on the field and get runners in the box. Even as the half wound quietly down, it felt like single great cross could undo the Timbers’ defense—and in first-half stoppage time, a telling cross is finally what the Rapids got. Wingback Braian Galván got the ball deep on the left wing, whipped a cross into the middle of the six-yard box, and the veteran Dominic Badji, on his second tour in Colorado, nipped between Dario Zuparic and Renzo Zambrano and planted his header into the far corner.
It was a classic center forward’s goal, and coming just a minute before the halftime whistle, it changed completely the complexion of the game.
The Timbers started the second half with a new sense of attacking urgency and quickly generated their best pressure of the game, a stinging Valeri shot forcing William Yarbrough into his best save of the night five minutes after the restart.
But the change in momentum was brief. The Rapids nearly added a second goal just two minutes later when Danny Wilson had a free run at a corner and glanced his header just wide. Just after the hour mark, they put another one away on another frustrating defensive sequence.
Wilson played a long ball in the direction of a breaking Galván, and a backtracking Yimmi Chará misplayed it, allowing Galván to send a cross into the penalty area from the byline. Larrys Mabiala attempted to clear it, but succeeded only in flicking the ball into the path of an onrushing Diego Rubio, who headed it past Steve Clark.
That was, for all intents and purposes, the end of the drama. Rubio nearly scored again just minutes later, hitting the post with another header, and Clark stood strong to turn away a clean Cole Bassett chance on the break just several minutes after that.
The Timbers never mounted a significant response, and it seemed that Giovani Savarese, whose response after going down 2–0 was to introduce the trio of George Fochive, Marvin Loría, and Jose Carlos Van Rankin, could sense that his team had neither the legs nor the will to claw their way back into the game.
Savarese said after the match that he thought it was a “good game.” It was not. The Timbers were bloodless, finishing with an expected goal tally of just 0.3, and the Rapids dispatched them as coolly as you would expect a veteran, playoff-bound team to. Colorado is never a particularly easy trip, especially late in the year, and especially this year, given the formidable team that Robin Fraser has mustered. But even given all that, and given the short turnaround and squad rotation, this was a meek showing.
The Timbers’ final three games, all against Western Conference teams currently outside the playoff positions, should provide them with an opportunity to boost both their standing in the table and their collective confidence heading into the postseason. We know that the Timbers, on their day, can play with anyone in the league. The last two months proved that. The problem is that this team’s flaws are so glaring, and the underlying numbers are so unfavorable, that it is not at all difficult to see them ending this up-and-down campaign on the kind of low they endured in August.
The Timbers have conceded the second most goals in the West and again have one of the conference’s worst goal differences. The season, much like the club as a whole, is hanging by a thread right now. There is remains time to right the ship, but it’s quickly melting away.
