PORTLAND, Ore. – It was only a quarter-hour after the loss, the Portland Timbers’ first at Providence Park this season, that Sebastián Blanco remembered: The team had put itself in that situation, before.
Perhaps those previous spots weren’t as drastic as the two-goal deficit Portland carried into Saturday’s halftime – one which preceded the team’s 2-1 loss to Vancouver Whitecaps FC – but, according to Blanco, the team had endured poor stretches in their three previous wins, too. Yet whereas games against the Montréal Impact, Houston Dynamo and Philadelphia Union produced seven points, the final game of the team’s four-game home stretch produced none.
“The last four games at home have been similar,” Blanco explained. “The first half: so-so; the second half: much better. Now, we need to put things together for the 90 minutes.”
There may have been more nuance in the team’s performance than Blanco’s verdict hints. After all, until Vancouver broke through in the 14th minute, the Timbers had control of the game, even if it was in a type of exploratory, probing control.
“We started the match the way we wanted …,” Portland head coach Giovanni Savarese, alluding to a more aggressive approach. “We went with something different. That’s why we went with a more attack-minded team, and in the first half, maybe they were able to capitalize on our mistakes and score the two goals.”
The first mistake was Jeff Attinella’s, vacating his goal as Vancouver’s Kei Kamara outleap Larrys Mabiala to find an empty net from 18 yards out. Diego Valeri then pulled his first-half penalty kick wide before, just two minutes before halftime, Cristian Techera beat Alvas Powell to a cross in front of goal, heading home from close range to put his team ahead by two.
In some sense, they were the type of breaks that had gone the Timbers’ way over their previous, 15-game unbeaten run. Whenever streaks like that endure, there’s always an element of luck involved. But when that luck evens out, you end aberrations that pile up: an uncharacteristic misread on a cross; the sharpshooter leaving a penalty unconverted; a late-half cross that leaves you searching for solutions.
“I thought the second half was all us,” Savarese said, with Portland ending the match with 26 shots and a team-record 69.2 percent possession mark. “We gave everything that we had in the second half, and we scored the goal, but we couldn’t get back into it.
“Credit to Vancouver. They came with a plan. They executed. They were able to get the goals that they needed in the first half, taking advantage of our mistakes. In the second half, they defended. They defended everything that we threw at them, which was a lot, and they got the victory.”
It’s a victory which, before the night’s kickoff, many would have expected the Timbers to snare. Vancouver was coming off a mid-week game in the Canadian Championship final, one which cost them star winger Alphonso Davies with an injury. Even with Whitecaps head coach Carl Robinson choosing a strong starting lineup – pushing his guys for a seven-day stretch of three games – Vancouver came into the match outside of the Western Conference’s playoff picture.
These are the games teams at the top of their conference are supported to win at home, even if they, occasionally, slip up. When they do, they’re left bemoaning the nature of the sport.
“We never want to lose, but sometimes it happens in soccer,” Blanco said. “We need to take the mistakes and train them for Wednesday [at D.C. United] so things don’t happen like [they did against Vancouver].”
If the second-half performance is any indication, Saturday’s loss will serve as a wakeup call. Unfortunately, the cost of that service was a chance at history. Even a draw against their Cascadia Cup rivals would have extended the team’s unbeaten streak to 16, set a club record, and ended the home stand on a positive note.
Instead, for the first time since April, the team is left recovering from an MLS loss.
“You want to win every match, especially at home,” Savarese said, “but also, you have to know that, at some time and at some moment, defeat is going to come.
“The most important part is how we react to this defeat. That will make the character of the team that we are."
