Los Angeles Galaxy 2-4 Portland Timbers: The Sweet, Possibly Misplaced Scent of Potential

The Portland Timbers might be actually be…like, good this season. On evidence of everything, up to and including tonight’s game, the Los Angeles Galaxy is not a good team, so that bold stretch has less to do with the specific result of the Timbers beating the Galaxy 4-2 in LA, or even Portland’s current six unbeaten, four-game winning streak than the loud “clicking” sounds coming off the pitch every time they play…can the Timbers Army do Beatnik snap applause loud enough for the field mics to pick up?

About the Game
I can best sum up the first half by saying the game's first shot on goal went in, Timbers 1-0 at the half. Some good things happened – e.g., Finn Surman and Joao “Big First Step” Ortiz combining to contain a palpably eager Joseph Paintsil – but the game rarely rose higher than a flailing stalemate over the opening 45 minutes until Antony ran down a Santiago Moreno looping cross, turned with it, chipped over his defender and teed up David Da Costa for that lonely goal. Real one-eyed-man-in-the-land-of-the-blind stuff, basically, and then the halftime whistle sounded. The Galaxy came out as something like the same team – which, factually, they were – but Portland came out of the locker room transformed, as if inspired by a speech, the abrupt realization that they’d survived the worst, or both, and commenced to play the confident, connected soccer that savvy fans pay to see and swoon over. Just after the 50th minute, the Timbers went from besieging the Galaxy’s defensive third to an organized retreat after a turnover to scoring a slick insurance goal at the 53rd minute by the foot of Santiago Moreno: the three-to-four minute sequence that proceeded it might have been the most “soccer” soccer Portland has played all season, just checking all the boxes on how the manage and win a game. With the game slipping away, Greg Vanney gambled on a mass substitution – a shift change that included Marco “Chekhov’s Gun” Reus – but the same all-star team that created Portland’s second goal did themselves one better on their third. Even with my money on Kevin Kelsy skying that shot eight times out of ten, he capped a stellar, “yes, and” counter run up the left by David Da Costa and Antony with a net-bursting first-time shot (oof, may have to check the full highlights) that, despite a couple hiccups, buried the game. As everyone who tuned in knows, the Galaxy pulled back two goals in three minutes – the first on the kind of play that made LA so lethal just one season ago, the second due to a mixture of magic and missing the obvious – and that momentary lapse in bowel control sullied what would otherwise have been a “happy Halloween, we are here, motherfuckers” kind of performance. Instead, it staggered into…let’s call it a karaoke version of the same line. Which brings me to my favorite part of the game…

Rodriguez, preparing to come on.

Jonathan Rodriguez was among the substitutes that Phil Neville sent on around the 70th minute (came on for Antony; Omir Fernandez came on for Ortiz and Felipe Mora came on for Kelsy), and he cut the Galaxy off at the legs in a way that leaves me feeling conflicted in all the best ways: he summoned a goal and sacrificed valuable minutes to the Dark Arts. Did Emiro Garces bump Jona’s knees together and make him fall in LA’s 18? (See the full highlights, make your own call.) Doesn’t matter; Rodriguez transmuted Surman’s (right?) hopeful ball over the top into a goal with a stumble and a kick, 4-2 Portland, the end. He drove Maya Yoshida mad with fury a few minutes later by drawing a time-eating foul to the right of LA’s box. It’s the worst part of the game, it’s the best part of the game, it’s knee-slapping comedy when your guy gets away with it (so long as no one actually gets hurt; I have boundaries). To call it by name, Rodriguez’s bullshit throttled the life out any dreamed of revival for the Galaxy and, because the rules make that lawful evil, let it be so.

