Indefinite Hiatus

 The author needs to take a minute to resolve some health issues. Dammit.

FC Cincinnati & MLS East (Mostly) Week 18 Check-In: So...How's It Going?

Forever just two personnel moves away...

And…I finally have the time/energy to post an Eastern Conference-wide check-in with an FC Cincinnati cherry on top. Huzzah.

Down below, you'll find all the teams in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference listed in the order of their current place in the conference standings, along with the most basic factual information about each of them. After that comes a quick riff on how their 2025 looks so far based on 1) my impression of a given team based on seeing them one way or the other over the season and 2) their last 10 results, more or less.

I pulled Cincy out of the regular order and lifted them to the top with an eye to dwelling on my very own Special Little Guys of the East. If you want depth or real knowledge about individual players, I suggest you hit up local sources – something I encourage people to do in any event and often as they can - or, if you’re into that certain flavor of weird, your local team’s subreddit.

The point of the exercise is to look past injuries to key players or arguments about how totally and thoroughly unstoppable any given team will be if [Player A] would just start doing [X], or if only the stupid fucking coach would get his head out of his ass and start [Player B] or move [Player C] to left back, and to flatten the notes on each team to the cold, hard calculus of the results they’ve compiled, where and against what quality of opposition, and holy run-on sentence, Melville. The animating thought behind it seeks to correct the human habit of holding onto a detail – say, a big win over a good team – and interpreting a team through that flawed lens for weeks, or even months, thereafter. With 18 games crossed off on the calendar for most teams, MLS fans finally have a forest to stare at and, personally, that feels like a better way to clock what’s going on than, to muddle a phrase, get into the trees…and, rimshot.

With that, let’s kick things off the East’s silver-medal team:

Portland Timbers 1-1 San Jose Earthquakes: A Tale of Wild Cards & Cliches

Killing himself. Wild, right?

For those who missed it, Preston Judd had a big game in the San Jose Earthquakes’ 3-3 draw versus Houston Dynamo FC. Two weeks after that opportunist’s brace, he teed up the winner in San Jose’s win at the till-then utterly hapless Los Angeles Galaxy.

Judd scored the late equalizer in San Jose’s 1-1 draw at the Portland Timbers, of course, but guess who fired the shot that led to the rebound he put back? Ousseni Bouda. Now guess who Judd set up for the winner against the Galaxy? Yep, Bouda.

When prepping to face the ‘Quakes, any sane coach would key on The Cristians (Espinoza and Arango) and Josef Martinez. Martinez didn’t suit up yesterday, something I think was known, but who knows? The larger point is, who builds a game-plan around stopping Ousseni Bouda and Preston-fucking-Judd?

Still, what is a wild card except an old-school cheat code? And yet…is that what really happened?

About the Game
I only half-watch games when I see them live (to anyone wondering why I don’t go to many of them), so I just sat down to re-watch the second half. Even that confirmed a handful of loose perceptions I had from the first half – e.g., the Timbers performed soccer well enough, but the ‘Quakes always looked that little bit more incisive, Dave Romney won every 1-v-1 against Santiago Moreno and basically took him out of the game, etc. Still, and despite what was scored as Portland’s 0.55 xG versus San Jose’s 1.09 at the half, the Timbers played well enough to make me think they would hold it together and had a punter’s chance of figuring it out before the final whistle. Full disclosure, I missed Ian Harkes’ second yellow card – of which, funny! (i.e., his foul on Diego Chara was soft, without being wholly, laughably unreasonable) – plus a couple early shots (which, if The Mothership means to earn its keep, should be in the full highlights). As for the +/- 15 minutes after Harkes’ 52nd -minute sending off? Yeah, caught all of that. Soccer has at least a half dozen cliches and, as just demonstrated by San Jose, a team playing like 12 men after going down to 10 is very much one of them.

Portland Timbers 2-1 St. Louis CITY FC: Anchor & Inspiration

Antony's contribution: a visual

The Portland Timbers have a long history of slow starts to the regular season. Now off to what I’m told is their strongest start to a season since 2013, and perhaps with a nostalgic glint in their eye to how they once had to rescue entire seasons, the Timbers have acquired a late habit of starting at half speed, even spotting the opposition the first goal.

I flagged the latter as potential kiss of death in one preview thread our another on Bluesky, but, for the second match day in a row, Portland snatched victory for the slackening jaws of defeat with a 2-1 home win over St. Louis CITY FC. Who knows? Maybe the Timbers only feel like their true and best selves when chasing something, whether season or game?

About the Game
Whether due to players they had missing (Eduard Lowen) to caretaker coach, David Critchley, trying to teach his old team new tricks, St. Louis rewrote my expectations by keeping the ball on the ground and working it forward from the back. They stretched the field occasionally (see the first attempt in the full highlights), but they looked up to playing through Portland and, for most of the second half, the Timbers seemed open to allowing it. While not totally helpless – a couple slip passes sent (I think) Santiago Moreno and Kevin Kelsy just behind St. Louis’ last defender – Portland spent most of the first half a step behind both the most recent play and the game. They escaped the first half without giving up a goal, but even that took a double save from James Pantemis on two (or three) clear, close shots jointly gifted to St. Louis by some light dicking around at the back and a clumsy touch by Joao Ortiz. Portland saved their best moments for first half stoppage time – including a shot at redemption for Ortiz that he side-footed softly to nowhere – but the cobwebs lingered long enough into the second half for Portland to give up the first goal 50 minutes in. Former Timbers academy kid, Akil Watts, put St. Louis up 1-0 when he created and capitalized on a wee crisis in front of Pantemis’ goal. Watch the highlights on that goal and you’ll see Watts have time to both give up on the play then get back into it before any Timbers defender even noticed him. You hate to see it, but, stick around. It gets better!

