LOOKING TO SHORE UP DEFENCE AGAINST PORTLAND AT BIG O.

Allowing late goals leads to poor record

As competitive as the Impact has been in its inaugural Major League Soccer season, there’s one glaring concern that stands out.

The Impact (1-5-2) has allowed a league-worst 15 goals in its first eight games. It’s a problem the club will be looking to fix when it plays host to the Portland Timbers Saturday afternoon at Olympic Stadium (2 p.m., TVA Sports, CJAD Radio 800).

Midfielder Justin Mapp says learning to be stingy on defence is the next phase in the club’s development.

“To get results, you have to be good in the back,” Mapp said. “And it’s not just the back, but the whole team.

“You see teams that go far, year in and year out, have solid defence. They’re giving up very few goals. It’s especially important at home to keep a clean sheet while getting (scoring chances) at the other end.

“It all starts defensively,” Mapp added. “If we can move forward by doing that, it will make us a better team.”

The Impact has scored the first goal in five games, but has won only once and had to settle for a pair of 1-1 draws. The Impact tied 1-1 with D.C. United in its last game on April 18, its first point in six road games. One loss and two ties came after the Impact relinquished goals in the final 30 minutes.

“I don’t know why that’s happening,” Mapp said. “I think it’s just a case of being disciplined, focused, and not just for 70 or 75 minutes. In Dallas (a 2-1 loss on April 14), they scored two in the last 10 minutes, and that was a game we should have gotten something out of.

“It’s just playing to the final whistle, I think that’s all it is.”

The Impact, ninth in the 10-team Eastern Conference, has a minus-8 goal differential. The only team with a worse differential is Toronto FC (0-6-0) at minus-9.

While many, including the media, have been preoccupied since the beginning of the season with where the Impact scoring will come from, head coach Jesse Marsch has been more concerned about defence.

“That’s the pitfall of every expansion team,” Marsch said of allowing too many goals. “We’ve got to continue to fine tune that and to understand how in critical moments to not give away plays.”

In training this week, a lot of time was spent working on how to be more productive offensively on set pieces – free kicks, corner kicks and even throw-ins. But just as much time, if not more, was spent working on how to defend those same situations.

“We’ve given up so many different kinds of goals, it’s hard to identify one particular thing,” Marsch said. “Certainly the emphasis on how we play as a unit is important and when guys do make mistakes that we’re ready to cover for him.

“We’ve talked a lot about on shots and crosses that we need to do a better job of making ourselves big. That we don’t flinch away and give bigger windows of opportunity for balls to come into the box or to go into the goal.

“We are continuing to battle in different moments, to understand how to be solid in different moments, individually make plays when they need to, and then collectively understand that at different moments you’ve just got to make a play. We’ll get there.”

The Impact will play at home for only the third time this season, with a win and a tie in its previous games at Olympic Stadium. Portland is last in the nine-team Western Conference at 2-4-1 overall and 0-2-1 on the road, but is coming off a 1-0 home win over Sporting Kansas City a week ago. Let’s get physical: The Impact leads the league with 123 fouls committed, and the Timbers are known for their physical play.

It should make for an interesting matchup.

“Portland makes it their business to set the tone physically, and with the personnel they have they’re able to do that in most games,” Marsch said. “We got a good taste of it in preseason when we played them, so I think we’re prepared for that. We also feel, on a big field, that if we can match that, when the game settles down we’ll be able to find our moments and play some soccer that we’ll be successful.

“We’ve just got to be smart about where we foul so that we’re not giving them too many set pieces to have opportunities to have their big boys coming into our box.

“The one thing we want to be sure of is that we don’t shy away from the physical moments, because I think that will still be an important part of the game.”