PORTLAND, Ore. – In the soccer world, we’re used to the way losing teams talk about their losses, often doing so in a way that tries to mitigate their impacts. Some point to bad luck. Others point to poor officiating decisions. Still others point to numbers, like shots on goal or possession totals, to imply that their team wasn’t as bad as the final score.
“I thought in the first half we created a lot of chances and we had opportunities ...,” Portland Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese said after his team’s game against Atlanta United on August 25.