With Major League Soccer’s Tuesday release of the remainder of its regular-season schedule, the Portland Timbers found out how long, exactly, they will be home from the road.
Beginning with their return from Saturday’s 6-1 victory at the San Jose Earthquakes, the Timbers knew they would have at least a week-and-a-half in Portland: without any flights; with no need to pack a bag for the road. Games at Providence Park against Seattle Sounders FC on Wednesday (7pm PT, FOX 12 PLUS (KPDX)) and Vancouver Whitecaps FC on Sunday (7pm PT, ROOT SPORTS) assured as much. The soonest they would possible travel again would be Wednesday, September 30.
Instead, the Timbers’ home stretch will be slightly longer. Thanks to some fortune from the league’s schedule-makers, Portland will not need to leave home until October 7’s trip to LA Galaxy. For 19 days, the Timbers players and staff will be home.
“This week, definitely, is going to feel very different than the other weeks because of the fact that we are going to be home,” Portland head coach Giovanni Savarese conceded on Monday.
With the protocols MLS has put in place as COVID-19 precautions, road teams are no longer flying into markets one or two days before games and leaving in the 24 hours that follow. Teams fly in that morning, leave that night, never missing a night in their own beds.
That’s the silver lining. The bad part is being subjected to two flights in the same day, enduring the physical effects of that travel while having to play a game in between. In situations like Portland faced two weekends ago at Los Angeles FC, teams may not be lifting off from their road airport until the next day’s early hours, with arrival back home in the hours before dawn having carry-on effects to the next days’ training schedules.
Flattened out on a web page, a team’s schedule looks like a series of dates: two hour increments in different cities; road and home distinguished by an “at” in front of the opponent. Instinctively, we know there’s more to it than that. But when you actually map out the effects of the day’s travel, from the early-morning wakeup on game day to the time spent getting back to a normal routine, the ripples can be significant. Being able to ignore those ripples for 19 days is huge.
“We went through a very difficult time last week with all the wildfires,” Savarese said, “and this week is going to be perfect for us to have the opportunity to – even though we're playing still the same amount of matches – be at home, not travel, have the guys with their families, be able to work a little bit more, as we did today, in some of the areas that we want to improve. It is extremely important for us to be able to practice at home.”
As talk of home’s virtues ramped up during Savarese’s Monday press conference, he was quick to make one point clear, offering it early in his first response on the Timbers’ changing schedule. “The important thing,” he said, ”is we have to take advantage of the fact that we are home. We have to take advantage and be a stronger team at home than we have been so far.”
Portland’s first three games of MLS’s renewed regular season were all at home. They failed to win any of them. The momentum of a 3-0 loss against Seattle on Sunday, August 23, reemerged at the end of the team’s 4-4 draw to Real Salt Lake six days later. The next Wednesday, Portland fell at home to the LA Galaxy, 3-2.
“That is one thing that we need to improve,” Savarese said. “But I see in the players' training and the mentality that we want to make sure that we make Providence Park into a fortress, again. It's something that we are working, talking, preparing mentally to do so.”
Without fans, that task could be tougher. Precautions throughout Oregon still prevent mass gatherings, meaning fans are not allowed to attend Timbers games at the moment. Though Savarese explained that, in terms of the game’s tactics, “there is no change” when fans aren’t present, the team does miss something from “the emotional part.”
"We would definitely love to have fans,” he said. “But we have to adapt and be strong while they are not here at the moment.”
