If there’s ever been a stranger, harder match to dissect in the long and storied history of the Seattle Sounders - Portland Timbers rivalry, good luck finding it.
Unfortunately for the Sounders, they were undone by perhaps the worst 45 minutes in Seattle’s MLS era.
The Sounders have largely been impervious to letdowns in the Nicolas Lodeiro era. Wherever a problem arose, they met it with force and found a way through. That was frankly not the case on Sunday, when Portland, whipped into a frenzy by a recent poor string of results, scored four goals in the opening 40 minutes en route to a four-goal advantage by half.
The Sounders salvaged some respectability by pulling two back after the half to make the final score 4-2, but it didn’t change the result. The Sounders slunk back across state lines with a loss where even a draw would’ve helped.
Sunday’s matchup was arguably the biggest regular season meeting between the two in the MLS history of the series. It held deep playoff implications for both teams, one of which (Seattle) was on a soaring run of form while the other (Portland) had won just one of its previous five games. But either way you looked, both teams needed the points.
Portland more or less knew before halftime it would take all three.
Here’s a glimpse at three things we learned on a madhouse Sunday afternoon.
Adi Changes Games
Perhaps the biggest off-field domino that clattered on top of an on-field one in the Sounders’ 3-1 win a week ago was the absence of Portland’s star striker Fanendo Adi. The broad-shouldered No. 9 was left on the bench due to an in-house decision made by Timbers coach Caleb Porter, and the Timbers weren’t the same team as a result. Replacement striker Jack McInerney missed a few golden chances Adi rarely does, and the Timbers’ patented fast break attack slowed to a crawl.
Adi didn’t miss Sunday’s game. And it showed.
The strapping Nigerian was a ubiquitous threat for Portland on Sunday, scoring his eighth goal in nine games against the Sounders and running counters like a boss. The key metric wasn’t necessarily in sheer shots or chances or anything similarly raw. It was in the quality, not the quantity.
A week ago, in Seattle, the Timbers racked up 26 touches in the box, 16 shots and six on target. That’s represented here.
A week later, on Sunday in Portland, they managed 28 touches in the box, 15 shots and eight on target. That’s represented here.
Those numbers are startlingly similar - in fact, they’re almost identical - and they’re the difference between a 3-1 Portland loss and a 4-2 win. Margins in soccer are relatively slim as it is, so to add or subtract a primary attacking target is to entirely alter the formula. As for any team in the world, remove your best scoring threat for a relatively green vagabond forward and there’s bound to be some sort of negative impact.
That’s what happened here. Adi himself didn’t make the Timbers go, but he made them more lethal, more connected and less error-prone in the final third. One of the Timbers’ two best players led them to victory. Go figure.
Torres Shines In Return
To put it plainly, the Sounders’ back four picked a bad time to put in its worst collective defensive half in franchise history.
The Timbers managed a frankly unbelievable 10 shots in the box in the first 45 minutes, invited in as they were by the lax defending and poor positional marking for much of the game. You can rope in Osvaldo Alonso and Cristian Roldan for not helping as much as they typically do defensively, but there’s an important caveat to remember here. Both Alonso and Roldan - in addition to center back Brad Evans and right back Tyrone Mears - played the full 90 on Wednesday in sweat-drenched Houston.
Portland, it should be noted, did not have a midweek game.
The only starting defender who left this game playing as well as he has all year was Chad Marshall, who had a quality overall performance as he almost always does. But the other three - Evans, Mears and left back Joevin Jones - did not exactly cover themselves in glory. Which is perhaps why it wasn’t so much of a surprise to see interim coach Brian Schmetzer bring on a sub at half.
Even if it was Roman Torres running on for his first competitive match in nearly 12 months.
Torres missed nearly an entire year due to a knee ligament injury last September, and he’s been eased back into the fray ever since. When he came on at halftime, it was anyone’s guess as to how he’d look. One can assume the coaching staff simply hoped he wouldn’t re-injure himself.
Torres did quite a bit more than that. At a couple moments he made key interventions to help keep a clean sheet over the final 45 minutes during which the Sounders tried with all their might to climb back into the game. Despite his layoff, Torres certainly had the look of a starter.
That’ll make the stretch run interesting from a defensive standpoint. Does Schmetzer shift his pieces to shoehorn Torres back into the XI? And if so, what does that look like? Should be an interesting week of practice.
Sounders Down, Not Out
Both Seattle and Portland had a lot riding on this match. These rivalry games are always an emotional bellwether, pushing the winner onto bigger things and the loser into a concerted round of soul-searching. And to be sure, Seattle needed this one a fair bit more than Portland did. So the fact that the Timbers came away winners isn’t exactly welcome news north of the Columbia River.
Here’s an up-to-date look at the bottom six in the Western Conference through the weekend’s matches.
The win provided a significant boost to the Timbers’ postseason hopes, keeping them both above the thin red line and pushing them as close to No. 5 as they are to No. 7. The Sounders, meanwhile, have more work to do as a result of Sunday’s events. They play their second match in as many games against a team within two points of their position in the standings when they travel to San Jose to face to Earthquakes on Sept. 10. If the Portland match was pivotal, then this is much closer to must-win territory with just eight games left.
Even with the loss, the Sounders could still conceivably be within one point of Portland with just a single win, considering the Timbers have a game in hand. In fact, if the Sounders beat San Jose and the Timbers lose to both FC Dallas and Real Salt Lake in each of their next two games - a not unforeseeable turn of events - Seattle will occupy the sixth playoff spot at the end of the day on Sept. 10.
The Sounders’ route to the playoffs is still very much an open matter. The scenarios aren’t outlandish yet. But more results like Sunday’s, and those days won’t be that far off.
