Portland Timbers 2-1 Colorado Rapids: Strong Response to a Near-Death Experience

That ain't a light, son, it's a train. But also a light/a journey.

The Portland Timbers topped the Colorado Rapids 2-1 at Providence Park tonight. Hey! Get your mind out of the gutter! Think more two dudes laddering their hand up a baseball bat…dammit. My brain started glitching immediately after hearing Jake Zivin say “Timber Joey’s Victory Log.”

Right. Hitting the ground running…

About the Game
Not many soccer games turn on such a clear and decisive before-and-after – and most games that do get stuffed into the all-devouring “Tale of Two Halves” file – but that’s…mostly not what happened tonight. An almost wanton chance to put Colorado up 2-0 crept to Sam Bassett (more below) around the 75th minute and he couldn’t get it closer inside the goal than the crossbar.; after a couple bobbles around the right, the ball flies out of defense, (in short order) falls to David Da Costa, who plays Antony around the Rapids’ last defender, and the Rapids Calmer (TM; don’t touch that; I’m lawyered up) slips into under Nicholas Hansen for the equalizer. For most of the time before that goal, the Timbers couldn’t find much, never mind each other. Somewhere in the late stages of that curs'd time, Finn Surman picked up a bargain-bin yellow that Chris Penso waved around like so much foreshadowing; nine minutes later, working-man’s DP Djordje Mihailovic gets a step ahead of him leaving Surman no option but to keep one step behind, so as to avoid the foul. When Colorado went up 1-0, they looked convincing enough…

…the question is whether the Timbers pried open the first crack on the play in the first half that led to the penalty call against Andreas Maxso. That, in my mind, was their first truly competent attacking build of the night. Felipe Mora took the ensuing kick like he’d been either drugged or compromised (“when I snap my fingers, you will realize you missed, and too late too”; probably in here? if not, why not?), but the final moments of the first half might have been the beginning, given the final result and how it was arrived at, of what could justly be dubbed a Portland Timbers revival. If I asked to provide proof for that theory, I’d point to the barrage/siege the Timbers poured toward the Rapids’ goal after the equalizer. For anyone requiring more proof (what’s with this fuckin’ guy?), I’d flag the several…semi-effectual shots Portland found in the Rapids’ weak side in the minutes before Kevin Kelsy tapped-in the winner. Full disclosure: wondered how Juan David Mosquera squeezed his assist into the space between Colorado’s last defender and Hansen, but now I see that fear of an own-goal froze Reggie Cannon. The game wasn’t entirely over even then – see whatever you think Diego Chara did to Calvin Harris late, late in the game, which surely has to be in the full highlights (surely?) – but the ref waved it off and the Timbers swept all three points off the board, the end.

Atlanta United FC 4-2 FC Cincinnati: Bewitched, Bedazzled & Kinda Weird

Plenty to go around, sadly.

As anyone who has interacted with the MLS Season Pass interface knows, it can still slip in the odd the spoiler. For instance, I caught the fact that Miles Robinson scored a goal out of the corner of my eye before starting the full replay, so I had that at back of mind when Atlanta United FC opened the scoring at the 15th minute. I only got halfway through, "nothing to worry about" when Atlanta scored a second goal. I spent the rest of the game hoping that the caption read “Miles Robinson hat trick.” It did not. Atlanta carried that early lead to the final whistle, and only a little uncomfortably, outrunning Cincinnati to a 4-2 win at home.

About the Game
Atlanta looked a (promising) mess over the opening ten minutes with balls played in behind to phantom runs and a full-field defensive shape that looked doomed to watch Cincinnati pull them apart; the two quality shots the visitors created – one a close solo run by Gerardo Valenzuela, the other a sparkling team effort – had the feeling of heavy knocks rattling a door. Next thing you know, Nick Hagglund went down and off on a hard charge by Emmanuel Latte Lath (“I'll show you soft, Ronny!”; weird injury, too; ribs and lung?) and, mere minutes later, Derrick Williams headed home what might have been Atlanta’s first competent pass of the game on a set piece and it was off to the races. Atlanta scored again, of course, with a tap-in by Ajani Fortune five short minutes later after Saba "Well Janice*" Lobjanidze bewitched and bedazzled Lukas Engel on Cincy’s left (* I get so much free delight from closed captioning). From there, a broadcast booth narrative developed that Atlanta had pounced on a defense still working out its assignments. That argument holds up better in a world where Latte Lath didn’t miss two massive, free-free-free opportunities (more on one of those later), all of which fell outside that crucial window. Atlanta had gilded chances at an even half-dozen goals - a rightly shocking note given Cincinnati's typically tight defense - but all those chances ran against an undercurrent of Cincy playing through them with relative ease. That's to say, this was a weird one.

