Monday, April 13, 2015

What's the Matter with the Timbers? Orlando City SC 2:0 Portland Timbers

One might easily be forgiven for assuming that, after last week's sound and convincing drubbing of erstwhile Western Conference table leaders FC Dallas, the Portland Timbers would have seen Orlando City SC, an expansion side after all, as an easy mark at home, and would accordingly have taken to the pitch with a great deal of hunger together with a marked determination to earn another resounding victory.

Unfortunately, one would be mistaken in so doing.  In fact, by all accounts, for reasons that are not readily apparent --we will speculate on them a bit further down-- the Timbers did the opposite, and aside from Darlington Nagbe and a handful of isolated instances in other players, the Timbers seem to have not shown up to play at all.

But maybe that's not right either; while they did look quite poorly for much of the first half, the Timbers didn't look completely impotent and in fact, to the contrary, managed several decent looks at goal in spite of their apparent lack of passion.  During the second half they looked a bit more lively and did dominate possession, but again, there was no real heart in their performance and it was badly marred by stupid mistakes, chippy play and a general lack of execution in the final third of the field.   

One idea might be that the horrific and completely arbitrary refereeing threw the boys off so that they didn't know which foot to stand on.  While it's true that referee Kevin Stott, whatever his antecedents may be, proved himself deeply incompetent and, perhaps even worse, totally inconsistent, one has to think that by the time players reach this level of play, they will have encountered any number of terrible refs and accordingly ought to be capable of handling the situation.  For their part, the Lions certainly were, even if it is arguably the case that they got the better of the abysmal officiating.

As for Stott, I think we can all agree that he has no business at this level of play, South African antecedents or no, and that he really ought to stick to teaching math to middle-school kids.

Another possibility is that the Timbers were, sad to say, a bit star-struck at the prospect of playing against Kaka', a man who must have figured as a childhood idol to much of the roster, but if this is what happened, it's a new development since in past years they have shown no signs at all of being star-struck by the presence of players such as Thierry Henry or David Beckham, both of whom are easily Kaka's equal in terms of international stature.

Complicating the matter is the fact that with the exception of a specific central midfielder who will remain unnamed for the shame that's in it, no single Timber played that poorly and what really bit them in the ass is that none of them played very well either, with the exception of Darlington Nagbe who continues to redeem himself from last year's lackluster showing.

A final possibility (aside from the idea of alien intervention, lizard people and the like) is that the Timbers, while competent, just don't really have their shit 100 percent together in the absence of Diego Valeri and team captain Will Johnson and that in consequence, when faced with wildly inconsistent officiating, they kind of lost their heads and gave away the first half; and while they were able to pull it together for a better showing in the second, it was still rather uninspired play.  (This last leaving aside the evident fact that for whatever reason, former Timbers and current Lions goalkeeper Donovan Rickets appeared deeply motivated and managed two improbable saves in the second half: does Rickets have hard feelings toward Portland?  I couldn't say, but he certainly played as though he had something to prove.)

Anyhow, the whole thing amounted to a pretty disgraceful performance.  I don't claim to have the answers, the above are merely guesses.                   

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