As Aside on the Galaxy
Paintsil felt individually responsible for rescuing the Galaxy’s season in a way that bled through the TV screen, but, for all his speed and talent, his version of game-changing talent needs a catalyst to thrive – which he got after Reus came on. The same goes for Pec and that gets to one of the several things that are killing the Galaxy’s season: the struggles with finding a good pass start as early as the first and second pass in a sequence and the Timbers weren’t the first to find gaps all over the Galaxy’s shape and they won’t be the last. Outside of full-blown open-field breakdowns, LA does all right scrapping through midfield scrums, but their inability to flip a turnover into attack makes them as easy to contain as any team in single digits for goals in 2025 (just eight goals for LA so far). Reus provided a fair version of that after he came on, but you can also see his limits when Moreno ran him down from five yards behind and picks the ball off his feet like he wasn't even on it. The Galaxy gutted its midfield after 2024 – i.e., you don’t miss Mark Delgado till he’s gone, or even Gaston Brugman – and that amounted to kicking a leg out from under a stool and trying to stand it up on two legs. Or three, depending on the stool. Getting Riqui Puig back will help, if just by giving them some decent forward momentum (and a ready outlet for everything), but I’m less certain it will be enough on its own.

An Expanded Collection of Thoughts.
1) Is It This Simple?
Portland didn’t have Jimer Fory in 2024 and rarely started Finn Surman. While I can’t make…a strong case that Portland’s defense has improved – seven goals allowed over their past three games, with four coming against two of the West’s Most Disastrous (aka, LA and SKC) cuts that one off at the knees – I mean…Portland’s defense is better, right? How many times did you see Surman pop up at just the right time and place, and how much safer has Portland’s left looked this season versus last’s with Fory filling a more conservative role in the starting XI? The math doesn’t look great, sure, but, all those goals Portland surrendered came against factually desperate teams…and the case isn’t getting stronger. Probably best to put a pin in this and move on.

1a) Anyone Else Worried Surman Won’t Stick Around for Long?
That’s it.

2) An Arrival?
Ortiz looked both comfortable and combative out there tonight, not the best player on the field, but still a strong complement to a hard-tackling David Ayala. On top of making two next-level defensive plays in the first half (running ahead of Paintsil to kill a counter, then dispossessing him out of a double-team a couple plays later), he cleaned up his passing, kept his game simple and didn’t get sent off or pick up a dumb/violent yellow card. These are wins. He did get subbed after the Galaxy’s second goal, sure, but I’d argue the set up for the first goal went around him, even if the second might have passed directly through his neighborhood. Despite all the flaws I missed or marked, seeing Ortiz fit in felt good, and it leads to a spicy No. 3.

3) Did the F.O. Finally Get It Right?
To acknowledge some subtext in the above, yes, I have spent a portion of this post talking myself out of feeling good about it, but I also feel good about Da Costa and Fory, a little better about Ortiz after tonight and, bigger than either of those, I feel outright great about Antony, Moreno and Surman. And, if I feel that, even if just in this moment, isn't it possible that the Timbers much-maligned and rightly-mocked scouting and acquisition department deserve a tip of the cap for those good vibes? The past seven games haven’t been the hardest, but Portland picked up 15 or 21 points from that stretch - something a good team would do. They’re winning games they should and, again, have second in the West as their reward. So…right?

4) The Best Thing About Tonight?
Portland gave as hard as they got, they looked up to the physical challenges, and more later in the second half of the game than the first. I haven’t seen this in a few seasons and think this is the under-current bubbling up under the first thought above. To put a name to the intangible that makes me feel comfortable about pushing past all the tangibles - the goals allowed, chief among them – Portland looks confident this season, both individually and collectively. Long may it last.

That’s it for this one and, quelle surprise, I’m going to go back to doing scouting reports. To get the full confession out of the way, I simply don’t have the time to live last weekend’s beautiful dream, but that didn’t hold a candle to the searing case of Impostor Syndrome that kicked in when I tried to explain anything worthwhile about Minnesota. Turns out the orbit got smaller by necessity, so it’s back to Plan A, hopefully with better timing this time around.