It took eight years and 11 games, but the Portland Timbers have finally — finally — won a regular season MLS game in Seattle.
How’d they do it?
The same way they’ve built an unbeaten streak over the last two-and-a-half months that has now reached ten games. Diego Valeri delivered a hat-trick of assists, and Larrys Mabiala — all of the sudden Cascadia’s premier poacher — bagged a brace. They were bright going forward, and resilient after conceding.
And, it must be said, they got a Seattle team that is a shell of what we’ve known it as during the club’s decade in the league: ponderous going forward, lacking quality in defense, and looking every bit the team that has won just three times in 15 attempts so far this season.
The result for the Timbers was a 3-2 win on a drizzly June afternoon in the Emerald City, not a vintage edition of this great rivalry, but one that, in both cities, will be remembered with feeling.
Unlike the first meeting of the year between these teams in Portland in May, with Seattle after more than a solitary point, this game was open from start to finish.
The Timbers’ bright spot at the start of the game might very well have been Dairon Asprilla, who, drafted into the starting lineup for just the second time all season and slotted up top alongside Samuel Armenteros, attacked with the kind of energy and rhythm that he’s so apparently lacked so often this year.
But while Asprilla led all players with three first half shots, the standout moment of the opening period came when Seattle goalkeeper Bryan Meredith, making his first MLS start since 2012 in place of a concussed Stefan Frei, made an outstanding one-handed save on a header from Mabiala to game the scoreless.
It augured what was shortly to come.
Mabiala won that first half header over Kim Kee-Hee, and, two minutes into the second half, with another Valeri corner in flight, the South Korean center back never got near his Congolese counterpart. Mabiala got a free run at the ball and planted his header into the corner to give the Timbers the lead.
Two minutes after that, they gave the goal right back. Miscommunication between Zarek Valentin and Andres Flores on the left wing allowed Nicolas Lodeiro to steal the ball, cut back, and bend a lovely cross towards the back post — where Victor Rodriguez, having raced past Alvas Powell, met it to tie the game.
It was a sloppy sequence from the Timbers, and a brief flash of the kind of aggressive, direct attacking play that has been so largely absent from the Sounders’ season.
In contrast, that kind of aggressive, direct attacking play, especially after turnovers, has more than anything else made Portland’s season — and, just six minutes after Rodriguez’s equalizer, it’d give them the lead back.
With Seattle attacking, Will Bruin and Clint Dempsey collided on top of the Timbers penalty area and lost the ball, Flores hit Valeri in the open field, and Valeri used his first touch to slide a lead pass to Armenteros, running one against one with Waylon Francis, in the righthand channel.
It was a mismatch — heavyweight against lightweight — and Armenteros took Francis to school. The Swede squared up as he strode into the penalty area, cut sharply inside onto his favored left foot, and fired the ball into the far corner. Francis ended up on the ground.
That made it 2-1. Marshall hauled his team back into the game ten minutes later by beating Mabiala on a corner and scoring a header of his own to knot the game at two, but shortly thereafter, the Timbers’ central defender would get the last laugh.
Matched up against Marshall on the other end of the field six minutes later, Mabiala delivered the knockout blow: rising straight up over Marshall and powering another Valeri corner into the roof of the net.
What resulted was the image of the afternoon: Mabiala grinning, wheeling away in celebration, and Marshall — not Francis this time, but Seattle’s old warrior of a center back — prone on the turf. The Sounders wouldn’t get another significant chance.
It’s the end of an era in Seattle. The end might well have come last year, or even two years ago when Sigi Schmid was fired, but even if Raul Ruidiaz provides a lift when he debuts in two weeks, this is it.
The core of the team that frustrated the Timbers at CenturyLink Field in game after game, year after year, has lost its sting. Clint Dempsey, anemic in this game as he has been all season, is finished. Osvaldo Alonso isn’t far behind. Even Marshall, now in his fifteenth MLS season, couldn’t carry them all.
Alonso in particular was eaten alive defensively in this game, helpless against the brilliant Valeri, who created a game-high five chances from open play and nutmegged the Sounders captain again for good measure. Between them, Alonso and Cristian Roldan had just one tackle.
Alonso, remember, missed the first the first meeting of the year in Portland injured, as did the likes of Lodeiro and Rodriguez. This time, however, it was the Timbers who were down key players — Sebastian Blanco, Fanendo Adi, Andy Polo, David Guzman, and Liam Ridgewell. But you never would have known it.
The Sounders have survived some abysmal starts in recent years, but none of those starts ever included a home defeat to Portland. This is a new low, and after it was reached, Schmetzer, the Seattle native, the rivalry’s dean, didn’t mince words.
“This is a really, really tough loss,” he said. “This is going to sting. This is going to sting for a long time.”
It’s the end of an era indeed. The CenturyLink hex, at long last, is dead.
