Level Set 2026, the Portland Timbers: Where Things Stand as We Wait for the Whistle to Blow

Hello, 2012.

[Ed. - Factually, yes, I did post a “farewell post” for this blog late last year – and it wasn’t the first time. I very much meant it at the time, but please see the bottom of this post where I mumble some excuses for what will change going forward and why the farewell holds up, if in the most sorta kinda way possible.]

What follows is a brief history of the Portland Timbers, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed in between those two sections and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., less than one week before First Kick 2026. I saw an Adam Sussman skeet telling me that Merritt Paulson told him to expect a couple more signings before then, so it's likely that not everything below is final…and yet, I’m not going to hold my breath for greatness or anything.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

…for obvious reasons, this one’s going to go on a bit longer than the others in the series…

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In my head, I knew the Portland Timbers had some lean seasons before they won MLS Cup 2015. That datapoint receded to where it felt like some other team’s history until I picked through Wikipedia posts about those early seasons, as if thumbing through a yearbook. I also remember the 2015 season through a very specific lens, but I’ll get to that. Starting at the beginning…

Level Set 23, Charlotte FC: It Was Just Another Tuesday, And Then...

Does the job. A job.

What follows is a brief history of Charlotte FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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I have a nasty habit of picturing Charlotte FC as a team wholly composed of Brandt Bronicos, but that’s a personal hangup, not history. Charlotte only joined MLS in 2022, but they’ve been a reasonably successful, if conservative start-up. One could make a case that they’ve improved season-on-season – e.g., no playoffs in 2022, then qualifying as a wild card in 2023, then qualifying for the playoffs clean in 2024 on the back of a lofty fifth-place finish in the East (then in 2025…wait for it) – but they also have yet to hit that prized gallop on the road to progress. instance, Charlotte struggled with scoring from the jump – e.g., partial to/stuck in the mid-40s (e.g., 45 goals in 2022, 44 in 2023, 46 in 2024) – and, if memory serves, they’ve never been good on the road. The sole reason Charlotte landed the wild card in 2023? MLS expanded the number of teams that qualified for the playoffs from a (half-)sensible 14 in 2022 to a comically expansive 18 in 2023 (which tracked as an insurance policy in the event Miami struggled). Most of the spicy stuff happens on the player side with this team – e.g., the failed star experiment that was DP forward Enzo Copetti, the low-simmering drama around Polish forward/(still) all-time leading scorer Karol Swiderski – but a kind of “Charlotte FC is a team that plays in MLS” level of buzz around the team remains. So far, think capable to a fault.

Level Set 22, Minnesota United FC: MLS's Marquises of the B Students

Noble, but also not.

What follows is a brief history of Minnesota United FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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I tend to think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. That’s only half right, if for a couple reasons. First, Minnesota missed the post-season entirely their first two seasons and again in 2023. Second, even when the Loons do qualify – which, to be clear, they’ve done more often not and cleanly (i.e., not as a wild card) – they almost always fall out before the quarterfinals. That drops them into the folds of the biggest wrinkle in the Joy Points formula* - i.e., teams only get credit for qualifying for the playoffs when they reach the quarterfinals – and that choice obscures the reality that the Loons are a solid regular season team. “Solid” feels like a good descriptor for what Minnesota has historically done on the field, as well. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to round about the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant fielding teams that were constipated in every sense of the word, equal parts stubborn and organized, with a touch of ruthlessness. That started with the arrival of Osvaldo Alonso over from Seattle in 2019 and Minnesota carried that tradition forward with additions like Jan Gregus(?) and Hassani Dotson(?). Putting that shield in front of “imposing” center backs – i.e., large, slow-ish, but combative and capable center backs like Michael Boxall, Brent Kallman, (briefly) Ike Opara, and Bakaye Dibassy – went a long way toward taking care of one side of the team. On the other, Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with enough talent to make a competent defense pay off enough times. The most famous version of that was the “mercurial” Emanuel Reynoso (here, “mercurial,” speaks to his love of playing hooky), but they've also pulled out a couple wild cards or two, with the too-oft injured Kevin Molino serving as a tragic figure. When all else fails, Minnesota leans into one of the best all-purpose Band-aids in MLS history, one-man multi-tool, Finnish jack-of-all-but-defensive-trades, Robin Lod to steer the ship to shore. When that certain magic player cannot be found, is unavailable (or sulks in Argentina, a la Reynoso), Minnesota winds up relying on a rotating cast of characters like Darwin Quintero (the dreams they had for him…), Ethan Finlay and, more recently, Bongokuhle Hlongwane (just re-signed), Tani Oluwaseyi, and half-random guys like, say, Franco Fragapane. All that work and movement has yielded the returns immediately below…

