by Paul Gardner , Dec 7, 2015

No, it wasn’t a dream final -- these days we don't see many of them -- but it was a game with plenty of drama and enough good soccer to prevent it from ever lapsing into banality.

I’m interested here only in what happened on the field, during those 90-plus minutes of action. I decidedly am not interested in the buildup, all that fatuous theorizing and expertizing and “this is the guy to watch” and “team A has never lost when leading in the 63rd minute” and so on. Nor am I that interested in the tactical details.

Right before the game, the TV screens informed us that Columbus would play a 4-2-3-1, while Portland would shape up as a 4-3-3. Which was immediately contradicted by a graphic showing Portland with a 4-1-2-3 lineup. As has been said: Those who like that sort of thing would find that the sort of thing they like. Let them have it.

Those diagrams, which at once suggest -- almost demand -- strict positional discipline have long struck me as a contradiction of soccer’s marvelous fluidity. What saves those lineup numbers, I feel, is that they are known to be myths, fallacious formulae that are not to be taken too seriously.

Portland gave us a huge reminder of that almost as soon as the game started, when Diego Valeri swooped down on Columbus goalkeeper Steve Clark and hustled him into an appalling error. So, in under 30 seconds it was 1-0 Portland.

Formation-wise, that should have been one of the front-three -- probably Rodney Wallace or Fanendo Adi -- harrying Clark. But it was midfielder Valeri, with his tremendous ability to really play this game, to envisage it, to anticipate, to see the patterns, simply to sense -- (a soccer sense, for sure) -- the moves, who got there first.

Drama indeed -- and tragedy for Clark. Goalkeeper’s errors are always likely to be colossal. This one was, for sure -- because, looking at that final 2-1 scoreline, you could say it decided the game. But that is being too cruel to Clark. After all, the Crew now had the whole game to repair the damage. Though, of course, it was confronted with a different game from the one it had planned for.

Suddenly the home-field advantage, which is often thought to be worth a goal, had been snatched away from Columbus. Portland, you could be sure, would not turn defensive, definitely not their style. So an open game beckoned. That’s what we got, and with neither defense looking comfortable, pretty exciting it was for the next 20 minutes.

Columbus buckled first -- on the right wing, Lucas Melano was allowed to measure an uncontested cross from which Wallace, also not really challenged, headed in from seven yards. This did not look like the solid defense that Columbus had shown in the games against the Red Bulls.

Just as it was beginning to seem that this was not the Crew’s day, it got back into the game. Thanks to another pretty bad goalkeeping error, this one from Portland’s Adam Kwarasey, who made an embarrassing mess of trying to punch the ball away. The ball stayed in the goalmouth, and Kei Kamara took over. His confidence and superb footwork enabled him to find the smallest of openings and to smash the ball into the net, the power of the shot being too much for defender Alvas Powell who, standing on the goal line, was in its path.

The rest of the first half belonged to Columbus, though if this was domination, it was a rather tepid version. We’ve seen this before -- plenty of possession but no shots on goal. In fact, Portland had the best chance when Adi pounced on a loose ball and forced Clark into a terrific low save.

The second half opened in much the same style, Columbus with a lot of the ball but a lot of incoherence too. Things were not working for their playmaker Federico Higuain, who showed several nice touches on the ball -- moments that ought to have led to danger for Portland, but never did. Higuain covered plenty of ground -- was allowed to by Portland, which did not man-mark him -- but found it difficult to spring a teammate loose against the increasingly effective Portland defense. Effective, that is, in getting numbers in front of Columbus players.

Having a particularly good game was left back Jorge Villafana -- almost a career breakthrough game. He completely -- and cleanly -- snuffed out Ethan Finlay, and dealt quickly with any other threat down the Columbus right flank.

