There is little question that Atlanta United is MLS’s most dangerous team, but the blueprint to frustrate them is, by this point in their second season, fairly well established: get numbers behind the ball, sit very deep defensively, stay organized, and, if possible, steal a goal on the counter.
It’s the same blueprint that Giovani Savarese used to turn the Portland Timbers’ season around after it started so disastrously in March, and so, on Sunday afternoon, with the Timbers’ make their first and only trip of the year to Atlanta, there was no misunderstanding their approach.
Savarese rolled out five defenders, watched his team concede almost 70 percent possession and 20 shots, and, ultimately, became just the third Western Conference coach ever to go to Georgia come away with at least a point.
Larrys Mabiala opened the scoring midway through the first half, and while Atlanta’s pressure told in Julien Gressel’s equalizer midway through the second period, the Five Stripes could not find the winner. Portland’s unbeaten streak is now up to nine, with this 1-1 stalemate standing as one of their finest results of all.
To secure it, Savarese — nothing if not tactically adroit through his first half season in the top flight — had to dive deep into his bag of tricks.
Back in April, faced with a matchup against a similarly attack-oriented side in New York City FC, the Timbers’ boss set his team up in a low-blocked 4-4-1-1 and largely sealed off the final third of the field in what became a statement 3-0 win.
Here, against an even more explosive offense, Savarese opted for an even more defensive system: a 5-3-2, used for the first time all season, with Lawrence Olum in the center of defense, flanked by Mabiala and Julio Cascante, with Zarek Valentin and Alvas Powell wide of them.
It was the right approach, inventive and it was still going to take a near-perfect performance a slice of luck to yield a point. In the end, that’s just about what the Timbers would get.
Atlanta dominated the opening period of the game, coming closest to opening the scoring when Fidel Escobar’s header after 20 minutes was palmed away superbly by Jeff Attinella, but the Timbers picked their spots to get forward as well.
Sebastian Blanco rattled the crossbar shortly thereafter, set up by a barnstorming Alvas Powell, with the Timbers winning a sequence of attacking free kicks. Just after the half hour mark, Mabiala took advantage.
Atlanta, defending with an extremely high line, immediately lost three runners and were punished. Samuel Armenteros got on the end of Diego Valeri’s superb cross, forcing a reaction save by Brad Guzan that the big center back was able to stoop down and head home to give the Timbers the lead.
Darlington Nagbe, facing the Timbers for the first time since his December departure, carved out a great chance for his new team just before halftime when he got to the byline and floated a lovely cross towards the back post, but Josef Martinez, having planted his feet, sent his angled header wide.
In fact, it’d be with Nagbe strewn on the turf, succumbed to a hip injury early in the second half, that Atlanta would finally break through. A deflected shot by Gressel fell to Escobar, whose shot was blocked by Mabiala in the goalmouth, but slammed home by the German winger at the winger at the second time of asking.
Nagbe was withdrawn after the goal, characteristically quiet on one of the bigger personal stages of his career, and played no part as his team barreled after the winner.
They would come awfully close. Nagbe’s replacement Tito Villalba smashed a shot off the bar from just outside the box with ten minutes to go, but it was the infuriated Martinez’s inability to convert just one of a series of guild-edged chances that ultimately cost the hosts.
Had the Venezuelan finished like he’s finished all year — ruthlessly — the game wouldn’t have finished even. But the Timbers were always going to need some luck, such was the size of their task, and their performance warranted it.
Olum, in the center of the back three, attempted just ten passes all game. But he was staunch defensively, as were Mabiala and Cascante, while Attinella — who came up with eight saves in a wonderfully confident, smooth performance — has likely eliminated goalkeeper as a position of need for the Timbers this summer.
But the player who looked truly reborn in the back five was Powell — who wrecked such havoc down the right wing that he ended the afternoon with more key passes than Almiron, Barco, and Nagbe and made himself an indispensable outlet for the Timbers’ shorthanded attack.
It was, by some distance, Powell’s best performance of the season — as if the intensity and pace of the game, plus the added attacking responsibility of the wingback position, had the effect of focusing the so often wayward young player.
Powell remains something of an enigma. His team, however, does not. The unbeaten streak speaks for itself, but it bares spelling out: the Timbers have turned themselves into one of the toughest outs in MLS.
Much of that is down solely to Diego Chara, Blanco, and Valeri — whose brilliance in transition allows the Timbers to commit numbers defensively without losing their attacking threat — but the team’s depth, evident everywhere in Sunday’s side, is equally responsible and just as important in the long-run.
The Timbers don’t have the kind of progressive system they boasted in 2013, or one like the Red Bulls used to wallop Atlanta in May, and while Savarese surely wants to get there, as he did with Cosmos, he’s going to ensure in the meantime that the Timbers are able to take points from every single game they play.
Most teams can’t handle the onslaught in Atlanta. This team, to their great credit, just did.
