The Timbers match against the Seattle Sounders at Jeld-Wen Field today was a tense one with both sides squandering scoring chances over the ninety minutes. After falling behind early in the second half, the Timbers fought and clawed their way back into the game, eventually getting the equalizer and pushing for a winning goal until the final whistle was blown.
The team certainly didn't make it easy to pick a stand out player, with some good performances coming at both ends of the pitch. None of the Timbers' potential game changing players were able to really grab the game by the scruff of the neck and take it over, but all put in effective performances that might have been outstanding on another day. With the whole afternoon to think on the matter, making our picks for the Timbers' Man of the Match was still difficult.
Will - Rodney Wallace
Wallace hardly has a stellar track record with the Timbers. On the road he seems emblematic of the team's struggles, putting in lackadaisical efforts, making mental mistakes, and never quite putting it all together. At home, however, he is often a force to be reckoned with. Timbers fans were justifiably worried about Wallace filling in for the recently solid Steven Smith coming in to today's game, but after the shift Rodney just put in, it might just be Smith who needs to be worrying.
With Franck Songo'o cutting inside ahead of him, Wallace got forward effectively and, especially as things started to come together for the Timbers' attack later in the game, was a constant source of dangerous crosses into the box. He also defended well, dealing with the speedy Steve Zakuani all night while also providing cover for David Horst's occasional forays forward. Oh, also, he scored the Timbers' only goal in one of the many times on the night that he happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Check out the rest of our Man of the Match picks and vote on your own after the jump.
There are our picks for Man of the Match, but what are yours? Be sure to cast your vote and let us know why in the comments.
Geoff - Darlington Nagbe
There was no mistake about it. Seattle came into yesterday's game with the intent to slow Nagbe down. Osvaldo Alonso had it marked pretty much the entire game and yet still Nagbe managed to make meaningful runs both on the offense and tracking back to help defend. It was unfortunate that he wasn't able to score, but he seemed to have enough of an impact in the midfield to not be entirely out of the game either despite that kind of opposition.
Ryan - Jack Jewsbury
He continues to impress in his CDM role and today was no different. He constantly helped out Kimura, covered for when Wallace went forward and applied pressure on Montero and Johnson when they were able to get on the end of the long balls. All of those were good contributions but his best contribution was saying "I got this!" and taking over the corners.