Wrapping Round One of the Playoffs & Pondering a (Potential?) Hole in the Timbers' Roster

This machine, like pundits, lies. I am all man.

With Major League Soccer taking its annual embarrassing mid-playoffs pause (mid-playoffs! nuts!), the urge to jump in and gently pick it apart got hold of me last weekend. The Portland Timbers started their pause a couple three weeks before that, and I’m going to close with some loose notes on that, but let’s start with the post-season.

First and foremost, and as much as it made me giggle immodestly, I’m not going to join in the circle-jerk around Inter Miami CF’s early exit from the 2024 playoffs as The Greatest Upset of All Time – not with the way crowned heads fell off across MLS’s Eastern Conference. Miami’s (admittedly shocking) fall versus(!) Atlanta United FC cleared a path wide enough for Columbus Crew SC to line-dance their way to a second straight title, but they crashed out against a revived Red Bull New York before that path even opened. I’m calling anyone who claims they saw that coming a liar, not least because the Crew survived a mosh-pit of a season and (and!) they beat the Red Bulls on the road, on Decision Day. With everything they had going their way – claiming second in the league after an achingly slow start, a coach all observers mooned over like a young, slim Frank Sinatra, and a roster deep as the Marianas Trench – seeing them get swept rises every inch as high on the Shock-o-Meter as Miami’s early ouster.

FC Cincinnati’s failure to capitalize was far less surprising – especially given that long stumble down the stretch. Having to rebuild the defense late in the season had a lot to do with it, but, from my vague look from a distance, the way the goals and confidence dried up did them in as much as anything. Those particular symptoms notwithstanding, Cincy’s demise highlights a recurring theme across MLS playoffs history the positive power of momentum and its damning opposite. Pat Noonan’s team had labored since the middle of July, which makes that less backing into the playoffs than commuting to and from work in reverse every day. To be clear, nothing about that felt inevitable – New York City FC trekked across their own wilderness before a three-game wining streak lifted them past the play-in (that was with them losing at Montreal on Decision Day in the mix) – and Cincy had enough chances and half-chances to score the go-ahead in Game 3. Maybe it’s something about how long the poison stays in your system after the snake bites.

A 2024 Portland Timbers Post-Mortem: Entertaining the Possibility It Really Was That Bad

Let the image go blurry...you'll see Raffi, I promise.

As I sit down to write this, I’m not even sure that I can see around the crushing 0-5 “home” loss to the visiting Vancouver Whitecaps in the play-in to the 2024 playoffs. (Play-in to the playoffs; that had to be deliberate, right?) One could even make a case that looking past that result amounts to a demand to misread the 2024 season, to treat it as something other than a failure or, even yet another “transition season.” That last rock gets kicked around a little more below, not least because I'm no longer sure that still applies, but when your team only “makes the playoffs” through a bloated invitation list, then passes out and collectively shits themselves an hour into it? Don’t worry, I’m not even going to try to find that image…enjoy an image from a more wholesome metaphor...

Something else that’s in my head as I type this: because 2024 was my first full season on the Timbers subreddit, I have a lot more voices rattling around up there. That’s not all bad, of course – a broader perspective is good! – but digging through any accumulation of detail(/clutter) inevitably pushes you toward the trees side of the forest/trees equation and this just feels like a moment to focus on the forest, maybe figure out why all those fucking trees caught on fire all season long?

That absorption on detail expressed itself in a singular way this season, if just for me (and, obviously, nobody pushed me into all those subreddit rabbit-holes) – i.e., a loose perception that every player on the team was, in so many words, more or less fine. To be clear, yes, people on the Timbers sub-reddit (hereafter, “Over There”) did eventually start naming names – e.g., Zac McGraw ain’t doing so good, even if Kamal Miller’s making that a contest, and some dude Over There mounted what started as a lonely campaign calling for James Pantemis to start over Maxime Crepeau and, for all the doubt, even ridicule that guy endured…Pantemis did, in fact, take over the starting job – but just about every player had their champion, and several of them more often than not. When faced with a team that finished 9th in the West, aka, hanging on by a rotted toe, that idea just doesn’t hold up. Call it a paradox, call an argument for firing the coach, or just some specific coaches, or for firing the general manager, but just the loose sentiment says more about how fandom works than anything about the Timbers’ 2024 season.

The Timbers Take a Giant Shit in Providence Park, The End.

I generally don’t do emotion as a soccer fan, it’s just not how I experience the game. And yet…

On an experiential level, tonight’s 0-5 loss at Providence Park to a lately woeful Vancouver Whitecaps side had a helpless feeling to it. Suffocation feels like the best analogy, only with full awareness of how much longer it would last.

