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.

For most of the season, 2015 looked an extended epilogue to 2014’s malaise. The Timbers started slow (la plus ca change, n’est pas?) and, after a fitful rally through most of the spring and the early summer, they either drew or lost through most of July and deep into September. In posts before their late September game at the Columbus Crew – which you can probably find if you scroll through an eternity of posts on this site - I was telling anyone who would listen that Portland was cooked, the season was over, a reckoning/rebuild was coming, etc. I’d given up, in other words…only to see the Portland Timbers reel off one win after the other in a chain that wouldn’t break (this is intended spiritually, not factually) until they closed the loop by lifting MLS Cup 2015 in…Crew Stadium. Without digging into the why and weirdness of it – and this was with the victory parade coasting right past my office – 2015 still doesn’t track as a good season to me. Part of that had to do with all the doubt and aggravation that came before it, certainly, but it also existed in this surreal life-after-death space thanks to the divine (or infernal) intervention that was the double-post moment (for those who want to relive it).

Used because I suspect anxiety was his natural state.

It makes more sense when viewed through the rearview, especially if you 1) look at the roster that started the final and 2) absorb how connected and, most importantly, healthy the Timbers defense stayed that season. Every key defensive player – Adam Kwarasey, Jorge Villafana, Alvas Powell and, at the center of it all, Nat Borchers, Liam Ridgewell, and Chara – logged at least 2,479 minutes over the regular season (that was Chara), and most were over 2,700. Nagbe was another fixture, so they had consistency with ball progression as well…which gets the biggest surprise of them all: apart from the goal he poked in off Steve Clark’s toe in the first minute MLS Cup, Valeri posted (for him) crazy-low numbers in 2015, just two goals and eight assists, and, unless Wikipedia’s lying to me (impossible!), he hadn’t scored a single goal for the Timbers since a mid-season draw versus Vancouver (go here, play with the drop-menus). As it happened, the key compliment to Portland’s best-ever defense was forward Fanendo Adi, who had a career season for the Timbers that year (well, one of two). Since I just spotted it, here’s another fun fact: Lucas Melano started MLS Cup 2015, but that doesn’t blow me away nearly as much as my computer telling me that he scored the late, late goal at FC Dallas that sent the Timbers to MLS Cup 2015. Take a bow, Mr. Melano!

Back to the narrative: the success the Timbers enjoyed over the next six seasons was the main thing that patched the disconnect I felt after MLS Cup 2015. Several of the key players who made that success happen fell out of the line-up – e.g., Borchers (gone in 2016), Kwarasey (same), and, most of all (even if he was a role-player by the end) Jewsbury (also gone after 2016) – but the guys who made the foundation remained for Portland’s other, best seasons – e.g., Ridgewell, Valeri, and even Jorge Villafana stuck around through 2018, and Chara and (incredibly) Dairon Asprilla was through 2021. Even if gold-medal success (aka, winning trophies) has (largely) eluded them in the seasons since 2015, the Timbers held together and built around a core sturdy enough to carry them to two more finals – i.e., MLS Cups 2018 and 2021, and, for one more big score, the MLS Is Back Trophy – one helluva run for any team. The additions included some fine players – e.g., Sebastian “Chucky” Blanco, who rates as great for many, but I’m fine with adding Larrys Mabiala and Dario Zuparic – but also several others that fans love to argue about – e.g., Julio Cascante, Yimmi Chara, Bill Tuiloma, Zarek Valentin, and, on the project side of things, Marvin Loria and Cristhian Paredes. There was also the flawed savior/disaster, Bryan Fernandez, a troubled player with an in-MLS strike-rate to make you mourn. If there’s one thing I want to close this particular paragraph on, it’s this: for all the mistakes the Timbers Organization makes – and, wow, some have been searing (even if the worst stuff happened on the Portland Thorns side, but also Andy Polo and the Iron Front bullshit; again, this is Portland, have you seen the Army, read the room, etc.) – they do try on the player side, even when it ends in failure.

