MLS Western Conference Final: Portland Timbers vs Sporting Kansas City

This weekend, Portland Timbers and Sporting Kansas City played out a goalless draw in the first leg of the MLS Western Conference Final. This leaves everything nicely poised for the 2^nd leg, but how did each team to go in ahead?

In this tactical analysis, I’ll examine how each team approached the game. Along with that, I’ll look at how that either benefitted or hindered them. With the 2^nd leg taking place late on Friday night (2:30am GMT) I will then give my verdict as to who I believe will make the MLS Cup Final.

SKC’s Change Of Style

The biggest change going into this game was SKC’s approach. Usually they are the team who like to impose themselves on their opponents, however, this didn’t quite happen on Sunday. SKC were without ten-goal Diego Rubio due to suspension. To deal with this, SKC reverted from their usual 4-3-3 to a more defensive 4-1-4-1.

This could be seen with how disjointed some of the SKC attacks were like below:

At this point in the game, SKC’s attack wasn’t very convincing. The depth at which their runners had to come from ate valuable seconds and made it that much easier for Portland to defend them. However, Russell did try to change this later in the game.