No one knew the game would end where it did when Robinson’s goal finally came just after halftime, of course, especially with Taylor Twellman treating Atlanta’s woes over the first 15 minutes of every second half as a disaster to count on. That note came against the backdrop of some of the best attacking builds Cincinnati has produced all season; the chances rained and the shots poured until they piled up to nearly 30, with nine on goal. Not all of them made Brad Guzan sweat – I’d say Evander’s 60th minute effort gave his Old Spice the biggest workout – but his every save and the 21 shots off target (some of them more wise than good) meant more time playing catch-up for Cincy and with less time to get there. Another defensive breakdown – and on a set piece, again, and with the ball bouncing all over inside the six, again – restored Atlanta’s two-goal margin at the 66th minute, forcing Cincy back into a sprint. The Orange and Blue pulled within one a mere four minutes later when Valenzuela finally got his prize for a great game, but it wouldn’t take look for them to succumb to the game’s other defining feature, fully-bodied defensive breakdowns by the visitors. That hadn’t happened since the opening weeks of 2025 (e.g., the ass-kicking at Philly), but Jamal Thiare insured the win in stoppage time on what must have been Atlanta’s third clean break behind Cincy’s defense. Everything that could go wrong did, basically, and it was more than enough to erase a good amount of right.

Orlando City SC 1-0 Portland Timbers: Hitting a Speedbump, Hitting a Speedbump, Hitting a Spee...

A celebration of a great, perhaps useless design.

Neither a lot to get excited about, nor much to fret over. The Portland Timbers traveled to Orlando City SC and lost a slow, sweaty, tired affair 1-0, a result that, for me, differed from expectations by only a goal or two in Orlando’s favor. To be clear, that was my sense going in. Let’s move on to what actually happened.

About the Game
Orlando got on Portland early and Timbers players did their part to pile pressure on themselves with loose giveaways. The weight of it didn’t translate into much more than a few shots from range, with the best falling to (fortunately) left back David Brekalo and (less so), Luis Muriel. Santiago Moreno fired Portland’s best, early-ish shot with a Short Olimpico (i.e., it knuckled to near-post) and Kevin Kelsy crowned their first half attacking effort with a shot that was more wise than good (46th minute, came closer to the top row than Pedro Gallese’s goal mouth). Sadly, those efforts came on either side of Orlando’s one and only goal of the game, scored by Duncan McGuire off a slick Eduard Atuesta slip pass. Portland’s defenders shared the burden of that goal fairly equally – e.g., who’s to blame more between the three-to-four dudes stepping to Atuesta while (the theretofore great) and Jimer Fory and Finn Surman leaving a wide lane for McGuire between them – and that left Portland’s attack the burden of finding the equalizer. Or at least that’s one way this game could have played out…

Per the official stats, Orlando topped the Timbers by 2-to-1 on the basic attacking stats and (somehow) tripled them for xG…but they never looked much like adding a second goal. I just reviewed the full highlights to see whether there was some great chance or moment I forgot, but the Lions never found much better than aspirational over the second half and they didn’t even find that often. Sadly, the Timbers never really found third gear either – David Da Costa might have had their best chance of their seven (that's 7) total on the night, but that amounted to 2/3 a chance, at best. Unfun reminder, that leaves Portland on just 12 shots over their past two games.

