PORTLAND, Ore. – When their streak was snapped, the 2013 Portland Timbers sat in third place in the Western Conference. They’d established one of the best defensive records in the league, conceding only 17 times in 18 Major League Soccer games, but were still trying to take their attack to another level. Just over a goal-and-a-half per game (1.55) was a fine rate, but it wasn’t enough to keep half their matches from ending in a draw.
Just like this year, when the Timbers’ club-record-tying 15-match unbeaten run was ended by Vancouver Whitecaps FC in a 2-1 loss on Saturday night, 2013’s record-breaking team hadn’t arrived by the end of its run. Amid a style that controlled games without breaking through, prevented goals without scoring them, there was a feeling Caleb Porter’s first unit was a work in progress – that more pieces needed to fall in place; that the unbeaten run was a fortunate plus in a process of cultivating the end product.
“It’s not a bad thing to taste defeat,” Porter said, his Ohio connection having lured a larger-than-normal crowd to his post-match scrum in Columbus. “It’s not all bad to get bloodied and taste defeat. This team will respond positively, like good teams do.”
What else is a coach supposed to say, right? That one loss is devastating? Because it’s not. No, particularly in the face of 15 unbeaten, some perspective is needed. There should be some reverence for what the team’s accomplished, even in that moment of disappointment. There are lessons to learn, just as there are after every loss, but there’s no need to take one 90-minute stretch of mid-summer soccer and turn it into a verdict on the team’s state. Just like every 90 minutes before, it’s but one drop in a larger pitcher of what the Timbers have become.
This drop, however, ends Portland’s second stage under Giovanni Savarese. The first was the season’s opening road trip, one that saw the team go 0-3-2 amid a reset that would set the summer’s stage. The group needed to break itself down, establish a new foundation, and build from something new. It couldn’t just continue trying to be what it was before.
That reset started the 15-game run, one which began with a home win over Minnesota United FC, and vaulted the team toward the top of the Western Conference. It identified what the team could be excellent at – establishing a solid, intelligent defense capable of stymying any opponent, when it prioritized goal prevention – as well as what the team needs to work on, something Savarese pinpointed in the wake of Saturday’s loss.
“We went with something different,” the head coach said, immediately acknowledging his team still needs to evolve. “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.”
Neither of Vancouver’s goals felt like scores the Timbers would have given up earlier in their streak, against either FC Dallas or the Chicago Fire, in those March days when solidity was job one. Late goals conceded in Frisco, Texas, and Bridgeview, Illinois, showed a different type of vulnerability, but the fortitude the defense showed over most of those games hinted at what the team would eventually grow into: A group capable of keeping clean sheets against the likes of Los Angeles FC, New York City FC and Sporting KC.
As with that 2013 team, though, the solutions Portland need from their first-year coach still have to evolve. Without them, there have still too many instances where, at the end of matches, the team’s left with one point instead of three. While Porter’s first team was far more draw-laden, having tied nine of his first 18 league games, this year’s Timbers are still tied for the league lead in draws (seven). And there is a feeling that, once the team continues to evolve in attack, some of those Ts can be turned into Ws.
What we saw on Saturday was part of that evolution, and, to paraphrase a recent former President, progress isn’t always a straight line, or a smooth path. As Savarese noted two weeks ago in his mid-week press conference, the type of goals the team was conceding then, against Montreal and Houston, were a matter of finding a new balance – a new spot on the spectrum between give and take; between responding to games and dictating them.
“I agree with you that we have given up some goals against Montreal and Houston that maybe can look like mental lapses,” Savarese told me, then, “but when your approach, now, tries to [develop] a new component, sometimes these things are going to happen.”
That new component is the evolving attacking phase. It’s one that is slowly leaving the defense more exposed, testing whether the lessons learned over the team’s last four months have taken root. It’s one that requires trust.
“I trust my players 100 percent,” Savarese explained. “Sometimes we make mistakes – that’s normal. It’s how we react, how we find ways to get the points that we need after those situations, is the most important part.”
The clearest evidence of that trust is in the player selection – not only who is being picked but, in sacrificing some defensive qualities for attacking, where the players are deployed. At the beginning of the year, Sebastián Blanco was playing higher, as one of the team’s tandem attacking midfielders. On Saturday, he was in what’s become his more customary spot: central midfield. Diego Valeri has often been playing as one of two forwards, alongside Samuel Armenteros, but against Vancouver, he was back at the top of a midfield diamond. The team was still going with two forwards instead of the one it used spring’s 4-3-2-1 formation, and in the choice of David Guzmán instead of Lawrence Olum in front of defense, distribution was sought instead of destruction. The team was evolving its approach.
In 2013, that evolution also led to a bump in the road, albeit one that was more difficult to avoid, given that July 7, 2013 loss in Columbus saw the Timbers handed a 13th-minute red card. But it provided a moment to reflect, nonetheless, one that eventually produced a first-place finish in the Western Conference, a final-four appearance in the postseason and, until 2015, the best season in Portland’s MLS history. Like that season’s team, this year’s squad finishes their run in third place, is trying to convert draws into wins but, in some ways, feel like a couple of steps from the finished product.
“The most important part is how we react to this defeat,” Savarese said on Saturday, and with two road games in six days ahead, that reaction will be tested to its fullest. But in that test comes opportunity, if not to build from Saturday’s defeat than to identify what work’s left to do.
As Savarese implied in his willingness to open the team up and test both his defense and team’s unbeaten run, Major League Soccer seasons aren’t about what you do from March to August. It’s about the level you’ve reached come November, when the results matter most.
