A Seattle Sounders L'il Scouter & Portland v the Dregs of the West

Step One: less of this.

The Eastern Conference Re-Entry post took a pretty linear shape (and thanks to anyone who read it!), but, for reasons of local rooting interests, this Western Conference Re-Entry post will take a different shape.

It’ll start with a brief Scouting Report on the Portland Timbers’ next, dreaded opponent, the Seattle Sounders (aka, the Spoiled Rich Kids of the Middle North, aka, Cascadia’s Somehow Successful Fail-Sons). The section that follows expands on the template for the Eastern Conference Re-Entry by flagging all the teams within reach of the Timbers in the standings, whether above or below, and the post ends with a speed-run through the teams in the top half of the Western Conference table. With Portland closer to the bottom of the table than the top, that last section will be reduced or cut entirely as time allows…fwiw, I don’t know if it’s going to happen anymore than you do. Every day is a surprise/miracle. Even if neither are very good. [UPDATE: That section was cut, notes on the top eight in the West are written into the record indirectly and by suggestion.] Ahem. Getting on with it!

Before looking forward, I wanted to link to the long look back I posted right before MLS turned off the lights for the World Cup break. It was fairly straightforward, content-wise - just listing all the players and what I think of their contributions, talents and individual potential; you won’t see many rays of sunshine in there, because the sun struggles to get all the way down to 13th place. With that in mind (including the post), I wanted to start with a glance ahead to the next four games – e.g., at Seattle, v Dallas, v RSL, v Seattle - regardless of who’s lining up and giving direction to the starting eleven. (At time of posting, that is still interim head coach, Jack Cassidy), but Jeremy Peterman posted a quicky to Bluesky saying that the Timbers may report a new head coach this week.) The two things I liked to see:

1) Coherence in the Attack
Too often under Phil’s “guidance,” the Timbers functioned as a competitively dysfunctional improv troupe – i.e., too little “yes-anding” and too much “fuck it, guess I’ll just kick the ball.” Seeing the attacking pieces coordinate as they move on Thursday would be enough to make me coin the word "delief" (a delight meets a relief).

MLS Eastern Conference Re-Entry Cheat-Sheet: Your (Near) Post-World Cup Dose of Prevagen

From a movie/show called "State of Play," apparently.

With Major League Soccer returning to action this week (Eeeee!!!!), I put a little time into reorienting myself to what the big-picture state of play looked like before the World Cup break. So, with my results tracking Word doc as a guide (because MLSSoccer.com refuses to keep the Form Guide in full-season working condition), some sorting on the still-functioning (for now) Stats page, and a look ahead at what every team in MLS’s Eastern Conference has between today and (SIIIIGGHH!) the Leagues Cup in the first half of August, I put together brief ‘n’ loose notes on where every team in the East stands as regular season play resumes. There’s nothing deep down there, no more links, no kicking around tactics, notes on new signings, significant departures, and so on. This is just someone whispering over your shoulder to feed you a little more intel than you get off the name tag and your memory.

In the order they…stand, um, in the standings, these are my notes. Oh, and it looks like Leagues Cup kicks off on the first week of August. 

1st Nashville SC
Matches to Leagues Cup: v ATL, v MTL, @ ORL, @ DC
Notes
Compiled a 6-2-2 record over the ten games leading into the World Cup break, comfortably second in a runaway for the top three best goal differentials in MLS (Vancouver and San Jose are the other two), plus with three attacking players posting strong numbers in Sam Surridge (9 goals), Hany Mukhtar (6 goals, 5 assists), Warren Madrigal (5 goals, 4 assists; also, who?), and Cristian Espinoza (3 goals, 8 assists), plus the league’s sole remaining undefeated home record: Nashville’s better than fine. They’re also two points above Miami in the East with a game in hand. Based on the upcoming games listed above, and barring any disasters over the break, they’re a good bet to stay up here.

2nd Inter Miami CF
Matches to Leagues Cup: v CHI, @ MTL, v CLB
Notes
Their league-leading attack – led by (sigh) Lionel Messi – keeps Miami well above water and a free-swinging Eastern Conference (fun fact: every team in the West except three worst (SKC, Austin and Portland) have better goals allowed numbers than Miami). Their home record needs work (2-1-3, with the two wins coming versus Portland (of course) and a 6-4 win over Philly that underscores the “free-swinging” descriptor above. Miami will stick near the top, even if nothing in their past 10 games says their defense will improve (20 goals allowed, and against some crap teams). One likely under-appreciated detail: the assists they’re getting from Rodrigo De Paul (7) and Telasco Segovia (8). As for the upcoming, the Chicago game has fun written all over it, but I don’t see any gimmes in that run.