To give them some credit, Portland had the better of play over the second 45 minutes. By the 60th minute, Orlando shipped them as many turnovers as the Timbers sent the other way over the opening 30 minutes of the first half. Portland held the ball better, even if they didn’t always know how to get more out of holding onto it, and they managed to pin Orlando into their own half, it a little further from goal. They even had a reasonable shout for a penalty when 2nd-half sub, Ariel Lassiter, got around Brekalo, but the referee waved it away after seeing the tip of the defender’s toenail catch the ball after passing through Lassiter. As with the game, that “missed call” tracked as neither a lot to get excited about, nor much to fret over. I’ll get to the bigger fish to fry after…

Portland Timbers 1-1 Seattle Sounders: It Was the [BLANK] of Times

I think cuffs and collars matched. You?

Just to note it, these posts should get shorter the deeper we go into Major League Soccer’s 2025 regular season. Barring new signings in the summer, at some point in any season, the teams have what they have when it comes to the competence of their coach and the quality of their players, strong suits and weak links will be well-known in their equal parts.

Have the Portland Timbers reached that point at…hold on…14 games into the season? Here and there, maybe, but not overall? Nah. Let’s get to it…

About the Game
I didn’t clock how few shots the Timbers fired in Saturday’s 1-1 draw versus the Seattle Sounders until checking the final stats (still catching up, still not wholly connected to the game-day experience). Not what one wants to see in terms of offensive output, obviously, but it didn’t translate into the vague chatter I’d caught here and there about Portland being lucky to escape a loss. The Sounders found their chances – particularly from the low-to-mid 30s when the long ball to Danny Musovski and Roy…er, Ryan Kent was very much on (hold this thought) – but the final score didn’t look like they borrowed it from another game or anything, cuffs and collars matched, etc. Still, seeing just five shots total and knowing at least one of those counted as more hopeful than likely (e.g., Santiago Moreno’s at the 22nd) sets a fan to fretting about the latest drop-off on the attacking side (unless my math’s mistaken, the Timbers have been good for ¾ goal/game since the beginning of May). Per the tone of all the above, Seattle hardly piled on the chances, but I’ve already gotten ahead of myself.

Seeing Kamal Miller in a foot race with, oh, 65% of the league generally spells trouble and seeing Musovski win the decisive one felt inevitable. To his credit, Miller stalled a full breakout and Finn Surman did well to put himself between Albert Rusnak and Maxime Crepeau’s goal…only to tragically leave the five-hole open for Rusnak to shoot through. Seeing a similar play almost come off for a second Seattle goal got a couple dings out of the alarm bell, but Crepeau had a better angle to block Musovski’s shot and got down righteously to cover it. Portland hadn’t been helpless to that point - Juan David Mosquera’s solo/run shot at the 9th minute announced…a presence - but it took most of the half for them to build an attack that misdirected the Sounders defense. Maybe the surprise came from David Da Costa switching to the right, maybe it came from getting the ball behind Seattle’s midfield in one pass; whatever happened, the Sounders defense lost track of Da Costa and Moreno in rapid succession and paid the price with an easy equalizer that, despite credible efforts here and there, they never got around to erasing.

Columbus Crew 1-1 FC Cincinnati: A(n Inconclusive) Clash of Titans

AAhhhhhh! Stop-motion!

I skipped a write- up for FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 win at Toronto FC for a couple reasons, its lack of educational value among them. Saturday’s 1-1 draw at the Columbus Crew, on the other hand, checked all the boxes the Toronto win couldn’t, chief among them: seeing how Cincy stacks up against a consensus best team in Major League Soccer. So, let’s get into that..

