Timbers vs. Toronto FC - Player Grades #RCTID

So @StumptownFooty asked and I responded but, to be honest, this has been on my mind for the last few weeks as a missing piece of game by game analysis that would allow us to delve into each position, each player and start a conversation that maybe Gio and Gavin will end up reading (along with all your comments!).

As they say, a rising tide raises all boats, so when the Timbers win, the grades might seem a little high and when they lose, vice versa.  But in general, the methodology is to start with a 'C' and then see (no pun intended) what they can do for us lately.  A mid-week game coming off a 4-game losing streak is probably as good a place to start as any...

Timbers vs. FC Toronto - Wednesday, August 29, 2018 (@ Providence Park)

Attinella (A) - Clean sheet, ‘nuff said. He saved what he needed to, let the woodwork save what it needed to and let the defense keep shots on goal to a minimum.

Mabiala (A-) - This was his first game alongside Liam in how long? I think he is a much better stopper than sweeper and I will admit that this is the center back combo I’ve been waiting for.

Ridgewell (A) - As someone who has played the backline, I can’t stress the importance of having someone back there who, skills aside, can keep the back line on the same page. I think Ridgie brings just that and allows Mabiala to roam (which i think is his strength). As per Jorge, i don’t think he played his best game, but his influence resulted in a clean sheet.

Villafaña (A) - OK, admittedly it wasn’t his 'A' game, but I have to think that his presence bolstered the team’s mentality a bit and he was solid during his run. He had a significant challenge in marking the weak side space that effectively created 2v1 opportunities for TFC but he weathered them as we expected.

Valentin (B-) - That through pass to Blanco was a thing of beauty and he gets kudos for that, but, too many times it seems like he is forcing the ball into a lane that was already vacated. There were a couple of plays where he didn’t push forward or got caught defensively awkward and that didn’t help his grade. I will say that I think the day is quickly approaching when he is the odd man out and we have Powell and Villanfana racing up the sidelines...

Polo (B+) - I will concede that I really like the direction this kid’s game is heading. He continues to push a bit more forward every game and while he has his occasional errant pass or first touch he is helping the counter and making himself present at both ends of the pitch.

Guzman (A) - He finally performed the way I had expected him to all year. Make his presence known in the defensive mid, allow Chara some freedom and every once in awhile step up and shoot. I hope this isn’t a one and done for Him but I know the National team is calling. My hope is that he can maintain his momentum and get back to the “shake and bake” effect that he and Chara bring to the team. Oh, and he scored that second goal YOU KNOW WE WERE ALL WAITING FOR!

Chara (A+) - I know that the methodology starts players at a 'C' but I may consider starting Chara off at an 'A' based on what he has meant to the team.  His early efforts created a caution on Delgado and almost a red card (stoopid, stoopid, stoopid!) just for starters.  But he continued to be the defensive dynamo we (and the entire league) expect and then he gets a freaking game winner to cap it all off???  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!  Totally going to admit a man-crush right here!

Blanco (A) - He didn’t score but by golly he continues to demonstrate that he is the most dangerous player on the team with the ball at his feet. Yeah, he missed a gimme to Armenteros but it seems like the run of play always seems to run through him.

Valeri (C+) - I love Valeri. I love Valeri. I love Valeri. (Am I back in Kansas yet?) But... I think that moving him to a more central midfield position would benefit his current level of play. I don’t know if he’s trying too hard or he’s getting predictable but his ability to work without space seems to be diminishing. When he has space he continues to create and be the Maestro we will always love. Another option is to just give him a break for a game or too...

Armenteros (B) - At the beginning of the game he was especially dangerous but seemed to hell bent on scoring and so missed the army of open teammates he had options for. But his movement off the ball helped create the opening goal and it did seem like he was working harder to get the ball on the run as opposed to trying to be an Adi-like holding striker (which was a horrible thing to watch against the Flounders).

Savarese (A) - A coach’s job is to get the team ready for a fight and I think he did that. From the opening whistle. At no point did i think the Timbers level of intensity changed much and I applaud his starting lineup but maybe not is substitution pattern. But, he did use all his subs! Yay!

