Capping the "Getting Reacquainted With [_______]" Project & Barely Tying It to the Timbers

A ballet had the most metal one.

Since the middle of December 2024, I’ve posted mini-histories of every team in Major League Soccer under the title of “Getting Reacquainted with [Your Local Team]”…of varying quality, based on the evidence and feedback I’ve received online. That project had a variety of motives – among them, actually getting reacquainted with what every team in MLS has done over time, but also last season and how that looked against their history – but there was one motive to bring them all and in the darkness bind them: holding them all up as Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come for my local team, the Portland Timbers.

I’ll close this post with links to all of those mini-histories, and feel free to pick through them as your personal ghosts so move you, but a couple lessons from all that half-assed reading stood out:

1) there are patterns for a fair number of teams in MLS, even if they’re not linear, and seeing those patterns harden in seasons ahead wouldn’t surprise me in the least;

2) I still believe, however naively, that there is enough flexibility in the supply side of the equation (i.e., a planet’s-worth of under-appreciated players) and still/just enough leveling in the league’s roster rules to allow teams from smaller markets to keep putting together a team good enough to compete in MLS, even against the big-market/glamour teams – e.g., Los Angeles FC, the Los Angeles Galaxy, (for now) Inter Miami CF, and (maybe? one day?) New York City FC and Red Bull New York. Once you pull those three cities/five teams out of the sample (shouldn’t Chicago be in there, if only for some countries? And what about DC now?), that leaves plenty of MLS markets where the first question that follows an agent’s pitch to a player is, “Where is that? In America, yes, but where is that?”

There are other ways for MLS teams to exist, operate and succeed, of course: teams like Atlanta United FC and Toronto FC are sloppy drunken spenders, which allowed them to both do it (i.e., win trophies) and almost immediately undo it; FC Dallas and the Philadelphia Union (mainly, though they’re not alone) have player pipelines that pump out a steady stream of young talent, a situation that helps them on the field, if only until they get an offer they can’t refuse and have to pull key pieces out of a good roster. Even those distinctions only matter at the margins, because MLS teams by and large compete on some uneven form of the same terms. How many times were you reminded about The Los Angeles Galaxy lost decade as they made their run to MLS Cup 2024? Then there are the teams from “where is that?” America like Columbus Crew SC and the Seattle Sounders and, sure, even Atlanta (wait for it*), who have won half the MLS Cups over that same period.

For both Seattle and Columbus, their success has followed from doing the same things all the other teams do, only a little better and over time. Sure, some material factors like, say, having a bigger, better Homegrown Territories give a handful of teams a smaller(/less developed?) version of the foundations Philly and Dallas stand on, but, until I see some serious, European-league-level dynastic consolidation in terms of winning all the trophies season after season, I’ll cling to the belief that a smart front office and a sound scouting network can give any team a shot at silverware.

Shot in Spokane, WA, people.

Trying to see where the Portland Timbers fit into all that kicked off the Vision Quest and, after all that walking around, I’m not sure what I see. To review some basic facts:

1) *The Timbers have competed in three MLS Cups over the past decade and won one – i.e., they’ve competed in as many finals as Columbus (who Portland beat for their one MLS Cup!), and just one fewer than Seattle. The Timbers also won that weird (for now) one-off trophy in 2020 and all of this is good!; and

2) The Timbers have missed the playoffs for the past three seasons. Before anyone says, “wait, they qualified as a wild car…”, I’m cutting you right off with, “in what universe did what happened at the end of 2024 not hurt more than missing the playoffs?” I still taste the disappointment from that night every time I eat…while thinking specifically about that (I’m not a psycho), but, however you cut it, 2024 still counts as a third-straight season where Portland stumbled straight past non-competitive and head-long into bad…

…and that brings me to the final reason I wanted to poke around the all the other MLS teams.

Nearly all of the MLS teams not listed above have been footnotes to league history over the past ten seasons. The only teams that either won the Supporters’ Shield or competed for MLS Cup in any season since 2015 that wasn’t listed above were the New England Revolution and FC Cincinnati, who won the Shield in 2021 and 2023, respectively. Dallas only squeezes because they won the Shield back when your kids were knee-highs (aka, 2016). When it comes to rubber-hitting-the road competitive, the churn ends there. While the math gets a little fucked up –e.g., MLS had only 20 teams in 2015 and 2016, but four of the trophy-winning teams listed above didn’t exist in 2015, and that was NYCFC’s inaugural season – a lot of MLS teams have barely mattered for the past five seasons. That stings less for the newbies who haven’t been around that long (e.g., Charlotte FC and St. Louis CITY FC), of course, but adding them to the mix just raises the number of teams that haven’t had a clean sniff at a trophy over the past five seasons to a decade.