About the Game
When it comes to getting off on the right fight in a rivalry game on the road, it’s hard to beat scoring the first goal. Cincinnati took that big first step early (6th minute!) when the put a beautiful bow on a shit-show in Columbus’ area with a Kevin Denkey tap-in at the back post. The buildup featured some other encouraging details – e.g., Luca Orellano working Columbus’ left like a masseuse, Evander chipping in with a rare bicycle-kick assist – leaving Cincy fans asking what was there to love about the goal but everything? The host’s long (thoughtful?) response started from that point and, in some ways, lasted until the final whistle. Cincinnati gave as good as they got – particularly through the first half – but, per the final, official stats, they also spent much of the afternoon managing the pressure Columbus piled on. My notes (not the best, fwiw) didn’t flag any great looks for Cincinnati after Pavel Bucha’s well-placed rip toward the left upper 90 of Patrick Schulte’s goal around the 20th minute, so the balance of their highlights came on the defensive side of the ball. Given the venue and opposition, there’s nothing wrong with that; I’d go one further and say I saw plenty to admire, particularly among the last line of defense (to a personal preference, I like to see Matt Miazga step up and Miles Robinson clean up behind him). The full highlights show most of Columbus’ finer moments in both the first and second halves, including a few that, but for the hands/feet of Roman Celentano, would have given them an equalizer or the win (though, mysteriously, it skipped a free, if somewhat tricky header that Jacen Russell-Rowe should have put away). For what it’s worth, I got some bonus comfort out of the fact that it took a penalty kick to beat Celentano and loving embrace that as an indication that Cincy has its shit together in defense and they have decent back-up for the “regular” starters – Miazga, Robinson and Nick Hagglund (who, apart from getting gently, yet justly screwed on the handball that lead to the penalty kick, played a good one). In the here and now, that was good enough to smuggle a point out of Columbus, keep two more from Columbus’ points total, and Cincinnati a nose ahead in the Eastern Conference standings 14 weeks into the season.

All in all, this game pitted two good, well-coached, well-constructed teams against one another and, for the most part, played out on those terms. The main thing I want to see after sitting through that is what Cincinnati looks like when they host the return leg in mid-July. While I didn’t mind seeing them cede possession at a 2:1 fire-sale in Columbus, seeing them get on the ball and dictate periods of the home leg would give me a little more faith in their capacity to do that kind of thing when circumstances require it. I’ll flesh out that thought a little more below, but first…

FC Cincinnati 2-1 Austin FC: It's All Coming Up Evander

Mistakes can be made, that's all.

Today has been unexpectedly Cincinnati heavy. Before wrapping up FC Cincinnati’s broadly satisfying 2-1 win over a visiting Austin FC, I caught the tail end of an episode of the Partridge Family titled, “I Left My Heart in Cincinnati” that was positively drunk with old footage from Kings Island. Seeing the Blue Racer running against the Red one and The Banana Splits took my back to a world both of and before my time and it did me good (awww) and bad (so, so old).

About the Game
Cincy somewhere between a couple and a few chances to run riot over Austin over the opening 20 minutes. They took an early lead at the 12th minute when Yuya Kubo ran against a retreating Austin back-line that seemed open to giving him whatever option he wanted. After some briefly bobbled connections, the ball found Lukas Engel still farther to Austin’s right, who slipped a one-time pass into Evander loitering around the left side of the 18. I went with the verb “loiter” to capture the easy freedom of Evander’s positioning, but the opening goal showed the danger of leaving him there without an army of angry chaperones. And that puts Chehkov’s gun on the table for future reference.

Luca Orellano had come close two minutes before the opener and Kevin Denkey spurned a good opening with a shot straight at Austin’s Brad Stuver a mere three minutes on the other side of it. Consult the full highlights for some more highlight-reel adjacent moments – e.g., Denkey and Evander danced as well as they have all season Saturday afternoon – including what would have been an easy candidate for Goal of the Week (have that at around the 20th minute) had Evander clipped the curl on his one-time shot from 35+ yards out a degree or two shorter. Despite a bevy of invitations, Cincy’s second goal wouldn’t materialize for some time.

Austin pushed back, of course, and threatened to pull back a goal as early as the 17th minute on a cross that Brandon Vazquez should have put somewhere between on goal and away (which doesn't appear in the highlights due to the enshittification of MLS's video product), but, per the official stats they didn’t create a ton of chances and fired just two of them on Stuver’s goal. I don’t know how all that useless energy translated for Austin fans, but I’m guessing it felt like Purgatory for Cincinnati fans, or worse, the last episode of Lost. If you found this post, I don’t need to explain the perils of 1-0 lead to you, but seeing Cincy come within a desperate lunge or two of coughing up a stupid equalizer for the simple, stupid reason of failing to decisively clear a long ball provided a sobering reminder of said perils. It takes just one mistake, right? Say, an arm left thoughtlessly hanging when covering a cross from Cincy’s left?

