It’s the “perfect time,” Giovanni Savarese said on Tuesday. Despite the team’s three-match slide. Despite Seattle Sounders FC’s nine-match ride. Sunday (6:30pm PT, FS1) is the perfect time for the next edition of Portland and Seattle’s rivalry, the Timbers head coach felt. It was the perfect opportunity for the team to change course.
“It comes at a moment which we need this game …,” Savarese said, unprompted, including his thoughts with an answer about the team’s last road trip.
“I believe in my players, one hundred percent,” he’d say, later in the press conference, discussing his team’s path forward. “We just have to focus, continue to work and, as I said, prepare for this game that comes at a perfect time, this weekend.”
The Timbers have never dealt with a three-game losing streak under Savarese, but in this week’s need to rebound, something harkens back to the mood before facing New York City FC, as well as before the trip to Atlanta United. Each time, there was an air of uncertainty around those challenges – ignorance as to whether the team was truly ready to face each. Versus NYCFC, the Timbers went on to claim their second win of the Savarese era, posting a decisive 3-0 result. And at Atlanta, the team went blow-for-blow with the Five Stripes in a 1-1 draw.
Seattle’s visit feels similar. Beyond the Sounders’ six-game winning streak, there’s the thought that derbies always present their own challenges, and with Seattle having lost their season’s first two meetings with the Timbers, the visitors’ motivation will be heightened. If Portland can rebuke that, though, they will not only take another step toward retaining the Cascadia Cup, but they will have quelled any doubts that have surfaced over the last three games.
That may be the perfection Savarese was alluding to. Portland needs to rebound. They need to refocus. They need to restore their confidence. If a visit from your fiercest rivals doesn’t bring out your best, what will?
Here is this week’s KeyBank Scouting Report – three areas of focus ahead of Sunday’s match against Seattle:
1. The defense has to improve
The Timbers conceded 13 times during their 15-match unbeaten run – a great total, if not exactly world-beating, given it was during an unbeaten run. But during that stretch from April 15 through August 5, the defense had become the most reliable part of the team, holding opponents to one goal or less in 11 of those outings.
Now, in each of the last three games, the team has conceded at least twice, and while it’s tempting to say life on the road comes with a change of expectations, the team’s defense had executed on the road, before. It kept a clean sheet at Los Angeles FC on July 15. It held Atlanta United to one goal on June 24. Life on the road is certainly tougher, but it’s not “concede seven goals in two games” unmanageable.
On Monday, we talked about a potential dip in mentality within the group, one that would be natural for any team finishing a 15-game unbeaten run. High points are high for a reason, largely because they’re so lofty. They’re always unsustainable.
But the Timbers don’t need to get back to being a team that runs off 15 in a row. In the short-term, they need to get back to being a team that can prevent goals. Some of that may be tactical; other parts, physical or mental. Whatever the cause, Portland has to address it, because they can’t live life giving up this many goals.
2. A chance for “new” faces
Amid the team’s slump, though, the Timbers are providing chances for new faces to emerge. After all – and as he reiterated in his press conference, earlier this week – one of Savarese’s primary considerations when selecting his team is how players are performing. That’s common sense, right? Well, one of the implications of that common sense is increased scrutiny when things aren’t going well.
At the back, the team used two different selections over the last week, one that had Zarek Valentin at left back (against D.C. United, with Alvas Powell on the right) and another that had him on the right (with Marco Farfan on the left). Odds are, the team will go back to Valentin and Powell, but what does it do in the middle, where right-center back Larrys Mabiala missed his first minutes of the season after being subbed off in Kansas City. Is this when Bill Tuiloma or Liam Ridgewell return to the lineup?
And what of the attack, a place where the team has needed somebody to step up in the wake of Fanendo Adi’s departure? Both Tomás Conechny and Lucas Melano played for T2 midweek against Orange County. Jeremy Ebobisse was picked to go on the first team’s East Coast trip, while Foster Langsdorf has played his way into Golden Boot consideration at USL level. Do any of those players push Dairon Asprilla for the backup striker’s role on Sunday?
Beyond that, competition might be more open than it’s been since the season’s opening month. That’s what happens when a team loses three in a row.
3. The Cup in the balance
As all diehard Timbers fans know, this year’s Cascadia Cup tournament is a weird one. Because the league only scheduled two meetings between some Cascadia rivals (like, Portland and Vancouver), this year’s competition comes down to four games, with the first meeting between the Timbers and Sounders back in May – a 1-0 Timbers win – not counting in this year’s standings. That means, after Portland’s loss two weeks ago to the Whitecaps, all three teams are currently tied with one win, one loss in the table, with goal difference giving the Sounders a slight edge, right now.
The most important part of that summary might be an implication: that each team only has two games left in this year’s competition, a number that goes down to one after this weekend’s derby. If there is a loser on Sunday, they also lose control of their Cascadia Cup destiny, falling three points behind their rival with one match left. In terms of this year’s Cup, Sunday’s match isn’t do-or-die, but it does make the potential loser into a fan of Vancouver, hoping the Whitecaps can defeat one rival and lose to another, forging a three-way, six-point tie at the top of the table.
Maybe that paragraph turned cross-eyed. It felt pretty complicated for a short, three-team tournament. The long and short of it:, though Sunday’s game is very important, as it concerns the Cascadia Cup. The winner moves within one win of sealing this year’s title. The loser sees their rivalry fate torn from their control.