The question under this entire project: is Portland becoming one of those teams?

Portrait of the author, like, right now.

The main thing I was looking for as I went through all this were commonalities in how teams have succeeded and failed over the past decade. Getting an actual answer would require a lot more close reading, maybe some interviews, going super-deep into the astrological charts of key players – no stone unturned and all that – and I’m not even sure that would get me there. That said, when someone tells me patterns aren’t real, I point to once-great teams now fallen on hard times, perhaps irretrievably, e.g., DC United, Chicago Fire FC, and, the worst team in MLS history (now re-loading with a prepper’s intensity), the San Jose Earthquakes. I flagged a couple big spenders above (e.g., Atlanta and Toronto) to speak to the limits on that approach, but didn’t mention the handful of teams that cut corners and/or shuffle around the MLS bargain bin more than they should – e.g., the Colorado Rapids, Nashville SC, Austin FC, and maybe Minnesota United FC. At times, one wonders how much they believe in their own project.

So, no, I never figured out how the Portland Timbers and Portland, Oregon, the city, reach a place where they resonate beyond “that is a place where I can work” for players and agents. I believe, without investigation, that most American and Canadian professionals would happily play in Portland – “we play in front of such unbelievable fans,” only they’d mean it a little more – but taking that next step gets tricky. There’s competing for and winning trophies, of course, but what is that but the chicken/egg problem every team on the planet is trying to solve every season?

That’s it for the ramble. Links to all…jesus christ, 28 posts in this off-season series are below. I know they’re not perfect and the shortcomings grew more obvious as I went through. We’ll see if this comes back after 2025. Anyway, time to wrap up:

Getting Reacquainted with the Los Angeles Galaxy, MLS’s Joy Points Kings

Getting Reacquainted with Columbus Crew SC, MLS’s Kings of the Inside Straight

Getting Reacquainted with Red Bull New York, MLS’s Kings of Falling at the First Hurdle

Getting Reacquainted with Sporting Kansas City, MLS’s Good Team Going Through Some Things

Getting Reacquainted with the New England Revolution, #MLS’s Maids of Honor

Getting Reacquainted with FC Dallas, a Narrowly Successful MLS Team

Getting Reacquainted with the Colorado Rapids, MLS’s Broken Clocks

Getting Reacquainted with DC United FC, MLS’s Aging Rockstars

Getting Reacquainted with Chicago Fire FC, MLS’s Exercise in Meeting Your Unemployed Ex

Getting Reacquainted with the San Jose Earthquakes, MLS’s Great Betrayal(?)

Getting Reacquainted with Houston Dynamo FC, MLS’s Stubborn Workhorses

Getting Reacquainted with Real Salt Lake, the Inspiring Underdogs of MLS 2.0

Getting Reacquainted with Toronto FC, the Once-Lucky Wastrels of MLS

Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristoffersons of MLS

Getting Reacquainted with the Vancouver Whitecaps, Cascadia’s Afterthought

Getting Reacquainted with the Philadelphia Union, the MLS Team on the Precipice of…?

Getting Reacquainted with Club du Foot Montreal, Canada’s “Other” Flash in the Pan

Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, MLS’s Solid B Students

Getting Reacquainted with New York City FC, MLS’s Proof of Foundation

Getting Reacquainted with Los Angeles FC, It Rose from the Corpse of MLS 2.0

Getting Reacquainted with Atlanta United FC, the Drunken Sailors of MLS

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC, the Very Modern Model of a Median MLS Franchise

Getting Reacquainted with FC Cincinnati, MLS’s Maddest Makeover

Getting Reacquainted with Inter Miami CF, the Very Bestest, Special Boys of MLS

Getting Reacquainted with Nashville SC, the Plain Sister of MLS

Getting Reacquainted with Austin FC, McConaughey’s Disappointment

Getting Reacquainted with Charlotte FC, “a Team That Plays in MLS”

Getting Reacquainted with St. Louis CITY FC, the Boomtown (Rats?) of MLS

The End. Thanks to anyone who read all of those, or even this. Till the next one…which will finally be solely about the Timbers.