Shit-canned Noah, found under "drunken debate"

The years since 2021 have been, for lack of a better phrase, fucking bleak. I’ll get into details below, but I think most fans would agree that there’s too much limping along, too much of letting favorite players linger past their sell-by/retire date – Valeri and Mabiala feel like the standouts there, but Chara’s increasingly in that mix – and the general vibe feels like a “transition season” that, in keeping with the theme, overstayed its welcome…and yet 2024 did feel like a shift. If there’s one thing I’ve enjoyed in all this – and this is arguably the greatest pleasure of sports fandom – are never-ending, ever-evolving debates about every player who puts on a Timbers jersey: Kwarasey’s distribution; the workings and value of the double-pivot; did David Guzman’s range of passing make up for his failings in defense; is Yimmi Chara coming good yet; can the team be organized to give Jaroslaw Niezgoda the service he requires to be at all useful; what the hell happened to Tuiloma, and was/is Jeremy Ebobisse better or worse than we all think, etc. Give any Timbers fan a name and they can probably recall a debate about him. That’s what keeps me engaged, anyway. A couple more notes on the past…

Total Joy Points: 10

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2015
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2018, 2021
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2013
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2017
MLS Is Back Winner: 2020 (“Weird Trophy”)
CCL Quarterfinals: 2021

Long-Term Tendencies
Broadly, the Timbers are more likely to exceed the average for both goals scored and goals allowed, i.e., the attacks have been good, historically, the defenses bad. To pick at the (somewhat imprecise) numbers, Portland has competed in 14 MLS regular seasons, over which time: they have scored at or around the league average three times, gone a little over it once, but scored well over the league average (~8-10 goals, depending on the season) six times; the Timbers defense, meanwhile, went over the average for goals allowed six times, well over the average three times. That above pattern – i.e., a season with both a good offense and a weak defense – rarely overlaps, but, fun fact, in two of the seasons when that did happen, the Timbers won Weird Trophy (2020) and lost MLS Cup in a crapshoot (2021, their most painful, but not the most humiliating moment for me). To report something that will strike most Portland fans as obvious as the sun rising in the East, nothing has hurt this team like weak to bad defenses. That holds across every season Portland missed the playoffs, even in couple seasons where they scored over the average for goals (2014 and 2022). Small wonder, then, that the Timbers won MLS Cup the same season they fielded their best-ever defense. And, almost poetically, a porous Portland defense undid one of its all-time best seasons of attacking soccer. Which brings me to…

How 2024 Measured Up
Because I’ve covered this extensively in earlier posts, I’m going to link to the post-mortem that went up on November 4th and the final statement that went up on December 6th - after I’d recovered from the loss to Vancouver (I’ll spare that horse a third flogging). For those who don’t want to hit the links, or already did, a summary:

I kid, I kid. Just playing with a concept.

After starting worse than usual – a period that ran, basically, uninterrupted from March to Mid-May; and this is where the defense alternated between burying them and killing them – Portland pulled off a powerful rally between that very moment and a little after the Leagues Cup. Things looked bright particularly after the Leagues Cup went all right, but the wheels went off down the stretch and then the car caught on fire and exploded in “the playoffs” (again, please, please tighten up the playoff format, MLS). That could be due to a locker room broken by the ongoing and expensive spat between Evander and the Timbers F.O. In a maddening twist, the defense actually did their part down the stretch; it was the high-octane attack that sputtered out. I floated theories in both posts – e.g., the Timbers’ struggle with ball progression, particularly against pressing teams; the related, general failure to connect all the field, including the attack; how much Evander’s oft-soloist style of play contributed to that issue; the absence of a field-chewing, hard-tackling No. 6 (or some comparable arrangement), and how much that exposed the defense – and those remain my general theories as to what held Portland back last season. Against that, with a peak-Valeri-esque 15 goals and 19 assists, Evander staked an entirely real claim to the MVP trophy, Felipe Mora and Jonathan Rodriguez added 30 goals between them, almost evenly, and several young players stepped up their games, e.g., Antony, Santiago Moreno and David Ayala (in reverse order, for me, as in Ayala improved most). A fair amount of good, in other words, held back by a handful of things that one would think could be repaired by smarter coaching. And yet, a noisy pattern in the data begs to interrupt: how do I talk past the fact that, between tactics and personnel, the Timbers defense has gone over the average for goals allowed in each of the past five seasons? The defense improved enough by the end of 2024 to get within touching distance of the average, but pretending an issue doesn’t exist flies in the face of too much evidence to hold up.