Level Set 21, New York City FC: Chivas USA 2.0, Which (Mostly) Works Better

No.

What follows is a brief history of New York City FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the concept hatched with Chivas USA – i.e., planting a junior club for a major international team in the U.S., in this case, (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City. New York’s second team joined a very different league, of course, one where the rules actively invited the signing of ringers. As befitted a team playing in America’s premier city (sorry, LA), the organization went big (if mostly in name), signing England/Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, classy Italian regista (think I’m using that correctly), Andrea Pirlo (loved this guy), and Spanish golden-generation great, striker David Villa. They also insulted that talent by making them play homes games at Yankee Stadium, aka, a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look that hasn’t been a regular feature in MLS since the league’s earliest days when teams played most games over American football fields. Happily, NYCFC has constructed a soccer-specific at a place called Willets Point. (Yay!) Unhappily, and somewhat incredibly, that facility won’t open until the 2027 season (boo! Honestly, I can’t out “good job,” with “about fucking time” getting in its way.) NYCFC’s debut season reinforced a familiar lesson, chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (and aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams ain’t enough. The team missed the playoffs in their first season (by quite a bit), and defensive failures would plague the team until they got more holistic about roster building. Defensive reinforcements arrived over their second and third seasons, led by Maxime Chanot and Alexander Callens in central defense and Sean Johnson in goal, and that laid the foundation that rebuilt the team. Success wouldn’t come until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers at fullback, up the midfield spine and at the sharper end of the attack. A lot of the relevant players were on the roster as early as the 2019 – guys like crunching No. 8s, Alexander Ring and a young James Sands, fullback Anton “Tin-Tin” Tinnerholm and Ronald Matarrita, and a young forward named Valentin Castellanos, who went by “Tata.” The seemingly eternal Maximiliano Moralez was the key piece, though, the modest mouse that got the attack singing from the same sheet. The seasons since have been berry, berry good: NYCFC finished in the top ten every season from 2016 to 2022 - and in the top five more often than not – and reached the quarterfinals of the playoffs in 2024 and 2025. Blue New York reached its peak in 2021 with the arrival of Norwegian Ronny Deila as head coach, a star-turn season from Castellanos, and its first MLS Cup at the end (over the fallen, last-gasping bodies of the Portland Timbers). With Ring as a notable exception, that roster didn’t look so different from 2019’s and that speaks to the consistency of NYCFC’s roster-builds. Their worst season came in 2023, after Castellanos left (factually happened in the middle 2022), a couple players aged out, others moved on - Johnson and Callens stand out – and the hot, new, often young fixes like Santiago Rodriguez, Talles Magno and…Richie Ledezma(?) struggled to maintain the same standard. NYCFC have come back since, but the lofty peak they climbed in 2021 towers a little higher lately.

Level Set 20, Seattle Sounders: The Kristoffersons of MLS

Good at everything, etc., but mostly defense.