Portland Timbers 1-0 Sporting Kansas City: A Result

Taking miracles, in whatever form.

I’m weighing the game I wanted, maybe even expected, against the game that I got. That’s not taking me to dark places, exactly, and for reasons I’ll lay out, or perhaps just accept, below.

Conflicted feels like the right adjective for my thoughts on the Portland Timbers' 1-0 win over – to start picking at it – (still) 12th-place Sporting Kansas City, and yet it doesn’t. With that, let’s pop this zit.

About the Game
Control of the game, so long as you use the word loosely, slipped away from the Timbers at some point in this game. The question is when – and, to be clear, only when. Despite my headful of quibbles with this or that detail or player, the thought of Portland losing never crossed my mind. Pissing away two points, on the other hand, never left the table. Even that thought leaves things to unpack.

I saw three phases in the game, each bleeding into the next. With David Da Costa (typed that as David Dad Costa, kinda liked that) and Santiago Moreno buzzing under Felipe Mora, the Timbers got off to a good start. Antony produced the first big moment for either team with a diagonal run across the box and it came after a build up that felt sustainable. Portland put all of the same things together, and more, in the build-up to the, to call it by its full name, Brilliant and Only Goal of the game at the 10th minute: they worked the ball in, they pushed it up the left, moved it right, switched it back to the left, pushing SKC back the entire time; after, oh, 15-20 passes, it took a buffet of luck, timing and inspiration for Da Costa and Moreno (respectively) to score the winner and, by that, all three points, I hereby give thanks. Thus endeth Phase 1.

You know that moment in a track-‘n’-field relay, when the runner of the next leg gets up to speed in front of the runner from the previous one to build up momentum for the handoff? That was the change between Phase 1 and Phase 2. Sporting KC started finding direct passes through Portland’s lines around the same time the space for Da Costa and Moreno dried up. Their best chance(s) – perhaps for the entire game – came at the beginning of that phase in the form of three shots on Maxime Crepeau’s goal, most by Daniel Salloi, around the 15th minute. Crepeau made those saves and more, if without the confidence I like seeing from a ‘keeper (another came around the 61st minute, see the full highlights), but that didn’t chip away at my confidence in the result as the low-key siege SKC mounted against the Timbers defense for the remainder of Phase 2. Which brings this post to the most complicated part of the game, though not yet to Phase 3.

MLS Western Conference Check-In, More Words at the One-Third Mark

I'm coming for yer place, Soccer Don.

Careful readers who visited last night’s Eastern Conference check-in may notice I cribbed that preamble for this one. Fuck it. Who reinvents the wheel when he doesn’t have to? Ahem.

Welcome to this broad and necessarily shallow check-in on where things stand in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference about one-third of the way through the 2025 season. To set expectations a little:

I watch just one Western Conference team religiously – my Portland Timbers – and most of the additional (somewhat) in-depth watching I’ve done involved teams that they played the upcoming weekend. So, again, I’m not coming at any of this from some all-knowing, all-absorbing perch.

Against that, I sincerely believe that a lot of the week-to-week global coverage I see from this league (almost all of it from Official Organs) suffers from a pernicious tendency to read too much into the last game played – i.e., Content, particularly the stuff around failure and progress in players, formation shifts, etc., over-values the latest details, often at the expense of considering broader details like, say, did your team look like some hot-rod shit last weekend because they ran over the Los Angeles Galaxy (ha!) at home? All of the everything below looks at the same things, just over a longer arc. That follows for necessity, for sure, but it’s also about patterns, particularly when it comes to results, where they happened and against which teams and in what form.

Just to note it, I constructed the information boxes that top each section for each team from the (current) Conference Standings, the much-reduc’d Form Guide (still mourning the loss, contemplating egging MLS HQ…so long as that’s not a felony, because I can’t have another), and applying a filter one team at a time to the Official stats page. Just to note it, MLS has gutted its non-app content. Jesus fucking Christ, the home pages for must teams are like the shells of abandoned houses with all the copper piping and really good built-ins stripped out.

