An Overdue Farewell & Some Thoughts

It's in there, sure as my knife's going in your tire.

After spending about a week thinking about it, and even writing one more Timbers post for old time’s sake, I’m pulling the plug on this project. I won’t delete it – I put 12 years into it, for fuck’s sake – but will allow it to molder until even the internet forgets it. Doubt it’ll take long…

Traffic is down, but so is my enthusiasm. I can’t remember the last time I prioritized getting something posted on time, which makes this feel like good timing – i.e., I’m getting sick of doing this just as people are getting sick of me. Don’t know if that’s a win-win or a lose-lose, but it feels natural regardless.

Because I really, really think I’m going to finally, and for real, shut down this site, I have some final observations I’d like to make about the game I’ve spent 20+ seasons writing about in one form or another and for a minimum of three teams (for the record, the New England Revolution, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati.)

Give Them Grace
If you’ve ever screwed up at work (or at home, or just at life; raise your hand, this is a safe space), and you knew the specific thing you did wrong like your first name, last name and middle initial, and still had to sit in silence while someone walked you through that same error, i.e., the one you know on the same resentment-fueled granular level that you know your romantic partner’s worst habits, as if you made the mistake out of ignorance or idiocy, well, you know how that breaks your brain and generally makes you feel like you want to slash a parking lot’s worth of tires. Don’t worry, that won’t be the last run-on sentence in this post. Tradition means something around here.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Red Bull New York & A Roll-Call

So, the MLS season is...a hug that lasts hours?

Officially taking the next step in the ever-evolving, attempted-shrinking approach to these posts (didn't work) – something that makes ever more sense as the Major League Soccer season shrinks to its borderline tantric close. This might read like a glorified, long-winded reddit post, but I feel like I’ve put readers through enough over the past 20-some-odd years.

By way of framing, I’d call Saturday’s 2-1 win over Red Bull New York great and on a couple levels. Allow me to explain…

The Game, Still More Briefly
With the pressure to post on the same night now alleviated, I’m coming back around to the live game experience. I caught this game from the Multnomah Athletic Club deck (weird experience, which I both do and don’t recommend; and is a mother/son LEGO build the equivalent of a purity ball, or…?), which, despite flattening the vertical space, afforded me a fantastic view of how wide the Timbers spread the field. That felt like a good choice given the Red Bulls’ style of play and, throughout the first half, that held up. Portland piled on the pressure and scored one offside goal (see the full highlights) before Kristoffer Velde engineered a real one at the 28th minute. The Timbers carried that one-goal advantage into the half and well beyond, but the Red Bulls tightened their press at the start of the second half and squeezed it until Emil Forsberg scored a follow-the-bouncing-ball equalizer that matched Matias Rojas’ opener for unlikely good fortune. Portland answered back mere minutes later with a solid team goal that makes a fella want to stand up, salute, and believe in The Product. This season’s budding star, Antony, scored it, but I was lot more excited about the break-neck poise and pace that created it. If Red Bull came close to an equalizer I don’t remember it – the final stats don’t really hint at one - but the main thing that stood out about the performance as a whole was how much Red Bull struggled to play through the Timbers all night. I appreciate that’s hardly their forte, and it did the soul good to see Portland handle a mid-table team like they knew their way around the pitch and, total bonus, neutralize the Red Bulls game-plan.

Long-form thoughts on the Timbers are below, but, before touching on that, let’s do a…

Notes on the MLS Stretch-Run, with the Portland Timbers, FC Cincinnati & Spinal Tap

I've always wanted a girl who believes in Chicago.

We’ve reached that special time in the Major League Soccer calendar when pundits start stitching together posts that look like proofs – i.e., the ones that breakdown all the permutations that will see your local team either eliminated (aka, ded) or alive to fight for one more…let’s face it, almost certainly pointless weekend. A few teams have already been eliminated, of course – goodbye, DC, adieu, Montreal – but that still leaves plenty of teams counting long-dead chickens and hoping they can pawn them off on somebody.

With that in mind, you can add the following to the games I’ll be ignoring for this look ahead at this MLS Week, I dunno, 29? (Nope! It’s Week 33.)

Club du Foot Montreal v St. Louis CITY FC
New England Revolution v Toronto FC
Real Salt Lake v Sporting Kansas City

That doesn’t mean I’ll cover every other game at length, especially when the stakes fall short of existential – i.e., I don’t have much to say about Atlanta United FC v Columbus Crew beyond noting that Columbus needs to win this one and it’ll say something if they don’t, because it’s been a minute since that team saw a W (I count four games). One could argue the same applies to FC Dallas v Austin FC, but that one hits too close to home for me to ignore it.

