The Portland Timbers are still rolling, 3-2 winners on the road in Colorado last weekend, and they’ll go for their seventh straight win at home on Saturday against a high-profile opponent: Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s reeling LA Galaxy (2:00 p.m., TV on ESPN2).
The Opponent
Since beating the Timbers on Opening Day in Carson back in March — and with the exception of the Ibrahimovic-inspired comeback win over LAFC — the Galaxy’s season has been a disaster.
They’ve lost five of their last seven games, and four of their last five at home, and appear, despite significant offseason investments, to largely be the same team they were last year: talented but not cohesive going forward, and neither talented nor cohesive in defense.
There’s still hope for the Galaxy, largely because of how bad the Western Conference is, but time might be running out for manager Sigi Schmid. He doesn’t appear to have any tactical answers, nor the force of personality required to compensate.
LA badly needs a positive result in this game, but there’s little confidence that they’ll get one.
The Tactics
Schmid changed his team into a 3-5-2 at the hour mark against Dallas, which only further exacerbated their defensive problems. We’re unlikely to see a repeat on Saturday. More likely is the 4-2-3-1 that they’ve played most of the season, with Ibrahimovic up top and Ola Kamara shaded towards him on the left wing.
LA did much of its attacking damage in the first meeting by exploiting the Timbers’ high defensive line with pace in behind. But with Ibrahimovic operating as a target man, and the Timbers having abandoned the high line, LA will need a new plan of attack.
Schmid has urged the Galaxy to try to play through their star striker, but their most dangerous player is Romain Alessandrini — and he’ll be handful for Alvas Powell. It’ll be up to Larrys Mabiala, who had an excellent May, to limit Ibrahimovic.
For the Timbers, we’ll see largely what we’ve been seeing over the last two months. They’ll try to crowd the Galaxy out in midfield, and unleash their front three to run at a slow Galaxy backline. If that happens, they’ll get their goals.
The Lineup
1 – Attinella
16 – Valentin
25 – Tuiloma
33 – Mabiala
2 – Powell
21 – Chara
22 – Paredes
14 – Flores
8 – Valeri (C)
10 – Blanco
99 – Armenteros
— The starting forward job is Sam Armenteros’s, at least for the time being.
— Julio Cascante wasn’t terrible against Colorado, but he did score and own goal and concede a penalty and was hampered in training by a minor injury during the week. This could be the moment for Bill Tuiloma, who has played exclusively with T2 since mid-April, to return to the lineup.
The Memory
The Timbers won this game handily over a similarly flawed Galaxy team last year, getting the deciding goal in fabulous fashion from Diego Valeri.
The Pick
The winning streak won’t last forever, but it won’t end on Saturday. Timbers 3, Galaxy 1.
