Seeing what first-year head coach Brad Friedel is tackling with the New England Revolution brought an entirely new perspective on Giovanni Savarese’s challenges. The rookie Portland Timbers boss came into a team that had experienced success, had expectations of themselves, and harbored ideas about the best way to meet them. That culture has presented a unique set of obstacles and benefits for an incoming boss, but at least there was something to build on.
Friedel is having to seed all that on his own. The degree to which he’s been successful is open to debate and won’t be clear for some time, but in the magnitude and scope of the tasks, his job is less similar to Savarese’s than another first-year MLS boss: Colorado Rapids head coach Anthony Hudson.
Hudson brings his team into Providence Park on Saturday night (7:30pm PT, FOX 12 PLUS), and Wednesday’s New England win over New York City FC not withstanding, many of his debut season’s lessons have been like Friedel’s: hard-earned. Whereas the Revolution were winless in eight when the Timbers arrived at Gillette Stadium a week ago, Colorado brings the league’s third-worst record to Goose Hollow this weekend, and while the team has taken seven points in their last five games, a league-worst attack (31 goals in 24 games) and a minus-17 goal difference has the MLS original on the brink of postseason elimination. With eight games left on their schedule, the Rapids are coming off a 6-0 loss their last time out. And that loss was to their biggest rival, Real Salt Lake.
In the broadest strokes, Saturday's is a game that the Timbers have to win. Even a draw would be disappointing. Those may be the type of statements that opposing teams read, feel disrespected by, and toss onto their locker and dressing room walls, but that doesn’t make it any less true. If you’re a team with Portland’s ambitions – to make the playoffs; to be competitive once there – you can’t see at visit from a team near the bottom the league, one you’ve already beaten in their home, as anything but a golden chance at three points.
The big challenge there, for Timbers players, is balancing opportunity with respect. The Rapids are struggling, and they’re limited, but they’re still composed of capable players. There is a reason why, just over a month ago, they were able to defeat the LA Galaxy, 2-1, just as there is a reason their summer is dotted with results against teams like Real Salt Lake (2-2 on July 21) and the Vancouver Whitecaps (1-0 at BC Place on July 1). Their wins may be exceptions that prove 2018’s more downtrodden rule, but for the Rapids, those wins have still come.
Since falling to the Timbers in May, Colorado has moved away from the three-center back scheme Hudson brought from his time with the New Zealand national team. With the acquisition of Kellyn Acosta from FC Dallas, the team has favored a 4-3-1-2, midfield diamond that leverages Acosta’s skill and ability to play box-to-box. The U.S. international won’t be in Portland this weekend, having earned national-team duty, but Hudson may yet stay with that approach, or perhaps employ something closer to the 4-3-3 he chose last time out.
That means, in at least one way, the Rapids will present a different challenge this time around, though formation isn’t the only one. The actual tactics the team used in that May meeting? One which, defensively, had Hudson’s centerbacks man marking Portland’s three most-dangerous attackers? You won’t see that again. Diego Valeri and Sebastián Blanco pulled Rapids’ defense all over the field, freed up space for Samuel Armenteros, and helped the Swede produce Portland’s first-ever multi-goal performance in Colorado. The Timbers’ 3-2 win was as more a product of that, a learning experience for the first-year boss, than anything else the Rapids brought to the field.
That alone should be enough to think the teams’ second meeting will be more competitive, but there’s also the presence of Giles Barnes, the Jamaican international who is carving out a larger role in Hudson’s attack. Sam Nicholson is, too, having fully assimilated into the team after his early-season arrival from Minnesota. Former Wolverhampton Wanderers midfielder Jack Price has settled into a role in deep midfield, Edgar Castillo has continued to have a quietly influential season at left back, while his fellow U.S. international, Tim Howard, provides a semblance of stability in goal.
These are incremental improvements, the type of steps you see from teams that need multiple seasons to identify their path. And there’s no doubt that, by MLS standards, the Rapids still have a long way to go. But within the context of their season, that long way has already started, so much so that the team Portland fans will see on Saturday is likely to be markedly, if marginally, improved.
The Timbers need to take care of business on Saturday. There’s no doubt about that. There’s no conception of the current Portland team that makes anything short of three points an acceptable result. But confusing that standard with an easy day at Providence Park would be a mistake, for players and supporters alike. This Rapids team will be a more capable one than the Timbers saw, before.