Portland Timbers, at the Break: Was It Underachieving?

something's gotta give, something's gotta give, something's...

To open the post with a question, does the Portland Timbers conscious uncoupling from Phil Neville render all that came before it even partially irrelevant?

Answer: Some combination of we’re about to find out and we’ll only know if the new hire makes the current team rise above lower middle-table class.

As I thought about what I wanted to write into the record during the moral injury timeout of Major League Soccer’s 2026 season, aka, the 2026 World Cup, I came up with a couple different approaches – e.g., reviewing every goal allowed this season to see if I could get a handle on whatever ails the Timbers defense (28 goals allowed so far, 2.0/game), or mining themes out of all the posts I’d written since First Kick 2026. On the theory that Neville’s departure renders all that at least partially irrelevant, all that’s going out the window.

Related, I’m not going to bother picking at the bones of the rotting camel carcass that ended Phil’s tenure, last Saturday’s 1-3 home loss versus the San Jose Earthquakes. On the most basic level, it was an(other?) example of game getting away from the Timbers; they gave up three goals with just over a quarter of the game played and Portland hasn’t scored more than two goals in any game outside the opener versus Columbus and versus a wretched, yet rising Sporting Kansas City team (now just three points below the Timbers). I doubt I would have put much time into that one had Neville stuck around. Setting aside the question of whether he was up to it (he wasn’t), the two-month The World Cup break will give every team in MLS something like a fresh start. Sure, some teams would make that start with more baggage than others – think of Portland running eight points behind the pace for the “real” (as in non-play-in) playoffs as starting adulthood with student debt in a race against trust-fund kids – but the Timbers brain-trust had plenty of information for gauging what was and wasn't working and making the relevant adjustments.

Those adjustments can only go so far, of course, with the extent limited by the players currently under contract with Portland. And that’s what the rest of this post will be: one man’s examination of the cards the Timbers currently hold in their hand and that its next manager will have to play. I’ll take those one at a time in player-by-player, position-by-position blurbs below - most based on the eye test, with a glance at the numbers – starting with the regulars and then on through the bench. Before touching on the present realities, however, let us turn our attention to a couple other externals.

San Jose Earthquakes Scouting Report: You Know What? Fuck It.

Yummy and a future worth dreaming about.

As I sit down to type this, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a point to it. The Timbers won’t play again until the middle of July (July!) and San Jose doesn’t play another regular season game until the week after. I mean, how many teams will come back after the break remade, refreshed and quite possibly smelling of peaches and mint. You say that’s silly, I say you never know. But, because I did the work…

The Basics

San Jose Earthquakes
9-3-2, 28 pts., 14 GP; 31 gf, 14 ga (+17); home 4-2-1, away 5-1-1
Last 10 Results: WWWWWWDDLL (6-2-2)
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ VAN (1-0 W); v SD (3-0 W); @ SKC (3-1 W); @ LAFC (4-1 W); v ATX (5-1 W); @ STL (3-2 W); @ TFC (1-1 D); v VAN (1-1 D); @ SEA (2-3 L); v FCD (2-3 L);

I made the personally unsettling decision to track only the past ten games for every team in Major League Soccer (literally killing me), but for anyone who forgot the San Jose Earthquakes conceded one single goal over their first six games (versus Seattle Sounders; hold that thought). Even after the surrendered their second goal, then third, then fourth, then they allowed two after that, etc., it took to the beginning of (fucking) May for San Jose to draw its next game of 2026. In the words of the great philosopher, Gwen Stefani, that shit is bananas for the team that traded Cristian Espinoza to Nashville SC and doesn’t have any other player that would make most people’s short list for league-elite players.

When they picked up their second loss of the season at Seattle, nobody blinked because why would you? They were 10-1-0 at the time, San Jose was bound to slip up at some point, so why not again a Sounders that both started strong and beat them previously? Even that was tricky – e.g., they started a sacrificial lineup and gave up two shit goals, but the first shit goal (midfield where?) – which tied the score – came after Ousseni Bouda and Preston Judd came into the game. Judd returned the game to 2-2 with his ninth(!) goal of 2026, but Seattle scored the winner (also not good; defenders where?) after Beau Leroux and the experienced Paul Marie came in to solidify the defense. And then came last weekend versus FC Dallas...

