Austin Steal It 2-1 at Portland: Antony Penalty and Late Svatok Goal Sink the Timbers
SportSignals Match Desk · Football analysis desk ·
Portland Timbers went ahead. Portland Timbers looked the better side for long stretches. Portland Timbers lost. That is the story of Sunday morning's match at Providence Park, and if you want to know what is wrong with this club right now, that sentence tells you everything you need to know.
Austin won 2-1. Write it down. Stick it on the dressing room wall. Because a team that came into this match having lost three of their last five MLS fixtures, conceding eight goals in those five games, just walked out of Portland with three points. That is not a result. That is an indictment.
Torres Gives Portland the Lead They Did Not Deserve to Lose
Facundo Torres put Portland ahead on 25 minutes. Left foot, assisted by J. Rosales. It was a good goal and, for the majority of the match, it looked like it would be enough. Portland made 426 successful passes. Their goalkeeper made four saves. They committed 14 fouls, which tells you they were at least working and competing physically. Fine. I can accept all of that.
The thing is, you look at the numbers across the pitch and Portland were not exactly blowing Austin away. Austin had 13 shots to Portland's 10. Austin had 61 dangerous attacks to Portland's 25. Austin created four big chances and missed three of them. Portland created three big chances and missed one. When a side creates four big chances and misses three, you expect them to lose. But they did not lose. Portland managed to lose instead. That takes some doing.
The Cards Tell the Real Story
Portland picked up four yellow cards. Austin picked up one before the 88th minute. You do not win football matches giving away that many fouls. Guilherme Biro was booked on 35 minutes for a foul. Mikkel Desler followed on 47 minutes, also for a foul. That forced a substitution at 71 minutes when Desler was replaced by Brendan Hines-Ike before he could do any more damage to the team's discipline. Then in the 88th minute, both Oleksandr Svatok for Portland and José Luis Caicedo Barrera for Austin were booked for arguing. Both sides losing their heads in the final minutes of a match Portland were winning. Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.
Then Antony stepped up and scored a penalty on 89 minutes. Portland's goalkeeper made four saves in this match. He could not save the penalty. And then, one minute later, in stoppage time, Svatok, the man who had just been booked for arguing, put the ball in the net to give Austin the lead at 2-1. Svatok scored the winning goal for Austin. The man who had just been arguing with opponents scored the winning goal. You could not write it.
Attitude and Accountability in the Final Minutes
Listen, I am not going to stand here and tell you Portland were poor. They were not poor for most of this game. But the moment Austin got back into it through that penalty, Portland fell apart. There was a VAR review involving Antony at 86 minutes, two players booked for arguing at 88 minutes, a penalty conceded and converted at 89 minutes, and then Austin scored a third goal in three minutes of stoppage time to win the match. Three goals in three minutes of chaos. That is a mentality problem. That is standards dropping at the exact moment you need them to hold.
Portland won 49 duels to Austin's 34 in the stats. But Portland lost the match. Duels won means nothing if you cannot hold a lead in the final five minutes of a game you are controlling. The basics of defending a result, organising, staying disciplined, keeping your head, Portland failed at all of them when it mattered most.
Austin's Resilience Deserves Credit, Even If Portland Handed It to Them
To be fair to Austin, and I mean that sarcastically for the most part, they kept going. They came into this match in poor form, with two wins from their last ten MLS fixtures, having conceded 21 goals in that same ten-match sample. They had lost to Houston Dynamo 3-0 and lost to San Diego 5-0 in that run. A team leaking goals at that rate, coming to Portland, you expect them to capitulate. They did not. They kept creating. They put 13 shots on the board. They won 49 duels. When the opportunity came in the final minutes, Antony took his penalty and Austin did not look back.
That said, Portland gifted this. Two bookings for arguing. A penalty conceded in the 89th minute. That is not Austin winning a football match through quality alone. That is Portland handing it over.
The Substitutions Did Not Help Portland
Portland made five substitutions. Žan Kolmanič and Przemyslaw Placheta came on at 63 minutes. Brendan Hines-Ike replaced the booked Desler at 71. Then at 83 minutes, Ilie Sánchez replaced Facundo Torres, who had scored the opener and provided the creative spark, and Oleksandr Svatok replaced Jon Bell. Within five minutes of Svatok coming on, he was booked for arguing. Within seven minutes, he had scored the winner for Austin. Not for Portland. For Austin. Svatok put the ball in Portland's net, into his own goal from a right-foot shot in the 90th minute plus three minutes of stoppage time. The man brought on to shore things up in the final minutes put the ball past his own goalkeeper. That is the story of Portland's evening right there, end of.
What Needs to Change
Portland go into this result having won three of their last five MLS matches. They are not a bad team. They had beaten San Diego 3-1 and Seattle Sounders 2-1 in recent weeks. They can compete and they can score goals. In those same five matches, they conceded six goals and kept zero clean sheets. Zero. That is the number that defines this Portland side right now. They cannot defend a lead. They cannot maintain standards when the pressure comes. And until that changes, nights like this will keep happening.
Austin will take the win and move on. Portland need to look at themselves seriously, because shipping a goal in the 89th minute and an own goal in stoppage time, after going ahead in the 25th minute, is not bad luck. That is a collapse. It is a discipline collapse and a mentality collapse, and someone in that dressing room needs to say it plainly. Good teams do not lose matches like this. End of.