Sub1 - Flores (C) - Meh. I get it. He is Batman’s utility belt in a soccer kit. But then I don’t get the situational subs (or starts) when you are looking to change the game. Yeah, at the time of the sub there wasn’t any major change to the game Gio was looking for but still...

Sub2 - Melano (B) - 10 minutes, but he worked for it and tried to reverse a couple of the opinions he left behind. That defensive run to break up Bradley? Huzzah! That offensive run to get the through ball from Valeri? Huzzah! (Although i would have gone near post).

Sub3 - Tuiloma (C+) - He was solid deluding his brief tenure and that’s all you can ask of a defensive sub. Honestly, you didn’t expect a Powell-esque performance did you??

Submitted for the Timbers fan in all of us by Sean Egusa.

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility

On August 7, 2011, I have the honor of sharing my experience in Japan with a broader audience.  Here is the unabridged version of what I will share with the audience:

Speech Draft 7/30/11 (revised 8/5/11)

Good afternoon.

My name is Sean Egusa and recently I had the honor of sharing an amazing experience with 87 brothers and sisters on Azumano Travel's Flight of Friendhip as we traveled to northeastern Japan to lend a hand to the recovery efforts after the devastating events there of March 11, 2011.

At 2:45 local time, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred 43 miles of the coast of northeast Japan. The earthquake was so powerful that it shifted the main island of Japan 8 feet and shifted the earth on its axis.  The earthquake also sent a series of tsunami waves towards the Japanese coastline and it was for just such an eventuality that the Japanese had extensively trained and prepared.  The coastline was even fortified with man-made seawalls, designed to withstand the power of Poseidon.

Take for example, a section of the coastline just 140 miles north of Tokyo, where a 15 foot seawall protected the reactors of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant.  That is, the seawall was built to protect against waves 15 feet and lower.  47 minutes after the 9.0 earthquake, Mother Nature delivered a 47 foot tidal wave and that's when things started to go wrong.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, one of the most powerful marketing campaigns ever developed that is a particularly natural human reaction in natural disasters.  The ironic thing to me though is that the events following March 11 around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant created more fear, uncertainty and doubt than the double whammy Mother Nature delivered, and it continues to this day.

But let me take you back to what I witnessed with my own eyes...

8 weeks ago I slogged through piles of mud mixed with fish, squid, children's toys, tatami mats, family heirlooms with 20 strangers who are now some of my favorite people I know. I saw people from age 13 to 75 not care who they were, how much they made or what lot in life they came from pull ampan man story books, silverware, tatami mats, trees, sinks from the same pile of foul-smelling slime-ridden rotting mud, the mud that lent a particular stench to the atmosphere and is still present on both my boots and in my nostrils every time I close my eyes and remember standing there. One of those unexpected but very tangible memories of the trip.  And it is in those moments, as I stood where, 3 months earlier, a 10-15 foot wall of water had plowed through the town of Ishinomaki in northeastern Japan. 

I stood in the midst of surreal devastation.  (reading of a haiku written by a colleague)

Earthquake, tsunami
Sight and smell I can't forget
I am not the same

I would actually take pictures of the baytown of Rikuzentakata and compare them side by side with photos of Hiroshima's ground zero.  In Hiroshima, one lone building was left standing amidst what once was a bustling city center, while in Rikuzentakata, a lone pine stood where a forest once dominated the skyline.

I find it interesting that humanity can be so intent on creating that which could destroy us – as if we were trying our best to play our role in some self-fulfilling prophecy.  But while we gawk in our infantile understanding of what power is, Mother Nature reminds us of who is in control.  Not us…

To put this in perspective, the tsunami generated by the earthquake, in less than an hour, delivered devastation along 420 miles of Japanese coastline.  To put that in perspective, think about the entire coastline from Astoria, Oregon to Eureka, California hit by at least a 10 foot wall of water, more likely 20-30 feet, but in some places up to 80 feet.

