MLS Weakly Returns: Week 1 & Scouting Reports for the (Two) Home Team'(s)' Week 2 Opposition

Me going into every preseason, free 'n' easy.

To repeat a familiar refrain, mistakes were made. Who can say by whom?

The original model – which was probably imagined more in service of clicks than coherence – had me putting up weekly league-wide posts that included scouting reports on the following week’s opposition for the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. Because that’s a terrible idea, on its face, next week’s scouting reports on the Week 3 opposition for Portland (Nashville SC) and Cincy (Toronto FC) will get rolled into the same post as the review for their Week 2 games. But, since I’m rolling with Plan A for this post, you’ll find scouting reports for the Week 2 opposition for the Timbers (Austin FC) and Cincinnati (the Philadelphia Union) at the bottom of this post.

With that, let’s get back to the Week 1 results, which will start with one Featured Game of the Week from each Major League Soccer conference. As much as I hope to keep that feature, I will also burn it all the way down if I can’t squeeze it between life, other ambitions, and trying to remain sane and whole in a world full of flaming idiotic bullshit. Ahem.

Another concept that died on impact with reality: posting one review each for the Eastern and Western Conferences.

Western Conference Notes
Featured Game of the Week
San Jose Earthquakes 4-0 Real Salt Lake (Viewing: 15-30; 60-till the goals dried up)
This didn’t look nearly as bad as the final score in real time, something borne out by the top-line stats. Moreover, RSL rotated pretty heavily to preserve their legs for last week’s and this week’s CONCACAF Champions’ Cup games against Herediano – I’d turn to local reporting for a clearer read on how that much mattered – which means that, like a handful of teams (but not Sporting Kansas City, not any more), their heads might have been elsewhere. This eye-catching blowout comes with a couple caveats, in other words, those start with “it’s Week 1, y’all” and end with maybe tapping the brakes a little. Also, dig those away jerseys, Utah’s finest. My take on San Jose lands somewhere between giving them real credit for a strong opener (which comes with a side of quietly and sympathetically pulling for them) and rolling my eyes at a click-bait headline about “The Bruce Arena effect!” The ‘Quakes didn’t play against the ball as much as the possession stats suggest and connected smartly enough when they did go forward. The win featured a familiar standout, Cristian Espinoza, who lined up as a wingback in what everything I have available dubbed a 3-5-2 (the broadcast kept identifying him as a “right back”). He ended the game with two assists – one of them a dime dropped from a mile away (SJ’s third, scored by Ousseni Bouda) – but the balance of the damage followed from indifferent defensive cover from RSL’s midfield – e.g., San Jose’s first and fourth goals (and was that Diego Luna drifting off mid-defending in both cases?). RSL played, y’know, soccer well enough, and even created more chances (some quite good), but plenty of those 21 shots came from too far out to trouble the ‘Quakes ‘keeper, Daniel. A fair amount of credit for that goes to San Jose’s defense – Rodrigues looked as good as anyone on the field (and Bruno Wilson looks like everyone’s best friend; seriously, watch the goal celebrations) – and a little improvement could go a long way for them. So, again, this one’s hairy with caveats, but…noted.
Why This Game?
Every team that finished below the Timbers in 2024, but improves in 2025 stands out as a potential obstacle toward them reaching the playoffs. Think zero-sum meets relative, and let me know when you know what that means. I’m also not clear on where I think RSL will end up, so the possibility they may trend down for 2025 provided another draw. Related, I think Herediano kicked them out of the CCC earlier tonight.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Red Bull New York: Pour One Out for Daniel Edelman...

The Dream, circa June 2025.

To start with a biographical note, for context: I followed FC Cincinnati really closely through the second half of 2018, damn near all of 2019, through the second half of 2020, barely in 2021, through the middle of 2022, and sporadically in 2023. Based on the number of Word docs I have saved in various folders, that came to around 120 games total of attentive viewing, if with the balance coming in seasons when FC Cincy, for lack of a smarter pair of words, fucking sucked…

…a normal fan/person would have been utterly enrapt in the 2023 Supporters' Shield run, but that just meant less to write about for me. I ran out of ways to say, “still killin’ it, full-time and every day.”

