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Portland Timbers

After all the buildup to the opening salvo of North America's greatest soccer rivalry in 2017, it took just four minutes for the Portland Timbers to concede to the Seattle Sounders on Saturday afternoon at CenturyLink Field.

But this wasn't a case of Timbers stage fright. It wasn't the precursor to the kind of capitulation that, with this team, has become familiar of late.

In fact, the shame in the concession was that the Timbers would dominate the first half. They were solid defensively, dangerous in transition, and omnipresent around the Sounders' goal. When it was all said and done, Portland had racked up a staggering fifteen shots to Seattle's five β€” and zero goals to Seattle's one.

It was a difficult, and, as it turned out, impossible blow to absorb. The Timbers, tired and frustrated, would fade rapidly. By the time it was over, this defeat at CenturyLink felt much like the four that proceeded it. Despite every incentive and despite plenty of chances, Portland couldn't land a punch.

The Timbers are in a deep freeze. They've won just twice in two months, just once in their last seven games. This loss β€” against a completely pedestrian Sounders team β€” is this season's low. But if the Timbers don't get right soon, it won't be for long.

In this fixture last season, the Timbers would hold on for an hour before the Sounders struck a decisive blow through a Clint Dempsey penalty. On this day, however, the winning goal would arrive before a large number of the home team's fans.

In the third minute, Seattle's talisman Nicolas Lodeiro's shot forced a fine save out of Timbers goalkeeper Jake Gleeson. Chad Marshall flicked the resulting corner on, and Christian Roldan β€” having posted up Zarek Valentin β€” turned it in on the doorstep.

It was a nightmare start for the Timbers, but it wouldn't last. With Liam Ridgewell and Roy Miller both sharp, David Guzman running central midfield, and the Sounders retreating deeper and deeper into a defensive posture, the rest of the first half was all Portland.

The Timbers generated much of their attack down the lefthand side through Darlington Nagbe and Vytas, but Sebastian Blanco but was the team's most dangerous player. The winger tested Stefan Frei early with a long-range stinger, fired in several dangerous crosses, and went face-to-face with Roldan.

But Blanco couldn't break through β€” firing his best, and the Timbers' cleanest chance of their first half period of dominance wide after being played in by Guzman. He would end his day by firing a water bottle at the Portland bench after being substituted with fifteen minutes to go.

The Timbers' last, best hope of scoring in the first half came on a late corner, when a Lawrence Olum flick-on found Ridgewell ghosting in unmarked at the back-post β€” but the captain, unable to set himself, sent his header flying high and wide.

For the Timbers to put so much into the half β€” in the late spring heat, no less β€” and get nothing out of it was extremely ominous. The news would get no better at halftime when Guzman had to retire with concussion-like symptoms likely sustained in a meeting with the ever-lovable Clint Dempsey's elbow.

The Timbers suffered immensely for Guzman's absence. Without Diego Chara suspended, the Costa Rican was essential to his team's first half dominance β€” linking the Timbers' lines, driving them up the field, and moonlighting as a deep playmaker.

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Portland Timbers

Without Guzman, then, the Timbers' attack slowed and frayed. With two severely limited central midfielders in Amobi Okugo and Olum, the Timbers' back six and front four became disconnected. Space began to open up between lines for Seattle, which Jordan Morris' pace nearly exposed on several occasions.

But even if Guzman had been fit to continue, it might not have mattered. By the sixtieth minute, when they registered their final shot, the Timbers looked exhausted.

Portland put together the half it needed to play to get a result. But they couldn't find a goal in it.

That was mostly down to the vaunted front four, which, outside of Blanco, looked a shadow of itself. Nagbe, who had so much of the game in the first half, wasn't nearly incisive enough. Fanendo Adi was bottled up by his frequent foe Marshall and Marshall's Swedish center back partner Gustav Svensson.

But the most damaging no-show was Diego Valeri's. The Maestro, mostly uninvolved in the first half, appeared to press in the second. All told, he took just a single shot and went one-for-eight on entry passes into the penalty area.

When Valeri doesn't play well, the Timbers don't score goals. It's as simple as that.

The result in this game was that the Timbers squandered one of their best defensive performances of the season. Ridgewell, under so much fire of late, didn't put a foot wrong all afternoon. Miller was equally good, and both were aided by a comfortingly strong performance from Gleeson.

The Sounders, for their part, looked out of sorts offensively. Manager Brian Schmetzer, who was the subject of an adoring pregame tifo, hasn't quite gotten his team clicking. Schmetzer is well-loved in Seattle, and for good reason, but the jury is still out on him as the leader of one of the league's biggest clubs.

In this game, his goalkeeper Frei got a time-wasting yellow card in the first half of a home game. It wasn't, to say the least, a vintage Sounders performance β€” and it might not have been a successful one, had referee Mark Geiger given the Timbers penalties for clear handballs on Marshall and Osvaldo Alonso.

Porter was, somewhat uncharacteristically, measured in his comments on the officiating. Certainly, as far as Geiger goes, it could have been worse. But more than that, Porter was pleased with his team's effort. If Valeri and Adi are going to have off days, there's very little that can be done.

The good news is that June brings two more meetings with the Sounders, and plenty of games for this team to play itself back into the kind of groove it started the season in.

For now, however, nothing is coming is easy for the Timbers β€” with the latest consequence another agonizingly empty trip north.