I suppose inevitably, the tide began to turn against Columbus. It had tried everything, and nothing had worked. Portland, all the while, had never given up its attacking intentions, and was a constant threat. Melano had a great chance in the 53rd minute, but was slow to fire off a shot, allowing Michael Parkhurst to block it. In the 60th minute, Portland swarmed all over the Columbus goalmouth, and twice almost had the ball in the net -- the second time it rebounded off a post on to Parkhurst’s arm, a hand ball, yes, but surely not intentional, so referee Jair Marrufo was right to ignore it.

Ten minutes later an Adi header hit the bar and the ball bounced back and hit goalkeeper Clarke who somehow swatted it away without deflecting it into the net. Darlington Nagbe had a good chance but blasted way over.

Higuain at last came close to sparking a goal with an expert turn and touch that sent a volley across the Portland goal -- but j-u-u-u-st out of Jack McInerney’s reach.

The final 10 minutes were high on desperation -- desperate but ineffective attacking from Columbus, desperate but successful defending from Portland. A ragged, scrappy ending -- not without its nail-biting moments.

Portland deserved its win, a team always looking to attack, even in those final desperate minutes. In Diego Valeri they had the man of the match -- from that extraordinary moment of goalscoring opportunism in the first minute, through the whole game when his possession of the ball always carried the threat of trouble for Columbus.

Not a dream final, but a pretty good one. Though there remains a question as to whether it could have been better. What may have stopped it from developing into a more open, more skillful game, was the refereeing of Jair Marrufo. Certainly, I’d rate Marrufo one of the best referees in MLS, and have no doubt he deserved to be in charge of this final.

The one decision in the final that stands out as just plain wrong came in the build up to Portland’s second goal, when the ball clearly rolled out of play by about a yard -- it was hooked back in by Portland’s Powell, and play was allowed to continue. But the decision -- a really, really, bad one -- was the assistant referee’s, not Marrufo’s.

The problem I have with Marrufo starts with his opening whistle at the final. We hear a lot about the peculiarities of “playoff soccer,” but we hear very little about “playoff refereeing.” Yet such a thing clearly exists. The logic is clear. It’s a final, it should be played with 22 players on the field. Limit the cards, and if possible hand them out only in the second half.

We saw playoff refereeing at its worst during the Kansas City-Real Salt Lake final two years ago. At its worst, because it blatantly favored one team. Referee Hilario Grajeda’s perverse decision not to eject KC’s Aurelien Collin by giving him a second yellow card (which he abundantly earned) openly favored KC.

Marrufo did not favor either team on Sunday, but -- particularly in the first half -- the lenient approach was there for all to see, unapologetically visible, in Marrufo’s reluctance to call obvious fouls, and to issue obvious cards. He let far too much go -- an approach that always seems to please TV commentators -- “letting the game flow” said Adrian Healey, approvingly.

The most obvious incidents came when: at 5 minutes, the Crew’s Waylon Francis inflicted a crude physical foul on Adi that should have been yellow-carded; at 24-minute mark Portland’s Nagbe heavily barged Justin Meram off the ball, a tactical foul for which the rules mandate a yellow card and which Nagbe escaped. The worst moment was in the 11th minute when Nagbe chased Meram into the Portland penalty area and clumsily brought him down. That should have been a penalty kick to Columbus.

Marrufo was slightly more active with yellow cards in the second half -- he gave three. But two of them were for time-wasting.

When a referee displays a lenient attitude, it is very quickly picked up by the players, and the fouls increase. What commentator Healey identifies as “letting the game flow” is really nothing more than allowing teams to foul more. And that definitely has an effect on the game itself, it determines what sort of game is played. Thus, when a team knows that tactical fouls will not be yellow-carded (despite what the rules demand), then tactical fouls there will be, to the disadvantage of a team that wants to play, or is good at, a fast-breaking or counterattacking game.

Whether or not regular -- as opposed to playoff -- refereeing would have helped either Portland and Columbus is not my concern here. Respect for the rules is. The pressure on the referee of a big game not to eject a player, not to be seen as too active a part of the game, is no doubt intense. But for the referee to attempt to lessen that pressure by failing to apply the rules should never be acceptable.