As with last match day’s win over Colorado, this game turned on a vividly decisive moment – specifically, Antony alley-ooping the ball over Tomas Totland, then backing Henry Kessler into his own 18 before equalizing just around the defender’s left shoulder. It was a move sweet and classy enough for The Mothership to give it a long-form puff highlight of its own. From that point to the final whistle, the Timbers played like a stalled car jump-started by a king-sized battery. Legs came to life, movement improved all over with David Ayala acting as an all-purpose gear box that kept the machine running and racing, shifting slower and faster as needed; they even forced Roman Burki to reprise Pantemis' first-half double save in order to keep the game from running away from them. While St. Louis never fully faded out of the game, I have this line in my notes about “losing their nerve, grasping for chances instead of creating them” that sums it up nicely. Had you split the game between St. Louis’ best period and Portland’s, I’m still guessing the Timbers outplayed them over the sum of it, but the final numbers broke close to even and St. Louis are no doubt gnashing teeth and rending garments over not just losing Ayala on the winner, but failing to see him at all. Just heartbreaking defending, but Ayala fully earned a slab of the log after that performance.

St. Louis CITY FC Scouting Report: Needing and Wanting. Or Vice Versa

Why not 9 center backs? Why not 13?

To get the big dodge out of the way, who knows what to make of St. Louis CITY FC right now, what with Olof Mellberg getting shit-canned for an unmissable lack of results and, I’m told, a hard kink for fielding eight center backs in his starting XIs? At any rate, he’s gone, replaced by interim head coach David Critchley…who, for the record, guided the team to its first win since mid-March.

To compile this dossier, I jumped around about…65 minutes’ worth of real-time footage of St. Louis’ 0-1 road loss at the Colorado Rapids and their gently weird 2-1 home win over the San Jose Earthquakes. Normally, I’d put more time into the road game, but suspect the coaching change to color their approach in enough ways that I think that anyone bored and restless enough will benefit more from watching long outtakes of the San Jose game. If nothing else, and barring injuries (looking at Cedric Teuchert here), I’d expect the team that lines up against the Portland Timbers on Sunday will look more like the starting XI versus San Jose. I’ll dig into that more below, but let’s start with…

The Facts
Record/Stats
3-8-5, 14 pts., 13 gf, 21 ga (-8); home 2-3-3, away 1-5-2
Last 10 Results: LLDDLLDLLW
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ SKC (0-2 L); v CLB (1-2 L); v VAN (0-0 D); @ LAFC (2-2 D); @ SEA (1-4 L); v SD (1-2 L); v SKC (2-2 D); @ MIN (0-3 L); @ COL (0-1 L); v SJ (2-1 W)

Clearly, things have gone coach-firingly bad for St. Louis this season and, based on the time I put into the San Jose win, I’m not sure now firmly they’ve turned the page. Big picture, St. Louis kept games tighter until recent weeks (see losses at Seattle and Minnesota), but the defense still tilts toward the stronger side of the league average. The attack, unfortunately, leans harder in the other direction. Still, soothe – which bring me to…

Talking Point No. 1: The Timbers Have to Match “Playing for Their Jobs right now” Intensity
That’s it. St. Louis looked listless and gun-shy at Colorado, at least until they had to chase the game after Darren Yapi’s 41st minute goal forced them to chase the game (weird one; also kinda notable; here's the other one by Josef Martinez). They also defended deep (to the point of nesting) in the stretches I watched and played like they forgot St. Louis’ hard-pressing tradition. Maybe the game plan tilts toward allowing shots from range, or maybe that's just what Mellberg's approach encouraged indirectly by way of tactics. I saw more pressing versus San Jose and, again, I expect to see that against the Timbers, road game be damned. St. Louis may press and foul half as hard as they used to, but Portland should come ready to battle…like, really battle.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 DC United, Disappointment, Malaise and a Dash of FC Dallas

A guerrilla warfare situation.

After watching FC Cincinnati stall out to a 1-2 loss versus DC United – i.e., the team currently 12th in the East and who started yesterday with half as many points as Cincinnati – I looped back to their midweek 3-3 home draw versus FC Dallas – i.e., the team currently 11th in the West, who have as many points (18) as DC on the first day of June. That was last night.

Before sitting down to type this, I looped back to my notes on last weekend’s 2-4 loss at Atlanta United FC. At that time, that performance/result presented as a bad day at the office meets an ambush – think the foxhole scene in Red Dawn, the original, not the remake – because who thought an Atlanta team eight games into tripping over their own dicks, particularly on the attacking end, would run over a defense, 1) operating with all hands present, and 2) that had allowed (about) just one goal per game to that point in the season?

So…how many bad days at the office does it take to add up to a slump?

About the Game(s)
When Kevin Denkey crowned a full-field attacking move at the 15th minute that went down easy as an oyster, signs pointed to the machinery being back in place and turning smoothly. Sure, DC had already gone up a goal by then – see Gabriel Pirani’s finish at the second minute from the top of the 18 off a (too) simple set piece – and, after some light preventive bunkering, they returned to a press that forced Cincinnati to play through traffic all over the field. Still, Cincy had managed it well enough, up to and including getting close to goal with avenues and options. Denkey’s goal got the Bailey bopping and DC United didn’t have Christian Benteke to manage, so more of the same seemed possible, maybe even likely…

…and then Conner “Excuse Me, Who?” Antley popped up at the back post on a corner to head DC back into the lead. Two set pieces, two goals; you literally hate to see it.