Portland Timbers 1-0 Austin FC: Between Happiness and Satisfaction

This is not a highlight, but that is Ted Unkel.

Yes, ma’am, my homework is late. Yes, ma’am, it’s won’t happen again.

“Grappling with the possibility that I’m watching two mediocre teams play some JV shit.”
- Me, a Bluesky game thread, the 80th minute(?)

Upon further review, that overstates the case a bit. Portland Timbers players attempted at least two (hopeful) bicycle kicks, for one. Still, if I had to offer a key thought to hold in your head as you read everything that follows, that’s up there.

About the Game
The second shortest available video review of last Saturday's game (the "snapshot" is shorter...and pointless) reminded me that Austin FC fired a few more than I remembered – also notable, they fired a few more shots than Portland – including two that forced quality saves out of James Pantemis. Those came early and late, so credit to Pantemis for staying alert even as I was…nodding off, but none of the above has lured me into the Pantemania I saw popping up in various social media threads. You do you and all that, but I can’t think of what it would take me to take sides in a goalkeeper controversy, but assume it lands somewhere between insisting he must wear his “lucky sombrero” to reach his full potential or that three saves every game must be made by the famed scorpion-kick to build his social media brand. Seeing a defense limit the opposition to shots from range will consistently make me happier than anything a goalkeeper does.

Another telling detail in that short video review: the amount of time devoted to showing yellow cards. Few things stage-whisper “dud” quite like two teams failing to produce enough chances to fill a seven- minutes highlight reel.

Austin’s new signing, Brandon Vazquez, gets my credit for the best shot of the game – which, by the transitive property (associative? distributive?) hands Pantemis the best save – but Portland’s fucking new guy David Da Costa scored the goal that counted. It came (very) late, it took a little luck, and it was one of just two shots on goal for the Timbers (out of eight total), but I’m not above dipping my hand into the proverbial unflushed toilet if it means fishing out three points in the end.

A Brief Aside on Austin FC
Long time followers of this space know that I obsess (a lot? a little?) on the quality of the opposition and this win, however valuable (we’ll see!), falls squarely into that space. Austin is not, and do not project as, a strong team. They splashed real money on a solid forward – Vazquez – but, no matter how much I rate both Ilie Sanchez and Daniel Pereira (not bad, and I see real room for growth in the latter), neither looks up to feeding Vazquez a buffet. Jader Obrian and Osman Bukari both project as league-average wingers (Obrian, in particular, but I’m pulling for Bukari; something in me hates seeing a big/hyped signing go to waste) and Owen Wolff hardly looks the fully-modern version of Millie or a major general, or however that olde tyme saying (or musical) goes. It took a miracle season from Sebastian Driussi for Austin to hit big attacking numbers (2022), but they’ve been average or bad on the attacking side in their three other season (and in the running for league-worst in 2024). If you’re looking for a reason I’m not yet ready to celebrate the clean sheet or why I’m neutral about handing Pantemis the long-sleeved starters’ jersey, that’s it. In Austin’s defense, they looked more threatening, if the vague way of lots of blind passes across the goalmouth, against Sporting Kansas City in Week 1, so, again, maybe the broader comparison should make fans more excited about Portland’s understudy defenders? I don’t have great expectations for Austin in 2025, basically, and can't see getting them until they either invest a little more in their attack (can they? no idea), or until some player I’ve forgotten about rises from the physio’s table and onto the field…

…I’d go so far as to say I’m counting on teams like Austin to lay some bodies beneath the Timbers to thicken their margin of error. With that, let us return to the Prime Directive...

YES, I should go to more games...

