Having completed their final three-game week of the 2018, the Portland Timbers enter the final stretch of the regular season healthy and rested — ready to take on Western Conference-leading FC Dallas at Providence Park on Saturday night in a match with major playoff implications (7:30 p.m., TV on KPDX).
The Opponent
In many ways, coming off of a nightmarish 2017, FC Dallas has had an excellent season. They’re top of the West after 29 games, a playoff lock, carried by a number of the players who they’ve developed since Oscar Pareja came to the club five years ago.
And yet, there are questions to be asked about whether this team is a legitimate threat to get to MLS Cup. Dallas isn’t nearly as cohesive or effective going forward as the likes of LAFC and Sporting Kansas City, and not nearly as good defensively as a team like Seattle.
In fact, despite their record, it’s difficult to see Dallas as an elite team at all — especially after a summer transfer window in which they moved arguably their two most talented players in Mauro Diaz and Kellyn Acosta.
But Pareja has been ruthless in turning over the locker room since the debacle last season, and the group he has now appears to be fully bought in. That, along with their athleticism, has won them plenty of games: 15 on the year, and nine by just a single goal.
The Tactics
Dallas is coming into this game on the back of a big rope-a-dope 2-1 win in Vancouver last Sunday that brought Carl Robinson’s Whitecaps tenure to an end and was enough to leap ahead of SKC back into first place in the West.
Dallas played mainly on the counter in that game, as is their wont on the road, with a twist in Maxi Urruti’s positioning behind a central striker in the Pareja’s standard 4-2-3-1. Urruti doesn’t see a whole lot of the ball in that spot, but he’s certainly been better there of late than he was up top over the summer.
The Urutti-as-playmaker experiment sums Dallas up fairly well: they don’t especially wish to control the flow of games, but rather instead to capitalize on enough individual moments to win.
Interestingly enough, a move back to the 4-2-3-1 could be on the cards for the Timbers. They certainly looked better in that formation in Minnesota last weekend than they did in the 4-3-2-1, and with the amount of pace Dallas has on the flanks, the Timbers are going to need a fair amount of wide defensive structure.
Organization is especially important because, stylistically speaking, at this point, the Timbers are who they are. They’re going to play largely on the counter, no matter the venue, and they need to be much, much tighter defensively than they’ve been of late to give themselves a chances to win games.
Moving back to the 4-2-3-1 would have the added benefit of getting Diego Chara back into central midfield. His presence there in the second half was the driving force behind the Timbers’ fightback against the Loons, and neither he nor Andy Polo are particularly well served by the Christmas Tree look.
The Lineup
1 – Attinella
4 – Villafaña
18 – Cascante
33 – Mabiala
16 – Valentin
20 – Guzman
21 – Chara
11 – Polo
10 – Blanco
8 – Valeri (C)
99 – Armenteros
— Jeff Attinella rejoined training this week, and should be ready to step back into goal.
— Liam Ridgewell, on the other hand, was held out of training early in the week while dealing with a rib injury picked up in Minnesota and is questionable heading into Saturday.
— Perhaps minus Ridgewell and Attinella, this is going to be the Timbers’ top group for the final four games. There are big decisions for Savarese to make up top, in midfield, and at fullback. We’ll see what he does.
The Memory
The Timbers got their first point of the season in Dallas all the way back in March, and won this game comfortably last year — thanks in large part to a fabulous goalmouth dummy from Diego Chara.
The Pick
Neither one of these teams is playing great soccer, but both should be up for this game. It finishes 1-1.