MLS Eastern Conference Check-In, A Word at the One-Third Mark

What I have to work with...

Welcome to this broad and necessarily shallow check-in on where things stand in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference about one-third of the way through the 2025 season. To set expectations a little:

I watch just one Eastern Conference team every week – FC Cincinnati – and most of the additional (somewhat) in-depth watching I’ve done involved teams that they played on the upcoming weekend. So, no, I’m not coming at any of this from some all-knowing, all-absorbing perch.

Against that, I sincerely believe that a lot of the week-to-week global coverage I see from this league (almost all of it from Official Organs) has a pernicious tendency to read too much into the last game played – i.e., Content, particularly the stuff around failure and progress in players, formation shifts, etc., tends to over-value the latest details, often at the expense of considering broader details like, say, did your team look like some hot-rod shit last weekend because they ran over Montreal at home? Basically, all of the everything below looks at the same things, just over a longer arc. That follows for necessity, for sure, but it’s also about patterns, particularly when it comes to results, where they happened and against which teams and in what condition.

Just to note it, I constructed the information boxes that top each section for each team from the (current) Conference Standings (that link will be stale by Sunday), the much-reduc’d Form Guide (still mourning the loss, contemplating egging MLS HQ…so long as that’s not a felony, because I can’t have another), and applying a filter one team at a time to the official stats page. (Just to note it, MLS has gutted its non-app content. Jesus fucking Christ, the home pages for must teams are like shopping malls circa 2022, i.e., tacky little ghost teams haunted by advertisements to no one.)

The teams below are listed in their order in the Eastern Conference standings and whatever comments I provide come from a combination of things I’ve read, both in the Official Organ and strays caught on Bluesky, watching highlights and longer chunks of games when I had to, or told myself I had to, and watching MLS Wrap-Up – which, to the credit of all concerned, has improved now that they have stuff to chew on.

New York City FC 1-0 FC Cincinnati: The Many, Grace-Given Misses of Alonso Martinez

Alonso Martinez's afternoon, a visual.

FC Cincinnati has managed to stay one goal ahead of the opposition for the past month or so. That was always going to come to an end, of course – people change, hairstyles change, dog people wake up one day and realize they’re cat people, etc. – but Cincy was damned lucky to not lose in a blow out yesterday. New York City FC gave them a taste of their own medicine with a 1-0 win in the shitbox disgrace of a stadium they call home and I’m sure it tasted just as bitter.

About the Game, Briefly
It’s not often I find the lineup presented at the top of the broadcast – half of ‘em feel like misdirection from the head coach, honestly – but NYCFC’s attacking shape looked closer to the 3-2-4-1 than it did to the 4-3-3 shown in the official match report. Keeping all those players high served the familiar purpose of stifling Cincy’s build-out – which was huge – and having players closer to their goal to exploit any turnovers. One direct effect, aka, the huge one, was pinning both DeAndre Yedlin and Lukas Engel against their respective sidelines and cut off their outlets into the middle (hold this thought*). It took Cincy 20-25 minutes to sort out playing through it – they had their first coordinated break-out around the 30th minute (Luca Orellano missed) – or the loosening of NYC’s noose simply coincided with Keaton Parks limping off, but it proved too little, too late. The hosts had already found two quality looks within the first six minutes and it didn’t even take them 10 minutes to open the scoring. The pervasive role luck plays in goal-scoring is one of the more under-appreciated aspects of the game – e.g., it took (think it was) Miles Robinson’s feeble toe-picked “clearance” to steer the ball into the path of Julian Fernandez, who tucked the ball into the lower right corner of Roman Celetano’s – but the first half of the game saw New York make enough of its own luck to export it to abroad. The final stats erase that a bit, but it took (at least) 20 minutes for Cincy’s defense to get a handle on Andres Perea’s back-post runs and Alonso Martinez’ missed penalty kick at the 12th minute was the first of, gods, three(? four?) clear-cut-to-the-point-of-gilded opportunities he got. (To see the overstuffed catalog, kindly reference the full highlights.) If I had to guess at how NYCFC got that many trips to the same well, I’d put money on Pascal Jansen keeping Martinez close to Matt Miazga and putting them in as many foot races as he could; that led to the penalty call, if nothing else.

