View From The Shires: “Porterball” and the Johnson effect

With the MLS season almost at the halfway point, one team in particular has surprised pundits with their level of performance. The Portland Timbers may have succumbed to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of the Columbus Crew over the weekend, ending their franchise-record 15-game unbeaten streak, but that one result should not hide what has so far been a remarkable turnaround season for the team from the Pacific Northwest.

Having flirted with mediocrity through their first two years of existence, the Timbers now find themselves firmly in the playoff picture in the Western Conference and, with 30 points already accrued this year, are just four off their entire total for the 2012 season.

Without doubt, much of the credit for the Timbers’ success this season must be attributed to new head coach Caleb Porter, who has transformed Portland from the painfully direct and conservative outfit they embodied under former manager John Spencer into a side with a far more attractive, free-flowing spirit to it – a style of play those around the league have duly dubbed ‘Porterball.’

It shouldn’t have come this easy for Porter; by all accounts, this was supposed to be a gradual process and ownership had even pleaded for patience from the fans when the former Akron Zips head coach was appointed on August 29th, 2012. Granted, since taking over at Akron in 2006, Porter had successfully built one of college soccer’s leading programmes, winning a national title in 2011, whilst developing a stream of MLS-ready talent (Steve Zakuani, Teal Bunbury, Darlington Nagbe and Darren Mattocks, to name just a few players who honed their skills under Porter’s tutelage).

In fact, in the 2011 MLS SuperDraft alone, five of the top eight picks were Akron products and by this time Porter’s name was being linked with virtually every MLS head coaching vacancy which became available.

However, reservations about the 38-year-old’s credentials upon being appointed as Timbers’ head coach were hard to ignore.

For starters, as a former college coach with no previous pro experience, scrutiny was always going to be abundant, while Porter’s ill-fated short spell in charge of the USA U23 Men’s National Team, when the hotly-tipped side failed to even qualify for the London 2012 Olympic Games, was still fresh in the minds of many.

That said, plenty believed Porter could succeed at the MLS level but, for the most part, such sentiment was tempered by the belief that it would be a fair while before Portland would have a team on the field whose production could match their fans’ raucous support.

Just 18 games into the season however, Porter has already done an excellent job of proving the doubters wrong, as the Timbers have found a perfect medium between the idealistic possession-based style their head coach honed at Akron and the strengths of the current personnel at their disposal. A far cry from the rigid, long ball-centric football which supporters were forced to endure under Spencer, Porter has wasted no time in instilling a flexible system, designed around his players strengths, with an aesthetically pleasing approach, establishing himself after only a few months at the helm as one of the league’s finest tactical minds.

What is more impressive is Porter has done all this without an out-and-out goal-scorer at his disposal, as new signing, former West Ham striker Frédéric Piquionne, has so far failed to live up to his billing.

Instead, the goals have been shared around the side, with one key offseason addition in particular, Canadian Will Johnson, proving a pivotal piece in Porter’s new-look side, having weighed in with six goals and three assists in 17 games from midfield.

Acquired for allocation money last December, with Real Salt Lake desperate to cut salary, Johnson was named team captain by Porter prior to the start of the season and has promptly rewarded his manager’s faith with an MVP-worthy season, recently being named to the MLS All-Star Fan XI for the match against Roma on July 31st.

Johnson’s importance to Porter’s side was made all the more apparent over the weekend, when, with the Canadian national team captain away on Gold Cup duty, a visibly depleted Portland side took to the field against Columbus, duly suffering a 1-0 defeat to end their unbeaten streak.

Without their influential captain, the Timbers quite simply looked rudderless and, with Johnson set to at least miss the club’s next game against LA Galaxy on July 13th, fans of the club will no doubt be hoping that Canada’s tournament ends sooner rather than later, or that their manager can find an alternative solution in the meantime.

A number of other offseason additions may have also made valuable contributions to Portland’s success in 2013, such as on-loan Argentine playmaker Diego Valerí, fullback Michael Harrington, Jamaican forward Ryan Johnson and former Manchester United centre back Mikael Silvestre (prior to his season-ending knee injury), but none of those names have quite had the same impact as Johnson. He has been the glue which has held the side together and, no matter how flexible the line-up, there’s currently no replacement for what he brings to the team.

That said, when assessing Johnson’s remarkable first half, one has to undoubtedly attribute some of that success to his new coach’s system – one which has seemingly managed to get the best out of almost every player on the roster. One of the league’s brightest young prospects, Darlington Nagbe, is too visibly thriving in a more adventurous role under his old college head coach, while Costa Rican winger Rodney Wallace, who previously looked to be on his way out of Portland such was the disappointment with his play, now looks to be the frontrunner for MLS Comeback Player of the Year.

Even after losing both first choice centre backs, Silvestre and David Horst, to season-ending injuries, the Timbers have still managed to hold their defence together, with a combination of veteran Futty Danso, second-year pro Andrew Jean-Baptiste and the recently acquired Pa Modou Kah managing to keep opposition forwards at bay. Furthermore, behind them goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts, whose first team place looked to be under threat going into the offseason, has seemingly recaptured the form he showed whilst at LA Galaxy, when he was named MLS Goalkeeper of the Year in 2010. Add in the consistently solid performances of defensive midfielder Diego Chará, as well as the versatile Jack Jewsbury, and one begins to get the sense that his might not just be a team to challenge for a playoff place but could very well be an outside bet for MLS Cup glory, especially if they were to add one or two more pieces over the summer.

There’s no doubt that Porter’s arrival in Portland has seen the Timbers players take their game to a new level and owner Merritt Paulson and general manger Gavin Wilkinson must feel rightly vindicated, having seen the man they chose to take the franchise forward make an almost instant impact. Make no mistake, the Timbers are not going to be confused for Barcelona anytime soon but the fresh, new approach Porter has brought with him from college has been exactly what fans at Jeld-Wen Field have been longing for and, halfway through the season, the former Akron manager is clearly the leading candidate for Coach of the Year.

‘Porterball’ is undoubtedly here to stay and, once the talismanic Will Johnson returns to the team, the Timbers should be back on track and more than ready to make up for last weekend’s blip.