After what looked like a complicated 2024 season – i.e., they looked genuinely competitive until the middle of July and/or the defense broke – I decided to reconnect with Cincinnati as my main East Conference squeeze. If nothing else, it felt like a good anchor for keeping an eye on the East, but it came with the added bonus of watching a team that went through at least two ambitious changes in personnel – e.g., the signing of forward Kevin Denkey and swapping Luciano Acosta for recent Portland Timbers transplant, Evander. Both moves speak to the “not-fucking-around” mentality that Cincy’s front office has embraced after those searing, worst seasons.

Part of the work of getting back into the swing with FC Cincy comes with humbly accepting that I’ll need some time to get to know the latest iteration; the first eight-to-ten games of season will be more about learning than dropping judgments from the mountain top (also, not my style). The goal is to be in full, limbs-swinging double-Dutch mode and capable of seeing what's up with clear, perhaps even cold, eyes by mid-summer. We'll see how that goes, but let's start with (the wild guesswork) and...

Portland Timbers 1-4 Vancouver Whitecaps: The Brutal Laws of the Game & a Game to Aggressively Memory-Hole

So long as it feels better later, I'm good.

The rules of the game, when read and applied in black and white, make some calls unavoidable, even inevitable. I don’t know what Kamal Miller could have done differently in real time – i.e., Brian White’s first touch took the ball into the space into which Miller was running to catch up, he couldn’t do much to avoid some contact, so the real question was always going to turn on the kind of contact that occurred (you can toggle to the video here, but the link doesn't appear to change to the specific highlight) – but, no matter how many details you drop into the basic scenario, there is simply no getting around the fact that Miller was the last defender covering White, an attacking player running into a one-v-one against the ‘keeper, Maxime Crepeau.

I’m confident some Portland Timbers fan will undertake a frame-by-frame deconstruction to argue that White went down too easily and that another other fan will explore the practical physics of how much weight Miller’s hand would have needed to exert upon White’s shoulder in order to cause him to actually fall: by my reading, calling White for a dive presents the only alternative to the red card and I don’t see enough in what happened to sustain a flop.

Miller’s red card wasn’t the only mistake the Timbers made today; it was merely the first. It took several more to get to today’s lopsided 1-4 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps in Portland. Again. The smoldering question turns on how many of those mistakes followed from Miller’s red card against the balance of them that happened all on their own.

Before getting to that, or to anything else really, I want any Timbers fan who finds this post to keep one thought firmly in mind: as much as this result stings, maybe even embarrasses, it does not matter. It doesn’t matter even a little. Portland still has 33 games left to play and they remain very much alive on the bare terms of competing for an indulgently generous allotment of playoff slots. As MLS fans learn every season, and appear to unlearn after each regular season starts, a team can eat absolute clown-shit for three, even four months and still redeem the season with a good run in the playoffs – see, United FC, Atlanta, just one season ago (even if their own fans don’t entirely feel it). So, throw in the fact that the Timbers couldn’t field its best-possible team, take a deep breath, take the L (/spectator-sports equivalent of an enema), get out those binoculars so that you can take the longest possible view of the overall situation…

…which isn’t the same thing as thinking the Timbers are destined to have a good season, never mind a great one.

Charlotte FC 2-0 Portland Timbers: About the Thing That Happened and the Thing to Happen

Evander II is dead, long live [Evander II.]

Over the opening six to eight minutes of today’s final preseason game, the Portland Timbers played some of the finest soccer I’ve seen from them since the salad days of mid-June to mid-July 2024. The defensive lines pressed high and disrupted 90% of what Charlotte FC tried to do and Diego Chara sat deep, playing balls long wide to Jimer Fory on the right and…Eric Miller on the left.

Treat the words after the ellipses as a short way of saying that the lineup that Portland started today – a 3-5-2 (probably?) with Felipe Mora and Kevin Kelsy up top, Fory and E. Miller on either side of a midfield block built around Chara, Joao Ortiz, and David Ayala, a back three of Dario Zuparic, Zac McGraw, and Kamal Miller, and Maxime Crepeau in goal – was not and, ideally, will not, could not, and cannot be Phil Neville’s Plan A for the 2025 campaign. I have no insight into how long regular starters like Santiago Moreno, Jonathan Rodriguez, Juan David Mosquera and [New Evander] will get back on the field. I can only hope that start trickling in soon enough to take advantage of one of the softer opening stretches the Timbers have seen for gods know how long. Between First Kick and mid-April, Portland has four home games, three of them winnable and one against a dismantled and limping Los Angeles Galaxy team, and even if Nashville SC has improved (rumors of a flawless preseason have reached this monitoring station), I’ve seen tougher road games. That’s 24 points up for grabs, the balance of them for the taking. Gods know a strong start would do this team good.