What follows is a brief history of the Seattle Sounders, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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The Seattle Sounders have missed the playoffs just three times since joining MLS in 2009 – and, here, “missing the playoffs” includes falling out at any point before the conference quarterfinals (though they did whiff entirely in 2022) – and their haul of trophies makes them the second-best team of the past decade on the Joy Points Scale*. Only Los Angeles FC tops them over that period (though not all time…wait for it…). That hits closer to home for Timbers fan, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Smart first-season signings laid the foundation for that success: think everything from Jhon Kennedy Hurtado from Colombia, Sebastian Le Toux from the USL, and most important for me (because I obsess over the No. 6/No. 8 area), midfield wrecker Osvaldo Alonso (from one of the many in-tournament defections from a visiting Cuban team). Throw in a smart reclamation or two from the Expansion Draft – all-time utility-player great Brad Evans stood out – add a good first DP (Colombian forward Fredy Montero), put it all under a road-tested, road-approved MLS head coach like Sigi Schmid, and the Sounders had themselves a team. They made the playoffs both from the jump, then season after season, including percolating into the semifinals by their third season (2012; not easy, even even in the multi-DP era) and returning again in 2014. Those “blurps” into the big time followed from more smart signings – e.g., DP winger/midfielder Mauro Rosales and then-USMNT-regular Eddie Johnson in 2012, then USMNT fixture Clint Dempsey and the bustling Nigerian, Obafemi Martins in 2014 – and letting them cook without a care in the world in front of one of the Sounders’ many (insanely) reliable defenses. It was raining trophies from there (hallelujah): the Supporters’ Shield in 2014 (amen), then an MLS Cup in 2016 (amen) and another, better one in 2019 (amen; also, MLS Cup 2016 almost put me off soccer). Whether one starts that run in 2014 or 2016, that makes Seattle MLS’s fourth Shadynasty, after late 1990s DC United, early-to-mid-2000s San Jose/Houston, and the LA Galaxy teams from the first half of 2010s. Beyond the names listed above, Seattle owes that success to having smart succession plans plan for game-winning talent – e.g., just one season separates Morales’ departure from the arrival Nicolas Lodeiro (a better DP, frankly); they only burned one season of riding Dempsey’s aging knees and a mish-mash of attacking half-solutions before calling in Raul Ruidiaz (2018) to boost the next generation of attacking players (e.g., Jordan Morris) and the next round of journeyman (e.g., Will Bruin); Kim Kee-Hee took over the defense after MLS legend/monster Chad Marshall retired (2018?) and Roman Torres couldn’t step onto the field often enough, and Yeimar cane in after him. It even applies at the coaching level - Brian Schmetzer replaced Schmid after 2016 and he’s been there ever since and with very little cause to leave. The Sounders have never really fallen behind, on or off the field. After eight trophies over 16 seasons, one more thing sets them apart: they won MLS’s first, and only, “real” CONCACAF Champions’ title in 2022. (With all the respect in the world to the 1998 DC team and the 2000 LA Galaxy team, I think it took those teams winning for Liga MX to take that tourney seriously again). And, finally, maybe even fittingly, Seattle is just one of three teams to win three straight U.S. Open Cups (the other three: Fall River F.C. 1929-1931; Stix, Baer and Fuller 1933-1934 (does it even count if it’s over two legs? New Bedford Whalers second the "yes" motion); Greek American AA (1967-69). That’s one hell of a tradition to hold up and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’d like to see them drop it for five, six seasons. Time in the wilderness builds character for both a team and a fanbase.

Level Set 19, Nashville SC: The Responsible Younger Sibling

It's Shaun Cassidy, right?

