Analysis: Loons continue to struggle applying finishing touches in close games

After his team gave up a stoppage-time equalizer to the Portland Timbers, Minnesota United manager Eric Ramsay sounded like every Loons fan who had stayed up late to watch the game Saturday night.

“We have to be really annoyed at ourselves because over the course of the last two games, we’ve probably shown pretty much where we are, and why we are in the table, in the position that we find ourselves currently,” he said via video conference after the game at Providence Park in Portland, Ore. “We are a team that is very, very close to being one of the best, one of the most competitive on a really consistent basis, but we just can’t get over the line.”

The Loons, who entered Sunday in third place in the Western Conference with 41 points, could be on top of the West, even on top of the Supporters’ Shield race, if they had successfully closed out more games. But — even in perhaps their best season in club history — they keep finding a way to come up short.

“We can get really close, we can dominate large periods of games against top teams, as we did against L.A. midweek,” Ramsay said, referring to a 1-0 loss against LAFC on Wednesday night at Allianz Field. “We can come to a place like Portland and be very difficult to beat and get very close to getting over the line, but we haven’t been able [to date], which is really frustrating.”

MLS standings

SUMMARY LATE SAT.: Loons 1, Portland 1

Victories at Portland are always hard to come by, but it was a night of celebration for the Timbers, who had squads of former players in town to celebrate the team’s 50th anniversary. That the Loons took Portland out of it, then grabbed the lead with less than 15 minutes to play, was a sign that it was a pretty good night for Minnesota, even in a game that was more open than the Loons might have expected.

That they again dropped that lead is a testament to a team that appears to be developing something of a mental block about holding leads.

“I’m very keen to stress that we’re the team that has been in a losing position at least over the course of this entire season, so more often than any other team in MLS, we are in a position to lose points come the end of games,” Ramsay said. “I think that’s a credit to the team in one sense, but in another, we have to be much more clinical and ruthless in closing games out.”

Minnesota was awarded a first-half penalty kick by referee Ricardo Fierro after Morris Duggan (apparently) headed a free kick into the outstretched arm of Timbers midfielder David Ayala.

Fierro, though, overturned his own decision after video review — but fumbled his public explanation of the call.

“After review, there is no handball offense” is all he said — a confusing non-explanation given that the ball had pretty clearly hit Ayala’s arm, which was above his head at the time.

Here’s how Fierro explained things after the game via an email in response to a Star Tribune question.

“After review, it was determined that Portland’s defender headed the ball into his own teammate in an off-balance position. The ball hitting the arm of the defender coming directly from a teammate in this fashion is not a punishable handball offense.”

Even after the game, Ramsay was still speculating that Fierro had called a foul on Duggan, so it wasn’t as if there was an off-microphone explanation for players and coaches either.

Giving the referee a microphone to explain VAR calls feels like a necessary step, but the majority of the time, the referee falls back on boilerplate instead of explaining what he or she has seen. In order to make the goofy review system work, it’s going to require that the referees improve their on-mic communication skills.