San Jose Earthquakes (Oof) 4-1 Portland Timbers: I Believe the Term Is Jointly and Severally

The number of things that went wrong...

A team can survive a bad night at the office, being a step behind, connected only in sad little spurts, etc. A team cannot, however, survive a half dozen or so catastrophic defensive errors.

I call that kind of collapse a Five-Minute Fall Apart, even when they unfold over an 11-minute span. The rest of the game wasn’t much better and that’s the beginning of the story of how the San Jose Earthquakes rolled the Portland Timbers 4-1 tonight.

About the Game
The post started with a distinction between collective and individual failure for a reason: the Timbers committed sins both individually and as a team tonight, but they might have muddled through, even if just to a more respectable final score, had, say, both Finn Surman and Kamal Miller not bit like half-starved basses on the pieces of bait San Jose dangled before them. Their mistakes turned into the (borderline) sitters that put the game beyond Portland’s likely longest reach inside the first 30 minutes. Maxime Crepeau could have done better on both shots – the man’s head and feet didn’t seem to have an open channel, on the second goal more than the third, for me – and, as much as I get wishing James Pantemis was there, that does everyone the same amount of good as wishing Surman didn’t overcommit all the way into Nevada on the ball into Ousseni Bouda, or that Miller didn’t sprint all the way to the left sideline just to get nutmegged by DeJuan Jones. That’s the individual stuff and I feel confident arguing that three-minute span killed Portland’s chances at three points tonight. Moving on to the stuff that made even one point unlikely…

San Jose scored their first goal on their third (or fourth) run at the same attacking movement – i.e., push the ball outside to a runner sprinting to get around the Timbers’ widest defender on one side or the other, then pull it back to an attacking player who drifted into the space left open by a Portland backline that appears willing to collapse into its own damn goal. Seeing them come close mere minutes before the 90th on the same damn play felt like the right way to wrap up the game, but the problem was always the same. When San Jose pushed the ball wide, an Earthquake player curled off Portland’s defensive line and none of those players tracked that movement; Timbers midfielders – e.g., Joao Ortiz was the closest available option on their first goal – failed to run back to cover that run, leaving some quality attackers with time and the full width of the goal to fire at from around the penalty spot. Under those circumstances, whose man is that? The answer falls somewhere between everyone’s, no one’s and the first player to see him peel off. And that’s the, or maybe just a, collective failure.

San Jose Earthquakes Scouting Report: Lady or the Tiger, If With Less Risk

MLS's Bill Bellichek? (Nah, and thankfully.)

Am I short-changing this report a bit? A bit, maybe. I mean, what is there to analyze, really?

Can the San Jose Earthquakes win this? Of course, they can.

Is that likely?

The only argument they have for “yes” is that big, lonely win versus DC United. Bet the longest outdoor bar in America rocked that night…

To the game at hand…

San Jose Earthquakes
3-6-1, 10 pts., 20 gf, 19 ga (+1), home 2-3-1, away 1-3-0
Last…6, 7, 8 Results: LLLTWLLL
Strength/Location of Schedule
v MIN (0-1 L); v COL (1-2 L); @ CLT (1-4 L); v SEA (1-1 D); v DC (6-1 W); @ LAFC (1-2 L); v SKC (3-5 L); @ CLB (1-2 L)

Outside some blips that even their fans have forgotten, the Earthquakes have been terrible since 2012. A season that started with two lopsided wins and some too-soon, “say, is this a little Bruce Arena magic?” (pleading guilty, with reasons of lack of data and a need to fill copy) has been answered with, “nah, still San Jose.” The defense trots a mere three goals behind in the backwards race for the most goals allowed – though, in fairness, that field is surprisingly crowded – and that has killed them, but a cast of once-greats on a revival package tour has them hanging in MLS’s Western Conference at a lofty…11th. On the plus side, they’re just three points behind a Seattle team that has lost Jordan Morris for a chunky chunk of 2025.

