BEAVERTON, Ore. – When it comes to expansion teams, there’s always a certain element of surprise involved.
And the Portland Timbers were certainly surprised by Orlando City SC in their 2-0 loss Sunday at Providence Park – not in a good way, either.
Orlando head coach Adrian Heath went away from his 4-2-3-1 formation to more of a 4-3-3 with Kaka in a high floating role on the left, Cyle Larin up top and three central midfielders. That created a numbers advantage in the center of the park, allowed Orlando to control possession in the first half, and by the time Portland adjusted they were down 1-0 at halftime and on their way to a third shutout of the season.
Against New York City FC – the Timbers’ opponent for a Sunday showdown at Yankee Stadium (7 pm ET; Fox Sports 1) and another expansion team that has limited game tape to scout – Portland head coach Caleb Porter said that can’t happen again.
“We’ve got to play better; I’m not being coy about that, we need to play better,” Porter told the media at Thursday’s training session at the team facility before they departed for New York on Friday. “It wasn’t that we played bad for 90 minutes, but we played bad for 30 minutes in the first half, and we need to address that. I’ve looked at the game. I’ve looked at why we didn’t play well. I know why we didn’t play well. It wasn’t a psychological thing, which I initially thought perhaps we lacked hunger and energy. When you see the first 10 minutes, we came out very hungry, good energy, we looked lively. So it wasn’t a psychological thing with them not being ready.”
To adjust to Orlando’s new look, Porter replaced second-year holding midfielder George Fochive with veteran Jack Jewsbury at halftime with the idea of creating more possession and better positioning. And it worked, with the Timbers seeing much of the ball in the second half and firing off 14 shots – they had four in the first half.
Only a goal never came, and Porter pointed to their sluggish start, allowing Orlando to bunker in with a 1-0 advantage, as the reason for the loss.
“Those are adjustments we need to make inside the lines, and we didn’t make them soon enough and it cost us the goal,” Porter said. “For me, the biggest takeaway is making sure you make those adjustments in game and manage the other team and what they’re doing a little bit better.”
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Timbers center back Liam Ridgewell said they’ve had their eye on NYCFC since the beginning of their inaugural season; it’s only natural, he said, to track a new team with high-profile players such as US international Mix Diskerud and Spanish legend David Villa.
“We’ve got to quickly learn who they are, and we’ve doing that since the start of the season, so it’s building up nicely this week ahead of the game,” Ridgewell said.
Porter does have a bit of history with NYCFC head coach Jason Kreis to draw on.
Kreis’ Real Salt Lake team knocked Portland out of the MLS Cup Playoffs in 2013 in the Western Conference Championship series, in Porter’s rookie season leading the Timbers, before Kreis left to take the NYCFC job. But Porter says that brief history doesn’t mean much with Kreis’ new group of players.
“That’s a tricky thing with coaching, is you prepare for what you know,” Porter said. “But you have to be always prepared for the unexpected, and that’s on me and that’s on the players and that’s on all of us.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com.
