woof, i am hungover as shit, lol. some quick thoughts on the match: morales looks like he is maybe 70%, you see glimpses of his brilliance (the ball to release ned who should have scored, the nice through balls, etc), but overall his play isnt consistent yet. nice to have him back starting though. he still isnt taking free kicks like he used to either, that will come. beckerman is entirely at fault for the first goal and i give him 50% fault for the second. he got straight up skinned on the first one and the second one he didnt close space down and got chipped. he's had a couple really poor performances so far this year. sabo gets his head on EVERYTHING that comes over the top from the back/rimando. i was surprised that paulo started instead of espy. paulo was menacing but i cant remember him being a real threat on goal. espy's chip to beckerman for the 3rd goal was perfect, beckerman had his hands up a good 2-3 seconds waiting for the ball and espy picked him out. great job picking out the far post and squeezing the volley between steele and couple timbers defenders. borchers looked solid, cant wait for borlave to get into top form. i thought the team came out weak in the first half, the intensity wasnt there and the quality of the game was exponentially higher in the second half. it didnt show well on tv, but it was raining like a mofo, got a couple picks of that and the mean looking clouds around the area from our seats. really stupid thing by the jeld wen field crew putting the RSL fans a good 15 rows higher up into the corner. even worse was letting a decent group of timbers fans to sit right in front of them. even worse was that they were drunk and a couple decided to mouth off to the huge group of RSL fans. one guy snapped after the second goal RSL scored and the rain of confetti came down. nothing came of it, but he had to be restrained by a number of his friends. you can see a decent portion of the timbers strategy was the hack the ever living ******** out of morales' ankles. he took a beating all night and i'd say the ref actually called MAYBE 50% of the fouls. home boy made a couple awesome saves, had no chance on the goals. the depth of the team looks really good, but its not cohesive yet as you would expect early in the season. but the fact that we are dominating possession and passing statistics will mean that the cohesion will develop rapidly, as long as everyone stays healthy. it's going to take me a while to process the 203 photos i took, i'll get some posted as soon as i can. plus my ********ing telephoto lens was having motor problems so i had to use my 50 mm prime, pics probably wont be as good and no action shots.
Beckerman hasn't looked consistently sharp thus far. The team needs him to come around. The other player with a bad night was Will. Seemed like most of his touches resulted in turnovers. I was surprised when JK put him in. It was JK's only tactical mistake last night. Espy didn't start because we have 3 games in 8 days. Would rather have him with rested legs at home as we need to get 6 points this week.
woo, finally got done processing most of the photos, about a dozen were actually worth posting: JeldWenFlares by PdXBenedetti, on Flickr RSLfans by PdXBenedetti, on Flickr JeldWenScarvesPano by PdXBenedetti, on Flickr Click on the photos to see more.
why don't you arm chair coaches look at chalkboard before you berate Kyle for everything wrong on this team. I know that mostly the same beckerman haters are the ones that comment on these boards but it gets to the point that the other 10 players are allow to make a couple mistakes in a 90 min game but not kyle. Why don't you armchair coaches talked to jason and maybe he will bench him which is what you want and see what alvarez can do that is better. unbelievable.
I didn't think Will was horrible... Especially for just barley coming back after surgery! I think Jason put him in because Will just never stops. He pressures and runs and I though he was a big part in the never-say-die attitude of the team at the end of the game.
wow, rant much? maybe you should actually read the LOGICAL comments people are making about him here. the reality is that beckerman is always being held to a very high standard and he flat out isnt playing to that standard right now. he got completely skinned on the first goal and failed to close out space on the guy who assisted the second. this isnt some subjective opinion, these are observations made of his play.
SLC fans are class, congratulations on tearing out my f'ing heart and eating eating it in front of me, that was like a kick in the balls. One minute we are singing can't help falling in love and counting up our three points, then Bam! Kicked in the nads. FU Kyle freaking Beckerman, I hate you with a passion that knows no bounds. FU and F that f'ing portable bird sanctuary that you fing sport on your dome you f'ing f. You SLC people would be happy to know that I started a pretty lively FU Beckerman chant right before he scored, ripped out our hearts and feasted on our tears, so that sucked for me and congrats to you guys for what must feel great.