Also, losses generally roll off my back, but this duck is fucking soaked.

I like all of these players enough that I hated to see them humiliated, but I say that knowing full well that something about this team has to change.

David Ayala showed up tonight. I think a couple of the attacking players might have, but I’m not sure how one would tell given how rarely they got on the ball. Oh, except Jonathan Rodriguez, a player seemingly obsessed with getting on the ball where he could do absolutely nothing with it.

Weird, brutal fucking game.

The Timbers missed the playoffs in 2022 and 2023, but this? It was worse on every level.

Unless I somehow get caught up in the rest of the 2024 playoffs – maybe Miami cashes out early? – and feel like I have anything to say, the next post about the Timbers will be a post-mortem.

There’s nothing left to do, but accept things went wrong and figure out the best way to douse the flames and put a bow on the corpse. Till then.

Thoughts from the Meat in a Seattle and Vancouver Sandwich, aka, a Portland Timbers Review/Preview

The state of play, in blues legend form.

I think of the Portland Timbers 1-1 road draw at the Seattle Sounders in terms of finding the proper balance between love and hate. Some markers are obvious – e.g., they gave up the inevitable soft goal (this one came with a pillow-top); against that they got a bold, dare I say spicy, goal from a source (Antony) that wasn’t the big three (Evander, Felipe Mora, and Jonathan Rodriguez).

All kinds of things fall into the space between those two poles, including the way Seattle took all the game the Timbers gave them (a lot), all the shots that resulted therefrom (could have been 1-2, even 1-4 against Portland), but for Portland’s James Pantemis rising to every occasion save the one. Moreover, the draw extended the Timbers’ lease in Seattle’s collective heads. The latter might not matter at all in the big picture, but it is really, really funny in the smaller one.

The rest of this post comes in two parts, the first looking back to the Saturday’s _______ game (still working on the adjective that fits it best), the second looking ahead to Wednesday’s big, big play-in against the Vancouver Whitecaps. Courtesy of motorsports, the lingering effects of Major League Soccer’s second-tier status in the North American landscape, the Timbers get to host that one despite the ninth-place seed. I think every Timbers fan knows that by now, but the thought still brightens my face with a mirthful smile two days later.

Sorry for the delay on this going up to anyone who noticed, but I had a family reunion this weekend and it was welcome and very nice.

The Rope-a-Dope That Ropes the Dope Every Time
I’ll start by reading some more old news into the record: Portland drawing Seattle – again, this is in Seattle – resulted in the Sounders dropping to fourth place (which puts them into a playoff series against Houston Dynamo FC…but is that actually better than facing Minnesota United FC?), missing an automatic berth in to the CONACAF Champions’ League, handing the Cascadia Cup to the Timbers in their own house, and losing Obed Vargas for the first game of their three-game series against Houston. Honestly, I don’t know how Timbers fans continue to breathe through all the laughter...

Seattle Sounders Scouting Report: In Which I Channel D.A.R.E.

D.A.R.E., still 1,000% on brand.

Yeah, yeah, up goes another post. What can I say? I get nostalgic about every regular season one or two games before it ends…

…and then I forgot every last thing about it one day after MLS Cup. I am a simple man overwhelmed by the passing of the seasons. Enough about me. Preview time.

Does it get better than two teams playing their nemesis (both on and off the field) with all kinds of things on the line? This Saturday (aturday, aturday, aturday) won’t just establish who leads and whom follows in the post-season dance, it will decide which team takes home the Cascadia Cup (still wide-open) among? the Seattle Sounders, the Vancouver Whitecaps and…your…Portland Tim-BERS! [CROWD GOING WILD! REGGAETON HORNS!!] If I’m tracking the information posted on Sounder at Heart right, fun fact, Vancouver actually has the weakest grip on the Cascadia trophy.