I make this case not to provide any security or sense that what we do, what we create doesn’t matter, but my case is simply why complicate things more when we can’t even protect against the natural disasters of floods, tornados, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, that already plague this planet?

But while Japan has already come far along the road to recovery from the impacts of the earthquake and tsunami, it still struggles with grasping the entirety of the impacts from the meltdowns at Fukushima.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.

In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima and have dinner with relatives who had survived the great war.  On August 6, 1945 my uncle was stationed on some lonely island fortress in the south Pacific while my aunt, a junior in high school, was helping reinforce fortifications along the coastline as Japan prepared for the naval assault it knew had to come to end the war.  But most of her classmates were still back in school…  in Hiroshima.

I am not sure if it is that I feel some modicum of personal guilt for what I have seen through my relative’s eyes or whether it is just the natural guilt any living soul might feel as they stroll through the Hiroshima Peace Park.  We all have our own demons, but I may have a few more than you folks before me.

For you see, in the early hours of December 7, 1941, my great uncle Takashige Egusa led a task force of 88 dive bombers into an enemy harbor creating a chain of events that, 44 months later, ended in the mushroom clouds of nuclear devastation.

My mother still cries when she sees footage of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it has made me realize that, natural disasters aside, it is a bit sadder for all of us when we see a tragedy that we have bestowed upon ourselves. 

Thank you.

 

Rikuzentakata - Guest Blog Entry

Blogger's Note: In an effort to capture as many perspectives of the experience as possible I have asked friends and colleagues from the trip to offer a narrative of their own experience.  While I might have pared down the narrative a bit in places, what you read next are the words, the thoughts, the memories of others who I worked with, rode with, sang with, side by side.  My personal thanks to those who took the time to share.  Sean

THE FOLLOWING ARE THE WORDS AND THOUGHTS OF MR. JOHN BAUMGARDNER:

We were going to Kesennuma. I was originally scheduled to work in Kessenuma, but switched to the second group which was going to be at a school in another town.  I had switched because I was trying to deliver some letters written by kids in the Elementary portion of our Japanese Immersion Program to kids who were still in shelters.  I am very glad I switched as the experiences I had with them would have a huge impact on me.

After dropping off the first group in Kessenuma (がんばって！), we continued on to the town of Rikuzentakata.   We left Kesennuma and continued to see the same kind of damage we had seen earlier that day and the day before.  After winding through the beautiful scenery of this area, the road dropped back down onto the coastal area and things started to feel different.  All my colleagues could feel that something was different because the bus got steadily quieter and slowly I began to realize that it was because the devastation here was complete. 

There was nothing left.  You could see the roads and where the neighborhoods were, but there were no buildings at all, just debris or in many places just emptiness.  As we wound our way through what was once Rikuzentakata (population 25,000) we took in the view - a beautiful bay surrounded by sheer devastation.  We drove mile after mile without seeing a single building.  During the quiet bus ride we noticed a lone tall pine tree where once a famous forest of 70,000 pine trees once stood - and the one surviving tree was in danger from the salinity of the salt water from the tsunami. 

We arrived at a Junior High School where our moods picked up.  Some of the town had indeed survived on a small hill that overlooked the bay.  As the bus pulled in, there were adults lined up for what we learned was “free shopping”.  A clothing company (we think it was Uniclo) had donated lots of clothes and people could come and select what they wanted.  While we waited for Peace Winds to arrive, Koh and I started walking around.  We would go up to people who were living there at the shelter and temporary housing units and Koh (日本人) would introduce us and start talking to them.  I don’t know much but simply by watching the interaction I could understand what was going on.  The caring and compassion that we shared seemed to make a small, but very real, difference in their difficult lives.  We would go from person to person and talk with them and then she would let me know what gifts I should pull from my backpack to give to them.  I reflected back on the briefing we had received at our reception with the US Ambassador, that we may think our job here was to clean or to hand out stuff at shelters, but our real job was to listen to the people if the opportunity came up. In this moment I felt so very privileged to be a part of all this and especially to be a witness to and a small part of such touching exchanges between people.