We feel your pain because we have been there before... and both yours and ours will do it to us again, at the hands of others, or maybe each other again (A Portland SLC rivalry would be the best freaking rivalry ever, IMO). Suffer for a day or two, then nevermore (until the next time).
If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then this photo is "******* Amazing" repeated 500 times. Nicely done.
Thanks, got lucky that my seat was right on the very end of the row. That and I had no idea they lit them off until a person in front of us turned around to look at the RSL fans and then pointed them out. Here's a version without the stupid light bloom, I dont have a lens hood for my 50mm lens and I got a weird glare on the lens when I took the photo: Jeld Wen Flares by PdXBenedetti, on Flickr
Looking back at these last two weekends I have come to the conclusion that it feels much better beating a team you think you will lose to on the road (even in the 89th minute) than losing to a team you should beat, at home.
dude, come on. beckerman played pretty bad. Go look at the 2 portland goals and tell me who really got burned on them... Beckerman plays a position that gets hardly any credit for doing its job but sticks out like sore thumb when he doesn't. Nobody is saying bench him nobody is buring KB jerseys on the street all we are saying is he is making more noticeable mistakes these year than we've come to expect from him. To not criticize him would be wrong.
This discussion of avoiding a "triple whammy" by not sending off a defender for a red card offense in the box fascinates me. I understand the basic concept of the thing. You go look at a game like ours vs NE last year and notice that not only does that red screw things up, giving a pk (likely, though not guaranteed, goal) makes things entirely complicated. I understand the basic argument in this, you don't want to make a single play so damn defining of a moment. With that said... To not give a red because it is in the box feels like you are setting yourself up for a really bad scenario. What if Sabo hadn't converted the pk? Then all that happens is the Portland player gets a yellow for stopping what, in my opinion, looked to be a sure goal. How the hell can you say Ned isn't going to finish that when he is at the top middle of the 18 with the ball falling to his favored right foot? You, as the ref, are willing to just assume the pk will be scored at the damage will be sufficient? That seems like a gigantic stretch to me. That play should have resulted in a red. If it had been an RSL played I would argue the same thing. Just because it happens inside the box doesn't mean the guy shouldn't be sent off. If anything, it should heighten the severity. That's the purpose of the box, is it not?
How does Perkins really feel about his defense? "F#&$ING WORTHLESS!" Is pretty audible during the Jonny Steele celebration. http://www.mlssoccer.com/matchcenter/2012-03-31-por-v-rsl/highlights?videoID=180889
I think the dude yelling is actually a fan near the mic who went completely ape-shit crazy and had to be restrained by about 10 people. His head nearly exploded.
ya, only reason i saw them was because the people in front of us turned around to taunt the RSL group after the timbers scored and they pointed at them. i got a picture of that guy, apparently i forgot to upload it to flickr, i'll have to do that when i get home from work today. anyways, i dont know if it was that guy you hear, that would be pretty loud to be picked up by a mic facing the field.
Agreed with all points, except look at the stats of the game, the yellow card given shows for dissent, given to Brunner, the hand ball was committed by Wallace. The guy didn't even get carded for it. When the handball is that obvious anywhere on the field you usually see a yellow for it. Since it was in the box obviously denying a good goal scoring opportunity I dont know how the guy stayed on the field, let alone not even yellow carded for it. If an RSL player did that I'd be mad at him for being at idiot and getting himself sent off, not the ref for making the call. In my opinion this is like when Borchers got sent off last year (I think it was against Chivas), he was the only defender stopping a one-on-one with Rimando and fouled him, and got sent off for it. The difference here is Borchers was outside the box preventing a PK. The fact that Wallace's handball was inside the box makes the handball that much more egregious. If his hand hadn't moved then I would be all for leniency and keep him in the game. With the obvious slap down on the ball he should have been gone.
A couple years ago I got a text from my son in LA, telling me that he could hear me yelling on the broadcast.
it's complete and utter bullshit. How is that not a booking?! He slapped the ball out of the air, with his hand, in the box... am I missing something here?
well....ya, i mean you could hear a pin drop at most LA games (both chivas and galaxy). at a timbers game though? wee bit different.