Getting back to today’s 0-2 loss to Charlotte, the remaining 72 to 74 didn’t go so good. Even when the game was somewhat even – aka, the first half – Charlotte managed to turn possession into chances before Portland could. Worse, the Timbers faded out of the game, both gradually and quickly (neat trick, btw), and to a point where forcing a draw looked like the best possible outcome for a generally impotent Timbers team. That possibility went “poof” when Charlotte opened the scoring at the 65th minute by working the ball up Portland’s left and finishing the play by findin Kerwin Vargas in a half-space, in the channel (with the butcher knife). From there, there was nothing left to do but let the clock run out…but then new guy, Joao Ortiz, squared the ball one step away from Tyger Smalls (great name, no notes) and he literally lumbered out the field and finished off one of the clumsiest goals I’ve ever seen scored by a professional (which you can relive through the link above, if you so choose). In a world where Portland looked like they’d ever score, that might have a hurt a little. On this one, it just felt like finishing a thought.

A Proposal for League-Wide Coverage in 2025 & My Romantic Engagement with Every Team in MLS

Google "brides." Genuinely fascinating.

After more late-night deliberation than a proud man would confess to, I have arrived at a league-wide coverage model for 2025, Major League’s Soccer’s (alleged) 30th season. [Ed. – I think they just want a “big” anniversary before Messi fucks off to retirement.]

I hereby commit to following the Portland Timbers, as always (over hill, over dale, through rain, sleet, and snow, in a banana republic, or a constitutional one, forsaking none by my wife, vacations, and the occasional nap), but I hereby also recommit to FC Cincinnati (no, really this time; it’ll be different, baby!). Before anyone casts even the first whisper of aspersion, I renewed that vow before the (exciting!) domino effect dogpile of trades that ultimately sent Evander to Cincy.

I also hereby commit to watching a minimum of 60 minutes of all games involving any team that will play either Portland or Cincinnati the following MLS Match Day. That will allow me to share notes on not just what I saw in that game, but also how those teams have done in the weeks heading into the game before the most important game of their season, i.e., any game played against Portland and Cincinnati.

The posts featuring notes from the game(s) Cincy and the Timbers just played, plus (brief) notes on their opposition for the following week will go up on Sunday or Monday of every week.

I also hereby commit to watching a minimum of 45 minutes of two Featured Games every week. For the first 127 Match Days (yes, this is arbitrary), Featured Games shall involve only intra-Conference games – none of that inter-conference shit – and I will watch one game from each conference. I may stick with that \over the second half of the season, I may not; that's when the spirit takes the wheel.

Notes on those games, the teams involved and how they’ve looked in the weeks prior will top a pair of posts that will go up Wednesday evening and I’ll round those out with stray things I pick up from anything else I can get to between Sunday and Monday, plus whatever Matt Doyle (or his substitute analyst) churns out after the relevant Match Day (why do I feel like I should be capitalizing that?).

Mild Dread & the Preseason So Far

"Mild dread" is very literal on today's internet.

To get preliminaries out of the way, it’s the preseason, nothing matters, not just in the Portland Timbers extended universe, but generally, and I’m not taking much of anything, or even anything at all, from either today’s 0-0 draw against Chicago Fire FC or Wednesday’s 2-1 win over the San Jose Earthquakes. With that in mind…

Broadly
The Timbers looked sharper against San Jose than they did against Chicago, but I didn’t see much for fluid attacking movement in either game – Portland scored two goals against San Jose, one a set-piece, the other one half-trash – so opportunism looks to continue its long reign over well-oiled attacking machinery. Chicago provided stiffer competition – more on that shortly – but I don’t see the point of reading too much into any of that beyond filing away the possibility that the Fire may be further along in its rebuild than San Jose is in theirs. Based on what I saw, Portland’s 2025 Preseason First Team has some capacity to press – with the caveat that starting Felipe Mora disarms that a bit – and that gave them a good half against San Jose and a strong opening 10 minutes against Chicago. Related, I don’t expect much pressing to continue once Evander and Jonathan Rodriguez get back into the fold, but who knows?