The math is simple for the Timbers: if Portland wins and Vancouver loses or draws at Real Salt Lake, the Timbers host the play-in game versus Vancouver and lift the Cascadia Cup to the heavens! [SOUND OF CROWD GOING WILD, REGGAETON HORNS!!] The math gets a little more complicated around Seattle, but that has more to do with the mad scramble/crash-up derby among the teams that currently sit between 5th and 7th in the West. I pulled Vancouver out of that grouping because they can’t finish any higher than 7th, but, unless my math is wrong (as always, check it) Houston Dynamo FC, the Colorado Rapids, and Minnesota United FC can finish in any order – that’s up to and including Minnesota falling to 8th place (which would happen if and only if Vancouver beats RSL and they lose at home versus St. Louis CITY FC). Bottom line, Seattle will sit in third or fourth by the end of the night regardless and,

Even if I just wrote The Great Gatsby of playoff maths, all the above counts as a massive digression from the task at hand – i.e., tallying the things to worry about against the Sounders this Saturday and/or finding the best path to prolonging the Agony of Brian Schmetzer. Let’s turn to that now…

Seattle Sounders, The Basics
Record/Top Stats: 3rd in West, 5th overall; 16-9-8, 56 pts., 50 gf, 34 ga (+16); home record: 8-2-6
Last 10 Results: WLWLWWTWWW
Home or Away: HHAAAHHHAA

MLS Round-Up: Some Word Association on the Cusp of Decision Day

Ooh. Something about Orlando coming up.

With some strays called in – e.g., Columbus Crew SC (expectedly) picking at the bones of the New England Revolution (4-0) and Los Angeles FC sniping the Vancouver Whitecaps in second-half stoppage (2-1) - and nothing left to play but Decision Day, an urge to get things organized one final time before we take ‘em one game at a time (aka, the playoffs) kicked in. The rest of you do this in the privacy of your own mind, and you’re almost certainly better off for it. And yet, here we are…

Don’t expect deep analysis in anything below and I didn't flag more than a couple players by name. Also, judge me, if you must, for giving up early on doing league-wide coverage literally every season, but I still haven’t landed on a way of actually cover Major League Soccer that 1) I trust and 2) doesn't feel like rehashing the same shit everyone has plowed over three times or more. I’ll take another swing in 2025 – i.e., tinker with the methodology, maybe lower the bar for “trust,” etc. – but the best I can offer for 2024 is recollection of half- (or less-than-half-)remembered videos and highlights, a review of undeniable trends, both long- and short-term, and a succession of hiccups percolating up from my gut.

In nuts-‘n’-bolts terms, I’m gonna list every team in MLS, by conference and in their current order, from top to tail, and give a brief read on where they are now and their season as I understand it. Hot takes will come as my gut gives ‘em, otherwise…allons y!

WESTERN CONFERENCE (hey, that’s my home conference!)
Los Angeles Galaxy (1st in West, 2nd overall)
The somewhat rare team that can pull apart the opposition, arguably as good in possession as they are in transition. Vulnerabilities include a middling road record (6-6-4) and a middling defense, but the Galaxy have real talent all over the attacking third (given a preferred starting XI) and they can score from as many places. They’ve been lethal at home all season – only LAFC beat them there (and the last of their three home draws came in mid-May) – and they can beat any team on their day. They’ll have to win on the road to do it, but the Galaxy have a real shot at MLS Cup.

A Scouting Report & a Tease

Even your mom thinks I'm cool.

It’s not often that one gets to scout both teams that yer local team will play in the play-in they are doomed to play. And yet that’s exactly what happened when the Vancouver Whitecaps hosted Minnesota United FC and let them steal dinner with a 0-1 loss.

Most of the notes below point to Vancouver more than the Loons and, yes, that’s me hedging toward the ‘Caps as the Portland Timbers’ likeliest opposition for the play-in. Hot take. Yeah. At any rate, watching…about 75 minutes of this game dredged up thoughts and memories about both teams, and I’m going to lace those the post below. To be clear, I am familiar with both teams, as well as most of the players that line up for them, but I won’t pretend to I know either of them.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t done obsessive (unhinged) stuff all season to help me keep tabs on every team in Major League Soccer. No, you're the weirdo with the Word doc you created to track the progress of all 29 teams in the league because the Form Guide (hallelujah!) fell short of truly connecting you to the data. Not me, not this winner. That said, if I was that guy, I might have something like this just lying around.

Minnesota United FC
Record/Stats: 14-12-7, 49 pts., 54 gf, 48 ga (+6); home 6-6-4, away 8-6-3; 7th in West; 12th overall
Last 10 Results: LWLWWLWWTW
Venue:                HHHAAHAHAA (again, not laughing; H = home, A = away)
Decision Day Oppo: v STL

Vancouver Whitecaps
Record/Stats: 13-11-8, 47 pts., 50 gf, 45 ga (+5), home 6-6-4, away 7-5-4, 8th West, 14th overall
Last 10 Results:   WLWTWTLTLL
Venue:                  HHAHHAAHHH
Final Games: v LAFC, @ RSL

I’ll reference that below, but let’s start with: