They were never meant to be, the Portland Timbers and the 2014 MLS Playoffs, especially after a fatal, unexpected Champions League knockout blow in Honduras just three days before Portland took the field in Dallas for the final game of the regular season.
The Timbers took care of business – if there was one thing this team could always be relied on to do, it was bounce back from adversity, all too often during games as well as between games – but Vancouver’s gritty, sweaty, ugly 1-0 win over Colorado in British Columbia was enough to end the Timbers’ season.
In reality, by the numbers, Portland got extremely unlucky over the last month. Despite only losing once in their final nine games, keeping five clean sheets, and winning four games in the face of losing captain Will Johnson to a gruesome ACL tear and capitulating to the tune of a potentially season-crippling collapse in Toronto, the Timbers won’t play on this season.
Who could have foreseen Vancouver – the flaky Whitecaps, the team the Timbers beat 6-0 in two crucial games when the sun was still bright in early fall – going on a five-game unbeaten run to end the season, not conceding a goal for four straight games, and beating Seattle on the road en route to Kendall Waston’s 69th minute header that clinched the team’s second playoff appearance?
Very few, really, even in Vancouver.
Portland’s final salvo of the exhausting 2014 campaign was one of their finest – a complete, well-rounded, well-managed 2-0 triumph on the road over a playoff FC Dallas team that was at full-strength.
The professionalism from start to finish, the solid defensive performance, and even flashes of brilliance from Alvas Powell and Maxi Urruti showed how far this team has come since the dog days of summer. Even Darlington Nagbe, who scored and put together one of his finest ever games for the Timbers, was finally at his best.
Since May, statistically, Portland was the fourth best team in MLS behind Seattle, LA, and DC United. Had they made the playoffs, Portland would have played the same match, against the same Dallas team, probably won, and then faced Seattle in the conference semis.
Yeah, Seattle in the conference semis.
But if you’re going to have regrets about the way 2014 played out, have regrets about the team not having a bonafide target striker until June. Have regrets about Caleb Porter not figuring out his offense until Rodney Wallace’s return in the early summer, and certainly have regrets about how the Timbers’ central defense ever came down to the Raushawn McKenzie – Danny O’Rourke show.
No one walks away from this year feeling bad for the Timbers, and while that’s surprising, considering how the final month of the season played out, it’s just.
The anticlimactic finish for the Timbers on Saturday night was fitting for a season that mellowed after sparking so consistently and so frustratingly for so long.
Portland got good again at the end, sure, but it was too little, too late from a team that – make no mistake – drastically failed to live up to expectations in 2014. These were the defending Western Conference champions remember, and they were passed by five teams in the conference pecking order this season.
Next year, when the West adds Sporting Kansas City and Houston and loses Chivas USA, things will only get harder.
The promise of the Caleb Porter era is still intact, thanks to a lot of midseason money spent on Liam Ridgewell and Fanendo Adi, coupled with the Timbers’ overall marked improvement over the fall, but it’s hard to feel like 2014 was nothing more than a well drawn out tease – and a painful one at that.
According to a report from Jamie Goldberg, the Timbers believe that Diego Valeri tore his ACL in the win over Dallas. Although it’s not going to be as severe as the injury suffered by Johnson in Toronto, it’s going to be another roadblock for the Timbers in 2015 and a sour end to a sterling season for one of the most beloved men in Portland.
So maybe the impressive victory over Dallas wasn’t worth it. Maybe 2014 wasn’t worth it altogether.
So while one line of thought says that you would have liked to keep these Timbers together while they played their best soccer of the year at the most important time of the year, the prevailing and now mandated course of action for this franchise is a long, rejuvenating break. This team should – depending on injuries, most importantly to Valeri – be better next year. It was time to quit 2014.
Because if we’re being honest, this year was never what anyone wanted it to be.
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