Wild Card Round Match Recap & Reaction: Portland Timbers vs. Vancouver Whitecaps
Timbers forsaken by God - and all forms of good soccer play - as their season implodes
The Portland Timbers utterly imploded in the Western Conference Wild Card Round, falling to the Vancouver Whitecaps in a calamitous 5-0 defeat at home. The loss eliminates Portland from the postseason, and ends the 2024 season on the sourest note imaginable.
Recap
Phil Neville started the same XI from last Saturday in Seattle, with two changes: David Ayala partnered Diego Chara in the middle and Miguel Araujo lined up next to Dario Zuparic in central defense.
Despite having just three days warning, the Timbers Army still whipped up a customary incredible tifo, this time an homage to the comic “Hellboy”, with a straightforward call to arms to the men on the field: “Give ‘em hell, boys”.
Before long however, the Timbers found themselves in hell rather than serving it up.
The ‘Caps struck in the 20th minute, as they took advantage of this Timbers’ team biggest weakness: poor set piece defending. A corner kick from Vancouver was initially cleared, but the second ball was sent back towards the middle of the box. An almighty scrum ensued, and despite valiant efforts from James Pantemis and Claudio Bravo a rebound was just scuffed over the line by Ryan Gauld.
Things went from bad to worse when Vancouver doubled its advantage through Brian White in the 24th minute. The Timbers defense was sloppy in dealing with a deep cross, and the ball was squared for White who was unmarked at the far post for a tap-in.
And then affairs went from worse to utterly disastrous in the 31st minute when a poor Claudio Bravo backpass gifted the Whitecaps possession in the box, and Vancouver finished it off with an audacious chip from Gauld to make it 3-0 for the Whitecaps.
In the span of just over ten minutes, the Portland Timbers absolutely imploded. I don’t think even the most pessimistic Timbers fan saw this team going down three goals in the first half, and looking so absolutely lost and shellshocked in the course of doing so.
Meanwhile, Portland’s offense looked just as rigid and ineffective as it had in the recent weeks. The fluidity and lethality that they had once enjoyed this season was nowhere to be found, and all too frequently attacks looked too hesitant and also somehow too calculated at the same time. None of the attacking triumvirate of Evander, Jonathan Rodriguez, or Felipe Mora looked connected or on the same wavelength at all the entire night.
Despite a few late attempts, the Timbers barely challenged the Whitecaps’ goal. The Timbers managed just two shots on target — both long-range attempts. They didn’t look anywhere close to scoring, and that was even before they started leaking goals like a sieve.
Under a chorus of boos, the Timbers went into the locker room facing the worst halftime deficit they had seen the entire season. The vibes were all the way gone, sucked out of what was once a loud Providence Park and replaced by anxiety and angst.
Halftime: Portland 0 - 3 Vancouver
Needing to do something drastic, and having pretty much nothing to lose, Neville made a triple sub at halftime, bringing on Eryk Williamson, Santiago Moreno, and Kamal Miller. Diego Chara, Claudio Bravo, and Dario Zuparic got the hook, which shifted Antony to left back.
You might have thought that those changes would have encouraged some kind of improvement from the Timbers — but oh you sweet summer child you would be so, so wrong.
Portland was caught on the counter in the 52nd minute, and Stuart Armstrong headed home to make it 4-0. And then just seven minutes later, another quick Vancouver counterattack resulted in Gauld tallying a hat trick to make it 5-0.
As fans started streaming for the exits — before the game was even an hour done — the capitulation felt complete. Simply shambolic defending was punished punitively by Vancouver, who were absolutely ruthless with their efficiency.
The Timbers, despite all of their bluster and high-powered scoring from earlier this season, looked lost and completely devoid of any interest of putting the ball in the back of the net. Too rigid, too slow, and ultimately too ineffective. They ended with just four shots on target, and despite trailing since the 20th minute could only manage 0.8 expected goals.
After the fifth goal went in, there was still a half hour of match to be played. But everybody knew what the final result would be. The rest of the game was purely academic, and as the clock struck ninety minutes the time finally ran out on the Timbers 2024 season.
Full Time: Portland 0 - 5 Vancouver
Portland now faces the cold and dark offseason. They once again fell at the crucial moment, and for yet another year face a winter sure to be full of change and reflection.
Goals — POR: That’s all folks! // VAN: Gauld (20’, 31’, 59’), White (24’), Armstrong (51’)
Reaction
Well. That could not have gone any worse.
A season that at one point had so much promise, so much hope, ended with such a resounding thud that I think they could hear it from British Columbia.
Nobody in green, save for maybe David Ayala, showed up tonight. The Timbers played maybe 20 minutes of decent soccer, and then they just decided to take the night off. Vancouver was first to every ball, first to intercept every pass, and won every 50/50 challenge. Almost to a man, Portland was second best everywhere on the field for the entire game.
It was such a surprising end to the season that I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. For this team, that literally just days ago battled back for a draw in the house of their biggest rival, to straight up give up like this in the biggest game of the year was utterly baffling. There’s not enough fingers to point blame at all the responsible parties.
More digital ink will be spilled in the days and weeks to come to assess just what the hell went wrong, and what needs to be done to fix it. Because making it just this far was not good enough, and getting absolutely destroyed at home in the first postseason game the stadium has hosted since 2021 was definitely not good enough.
The Portland Timbers came into this season with goals of returning to contention. They stated that their goal was to return to the playoffs and turn the page from seasons past.
They have accomplished none of those things. This season showed promise, but it ultimately ended as all of the recent Timbers seasons have: in deflating disappointment.
My quick take is that this was a season where a great group of attacking players occasionally disguised a lack of a plan at the coaching level. I wouldn’t say the non-offensive players were uniformly bad, there just wasn’t a realistic plan for how they were going to defend or manage the midfield, or at least the players didn’t play as if there was such a plan. On offense things worked until they didn’t, that is until people figured us out. But since the attacking players were more or less just winging it, the coaching staff didn’t have an attacking plan b, except to maybe throw Anthony in there. And then Vancouver looked at the tape, made a plan, and crushed us systematically.
I haven't been part of this forum for a long time but feel the necessity to express my anger towards Neville.
1. His post match interviews, always poking his nose, not looking at the camera and throwing his players under the bus. I have never in my life seen a coach doing this. Saying his take responsibility but in fact then saying only one players made an effort. It is true many players did not have a good game, but effort? You are blaming a legend, Diego Chara, on perhaps his last game as a Timber on effort? This is so disrespectful towards all involved
2, He in fact got outcoached. Surprise surprise. Rodriguez isolated all night and he throwing his long balls at him because we had no midfield.
3. Not able to fix the defense all year even through he brought his own central defender
4. Imposing his style on a bunch of South American players....
He needs to go, and the guy who hired him needs to go as well