Sometimes rivalry games can turn out to be all hype, and other times they can deliver like Sunday’s explosive 113th meeting between the Portland Timbers and the Seattle Sounders, which saw the Timbers suffer a loss of historic proportions.
In what started as a wild back-and-forth at a packed Providence Park, not even the return of Sebastian Blanco as a starter was enough for the Timbers, who crumbled late. The spoils instead went to Seattle, who saw striker Raul Ruidiaz pour it on in the second half and end a goal-scoring drought in an emphatic fashion for a 6-2 Sounders win.
The Sounders’ win was the largest in this storied rivalry in MLS play. The loss marked the Timbers’ fifth time this season losing by three or more goals, and it was their biggest losing margin yet.
It was also the Timbers’ first time ever — since the team’s founding in 1975 — conceding six goals at home, which came Sunday in front of the first sellout crowd of 25,218 fans at Providence Park since the pandemic hit in March 2020.
“It’s hard to process this loss,” Diego Chara said. “It’s a big loss for us and for the fans.”
A visibly upset coach Giovanni Savarese opened his post-match remarks by apologizing to the Timbers’ fans for the loss.
“That energy from our fans was amazing so, even more for that reason, it is tough to see a result like this in a game against Seattle,” Savarese said. “It definitely hurt because it is a rival, and in our home to lose 6-2 is indescribable to explain the feeling you have. So, for my part, I’m sorry because you all showed up today.”
With the result, the Timbers (7-9-2, 23 points) remain stuck just barely above the playoff line and squander a chance to accumulate three points at home before a month on the road. The Sounders (10-3-6, 36 points) move to No. 2 in the Western Conference.
Ruidiaz, the proverbial thorn in the Timbers’ sides in this rivalry, scored a stunner in the 56th minute. On a free kick, he fired a missile past the Timbers wall and into the far upper corner, catching goalkeeper Aljaz Ivacic flatfooted. The goal ended a three-game scoring drought for Ruidiaz.
Ruidiaz put the match out of reach in the 72nd minute. Nicolas Lodeiro fired a free kick that Ivacic pushed away, but Ruidiaz beat everyone else to the ball and buried it. With that, Ruidiaz now has 10 goals in 10 matches all-time against Portland, and he has moved back to the top of the MLS Golden Boot standings with 13 goals this season.
A surprise goal from Jimmy Medranda piled on in the 78th minute — his volley from the top of the box rattled the crossbar and ping-ponged into the goal, summing up the Sounders’ shellacking of the Timbers in the end. Nicolas Benezet added the final goal on a breakaway one-on-one with Ivacic in deep stoppage time.
Savarese had to compose himself after the final goal before shaking hands with Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer. In that moment, Savarese was “more than shocked, upset, angry, not happy at all,” he said.
“If we look at the free kick of Ruidiaz, how can you stop that? The corner from Medranda, how can you stop that? But there were moments we could’ve been better,” Savarese said. “We should have also capitalized more on the great opportunities that we had because we played very well. Then you say, how can you play so well when you lose 6-2? That’s the thinking. How can we allow so many goals in a game we started so well? That’s something we now have to make sure we analyze.”
Before Ruidiaz opened the floodgates, the Timbers looked poised to wage a comeback in the 52nd minute when George Fochive equalized at 2-2. Claudio Bravo fired a rocket from outside of the box that goalkeeper Stefan Cleveland parried away. Fochive volleyed the deflection off the bounce, driving his shot into the grass, and it bounced over Cleveland.
“After we tied the game, we made that mistake in the middle, we lost the ball, Seattle got a free kick and Ruidiaz scored,” Diego Chara said. “That changed the game for us. Before that, we were playing really well, trying to keep the ball and create opportunities in the attack. But the third and fourth goals made it a different game.”
But the Sounders made the better of their chances all day, and opened scoring in the 13th minute. Ivacic blocked a Ruidiaz header at close range in transition, but the Sounders regained possession. Alex Roldan fed the ball back into the box and Fredy Montero poked it past Ivacic.
Montero scored again in the 29th minute on a surprising individual effort in another transition. From outside the box, he tried a shot from distance, and Ivacic got a hand to it but couldn’t keep it out.
