With very few exceptions, the Portland Timbers and Sporting Kansas City combine to play a very particular type of game: close, physical, intense, and unyielding. On paper, at least, Saturday night’s meeting in the heartland should have been one of those contests.
But it wasn’t. Instead, it was a cakewalk. The Timbers, at half strength and half speed, up against a resurgent home team, didn’t have a chance.
With Diego Chara and several other key players resting at the end of a stretch of three games in eight days, they suffered predictably. Kansas City dominated the game in midfield, attacking from every angle, completing more than 700 passes, holding 64 percent possession, and firing off an astonishing 25 shots.
They won the game 3-0 — a first half brace from Diego Rubio had it pretty well settled early on — but the final scoreline could have been far more gaudy.
The only good news for the Timbers is that this absolute clunker of a week is over. Having been outscored 7-1 over the last four days, the team will head back to Portland to reset and refocus ahead of what will be the biggest game of the season to date next Sunday night at Providence Park against the Seattle Sounders.
They’ll need to move on from what happened here quickly. On Wednesday night in what would finish as a 4-1 loss to D.C., the Timbers were at least the better team for 40 minutes before falling away. On this night, however, they were on their heels from the opening whistle.
Sporting spent the first period of the game gunning for Marco Farfan, whose last start came when these two teams played their first game of the year in Portland back on June 9, and created chance after chance on the Timbers’ lefthand side: Gerso had a couple, Rubio had one, and Graham Zusi got a good look at a free kick.
Thanks mostly to Jeff Attinella, as well as to Julio Cascante for one emergency tackle, the Timbers’ survived the early onslaught. They almost even had a goal, when Samuel Armenteros struck the post from long range on a quick counter.
But it was only a matter of time for Kansas City. The Timbers didn’t have the legs to chase the game and scramble defensively for 45 minutes, and sure enough, just before the half hour mark, Rubio found the breakthrough — taking in a little pass on top of the penalty area, turning, and lashing the ball past Attinella.
This time, the fault lay not with the overmatched Farfan, but with the Timbers’ anemic central midfield and defense. Cristhian Paredes’ token pressure on Roger Espinosa was not nearly what was needed to deny the pass in to Rubio, who, for his own part, had pulled away from Larrys Mabiala without changing gears.
It was the story of the evening: the Timbers weren’t getting anywhere near Sporting in the middle of the park, which meant they couldn’t get the ball, which meant that they faced wave after wave of pressure.
That said, it was a rare foray forward from Portland that led to their conceding again not ten minutes later. Zarek Valentin had a break down the right flank, but just as he charged into the box, he telegraphed a pass for Armenteros that was cut off and gave Sporting an excellent opportunity to counter.
And counter they did. Daniel Salloi sprinted into the channel that Valentin had vacated with his forward run, Matt Besler played him into space, and no one picked up Rubio as he arrived trailing the play in the box. Salloi picked him out, and it was 2-0.
It was a ruthless move from Kansas City, and another defensive mess from the Timbers. Mabiala, for one, the player who needed to cover for Valentin, lost the play when he took a step out towards Besler instead of tracking Salloi, only to recover, only to get beat by Salloi on the dribble.
It would be the end of the big central defender’s night. Going into halftime, Giovani Savarese, perhaps waiving the white flag to an extent, replaced him with Bill Tuiloma.
The Timbers hung tougher after the restart, and put together a handful of promising moves after Sebastian Blanco was introduced, but never forced Tim Melia into an outstanding save. By the time the final 15 minutes rolled in, they were dead on their feet.
Sporting’s final goal, which came off of a one-two worked by Johnny Russell and Krisztian Nemeth through a crowd of no fewer than six defenders, spoke to the Timbers’ fatigue as much as anything else. Russell, limited to substitute minutes while working his way back to full fitness, finished unblinkingly.
Kansas City had a flurry of further chances in the game’s final minutes, but would have to settle for the three-spot — still their most lopsided ever victory over the Timbers, as well as their third straight shutout win.
Not that any of that was a surprise. The Timbers fielded a B- lineup, ran into a good team, and were beaten accordingly. This trip became a lost cause for them the moment Savarese decided to play all of his starters on Wednesday night.
Why did he do that? Why did he decide to use the likes of Chara and Blanco on short rest against an Eastern Conference team when they could have played on normal rest against a fellow playoff-bound Western Conference team? There isn’t an easy answer. There’s hardly even a plausible explanation.
This was the game to compete in this week, not the one in D.C., and anyone in who follows this club or this league could have said as much.
Perhaps Savarese figured he wouldn’t have to make wholesale changes for either match, but changed his mind after watching his team shuffle around Audi Field in the second half on Wednesday. Perhaps he wanted to get certain players maximum rest before Seattle.
Either way, Savarese managed himself into a corner and paid the price. It’ll be a learning experience.
That’s the top-line story. It is not, however, an excuse for how the Timbers’ players — particularly their role players — performed this week. Outside of a core group that includes six or seven, this team isn’t filled with quality or reliability. In the midst of a brutal stretch leading into the fall, that’s troubling.
The Timbers, to their credit, have already done the work this year to ensure that a three game slide doesn’t cost them a playoff spot. But we’re about to see what this team is made of. We’re at that point of the season when the games get harder, the contenders begin to separate themselves, and time begins to run out.
Seattle, having won six straight, is coming up next. The Timbers need to pick themselves up off the mat, and get back to work.
