The Portland Timbers, winners of five straight games, traveled to Colorado on Saturday night to face a Rapids team on the other side of that coin — losers of five straight. With two marquee home matches upcoming to open June, having just played two against Seattle and LA, it might have been a trap game for the Timbers.
Samuel Armenteros made sure that it wasn’t.
The Swedish forward, rewarded for his heroics last weekend with a first start in more than a month, scored a brilliant opening goal, tacked on a second not ten minutes later, and was a missed breakaway chance from claiming the Timbers’ first ever MLS hat-trick in the second half.
It was a fabulous performance. Diego Valeri got back on the scoreboard as well, and the Timbers had more than enough to see the Rapids off in a game that was never as close as its 3-2 final scoreline ultimately indicated.
Midway through the first half, Sebastian Blanco played a ball into Armenteros, who reverse flicked it around his defender Danny Wilson, spun by Wilson to reclaim it, and lofted his finish coolly over Tim Howard’s left shoulder to give the Timbers the lead.
Already the reigning Goal of the Week winner for his solo effort to win the LAFC game, this from Armenteros was a a sublime, instinctual, humiliating piece of skill.
And the striker wasn’t done. First, though, the Rapids briefly drew themselves level.
Just a minute after the opener, a deep cross from Bismark Boateng skittered untouched through the penalty area into the path of Edgar Castillo, who nutmegged Alvas Powell and fired the ball back across, where it was stabbed in for an own goal by Julio Cascante.
Just five minutes after that, however, the Timbers went back on top. Armenteros, on the run, fed the ball wide right for Blanco — who took three touches inside and arrowed a cross towards the back post. Howard could only manage a grazing touch, and Armenteros, having drifted away from Wilson again, turned it in.
Wilson, a winter import from Rangers, had to be removed at halftime. He wasn’t the only one. The Rapids had no answers for Armenteros’ industry, nor were they anywhere near clean enough on the ball to keep the Timbers’ lethal counterattack quiet.
Ten minutes after the restart, thanks to a phenomenally errant pass by Boateng, the Timbers struck in transition again. This time it was Blanco, on the back of a forty yard run, setting up Valeri, who took his compatriot’s lovely weak side pass, walked around Deklyn Wynne, and slipped the ball past Howard for 3-1.
That goal, for all intents and purposes, ended the game. The Rapids huffed and puffed on the other end of the field, and set up a few half chances for the likes of Dominic Badji and Yannick Boli, but never looked like scoring twice.
Even deep into the second half, the Timbers remained the more dangerous team. Their last best chance came when Blanco played Armenteros through with fifteen minutes to go, but the Swede, with his last action of the game, sent his shot straight at Howard.
The Rapids had a goal ruled out by video review in the final minutes of regular time, and scored a penalty deep into stoppage time after Cascante ran through Badji, but time ran out on them to pursue the equalizer.
The Timbers defense in this game wasn’t quite as clean as it has been in recent weeks — with Powell in particular struggling — but there were several standout performances: Larrys Mabiala was again a rock, as was Diego Chara, who chipped in another match-high 14 defensive actions.
This was by no means a beautiful game — neither team made it to 400 passes — but the Timbers, especially their attackers, sure seemed to enjoy it.
Blanco, who was involved in each of the goals and easily could have ended the night with four assists, is in scintillating form. His understanding with Valeri, and Valeri’s with the game more broadly, remain marvelous. The Rapids’ decision to man-mark both players couldn’t have been more futile.
That was thanks in large part, of course, to Armenteros. No single Colorado center back — and they tried four of ’em in total — could either prevent his picking up and laying off the ball in the middle third of the field, or run with him in behind.
It was thanks in large part to his mobility and work-rate that the game opened up so many times for the Timbers, when it otherwise, as often happens in Commerce City, might have stayed tight and compact.
In fact, though beating this moribund Rapids team is no great achievement in and of itself, winning at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park certainly is. In the Timbers’ seven previous MLS seasons, they’d only won once in Colorado once and never scored more than two goals there.
But Colorado appears to have gotten worse under new manager Anthony Hudson — an achievement of sorts, considering how abysmal they were last season — and the Timbers are rapidly approaching the top of the Western Conference once again.
Up next? Home against the LA Galaxy, and then home Sporting Kansas City, possibly for the Western Conference lead going into the World Cup break. This streak has already set the course for the Timbers’ season. A couple more wins, though, and we’re going to have something awfully special on our hands.