At any rate, I pulled this together with an eye to get myself back in a sexy regular season mood after the international break. More whip-around than analysis – this will be the biggest possible picture, don’t expect anything on absences (unless I remember them; rare) and keep dreaming on a tactical breakdown - the facts and theories will come fast, but hopefully enough with enough meat on them to make it worth the time. Think the protein blast of riding down the highway on a motorcycle with your mouth open.

Right…starting with games of the most local interest (born in Cincinnati, live in Portland, OR):

Minnesota United FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Balling with the Elite, Running from the Hoi Polloi

Mood. I think, or thereabouts.

Anyone either have a guess, or do any of you wonderful people actually know, the number of points that the Portland Timbers since they just missed out the Leagues Cup semifinals?

The answer is two. Two fucking points out of 12 available. If you take out the two Leagues Cup wins (against Liga MX’s teams cramming for the start of the Clausura), the Timbers have a thin two wins over the past ten (10!) games. Those count as rays of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy 2-5-3 run – by Jove, wasn’t that road win at Los Angeles FC fun? remember that one? wasn’t it ever so fun? – and, in some ways, it was the fucking awful road form that got one to wondering whether the floor had given out, only without all of us doe-eyed believers catching on, a la Wile E. Coyote. Between shutouts at Toronto FC (probably out of the playoffs next weekend) and FC “Almost Certainly Cooked” Dallas (give it time…I kid, I kid), and contributing to an existential threat by being the only team to hand Real Salt Lake a road win over their past 10 games (related, get a load of the opposition in their four recent home wins: v DC, v STL, v HOU, v SJ), fans should be throwing rocks at their TVs and expensive beers at the executive suites. (And, should you ever get a clear line on Merritt Paulson, throw hard, people; throw hard).

And yet, somehow, the Timbers just took the second-best team in the West to within five minutes (with stoppage!) of a loss at home. Things still seem okay!

Minnesota United FC 1-1 Portland Timbers
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
My notes have this as “chess, with the odd collapse” – by which I (think I) meant, a game mostly contained between the two teams’ back lines with the odd breakthrough. For what it’s worth, the highlights support that take better than the final stats; the latter have me wondering whether I nodded off during the Timbers better moments. Stranger things, etc.

A smarter take – and the Official Xg backs it up a bit (how does one capitalize “xG”?) – holds that both teams came close to a decisive break throughout, only to have the last line of defense snuff out the danger. For (at least) the second week running, all Timbers defenders covered balls through and over the midfield like they’d read and absorbed the job description – again, the Finn Surman/Dario Zuparic feels like the ticket I want to ride until Portland runs outta gas (and Jimer Fory is, like, the best jerrycan they’ve had in seasons; also, yes (SIGH!), hold this thought) – and that kept Minnesota off the board, if with the odd, how-did-he-miss-that(?) moment (thinking Joaquin Pereyra, with most of the the goal at his mercy just after the half). Minnesota created a steady drip of chances throughout – credit to James Pantemis for keeping out his share (PHIL, just choose a guy!) – something that has yielded them (shit!) twelve more points worth of success than the Timbers have managed.

FC Cincinnati 0-1 Philadelphia Union: Is It a Slip When You're Shoved(?) & A Whip Around the East

What Pavel Bucha was up against...

Why don’t you love your home, FC Cincinnati? So much love in the stadium, so little love on the field.

On the plus side, it hurt more coming than it did going – i.e., not all’s lost, even as the Supporters’ Shield looks further away than it did Saturday morning – because, with one nerve-racking exception, a couple results broke Cincy’s way this weekend and, in another lane, one spoiled team’s morale took a vicious shot to the pills. With next weekend off (it’s another damn international break, isn’t it?) and a little time to kill today, I decided to take a broader look at the Eastern Conference as the regular season rounds into the stretch. Sadly, the chances at a photo finish atop the conference dropped a bit, due to…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 Philadelphia Union
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
In a game that moved 15% faster than every other one played this last weekend (made that up, but stick with me), Cincinnati spent too much of it struggling to keep up. The Union ran them over in midfield – Pavel Bucha, in particular, got mobbed like the freakin’ Beatles circa ’64 every time he so much as glanced the ball – and that kept the weight of the game leaning against Cincy’s back four-to-six. Anyone who checked just the score and final stats would walk away with a different impression – for all I know, a majority of Cincinnati fans might agree with them – but, for me, it was the visitors who signed their name on this statement game. If they scored the beautiful game by who won the most 50/50s, Philly took this one walking away.

To their very real credit, Cincinnati’s back four-to-six held firm through it all. They didn’t give up many easy chances – Tai Baribo’s step ahead of Nick Hagglund around the 30th minute might have been the easiest look for either team all night (check the highlights, nominate your candidate) – and thereby held up their end of the game. In a haunting call-back to recent home games past (more below), the Union’s midfield largely limited the Orange and Blue’s attack to hopeful little raids, most of those running into a thicket and harried on all sides. Evander smuggled through most of their chances – at times, with a whiff of tunnel-vision and an arguable failure to contemplate delegating – but both he and Kevin Denkey forced at least one hard save out of Philly’s ‘keeper, Andrew Rick. Dreaming now of what a little more calm and control behind them might have done for the effort…

San Diego FC 0-0 Portland Timbers: A Little Satisfaction, a Little Future Trepidation & a Wrap Up of the West

With, like, a lot of shit left out.