Arena has stuck with the 3-5-2 over the past three games (a reliable example, probably?). The constants include the three players The San Jose Organization gambled on – Cristian Espinoza, Josef Martinez and Cristian Arango, with the latter in the front two and the former covering (most of) the right – and a reasonably steady cast of players that hint at why San Jose didn’t stick around at the top the West. They’re better with Daniel in the net (especially after a fragile performance by Earl Edwards, Jr. versus Sporting KC) and have started Dave Romney (always) and Rodrigues (a little less so) in the three at the back. I have a vague sense Bruno Wilson made them better, but he hasn’t played since DC, though, for what it’s worth, rookie Max Floriani filled in at Columbus last week and looked all right. Bruce hasn’t settled the midfield, cycling variously among Ian Harkes, Nico Tsakiris, Beau Leroux, Mark-Anthony Kaye, and, wow, Ahmal Pellegrino – who I’d guess Arena tried as a playmaker – but it mostly makes them porous through midfield*. Vitor Costa de Brito has started opposite Espinoza on the left in every game I looked at, but that’s recent (he has just 346 minutes on the season), so maybe that side improves. All that aside, there’s a very basic method to whatever damage San Jose can inflict, and I’ll get to that after confessing sources.

New York City FC Scouting Report: A Simple Matter of Overcoming Test Anxiety

You got this, bro(s)!

This feels like the first real test for FC Cincinnati in a while…even if it doesn’t look as tough – or as fun – as it used to. Is it just me, or did Cincy and New York City FC play some wild ones around the time Cincy got their shit together?

I’d look into it, but MLSSoccer.com has been stripped for parts to push people to their shitty app. I will never let this go...

Starting with the basics…

New York City FC
4-4-2, 11 pts., 12 gf, 13 ga (-1); home 3-1-0, away 1-3-2
Last...huh, 8 Results: WWDLLWLW
Strength/Location of Schedule
ORL (2-1 W); v NE (2-1 W); @ CLB (0-0 D); @ ATL (3-4 L); v MIN (1-2 L); v PHI (1-0 W); @ NE (0-2 L); @ TFC (1-0 W)

If anything made NYCFC a reliably competitive team through its best seasons, it was defense. They weren’t much better than average defensively in 2024 and merely occupy the mushy middle in that category this season. But for the fact they average just over a goal for per game (1.2), just over a goal allowed per game (1.3) wouldn’t be so bad, but that combo only makes them good enough for ninth in MLS’s Eastern Conference. One team constant for them did carry over: NYCFC get results in the vast, misshapen stadium they call home - and there lies Cincinnati’s greatest challenge. I don’t know much about their new-to-2024 Dutch head coach, Pascal Jansen, but he put in about eight years in the Eredivisie (or thereabouts; don’t know what Jong PSV is, doesn’t feel enormously important; cool detail about his mom in his bio, tho), and spent 2024 coaching Hungary’s Ferencvaros. More germane to the here and now, Jansen typically goes with a 4-3-3 and the guys he started against both Philly (in NYC) and Toronto (in Toronto) look like the early 2025 version of Plan A. That starting set includes some quality personnel – e.g., Thiago Martins in central defense (think he's shaved off a couple goals, fwiw), Keaton Parks as a ball-winning two-way player and Golden-Boot chaser, Alonso Martinez (six goals, so far) – but I like to hold up the newly-embiggened Justin Haak as a talisman for what NYCFC both has and lacks. Think more drilled competence than game-changing excellence. Something else I can’t shake: how is Maxi Moralez still starting for this team when he was “getting up there” in 2021? Rounding out the regulars, they’re getting decent early production out of Hannes Wolf, who kind of lingers on the sides behind the leading edge of the attack, and they have decent, if under-productive wing/fullbacks in Kevin O’Toole (reliably on the left) and whomever starts between Mitja Ilenic and Tayvon Gray. None of the players mentioned have produced a noteworthy number of assists – something that made sense as I watched them.