Valentina Savarese
Photo Courtesy of Major League Soccer
One of the most beautiful aspects of the ‘beautiful game’ is its unpredictability. Soccer has always had an impressive intrinsic ability to keep its supporters engaged, and the unconventional 2020 Major League Soccer season, in light of the widespread uncertainty brought on by the global pandemic, definitely took this a step further. Back in March, the foreseeable future of Major League Soccer, much like that of the rest of the world, seemed to be completely suspended in limbo. This left both professional organizations and fans alike wondering how the remaining 2020 MLS season would take shape.
Ultimately, the solution was a newly conceived, bracket-formatted tournament that began on July 8, and ended on August 11. Announced on June 10, 2020, as a response to the increasingly threatening coronavirus pandemic, the MLS is Back Tournament initially involved dividing each of the 26 MLS teams into six groups based on their conference, with Group A originally being allotted six teams and the remaining groups containing four. The groups were later altered to include four teams each after the withdrawal of both FC Dallas and Nashville SC from the competition due to complications regarding the coronavirus. Played exclusively inside of the “bubble” of the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida, the tournament included a series of group stage and knockout stage matches that culminated in the MLS is Back final on August 11, 2020, in which the Portland Timbers triumphed over Orlando City SC.
The MLS is Back Tournament allowed for a unique return to gameplay that produced an exciting set of matches, with each result more unpredictable than the last. For example, 2019 MLS Cup Champions Seattle Sounders did not get through in the early knockout round of the tournament, and 2018 MLS Cup Champions Atlanta United did not even make it past the initial group stage. Probability projections originally favored Los Angeles Football Club with a 17% chance of winning and Atlanta United with an 8% chance. The Portland Timbers, on the other hand, were given a mere 3% chance of winning, making their accomplishment all the more unexpected. Against their initial odds, the Portland Timbers road to success can be explained by their depth, versatility, and rotation of the team’s roster.
What set the Portland Timbers apart over the course of the tournament was their attempt to distribute playing time more evenly between the players that competed. In order to stay competitive in a tournament with such little downtime between matches, it was important to make use of a variety of players, as opposed to tiring out the same starting 11 over and over again, which may have easily been the case with fan-favorite Los Angeles FC, who were eliminated in the quarter finals. Not only was this crucial in making sure that the Portland Timbers were energized and ready to perform during each match, but it demonstrated the balanced skill level of the team as a whole, which essentially contributed to their ultimate victory.
Careful analysis of the individual minutes played by each of the 18 Timbers players that competed during the first three group stage rounds of the tournament shows a superior depth of roster across the board and highlights the well-roundedness of the entire team. In comparison with favorites to win LAFC, and the Seattle Sounders, the Timbers made a more complete use of their roster and maintained this versatility throughout the competition.
Looking back, this seems to have been the foundation of the club’s success and can be expressed in the table that I created below. Individual minutes played amongst the Portland Timbers’ first three matches are shown and players being substituted in during the match are denoted in red. Extra time was only taken into consideration if a player was substituted on during this overtime, and is expressed as 1 minute.
*All Statistics via Wyscout.com
Over the course of the first three matches of the tournament, the Portland Timbers used 18 different players, with 13 of these being starters. Goalkeeper Steve Clark played all 270 minutes, as did defensive midfielder Diego Chará and attacking midfielder Sebastián Blanco. However, no other player was used to this extent and no one played less than 69 minutes in total throughout the entire group stage. This allows us to see that, once on the pitch, each player could be almost equally depended on to perform to the best of their ability. Even game-changing attacking midfielder, 2017 MLS MVP award winner, and Portland’s captain Diego Valeri was not used at this rate, playing 189 minutes in the three matches. Valeri was the third leading goal scorer for the Timbers in 2019, (8), and had the second highest number of assists in the entire league, (16). Despite his inarguably great value to the Timbers, the team did not need to solely depend on him to achieve success. The Timbers usually implement a 4-3-2-1 formation, and, in Valeri’s absence, strikers Jeremy Ebobisse, with 181 minutes played in the tournament, and Jarosław Niezgoda, with 89 minutes played, or, essentially, Blanco, could be substituted in to close the gap.
Demonstrated in the graph that I created below, of all 18 players utilized by the Timbers in the first three matches of MLS is Back, 17 played 82 minutes or more, 14 played 90 minutes or more, and only 3 played 200 minutes or more.
*All Statistics via Wyscout.com
Selecting a range of values from 150 to 200 minutes played, we can see that the Timbers had 8 players falling right into that category. In contrast, Los Angeles FC had only 2, with 8 of their players playing 200 minutes or more. This high usage rate may have caused issues for LAFC down the road. They utilized four players, namely striker Diego Rossi, defender Eddie Segura, midfielder Latif Blessing, and right-winger Brian Rodríguez for the full 270 minutes of group stage matches. While the Timbers never had a player with less than 69 minutes played in total, LAFC used defender Jordan Harvey, midfielder José Cifuentes, forward Danny Musovski, striker Adama Diomande, midfielder Bryce Duke, and defender Andy Najar for 2 minutes, 44 minutes, 16 minutes, 16 minutes, 13 minutes, and 23 minutes respectively. What LAFC may have lacked is depth of team roster and they struggled with team rotation as a whole, potentially tiring out the key players in their starting 11 over time. The same can be said for the Seattle Sounders, who were eliminated in the early knockout round of the tournament. A usually quite well-rounded team, the Sounders only had 2 players, defenders Shane O’Neill and Yeimar Gómez Andrade, within the 150-200 minute range, and 8 players that had 200 or more minutes of game time in the group stages of all 19 players that competed.
This lack of evenly distributed playing time among these two teams might have aided in their inability to achieve their desired result of reaching the final. While the 2020 MLS is Back Tournament was certainly unpredictable, if we look closely at the success of the Portland Timbers, it can help us understand a key factor in playing in such a unique style of competition. Player rotation is always crucial in making sure that teams are able to constantly compete at their best level, and this comes directly from the depth of the team’s skill level across the board and the ability that each player possesses to come into a match and do their job. The Portland Timbers were able to utilize the skill sets of all of their players to constantly bring a fresh quality of play over the course of the competition and emerge victorious.