The Portland Timbers had this past weekend off, and hopefully the time off has done them some good by the 17th, when they play Dallas. It has been a disappointing month, results-wise, and a quick step back from the action could help refocus and resettle the team. Caleb Porter, speaking about the rest, sounded a bit like an unhinged addiction counselor:
“I told the guys we have to get away and recharge mentally and physically, starve yourself of the ball,” Porter said. “I mean, these guys touch the ball every single day and they’re pros and they’re passionate about the game and they love touching the ball every day, but sometimes it’s good to get away from the ball and when you get back to it, you crave it.”
Whether Coach Porter followed his own advice, I’m unsure. He strikes me as the type to scheme single-mindedly through every spare hour. Now that the foundation for the end of the season has been laid, he has to make sure that his final couple months of building go well. The conference table is very tight, and it would be a massive shame to slip out of the playoff positions. It seems unlikely at the moment, but the sport is full of painful unlikelihoods, like Clint Dempsey signing for the Seattle Sounders (on a personal note, as a follower of both the Timbers and Arsenal, archrival to Dempsey’s former London club, Tottenham Hotspur, Dempsey has had a way of perpetually disappointing me). This marquee signing gives a huge late-season lift to the Sounders and has had the national soccer press aflutter for a week straight. It’ll be one of the main narratives of the season when the pundits do their recaps.
Dempsey is second only to Landon Donovan in terms of American star power, while in terms of talent, it’s an open question or matter of taste. His decision to come home from England will be a bullet point in the ongoing and rather dull debate over whether it’s better for elite American players to ply their trade overseas or play in MLS. I imagine that it was a difficult decision; just a year ago, before he joined Tottenham on the last day of the transfer window, Dempsey was doing his best to court a move to a team that played in the UEFA Champions League (the mark of a “big” European club). It didn’t seem particularly farfetched, as he’d just come off a season in which he’d scored 17 goals for Fulham. Champions League teams didn’t come knocking, however. Liverpool, famous but far from a CL berth in the table, made noises but didn’t follow through. Tottenham, perpetually on the verge of CL qualification but almost always left out in the cold, snatched him up at a bargain price and proceeded, once again, not to qualify. Americans have been few and far between in CL competition, and I’m certain that it’s something he wishes he could have swung.
The rewards, however, of playing stateside will be great. He’s a big star here. A lot of Timbers fans will wish, secretly, that they could cheer for him.
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