PORTLAND, Ore. – Caleb Porter often likes to look on the bright side of things when the results don’t fall the way of the Portland Timbers.
That didn’t happen on Sunday.
The Timbers head coach pulled no punches after his team fell 2-0 to expansion side Orlando City SC at Providence Park, saying his side got just what they deserved.
“I couldn’t tell my guys after the game that they played well and deserved to win today,” Porter said in his postgame comments. “I felt Orlando deserved to win the game, and that’s tough as a coach to say that to your guys after a game. This was a head-scratcher a little bit.”
The signs coming in certainly didn’t point to a comprehensive Orlando win.
Portland were coming off their first win of the season, a dominating 3-1 victory over then-unbeaten FC Dallas last weekend. Porter said in the days leading up to Sunday’s game that the win was crucial to spark momentum heading into a stretch where they’ll play six of their next eight games on the road.
Orlando, meanwhile, were winless in three – with two losses in that span – and facing the first cross-country road trip of their young MLS existence.
“Usually you can see it coming; I didn’t see it coming,” Porter said. “It was a great week of training, energy was good. Obviously coming off our first win we were confident. Sometimes you can see it a little bit in training, a bit casual, and that wasn’t the case. All week they were sharp, looked hungry for the game, and for whatever reason they just lacked energy in that first half.”
Neither half was good enough – with Orlando goals coming on either side of the break – but the first half was especially sluggish, Porter said.
The Timbers conceded too much possession, and it cost them a 30th-minute goal from Cyle Larin, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2015 SuperDraft. Portland’s attack also lacked teeth, resulting in just four shots in the opening period.
“I think we just ended up being a bit disjointed and not in the right positions, and sometimes that can happen,” center back Liam Ridgewell said of Larin’s goal. “It’s something you’ve got to work on as a team and a back four, and we’ll just have to make sure we try to put those things right.
"It might be a wake-up call that everything isn’t going to be so rosy, and we’ve got to work hard every single game and every single minute.”
Portland came out on the offensive in the second half, dominating possession and firing off 14 shots but failing where it counts. Part of that had to do with two stellar saves from Orlando goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts, who was making his return to the Rose City after playing parts of the last three seasons for the Timbers.
Orlando put to bed any ideas of a Portland rally on a Kaká penalty kick goal in the 85th minute.
“For whatever reason the plan didn’t get executed in the first half,” Porter said. “Sometimes that’s your team, you got it wrong, or sometimes it’s just the opponent and they’re better. And I think it was probably a little bit of both.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com.
