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.

An Aside on St. Louis
While they’ll be better with all hands back and available (duh), it gets harder to read St. Louis with each passing week and around every “L” added to their record. In the plus column, they got str4ong performances from second-banana starters like Celio Pompeu and Simon Becher – the former can break some ankles, the latter through a unique combination of being big and slippery – and it must have done St. Louis fans some good to see them play soccer through that first half. On the negative side, the weight of expectations fell on Marcel Hartel, who wasn’t up to the burden, and Joao Klauss failed to make the most of his two big chances. In keeping with that larger “tough-to-read” theme, St. Louis team defense held up until it very abruptly did not. Somewhere between five and ten minutes after Taylor Twellman praised how well Watts and Alfredo Morales had managed the midfield, they started losing track of Ayala in the middle spaces and Ayala obliged by prying at the gaps in St. Louis backline. Even one point would have done something for morale – struggling teams need those li’l lifts a little more – but St. Louis instead inched closer to the dread mark of losing one-third of the games for the entire regular season - and with half the season still left to play. If there’s a way to salvage their 2025, I can’t see it – or didn’t yesterday. I don’t think they have the players more a methodical approach, and the margin for finding their best possible selves for this year keeps shrinking.

All I see is "big win!"

Strays & Sub-Strays re the Timbers
1) Bhagwan!
Sorry, I just like the word, both for its sound and the local appeal, but “Bhagwan!” pops into my mind unbidden with every big win and this one counts. The summer months are grind-time in Major League Soccer, that time with so (fucking) much season left to play and the playoffs so (fucking) far away, when every “should-win” game – i.e., when your local team hosts a struggling one – becomes a must-win for any team hoping to earn the right to host home games in the playoffs.

2) Anchor & Inspiration
Antony produced the game’s buzziest moment and may even have inspired the team-wide revival. He has lifted the Timbers all season and hats off to the young man for growing into that role. He wouldn’t have got nearly as far as he has without Ayala carrying the team behind him. I don’t say that to separate those two players or even to compare them; I actually intend this in the sense that those two roles are complementary pieces in building a better team. Both players have grown this season to where they compare favorably with your brighter stars from around all of MLS and the future looks good.

2a) One Subtle, Simple Yet Major Improvement
Like a lot of teams around the league, the Timbers often build out up the wings – i.e., through either Juan David Mosquera or Jimer Fory – but one key reason for the Timbers’ improved ability to keep the builds going are players like Ayala, Moreno and David Da Costa dropping back earlier/automatically to provide an option inside when opposing presses/defenses try to pin the Timbers’ progress up the wing. That opens up the field and a wider array of options for the next ball.

I wanted it to, baby...

2b) The Role He Was Born to Play
I’m a straight-up fucking groupie (call me!) for deep-lying midfielders who can open up the game from the depths. My lustful, longing attachment to that role allowed me to look past David Guzman’s shortcomings for a couple seasons, but I’m damn confident that Portland has found their man in Ayala. Better still, the rest of the team seems to be on board and you can see them trying to find him in that central space a step or two behind the front of the attack throughout the game. One more…

2c) Don’t Think Meat
Sometimes I want to see the Timbers pass the ball to the next player just to keep it moving. Maybe give it to the next guy quicker, if just to see if he’s got a better idea or a clearer lane for the next step in the build. Every pass doesn’t have to change the game – most of them don’t, obviously – but every pass changes the point of reference and keeps the defense moving around. So, yeah, less thought, more do.

3) Mora v Kelsy
I got a little thrill when I heard Twellman address the Felipe Mora/Kevin Kelsy “debate.” As the game drifted toward its end, he seemed big on getting Mora in there to give a different look to the attack and, admittedly, I’m warming to the Mora-as-super-sub concept more than I thought I would.

3a) I saw Kelsy throw a mini-fit at some point in the second half when he didn’t see his teammates look for him enough at the back post. When a cross finally went over there and he nodded a good ball back across, I agreed he had a point.

4) A Growing Mystery
I have to confess, I don’t know what Da Costa’s doing right now and suspect he doesn’t either. The broadcast team (think this was an Andrew Wiebe bit) flagged something about Phil Neville trying to push Da Costa closer to goal in training this week and making sure he’s firing shots from range, but that (reported) shift barely made a cameo. I still like Da Costa and his price tag is more his problem than mine, but I do see some significance in the fact that he’s only coming up at the end of this post.

5) The [However Much the Timbers Spent on the Current Roster] Question?
Does this Portland Timbers team, as currently constituted and coached, have what it takes to compete in the MLS playoffs? Are they a quarterfinal team? A semifinal team?

To anyone thinking I’m raising that question too early in a (so fucking) long season, my response is, what happens if the team we have now is the team we have then?

Went long again, dammit, but this one did feel extra meaty. Hope you found something to start a thought in there, even if that thought is, “whoa, this guy’s fulla shit.” Till the next one…