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Putting Timbers in a corner can be a good thing

Portland’s playoff success coming from corners or free kicks

By Paul Danzer, Columbian Soccer, hockey and Community Sports Reporter
Published: November 28, 2015, 4:36pm

The Portland Timbers might be 90 minutes away from a berth in the MLS Cup final, but it figures to be just a few moments on Sunday in Frisco, Texas, that determine the fate of the Timbers and FC Dallas.

And those decisive moments just might come on the end of a corner kick or a free kick.

The Timbers take a 3-1 lead into the decisive second leg. They scored two of their three goals in the first leg of this two-game, total-goals battle from corner kicks, with central defenders Liam Ridgewell and Nat Borchers providing the finishes on second-ball opportunities.

“When you look at little keys to the game, I think attacking set pieces for us will continue to be a real key in this series,” Timbers coach Caleb Porter said.

With that in mind, Porter said his team would continue to focus on their attacking set pieces in the run up to this match.

“We did that last week. And we’re going to continue to work on it. We think that’s an area that we can continue to exploit Dallas,” Porter said.

Who takes those set-piece opportunities? In leg one, Darlington Nagbe took the corner kicks. But Diego Valeri, one of the better takers of free and corner kicks in MLS, is eligible to play leg two after being suspended for last week’s game in Portland.

“We can go two on the ball. We can go one on the ball. We can mix it up and have different guys serve it from different angles,” Porter said. “So there will be some of those wrinkles we’ll throw in.”

During the regular season, Portland scored only nine times from corners or free kicks. In addition to the two goals from corner kicks last Sunday, the Timbers have been very good with attacking restarts in the playoffs.

In the knockout round against Sporting Kansas City, Rodney Wallace’s opening goal came from a play that started from an attacking restart. In that case, Kansas City cleared the initial ball, but Borchers was still forward to win the header that led to the Wallace goal. And Fanendo Adi’s opening goal at Vancouver began with a restart — a quickly taken throw-in.

Dallas, by contrast, has given up a set-piece goal in each of its three playoff games: A free kick from Clint Dempsey and a corner kick finish by Chad Marshall in the Seattle series, and Portland’s two corner kick conversions.

In the regular season, Dallas gave up 10 goals from corner kicks or free kicks. In the U.S. Open Cup tournament, Sporting Kansas City scored early goals from a corner kick and a free kick to begin a 6-2 rout of visiting Dallas.

One aspect of attacking opportunities for Portland that might favor Dallas: FCD can be deadly on the counter-attack. Three of its four goals in the 4-1 July 25 win over visiting Portland came from counter-attacks, the first of those directly after a Timbers attacking corner kick.

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Columbian Soccer, hockey and Community Sports Reporter