Questions for Their 2025 Season
After fretting that the Organization would stand pat, the Timbers dropped a pleasant surprise or two after the new year. Signing Ecuadoran midfielder Joao Ortiz feels like the big one to me, and not just because I obsess over defensive midfield. Getting a handle on traffic going into and coming out of Portland’s defense was my personal bete noire of the 2024 season, so that’s Step 1. Step 2 follows from acknowledging that the Timbers basically stood pat on defenders going into 2025. I see people talking up Finn Surman, something I can’t bring myself to do until I see ~500 more minutes from him, and only other straight-up defensive signing was SuperDraft pick Ian Smith. Even if those players pan out over time (and I have faith…wait, do I have faith?), that still leaves Ortiz as the single biggest signing for addressing last season’s biggest problem. I know nothing about Ortiz and don’t think I’ll learn much, or even anything, by watching eight-ten minutes of his best moments (they call them “highlight reels” for a reason…and do they even make burner reels?), but projects as the right kind of signing and in the right position. The Timbers also signed Kevin Kelsy, a Venezuelan (no shit?) forward, and a young one, and I like that signing too. Based on what little I’ve seen (a couple games for FC Cincinnati, so it’s good data), he’s mobile for a big player, has decent feet, but didn’t excel at the back to goal stuff – i.e., he got knocked off the ball easier than you’d expect – but he still tracks as a succession plan for when the rest of the forward corps shuffles off into retirement. Last, but not least, Portland rescued Ariel Lassiter from free agency and, for what it’s worth, I can see him competing for starting minutes – a good thing, because what team wants their regular starters taking that “regular” piece for granted? Now, the elephant in the room.

I don’t know whether Evander will stay with the team and, yes, replacing his top-line output (aka, goals and assists) is a tall fucking challenge. Going the other way, and this impression has only deepened over the off-season, I’m somewhat convinced that getting back to Brazil was his primary motivation all along – Portland’s closer than Denmark, and so on – and relying on a player whose thoughts are elsewhere doesn’t feel great, even as I don’t actually hold that against him. In the event Evander does stay, I trust him to play well, but with two big concerns: 1) I expect him to get into sulks, perhaps team poisoning ones, if/when things turn sour; and 2) I don’t expect his style of play to change and remain worried about what that does to the team’s on-field connectivity. Starting fresh isn’t the craziest idea, particularly if the Timbers have someone else lined up (also, do they?), but seems all but guaranteed to cause, SIGH, yet another slow start.

With all the above in mind, here are my big questions about the Portland Timbers, as currently constituted (i.e., with Evander) going into the 2025 season:

1) Who starts in defense and how many will form that last line of defense? For what it’s worth, I’m open on both questions, I just want something that works.

2) What to do with Moreno? As much as he improved last season, I think both he and the Organization are figuring out how to get the most out of him – or, honestly, if that’s all there is. I accept that he’s better inside than he is as a winger, and that he and Juan David Mosquera worked well together between the channel and the outside on the right. For all that, keeping inside still leaves the question of how to fit him with Ayala and Ortiz. Moving on from Eryk Williamson cleared out some clutter on the roster, but I think some questions remain on the field.

3) What will Mora and Rodriguez look like in Year 2? While I don’t think Mora’s done, he’s not the player he was in, say, 2021 or before the injuries (though he did better than I recalled last season), and he’s a season closer to retirement on top of that. Love the guy, but still wondering. As for Rodriguez, thinking more about his game/style has unsettled the way I see him. The main thing I want to see from him, apart from a full season, is more connection with the rest of the front line. He was a great target for a lot of last season, and reading crosses was a lot of that, but Rodriguez defaults to shooting first too often and I think that makes him easier to defend – especially given his foot-speed.

4) I’m watching Phil Neville, et al, like damn hawk.

That’s it. My apologies for the epic.