What follows is a brief history of Nashville SC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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Nashville SC joined in the COVID season (2020), along with Inter Miami CF, but fate has made them the plain sister/unathletic brother to MLS's glamour boys. And they built their inaugural roster as if they'd had their fortunes told by an insurance agent. It started with anchoring the backline with Walker Zimmerman and the midfield with forever-MLS vet, Dax McCarty; the front-office honchos filled out those two lines with still more familiar, imposing figures – e.g., Dave Romney and Daniel Lovitz in defense and Anibal Godoy in midfield. When it came to the offense, Nashville spent both big and wisely on one player – Hany Mukhtar, a future (and deserved) league MVP (2022) – but spent a couple seasons looking to squeeze more production than other teams got out of MLS journeymen like C. J. Sapong, Teal Bunbury, or even Alex Muyl and Fafa Picault. That’s not to say they haven’t tried to level up with bolder signings – e.g., I thought they’d landed a secondary scorer with winger Randall Leal, alas – but pinching pennies on the attacking side may have been Nashville’s first tradition. Have they moved on since? One could make a case for Sam Surridge as a first step – they (reportedly) paid $6.5 million – but he also came over after a shaky season in the English Championship. (And who can see what the future holds?) If Nashville has demonstrated anything, it’s how far a good defense goes toward getting reliable results and/or into the playoffs. Apart from a slip in 2024, Nashville has qualified for the playoffs every season since joining MLS, if sometimes only as a wild card, which, again, doesn’t count around here*…also, yes, wait for it. Consistency ain’t so bad, of course, and a good defense is great, but a team has to have a little something on the other end to win tournaments – and one player can’t shoulder the entire attack. Call it illustration, call it a quirky bit of trivia, Nashville didn’t even make the MLS Cup quarterfinals in Mukhtar’s 2022 super-season.

Level Set 18, Columbus Crew: The Hottest Ticket in Flyover Country

It is hard to explain what this meant at the time. Seriously.

What follows is a brief history of the Columbus Crew, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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Don’t let the(/the greatest) flyover state thing fool you: the Columbus Crew (which I type as “Columbus Screw” 75% of the time), have long had a knack for signing exotic players. They’ve signed their share of guys who fit the working-class image of their original crest (faceless, but the crossed arms suggest the cat-calls) – e.g., Brian McBride stands out there, but they also got great mileage out of Josh Williams, Chad Marshall, Jonathan Mensah and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Artur and, briefly, Aidan Morris – but they put their stamp on league history through guys like Guillermo Barros-Schelotto, Lucas Zelarayan and, most recently, Cucho Hernandez. Toiling under the shadow of the early greats, DC United, the Los Angeles Galaxy and, to a lesser extent, the Chicago Fire and Sporting Kansas City, the Crew spent most of their first decade bumping against other teams’ achievements. They yanked a Supporters’ Shield out of their asses in 2004, but they also missed the playoffs five times between 2000 and 2007 and felt the sting of the Wooden Spoon in 2006. A mere two seasons later, though, Columbus became the smoothest, smartest team in MLS. Coached by Sigi Schmid, guided by Schelotto and back-stopped by a (hey!) working-class defense and midfield built around Marshall, Brian Carroll, and Brad Evans – incidentally, all players who would go on to anchor the all-time great expansion team (Seattle; it’s Seattle) – the Crew picked up the double in 2008, plus another Supporters’ Shield in 2009. They’d cracked a unique approach to the designated player code: finding great talents that few people States-side had heard of. And it paid off smartly until it abruptly did not – or at least until they re-learned the old trick. Between 2012 and 2022, Columbus missed the playoffs as many times as they made them and, despite being the home to the first (and, fair point, super-basic) soccer-specific stadium in MLS history, Columbus barely survived a bid to relocate the team after the 2018 season. The fans pulled together to fight that off in a way that still inspires and, a couple seasons later, Columbus reclaimed their crown as the best team between the coasts in Major League Soccer. They won two more MLS Cups – one in 2020 (aka, The Weird Season; look at the freakin' attendance) and again in 2023, both games at a saucy stroll – and they might have had one more trophy had they not screwed themselves over in MLS Cup 2015 (see: Clark, Steve and Valeri, Diego). For all their failures, and they’ve had a few, Columbus does have a bless’d eye for spotting talent. Checking their all-time roster and scrolling down is a genuinely worthwhile exercise, if just to see all the names that (arguably, in some cases) became more famous on other teams around the league. Per the Joy Points Scale*, Columbus remains one of the most successful teams in MLS history and all of the various powers-that-be that have guided them through damn near three decades’ worth of history deserve credit for accomplishing everything that they did in a…let’s go with unexpected market.