More Notes/Theories/Questions about the Portland Timbers
1) Ye Olde Stubborn Trapezoid
My personal frustration with the way the Timbers play out of the back returned this week and the trapezoidal shape of it stood out: a parallel line across the back made up of (this week) Ian Smith, Finn Surman and Zac McGraw and a parallel line higher up with Joao Ortiz and David Ayala – or at least that’s what fit on my TV screen. I’m sure that varying combinations of Ariel Lassiter, Antony, Da Costa, and even Felipe Mora (who made the most of Portland’s second shot on goal, fwiw) moved around off-screen, but I couldn’t stop fixating on how little any of the five players arranged across those parallel lines do to change the defensive shape of the opposition. Seeing FC Cincinnati arranged in a similar shape and move just as little in a (fucking) blowout loss at Philadelphia just shoved it closer to front of mind. I understand the idea of keeping shape – particularly with so many new/unfamiliar players on the field – but I feel like I’ve been staring at the same shape for months and that leaves me wondering/despairing over whether I'll ever see it loosen up a little. Why not, for instance, have any of Jimer Fory, Lassiter or Antony come back to provide an option around Austin’s defensive block? (Portland’s shape would need to shift to provide support, etc., I get that, but…do something, man!) Maybe Da Costa will start dropping in around the starting two d-mids…I just want to see either somebody move or another player come back to provide a numbers advantage, because the Timbers have a hell of a time playing out of the back under control. And it’s doubly frustrating after watching, say, Nashville SC’s Edvard Tagseth having license to roam all over that same space, or even Austin’s Pereira; this is something a team can do without committing soccer suicide. Just…look into it, okay?

2) A (Conditional) Celebration of Defensive Depth!
Smith and Surman looked fine, even comfortable, back there and I have yet to see McGraw exposed outside of an early ejection scenario (take another bow, Kamal Miller), and that’s good! At this early stage in the season and in this budding rebuild, however far along one believes it to be, the main thing I want to see is competition for the starting spots and the options that competition necessarily entails.

3) A(n Ongoing) Brooding Doubt
I don’t recall what the Timbers paid for Ortiz, but I have to see him provide anything that a mediocre American (or Canadian) player isn’t up to providing. I bring less as some weird nativist kink, but as a way to suggest savings of time, effort and, more than likely cash. I’m still giving Ortiz time, but the clock will start ticking loudly if I don’t see something by, say, Game 6.

Finally, to end on an high note, maybe even one with an infectious tempo…

4) He Didn’t Da Costa Too Much!
I appreciate that the things I value in a player aren’t universal, but Da Costa’s technical abilities and basic approach to the game really hit for me. His dribbling looks better than average, but how quickly he likes to get the ball off his foot and to another Timber put a big ol’ bow on my first, full impression – we’re talking sitting down to talk to my mom after a second date that went really, really well level of optimism. The one thing I keep hearing about the Timbers attack is how fast coaching staff and fans want it go and Da Costa looks like a good fit for the concept. Even as I hope he improves on Evander’s time here, I doubt Da Costa will produce those kinds of numbers (though, again, hope springs); I’m not sure he even makes Mora or, when he returns to health/availability, Jonathan Rodriguez better, but I’ll take anything that makes Portland better and harder to manage in possession. Sticking a guy on Evander goes a long way when the ball sticks to him all the time, so I’m hoping that a more mobile, unpredictable style of play makes the Timbers a better team in 2025. Gods know there’s a long way to go on that, but I’m crossing my fingers ahead of the trip.

That’s it for this one. As people who follow me on Bluesky already now (those poor, unfortunately souls), the original plan was to roll a preview for the Timbers next game into this post and calling it a weekly. After cobbling that into an unwieldy beast for the FC Cincinnati post that went up earlier today, I decided against that. I’m still also trying to figure out how to get MLS-wide coverage in any form into these posts. The signs don’t look so good, but, hey, what’s a good idea but something you haven’t thought of yet?

…bad ideas come the same way, of course, as borne out by my early, fits-‘n’-starts drunken editorial decisions so far for 2025. At any rate, the new plan is to post review posts for both Cincy and Portland on Sunday, then (shorter) preview posts later in the week. We’ll see how that goes, starting with the Nashville SC scouting report slated to go up on…Thursday. Till then…