PORTLAND, Ore. — Any fear the Portland Timbers’ were in for a prolonged post-Champions League swoon have now been set aside. Building off last week’s 2-0 win at the San Jose Earthquakes, the Timbers claimed their second win in a row on Saturday at Providence Park, though their victory over the visiting LA Galaxy may have come at a significant cost.
With two goals from Felipe Mora and a converted penalty kick from Diego Valeri, the Timbers earned a 3-0 win over the Galaxy, a team that came into the weekend with the second-best record in Major League Soccer. Those goals, though, came against a team playing with 10 men, with a late first-half challenge from Derrick Williams earning the LA defender a straight red card while leaving Timbers midfielder Andy Polo with a potentially seriously right-leg injury.
“The guys were able to execute the right way, without relaxing, taking their foot off the gas …,” Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese said about his team’s performance. “Once we found the first goal, I thought from that point on, the guys were very, very mature to get a very important result.”
Another Portland player, Dairon Asprilla, also left the game early. He was replaced at halftime by Marvin Loría after suffering an early injury. Combined with an injury list that has nine players ruled out before kickoff and one theme of Portland’s season continued. The team left Saturday’s match with even more fitness concerns.
In a different respect, though, another theme of 2021 is quickly dying out; or better put, the theme hasn’t been allowed to take hold. Coming off the team’s 2-1, post-Champions League loss on May 9 to Seattle Sounders FC, worries began to surface about how a depleted Timbers would handle their games over the next month. Since then, the team has earned six points and outscored their opponents, 5-0.
“I think there’s a lot of chatter outside our club,” forward Jeremy Ebobisse said, before describing what he’s heard. “Can we win without X [player]? Can we win without Y? But what we’ve shown — whether it was last year, when Seba [Blanco] went down, or I went down, now with [Diego] Chara and Larrys [Mabiala] and everyone else is down — we’ll find ways to get dubs. That’s what happened [today]. That’s what happened in San Jose. Guys are ready to step up, when it’s time.”
The way Saturday’s game played out, it’s difficult to draw any new conclusions about either team. Portland was fine in the first half but didn’t generate any goals, and come the second half, they were playing against a team hamstrung. And for the Galaxy, they endured the challenges of a visit to Providence Park until Williams’ bad decision, one that undermined hopes of a result.
In the bigger picture, it’s worth wondering what these last eight days mean for Portland, just as it was worth wondering what their trajectory was after the Seattle loss. This time, though, the story is how the team has adjusted — including making a subtle switch to a 4-3-3 formation that better suits their healthy personnel — as well as who’s made those adjustments. As Ebobisse hinted, there was a building expectation that the injuries would be too much. Instead, the Timbers found solutions.
“The team mentality was phenomenal,” Savarese said. “Even though, at beginning sometimes, we could have done a little bit better in moving the ball in some areas to create more chances, we still had the better chances. We still were dangerous in some moment and, eventually, with the substitution of Polo, who got injured with that bad tackle, we had to make some smart moves.”
Come full time, the Timbers were sixth in the Western Conference. They’ll probably fall a spot of two as the weekend goes on. But if you’d asked the team two months ago, before their Champions League started, whether they’d take nine points though six rounds, they’d probably have said, “No,” while still admitting those results were acceptable. Likewise, having scored nine goals while allowing eight — even including a rotated lineup’s 4-1 loss on May 1 at FC Dallas — the team’s indicators look good. It’s taken the whole roster, but in terms of regular-season results, Portland is on course.
There may not be many lessons to take from the Galaxy game, but the trajectory is important. Another result in the win column. And, in Saverese’s words, “another very good performance.”
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