After a while it was the kids’ turn for “free shopping” and we watched as they selected new clothes to wear.  The Principal of the school came out as well and Koh talked to him and introduced us.  I presented to him some letters from our kids and a book on Oregon.  The kids quickly started passing the book around and looking through it.  After a nice chat, the Peace Winds people arrived and we started to finally get to work and the task we had come to do.

On some flat land at the Junior High a joint project between Mercy Corps and Peace Winds had built almost 100 temporary housing units and were busy building about 75 more.  There were about 20 or so that were already fully furnished and people had already moved into them.  Our job was to finish the process of furnishing the rest of the units so that more people could move in soon.  We worked very quickly giving each unit the correct number of futons, sets of sheets, sets of dishes, etc.  When we got to the last set of units, they were next to the ones where people had already moved into.  While loading up the last few units I noticed a lady waving to me from the window of one of the units where people had already moved into.  She was one of the people that Koh and I had met earlier and talked to and given gifts to.  I remembered she had told us that she had 3 grandkids and I had given her stuff for them including a letter from the kids in our program.  I waved back to her and then she started talking to me in a very excited manner.  Koh explained that she was so happy because she had just got news from her daughter that she and her family were moving into one of the units we had just furnished that very night.  She was so glad that her family was getting this opportunity and so grateful to us for helping to make it happen.

We finished preparing 83 units that day so that 232 people could move in.  That was a nice accomplishment by our team, but could not come even close to the feeling that we had also touched several hearts that day and seeing it in their faces.

The ride back through the devastated town was very different for me.  As I looked at the massive cleanup operation continuing to go on there I thought about a new phrase I had learned on the trip, “shikata ga nai”, which roughly means ‘nothing can be done’ or as I like to say, ‘it is what it is’.  We couldn’t do anything about the devastation that had happened, but we could certainly do something about the recovery that was very clearly going on.

--John Baumgardner

Accomplishments and Frustrations...

Sean in Kesennuma

Earthquake, tsunami
Sight and smell I can't forget
I am not the same

I sit with my family, in my home and sip a local beer.  They are distractions for now to keep me from thinking, from remembering…

We were warned.  One of the dangers of going is to know what it feels like to help and to want to stay, to want to do more than the opportunity allows.  Knowing creates an emotional battlefield that, while may have been expected, most of us were unprepared to deal with.  I was unprepared. 

But in the end, what personal and emotional struggles the alumni of the Flight of Friendship to Sendai, Japan might have, it pales in comparison to the struggle in every aspect of life and living that the people of northeastern Japan must cope with now and for the foreseeable future.  We had a unique opportunity to enter a world that few outside of the area will ever experience first-hand. 

Teamwork!

For a few moments we realized a bit of accomplishment that would then settle into a melancholy we came to expect as we hauled a tree stump down to an impromptu dump that was once a playground, as we cleared signs identifying evacuation points out of streams, as we pulled a child’s toy from piles of debris, as neighbors watched us clean up a house and then asked when we could start on theirs.

When people ask about the scope of devastation resulting from the double-whammy Mother Nature provided, my general response has been to ask people to think about the entire 300+ mile coastline of Oregon and all the towns and small communities.  Think about every one of those locations having significant loss and damage and then the logistical challenge of accessing every one of those communities because honestly, right now, every one of those communities is in desperate need.

But it’s just not possible.  This is the reality in northeastern Japan. 

There are supplies sitting in warehouses… but they can’t get the supplies north.  There are people around the world wanting to lend a hand… but they can’t get to Ground Zero.  Not to say that absolutely nothing is happening, a lot is, but a lot more is needed.  This disaster happened to one of the most patient and proud civilizations ever to exist, but even their patience has its limits when no progress is perceived and sometimes pride needs to be swallowed to avoid an even further fall.

For the Children

However, in spite of any defeatist sentiment I may have conveyed, there are smiles and hope in the heart of it all.  There are children attending school in the only building left standing in a community, there are families being reunited, there is new housing being built, there is an ingrained mentality in the people that life moves on and so they must look forward, not back. 

