Twelve games without a loss, 10 in league play. You’ve heard a version of those numbers relentlessly since the Portland Timbers’ streak started approaching double digits, mostly because that’s when the story became dominant. Streaks like this are rare, and while this one has come amid a feeling that Portland still has room to grow, the contrast between that growth and the team’s results only fuels the story. This still growing, coalescing, learning version of the Timbers has still gone a dozen games in all competitions without feeling a loss.
Saturday night against San Jose (8pm PT, ROOT SPORTS) presents a perfect opportunity to extend that streak, so perfect that it allows us to evoke our favorite metaphor: the double-edged sword. While a win over an Earthquakes team that’s drawing the fewest points-per-game in Major League Soccer (0.71) will reinforce every narrative baked into this run – all the virtues of mentality, squad depth, and versatility we’ve come to know and love – a loss will feel so severe and so unexpected, we’ll have to reexamine those virtues. What good is the mentality Portland has built if it can’t claim three point versus San Jose at home?
That may sound severe, and in truth, double-edged swords are. Calmly, cogently, and away from bladed weaponry, we can remember the proper perspective of Saturday’s match. It’s game 16 of a 34-match season. It’s only July. MLS is never decided in the summer. A loss to San Jose might feel like the end of the world, but only relatively so. It will merely end the world of 12-game unbeaten runs the Timbers have crafted over the last three months.
With that out of the way, here is your KeyBank Scouting Report – three areas of focus ahead of Saturday’s kickoff:
1. This is where we talk about formations
It’s become a weekly thing, and given the tendencies we’ve seen from Giovanni Savarese, perhaps there will never be a time, in the weeks before a game, where there won’t be questions about how his team will set up. And, perhaps, that’s exactly how Portland’s head coach wants it.
This season, in the two games his team has played against San Jose, Savarese has started two different formations. Earlier this year, in the Bay Area, Savarese started with the 4-3-2-1 set that had helped his team turn away from their early-season doldrums. Come the Earthquakes’ trip to Portland for their U.S. Open Cup match, though, the Timbers were going with a 4-2-3-1 – a temporary sojourn back to the formation the he’d used in the preseason and over the first two weeks of the Major League Soccer campaign.
Lest you believe those are the only options, consider the approaches Portland has used over the last two weeks: a 5-3-2 in Atlanta; and, in Seattle, a 4-3-1-2. Those choices only add to the uncertainty surrounding Saturday’s setups, only add to the folly of trying to predict Portland’s shape before they actually line up.
2. Who makes the 18?
While the focus of Timbers obsessives may rightly be on formation, another perhaps more interesting, if more nuanced, battle will be taking place deeper on the roster. With the renewed availability of David Guzmán, Andy Polo, Liam Ridgewell, Fanendo Adi and Sebastián Blanco – back from World Cup duty, personal absence and injuries – Savarese not only has a new depth of starting options but a challenge to narrow his gameday squad to 18 players.
Take last week’s team in Seattle, one that already looked sufficiently stocked despite a spate of absences. Would it be that easy to drop in four names, should all of Guzman, Polo, Ridgewell and Adi earn places in the gameday squad, without having one surprising, perhaps shocking exclusion from the gameday 18? Perhaps it all depends on your shock threshold.
“It’s a tough part about our job, but you want to be in that tough part of trying to select a team, because everybody is doing well,” he explained. “As a challenge, that’s difficult, and that’s how the players should be, and that’s how a coach should look at the team – it being difficult not only to select the 11, but most of all who’s going to be out of the 18 …
“Everybody is working hard. Everybody is doing well, and it’s tough to make these decisions. But, in the end, we have to make it, but the guys have to keep doing the things they have been doing so far. The mentality is strong and everybody is battling.”
The Timbers have never been this healthy during the 2018 season, so even beyond Savarese’s tendency to change things up, it’s difficult to predict what he’s going to do. One hint he did drop on Tuesday, though, is that the battles will be settled on the field – in the days spent competing on the training ground, before San Jose’s arrival.
“Today in practice, you can see that guys want to do well to make sure they are the ones playing,” Savarese shared. “It’s where a coach wants to be.”
3. Making up the home-road imbalance
Since the final whistle blew on the season’s first game, the Timbers have been trying to even out the schedule, because by the time they returned home in April, they were down five: five more games played on the road than at home.
Such is life when your stadium is being renovated, and Portland’s not the first team that’s had to navigate the imbalance. Los Angeles FC had to start this year on the road, too, as Banc of California Stadium was being completed, while Toronto FC had huge road trips to begin both the 2016 and 2017 seasons due to their own stadium expansion, years they made the MLS Cup final.
Every season does even out, eventually, but until it does, it’s important to keep a team’s results in the appropriate context. And for Portland, that evening-out process is still ongoing. Before the team kicks off Saturday at Providence Park, they will have still played three more MLS games on the road than at home. Only one team in MLS, D.C. United (waiting to open Audi Field this month), has a more severe road-home imbalance.
It’s become common knowledge that life on the road is more severe in Major League Soccer than other leagues; at least, that’s become a common refrain, whether it’s true or not. But that refrain can’t both be part of MLS’ context and then completely missed when evaluating D.C.’s (10 more road games than home), LAFC’s (3) or Portland’s starts.
The Timbers have been strong on the road this season, posting a 3-3-3 record. At home, though, that 1.33 points-per-game rate climbs to 2.33 (4-0-2). If the team’s form holds, all the qualms we might have about the Timbers’ goal difference and place in the standings will fade as the home games come. And that fade could start with games like Saturday’s.
