BEAVERTON, Ore. – If you want to see a track meet at Providence Park on Sunday, you might be better off heading to the adidas headquarters just across the river.
There are no guarantees, of course, but that’s how Portland Timbers head coach Caleb Porter hopes his team’s showdown with FC Dallas will play out.
With the two teams will meeting in the first leg of the Western Conference Championship in the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs (4:30 pm PT; FS1, FOX Deportes, TSN5), Porter has stressed the need for his charges to be pragmatic in their approach against a talented and fast FC Dallas team, so as not to put themselves at a disadvantage next week’s second leg in Dallas.
“I don’t think you’re going to see a track meet, open game. The fans would love that, but we’re not going to let the game get that way,” Porter told reporters following the team’s training session on Friday. “That wouldn’t be smart in the first leg, to have that type of game and second leg, that’s when you sometimes see that. Because now it’s a 90-minute game and you know in terms of the goals and the tiebreakers and everything so teams have to start to open up, especially if there’s an early goal. So first leg, even though we’re at home, we’re going to be smart about it.”
The Timbers have already demonstrated the effectiveness of a balanced approach once in this playoff run. In their conference semifinal series against the Vancouver Whitecaps they got the clean sheet, but not the goal, in a 0-0 draw at Providence Park in the first leg and then went on to win the second leg in Vancouver, 2-0.
“We were really patient with the two legs, and I think you saw that experience,” Porter recalled. “We want to play aggressive in this first leg. It is a different situation than the first leg [against] Vancouver because we had to manage that short window.
“But we can’t get carried away trying to go and win the game and try to score goals, and sometimes that happens with us at home because of the energy of our fans. Sometimes we’ve let that almost let us get reckless.”
The away goals tiebreaker provides a twist in the game plan of any MLS coach finding themselves in the playoff. In Porter’s case the rule makes it all that more important for his team to keep Dallas off the board in the first leg, and he noted that “a 1-0 win is a lot better than a 2-1 win,” though any margin of victory would obviously put his team at an advantage heading into the second leg.
And while Porter is not anticipating a flood of goals on Sunday, he doesn’t think that will make for a boring game between the two teams.
“I think from a confidence standpoint, while you won’t see probably a shootout, you’ll see a lot of confidence in all the players, which will [make] for some exciting actions in the game – individual actions, collective actions,” Porter explained. “Because when teams are in sync you see good football; I think you’re going to see some good football actions in these games.”