While there, I was asked how we would carry the message of what we did, what we saw, back to the United States, back to the world.  It was tough to respond because their fear is that they might already be forgotten, and for most, that is close to the truth.  But they have us now, to help share the struggles that they continue to face in the hopes that we will remember.  We will.

Japanese and Americans working together!

We were warned, but it was a warning we all embraced.  It was hard to be there, but harder yet to come home when so many still have nothing to come home to.

All's Quiet on the Northeastern Front

As we drove into Ishinomaki we sort of honestly questioned what we could do to help this town that obviously didn't seem to have been impacted much by the...

An empty foundation against the 

backdrop of homes still standing

The transition into the devastation was slow.  It snuck up on us.  That wasn't nice.  Observing with wild abandon, cameras, iPhones, iPads all clicking away or rolling with video, capturing the change in landscape that we had been waiting to witness.  Not knowing that we had not seen anything yet.  It is hard to gauge and to put in perspective that which you have not witnessed first hand.  To this point we had no idea, no perspective of the diversity of the wreckage we were about to see just from this town and its surroundings.

A building still standing, serves as a backdrop to a house or business (we could not tell) completely demolished.  How did one stand and the other literally wash away?  But that building that still stands...  It provides still a symbol of civilization, of society, of economy, that we will not be washed away in totality.

And we see images and witness carnage most of us have never seen before (outside of the CNN or a YouTube video) and roll through streets, over bridges, through tunnels, up winding mountain roads - perilous from the earthquake damage - and down into a town built into a small bay...

No, it used to be a town.  I know now why such experiences haunt people for a lifetime.

The vista of what was once Ooginohama

It took us Oregonians to snap out of the similar surroundings - "Gee, this looks a lot like the Oregon coast." Amongst the trees and at the foot of a rising forest in the flats of the bay's shoreline was nothing but broken, split, torn, ripped, shredded, twisted, ravaged construction strewn serenely across the landscape. 

Ooginohama, that was the name.  It takes a bit to learn, but once you do, you will never forget.  And so we laced our boots up a bit tighter, pulled the gloves on more firmly, and prepared to spend the day doing something, anything to help get this town, these people, back into a position where they can start to rebuild.  Looking out at the vista there was no ability to rebuild.  Three months after the event the scope of the recovery is still evident and a daunting task.  But every task must start somewhere, and ours started at a little creek and forest below the local elementary school.  And it would bring balance to us, it would be our Yin to the Yang that our eyes had just witnessed.

More to come, but for those who can't wait, here are more pictures of the day in Ishinomaki on Flickr

Itte Kimasu (いって きます) - I'll be Back

It is customary in Japan when you are leaving your home to let others know you are heading out with a simple "itte kimasu."  What you get back is a customary response of "itte rashai."  Sometimes I do feel like this is home and instead of saying sayonara (goodbye) or jaa, mata (until I see you again), I want to let them know that I'll be right back.

I sit in the airport with so many stories to share, not just of the experience of Toohoku, but the dynamics and personalities of the Flight of Friendship group where it seemed so many people shone and so many new friends were made.

I will share these stories, but not today, not now.  I am going to stew a little bit more on the flight and come up with more catchy titles such as "Wasuremono Nai De" that will draw the reader in a little deeper into our world.  So I will let Bob (see picture) send us all of with a kampai (cheers) and an otsukaresama deshita (let us reflect on the tiredness of our efforts of the day).

Visiting Ground Zero

There were many, many ground zeros during the tsunami. Most of us have seen footage of the tsunami from up and down the eastern Japanese seaboard.

See if you can find this in the video!

However, today our group went to Kesennuma, a small town about 2 1/2 hours North of Sendai (see the map).

This town is a bit famous thanks to YouTube and is actually the town in which the video I posted earlier.

Watch the video again. We drove down the roads since washed away. We passed by and looked up to where townfolk congregated wondering if this was the end. We arrived almost 3 months later and found this:

There is so much to do...