Post-Game Analysis: Keeping the big guys in check

Portland Timbers have two spectacular Diegos on the roster, and what both Caleb Porter and Giovanni Savarese have found is that the job of a coach in the Pacific Northwest is to get everyone on the same page and then unleash those supertalents. To do so successfully requires the coach to compromise his ideals — adios Porterball, sayonara the full-field aggression with which Savarese began 2018 — and inject their key strategic principles into a system that fits everyone else on the roster.

For Savarese, the principles he won't abandon include intense focus in the defensive third, particularly when it comes to defending the middle of the box, and verticality in attack, which means looking to…