You know this is different because of the way it feels, just as you knew that March, 4-0 loss at the New York Red Bulls was more than one bad day on the road. The larger context persuades you, just as the context of a loss at the LA Galaxy to open the season told you the Red Bulls result was more than a one-off.
To many of us, the last two games for the Portland Timbers feel more like a bad week on the road. The team had lost the Saturday before they departed and, amid the three home games that preceded that defeat to Vancouver, there were already warning signs. In the defense’s mistakes. In the attack’s slow start. There were small signs that something was starting to change with the Timbers’ performance, signs that inform how we should feel about the latest results.
That’s how you know that this, the downturn that’s transpired over the last nine days, truly constitutes the third major phase of the Giovanni Savarese era. If feels different than the phase before – the second one, one that was defined by growth and victories. But with each of those positives came expectations, and was evidenced by the loss column over the last three games, Portland is no longer living up to those marks.
“This is soccer. And that’s it. This happens,” Savarese said, postgame on Saturday, acknowledging that, over the course of 34-game seasons, you’re going to have down spells. But within each down spell, there comes a new challenge, as well as the need to acknowledge what hasn’t worked.
“We explored something,” he said, harkening back to an approach he also outlined after losses to Vancouver and D.C. United. “We tried to see if we can work with players playing matches back-to-back and we learned that we have to change certain things.”
Whereas the first, obstacle-ridden phase of Savarese’s tenure was about assessing what the team could be, this phase is about living with what the team’s become.
What the Timbers are
Part of what makes this slump so surprising is the level the Timbers were at before. Perhaps the sticker shock of a 15-game unbeaten run exaggerates the team’s quality – no team is going to go without a loss, forever – but between the season’s slow start on the road, the recovery at home, and the eye-tests that played out each week, it wasn’t hard to believe the Timbers were one of the five or six best teams in Major League Soccer.
The team’s goal difference said as much, with Portland at one point sporting the third-best mark in the West (by Pythagorean goal difference). The standings, at the end of the run, did, too, with the Timbers inching toward first-place FC Dallas. Expected goals models were less flattering but also explained away by the Timbers’ reliance on counter attacking (which some xG methods have undervalued). Even the talent within the roster suggested Portland was a team that could compete at the top of their conference.
The standings, goal difference and expected goals numbers have obviously changed over the last couple of games, but the underlying reality the Timbers’ staff is dealing with hasn’t. The team showed, between April and August, that it could play at a certain level. Whether that potential represented a high point or is part of a longer course, it established a standard for the group.
Even amid a three-game losing streak, that is the level, at least, that the team has to use as its benchmark, if for no other reason than it’s how the team played before. Now, this group knows what it can do – part of the reason the last week-plus has felt so unacceptable.
What has changed
When considering how the Timbers could have, over the course of a week, gotten to this point, four things come to mind. First is something you hear a lot in sports, now, the concept of regression to the mean. Crudely, that is a high-brow way of saying a team of player’s latest performance is returning to their true, expected level of play (albeit with a statistical reference entangled). If you’ve heard that phrase over the last few days, it’s from somebody implying the Timbers weren’t as good as the standings hinted nine days ago, that their actual level is lower, and this stretch is just part of Portland “regressing” to their (statistical) “mean.”
That may be true, but when it comes to getting this team back on track, it also doesn’t matter. There are times when players and coaches have to deal with reality – that mean-level of performance – but during the day-to-day process that defines a team’s existence, people have to focus on potentials. They have concentrate on what the team can do, the best way to get there, and how long it will take. Each gameday, pragmatism takes over, again, and you do what’s best over the two-hour space, given the reality you have. Around games, though – and even within the subtext of them – it’s about reaching your potential.
To reach those levels, though, players have to believe they can get there. That’s where one of Savarese’s key focuses, mentality, becomes even more important. Sometime between the Red Bulls loss and, five weeks later, the team’s home win over New York City FC, the group’s belief started to grow. It went from a decimated place in the wake of that March loss to, come kickoff against NYCFC, a place that allowed it to topple an undefeated foe. Over the next three months, as that belief became the norm, the team went on its record-tying run.
Over the next six days, Savarese’s biggest challenge is going to be restoring the team’s mentality, something that has to be coupled with addressing this:
And this:
Not to mention this, where Sporting was able to get the ball for their second goal:
These aren’t the only problems the Timbers had during their losses against D.C. United and Sporting Kansas City, but when it comes to signs of regression, this may be the biggest one. When the team needed to regroup following its loss to the Red Bulls, it did by going to a 4-3-2-1 formation that prioritized protecting the defense by being stout in the middle of the park. Savarese, in recent weeks, has talked about evolving the team’s approach to create a more potent in attack, but against both D.C. and Sporting, the team was still playing a 5-3-2 formation, one which should have afforded a lot protection in the middle.
Yamil Asad has too much time to pick out Wayne Rooney, in clip number one. And in clip number two, nobody should be allowed to receive, turn on, and shoot a ball like that from that point of the field. The team knows these things aren't supposed to happen, but ultimately, it just didn’t execute.
Beyond the failure to execute – or potentially some mistake in planning or training leading into these games – those situations reflect a possible dip in mentality. When the Timbers took the field in Dallas after their Red Bulls loss, they were practically scared into succeeding – afraid of what would become of the team if they didn’t turn things around. From there until last week’s Vancouver game, the team only lost one, highly controversial game in Orlando.
You don’t go from that level to losing 4-1 and 3-0 because you suddenly become a bad team. Losing Fanendo Adi’s threat off the bench hurts, but this kind of dip? It hints something is wrong beyond the tactics and depth chart – something almost every team has to deal with, over the course of a long season. The Timbers just happen to be dealing with it now.
A week ago, life wasn’t difficult for the Timbers. And it hadn’t been difficult for a long time. The team had experienced success, and the hunger, understandably, dissipated. Now, it’s a matter regaining that mentality and, once it’s bad, realizing how easy it is to lose focus.
Where the team goes, now
That’s not to say that this slump should just be written off as a natural, seasonal occurrence. Just because it happens to every team doesn’t mean it’s not a challenge, one which, if a team doesn’t respond quickly enough, could come to change their season. Plus, given this group and staff has never been derailed from success before, there’s reason to wonder how they will respond.
If the past is any indication, look for the Timbers to take care of the foundations first, which means reestablishing its ability to prevent goals. From there, the team can slowly build from its new base. That’s what Savarese did earlier this year, when the season started so wrong, and in the wake of conceding nine goals in four games (and 15 in their last seven), we may again see the coach’s back to basics approach.
But there is also the larger vision of this team, one Savarese was trying to reach by evolving the team’s approach. “We tried to be more ambitious,” he said, again, alluding in the waking of the Kansas City loss, “but we didn’t have the right ideas to be able to break them down.”
Some might say that, in the wake of recent result, those attempts to evolve have backfired, but there is another way to look at it. The team has a potential, from Savarese’s point of view, and it was one the group was merely building toward during its 15-game run. To reach the next level, though, the group needs to expand its game, take the pain of the setbacks, and learn from the experience. This team was walking along fine, before, but if it’s ever going to sprint to its potential, it has to know what it’s like to trip, fall, and get up.
Either way you look at it, the team needs to respond, and with Seattle Sounders FC on the horizon Sunday (6:30pm PT, FS1), motivation will not be a problem. How quickly that motivation takes hold, though, will define how this, the third part of Savarese’s debut, plays out.