Also, four points in two games would look a lot better if it hadn’t come against two of MLS’s most-plagued franchises (seriously, I’ve done the math, both teams are cursed). Still, Portland cleared the bar on the (meaningless) results side…woo-hooooooo.

I multi-tasked through the San Jose game (because working), so the notes below come more from what I saw against Chicago today…but I’m noting them because I believe they still (unfortunately) pertain generally.

The Lingering Issue
The Timbers continue to present as a combination of rushed and disconnected when they get on the ball. The symptoms get worse anytime they play teams that press, or even mark man-to-man, but this feels ominous against a scrolling backdrop of Portland struggling with passing and/or composure on the ball for some seasons now. A few overlapping pathologies either create or play into this problem. Because I just burned a half hour failing to wrestle this into bullet-points, and my bastard brain refused to tap-out, please consider this stream-of-consciousness up-chuck my first draft at examining the problem:

Getting Reacquainted with the Portland Timbers, My Burden, My Boo

Ah, memories.

For obvious reasons, this one’s going to go on a bit longer than the others in the series…

Thumbnail History
In my head, I knew the Portland Timbers had some lean seasons before they won MLS Cup 2015, but it receded to where it felt like some other team’s history until I picked through Wikipedia posts about those early seasons, as if thumbing through a yearbook. I also remember the 2015 season through a very specific lens, but I’ll get to that. Starting at the beginning…

Now that I’ve posted mini-histories for every other team in Major League Soccer (may not be better than a Wikipedia post, but definitely shorter), I was struck by how steadily the Timbers pieced together a competitive team, and how early it came in their MLS history. When Portland graduated from the USL to MLS in 2011, they came in with a roster typical of that time (MLS…2.5?): it started with a few players who came up from the USL team – e.g., Futty Danso, Steve Purdy, Bright Dike, and Kalif Alhassan – which was then beefed up with players typical of every Expansion Draft, i.e., fixer-uppers with a good season or two behind them – e.g., Eric Brunner, Eric Alexander, Kenny Cooper – and capped with the player who was born a cagey vet and who would captain through (most of?) their first several seasons, “Captain” Jack Jewsbury. The key additions from outside the domestic professional ranks included a hot college draft pick named Darlington Nagbe and a Colombian midfielder named Diego Chara, who was sold to expectant fans as an “attacking midfielder.” The front office hired a cliché, aka, a “fiery Scotsman,” aka, John Spencer to coach them, and off they went. The Timbers did reasonably well in that expansion season, missing the playoffs by an AI-generated handful, but they fell headlong into a sophomore slump in Year 2. Despite spotting the right weakness – the attack – and upgrading with a couple Colombians (Sebastian Rincon and Jose Adolfo Valencia, who I barely remember), another reclamation project (Danny Mwanga), and spending on a DP forward (Kris Boyd), all that tinkering didn’t lead to anything good and Boyd, in particular, didn't match the hype.  2012 might have been the Timbers’ worst all-time season (and big shout to Chivas USA and Toronto FC for sparing them the blushes!) - haven’t run the numbers, don’t see the point – but the building blocks started falling in place fairly quickly thereafter. First the front office plucked Caleb Porter from the college ranks (University of Akron) before the end of 2012. The players came next, starting with the Flying Johnsons, Will and Ryan (also, no one called them that), Pa Modou Kah (why not?) came over from the Dutch top-flight, by way of Saudi Arabia – Portland even got a little jiggy when they signed former Manchester United stand-out Mikael Silvestre (who broke quickly) – and, of course, the crown jewel of the 2013 renovation, Diego Valeri. He joined on loan, but made it official (I think) before the year was over and would become a fixture/face-of-the-franchise for the next nine seasons (right? because you count both 2013 and 2021?). The result was an about-face from 2012, and an appetizer for the peak seasons to come: 2013 was arguably the Timbers’ best-ever season, if only on paper: the team was balanced, going well over the average for goals scored, while keeping out well below the average; their post-season ended in the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs against what was probably the last, best season for Real Salt Lake’s golden-generation. Portland suffered a…senior slump(?) in the 2014 season, missing the playoffs…and this is where the way I remember 2015 comes up.