“We played to try to be the dominant team today, and we knew that playing like that, we had to be good in managing their counters,” Savarese said when asked about Seattle scoring on so many counterattacks. “They are very fast, they have good players that can create difficult moments out of nothing and they are clinical when they get close to the goal. We knew that this was a possibility. We can opt to close ourselves as we have done sometimes in the past and won matches like that, but the reality is that we knew the way we were going to play today, their counter was going to be a possibility.”
The cruelty of the Sounders’ early goals — at least for the Timbers — was that they came very much against the run of play.
In the first half, the Timbers out-shot Seattle 14-6, and many of them were dangerous, prompting six saves from Cleveland — more saves than goalkeepers will usually make in an entire game. (In the end, the Timbers out-shot Seattle 21-15 and Cleveland finished with seven saves total.)
In his first start in nearly a year, Sebastian Blanco pulled one back in the 32nd minute. He received the ball inside the box from Felipe Mora and struck it low and hard as defender Shane O’Neill put a foot out to block it. It deflected off O’Neill and popped over Cleveland.
Blanco suffered a season-ending injury in September in Seattle within the first minute on the field against the Sounders. He made his return in June as a late substitute, and has slowly been building his minutes before Sunday’s start.
“The Timbers fought hard, they got back into the game, but the quality of our team just showed through,” Schmetzer said afterward. “I mean, some of the goals we scored were just tremendous.”
When asked by the Oregonian/OregonLive if he believed the Timbers had the defensive talent to improve, Savarese denied the defense was the reason for the loss.
“It has nothing to do with the defenders — it has to do with the entire team, the way we defended,” he said. “We need to be better all around, and we need to be better in some moments to sacrifice all around. And the guys worked hard — it’s not about the guys not putting the work in, but it just needs to be better from the entire team in being a little more solid defensively and not give up goals like this because it’s difficult to win when you concede too many goals.”
Despite the loss, Sunday marked a turning point for the Timbers in one important way: the team had all of its high-priced designated players available for the first time this year.
While Blanco made his first start of 2021, Jaroslaw Niezgoda made the gameday roster for his first time this year after both players tore their ACLs last year. Blanco and Niezgoda, along with Yimmi Chara, are designated players, meaning they can be paid above the MLS salary cap.
But that also means the Timbers are running out of excuses — while they were slammed with an unprecedented number of injuries earlier in the season, Savarese had a nearly full roster to choose from Sunday.
“We just have to continue to work with the entire team and believe in the work and that we can be much better than we’ve been so far,” Savarese said. “Yes, so far we have allowed too many goals and that’s not a good thing. It’s been good we’re still scoring, we’re getting there and creating opportunities, but we need to be more solid.”
The Sounders came into Sunday still missing some of their best players: goalkeeper Stefan Frei has been out since May, striker Jordan Morris is out for the year, and Nicolas Lodeiro started on the bench having just played 27 minutes previously this season. Lodeiro, who had knee surgery in May, came on at halftime.
The Sounders started the season with 13-game winning streak, the best run to open a season in MLS history. But by Sunday, they had cooled off, going winless in their previous three MLS games before facing the Timbers.
The Sounders arrived to Providence Park on short rest after competing Wednesday in the Leagues Cup, a competition for the best Liga MX and MLS teams that did not qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League. The Timbers competed in the Champions League earlier this year, losing to Club America in the quarterfinal round.
Sunday’s match was originally scheduled to be played two hours earlier, but was pushed back due to the intense heat wave that has again slammed the Pacific Northwest in this record-setting summer.
The Timbers Army unveiled a tifo Sunday for the first time since March 2020 with the words “We are the Rose City” and a separate banner that continued, “You can’t stop us.”
Sunday’s match was the Timbers’ 31st time facing the Sounders in MLS play, and their 113th time across all competitions and all leagues in a historic rivalry.
Now, the Timbers head on the road and they won’t return to Providence Park for another month. Up next, they face Sporting Kansas City on Wednesday.
“The hurt lasts for a little while, but we know that tomorrow we need to come with a different mentality and start preparing for the next game,” Diego Chara said. “It’s going to be very important for us to get points against Kansas. It will be a hard game, but we need to be prepared and start learning from the mistakes we made today.”
— Caitlin Murray for The Oregonian/OregonLive
Twitter: @caitlinmurr