This post also counts as my first/second stab at a new format/concept. On the most basic level, it involves: 1) kicking around (or just kicking) the Portland Timbers’ most recent result; 2) a quick tour around the relevant parts of the Western Conference for perspective on the grand scheme; and 3) a quick check-in with the team Portland plays next (the Dread Pirate Minnesota). I’m going to hit this at the highest stream-of-consciousness speed I can manage – about all I can do four days late, but I pledged to drag myself through this, gritted teeth, bad taste and all.

Close readers may have noticed I identified this as a first for a new format and, paraphrasing one of the worst we'll-do-it-in-post moments in the Star Wars universe, that’s true from a certain point of view – specifically, I switched the order after the sections on last Saturday’s game, so that the Scouting Memo (I tightened it up), aka, the only forward-looking portion of the post, comes at the end, which is the opposite of what I did for the FC Cincinnati post. (No need to read that; already forgotten.)

There will actually be a third iteration this weekend, when I post notes on the game and then the other bits later. At any rate…

I just sat through the highlights to reconnect with this game. The first that struck me was the full minute of the 7:30 burned on the VAR review for the Andres Dreyer “goal” called back for offside around the 30th minute. I had a joke in the hopper about that being the only actual event of the game, but the rest of the highlights and the final stats painted a better memory for this game than the World of Imagination in my mind. It was still pretty damn dull, but, hey, little Ws have big hearts.

San Diego FC 0-0 Portland Timbers
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
Is it possible that Corey Baird, formerly of FC Cincinnati (formerly of Houston Dynamo FC, formerly of LAFC, formerly of Real Salt Lake), coming off was the single most significant event of the game? It’s possible, sure: he played two drop-flicks that sent Dreyer free-‘n’-easy behind Portland’s back line, including the one that teed off Dreyer’s offside shot. The drought only looked more apparent thanks to San Diego’s failure to post even one shot on goal over the second half. They had a couple, just not many. Even so, I wouldn’t have believed MLS’s newest kids put just one shot on goal all game if the stats didn’t swear to it…and, yep, even that one shot on goal followed from the earlier Baird/Dreyer connection. The sum of that feels a tenuous combination of promising (for Portland) and significant (for San Diego), with the emphasis on tenuous.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 New York City FC, a Hot Date in Philly & A Saucy Spin 'Round the East

Too heavy for you, FRIEND?!

As I was thinking about everything to what’s on my mind to the late timing of this post, I decided to put up the FC Cincinnati post first. If nothing else, the weekend complicated their shit more than anything in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference affected the Portland Timbers.

This post also counts as my first stab at a new format/concept. On the most basic level, it involves: 1) kicking around (or just kicking) FC Cincy’s most recent result; 2) checking in on the team Cincy plays next, in this case the Philadelphia Union, and 3) taking a quick tour around the relevant parts of the Eastern Conference for perspective on the grand scheme. As for what you can expect, more style than substance, for starters, and leaning into what I’d call, for lack of a better word, riffing. Why? This is supposed to be fun, dammit. Moving on to something that wasn’t fun…

FC Cincinnati 0-1 New York City FC
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
A classic example of one of those goddamn games where your local team’s stumbles leave the proverbial door open for the opposition. In a game that found too few, NYCFC found/built the better chances – up to and including coming within a touch or two of waking the ball into the back of the net at the 76th minute (has to be in here, right?). Cincy’s attack looked anxious and flummoxed, never looked wholly connected and, in the earliest part of the game, got short-circuited by one too many impatient shots from range by Evander. To his credit, he put a tricky one on goal somewhere in the mid-20s(?), but even that effort didn’t do more than build the pile of hopeful shots on shot higher.

NYC didn’t create much more – neither team did – but they made the most out of their four shots on goal (all arguably bested by Hannes Wolf’s shot off the post). And yet, it still took a defense-wide gaffe by Cincy to clear the path for Alonso Martinez’s winner – e.g., Matt Miazga got pulled miles left (for some goddamn reason), he forced Nick Hagglund to come across when he played a soft pass out of a press, and that opened the entire right half of the field to one of The-Men-Most-Likely-to-Break-a-High-Line in all of MLS. Maybe mistakes were made in the chase, maybe Roman Celentano should have come out (gods only know how many demons live up Miazga’s ass), but the footrace was over before it started and, when you get right down to it, good defending means never having to make hard choices.