Portland Timbers must sort out identity crisis in final win-or-die match
Catch the Timbers play in Portland and you'll see a team that knows how to win. In front of the booming Timbers Army and on the slick Providence Park pitch that makes for a quicker game, the Timbers have generally been excellent at finding ways to win and grinding out results. The Timbers have 12 wins at home this season, which is a club record.
But to watch them on the road is a very different story. They have yet to win an MLS game outside Portland this year, and now their season will come down to one final road game. If the Timbers can win in Vancouver when they face the Whitecaps on Sunday, they are into the playoffs. But if they tie or lose, their season may be over at the hands of Sporting Kansas City getting a point elsewhere.
Coach Caleb Porter admits that it's been "it is a tale of two seasons" for the Timbers, home and away. There is an identity crisis of sorts that the Timbers must figure out if the reigning MLS Cup champions are going to defend their title in the postseason.
Sorting out that problem on the final day of the season — Decision Day, when every MLS team plays at the same time to fight for the final playoff spots — is hardly ideal. A bit of soul-searching may be in order: How does a team go 16 road games without a single win? There probably aren't any easy answers.
It's no surprise to see teams in MLS do worse on the road than at home. Going into Sunday's Decision Day, less than 20 percent of MLS games this year saw an away team win. The travel in MLS is long and involves crossing multiple time zones — a team like the Portland Timbers will travel almost 40,000 miles in a single season and it will mostly be via commercial flights. But it can't explain how poorly the Timbers have done because that last year they were one of the best road teams.
In Portland's case, Porter points to the injuries that have ravaged the Timbers all year. Those injuries affected the Timbers more on the road than at home, he says. But the Timbers have been battling these forces beyond their control all year, and have managed to go 12-3-2 at home, even with constant injuries.
After a certain point, the barrier the Timbers faced on the road may have become a psychological one more than anything else. While early in the season the Timbers often played well on the road and only lost their footing on late miscues, their recent away form has deteriorated, highlighted by a rough 3-1 loss to the last-placed Houston Dynamo a month ago.
The question for the Timbers is how they can snap out of their funk and find the mentality of last year, when they had the second-best road record in the league and won eight road games. If anything can help the Timbers, it may be a bit of desperation. In all but the unlikeliest scenarios, if the Timbers don't win on Sunday then they will miss the playoffs.
"When you look at a final game like this, everything's kind of out the door," Porter told the Oregonian on Friday. "You don't care about the past or anything other than getting the result. That's what it comes down to. In some ways, the fact that we haven't won on the road and all the storylines, it doesn't matter."
"We just need to win this game. That's it," he continued. "Doesn't matter how we do it. Doesn't matter who's in the lineup. Doesn't matter what's happened in the past. We win and we're in and that should give us a lot of motivation."
If the Timbers think absences are to blame this year, then Sunday may not bring high confidence. Two starters, centerback Liam Ridgewell and central midfielder Diego Chara, will both be suspended on card accumulation. On top of that, Diego Valeri, the Timbers' best attacking player, along with Jack Jewsbury are both questionable over injuries. Neither Valeri nor Jewsbury trained Friday, and defensive midfielder Ben Zemanski is also out.
The Timbers suffered a heartbreaking draw at home on Wednesday in a CONCACAF Champions League match and absences clearly played a part. Valeri and Jewsbury were out, striker Fanendo Adi was suspended and winger Darren Mattocks was limited. The Timbers came out in a 4-4-2 they've rarely used this season instead of a preferred 4-2-3-1 because the roster was so limited and, though their makeshift lineup managed relatively well, their draw meant they were knocked out of the competition.
Sunday is sure to bring even more difficult lineup decisions for Porter, especially defensively. Ridgewell, the captain, has been the anchor of the back line and Chara has been the disruptive ball-winner who helps shield the defense. The Timbers have conceded the second-most goals in the Western Conference this year and that is largely down to their road form — losing Ridgewell and Chara doesn't help.
To get a win on Sunday would mean the Timbers have to sharply change course and defy the odds set by the previous 16 road games this season. But the Timbers have battled their way above the red line before and, to hear Porter tell it, there's nothing new about trying to repeat that again. That optimism may not be entirely misplaced, despite how difficult the task ahead is — since Porter took over in Portland, the Timbers have gone 9-2-3 in the month of October, the period heading into playoffs.
"That pressure we've been under will help us," he said. "We know we can do it because we've done it before."
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