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Portland Timbers: Blood From a Stone

Some have it, some get out of the way.

With this as late as it is, I’m gonna do all of us a solid and keep it short. Then again, with the Portland Timbers once again sinking to the bottom of the Western Conference what else is there to say but not great, Bob?

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
My personal highlights included Cole Bassett nutmegging Rodrigo De Paul in the first half (even if the ensuing play went nowhere) and Joao Ortiz getting off scot-free after absolutely wrecking him in the second, but that doesn’t show up on the scoreboard like Lionel Messi cutting through four defenders like a cosmically centered border collie wrecking an obstacle course. You have to tip your hat to the guy on that one, no matter how grudgingly, but seeing the defenders lose the sunsetting legend score Miami’s first goal on yet another give-and-go and the 1,000,000th trailing run of his career sticks in the craw like a broken chicken bone. At any rate, the fat lady broke into her aria after the second goal. One could make a fair case she started her vocal exercises after the first.

You have to sit through the full highlights to see Portland’s better moments (with MLS doing the clipping, I assume Messi’s wunder-run consumed the snapshot whole). Despite posting decent numbers, the Timbers didn’t put up much resistance. Kevin Kelsy probably fired Portland’s most collectively competent shot on goal (second half header) and Cole Bassett shot a smart one from range in the first half, but their chances of scoring more than one goal felt like something between fantasy and pipe dream. With 13 games in the books and just one (tough) game left to play versus the San Jose Earthquakes (more…tomorrow? Thursday?), the stinging sense that Portland’s not really in the hunt for, well, anything lingers like a fart in an elevator. The answer to the question of what’s going wrong boils down to the enduring cliché [gestures broadly]. The eye test is only really damning on the attack end – take the six goals scored versus Sporting Kansas City out of the sample and Portland averages a sliver above one goal a game – but the defense can’t be great when the Timbers posted its only clean sheet…versus SKC.

Portland Timbers 6-0 Sporting KC: Love & Trust, Plus a Club du Foot Montreal Scouting Report

Kindly turn your attention to the little red dot...

In last week’s post, I recommended that Portland Timbers fans memory-hole the hopeless, whistle-to-whistle loss at Real Salt Lake. At the risk of pissing off, OH, everyone, I recommend that people memory-hole Portland’s Sunday-best 6-0 demolition of Sporting Kansas City. The argument for treating the SKC win like someone else’s bestest birthday ever actually makes more sense because, which of these things feels most likely to happen again: 1) Portland getting outplayed at every position but goalkeeper, or 2) the Timbers kicking rainbow sparkles out of some hapless team going for all-time Wooden Spoon?

If the Timbers roll up to Montreal on Wednesday and we see bright shimmering lights in the eastern skies, we’ll know it’s not the Aurora Borealis. It’s our boys kicking rainbow sparkles out of Club du Foot Montreal.

Needless to say, I don’t like our chances up north. I also don’t need Portland to keep this great thing rolling. All I need from them in Montreal is something between recognizable competence and three points. Per the title, this post will close with a wee Montreal Scouting Report. Before that, let’s relive the glorious thing I’m charging you all with forgetting…swear this is for your own protection.

Portland Timbers 6-0 Sporting Kansas City
What Passes for a Match Report
Even after Kristoffer Velde banged in a 6th-minute goal that was somehow equal parts unlikely and entirely on-brand, I still had no goddamn idea which way the game would ultimately goal. Speaking solely for myself, all doubts evaporated by the 26th-minute own-goal scored by that poor bastard Jacob Davis (who, just to note it, is one of several Jacobs/Jasons in SKC’s defense that I’ve seen mortally mortify himself over the first third of 2026). That one had some dark magic in it. Like a monkey’s paw curling just to give you the finger for some sin you may never have committed.

Sporting Kansas City Scouting Report & MLS Week 11 Wrap: A Parade of Weakness

So, "welcoming spirit" is a thing. 

This post ends with the Sporting Kansas City Scouting Report. For the record, (I swear) I did not do that to drag the reader through the rest of the post; skip to the bottom as the spirit moves you. It had more to do with keeping the past with the past and the future wherever it ends up. Think of it as kicking around what I know before moving on to what I think I know.

The secondary purpose comes with situating the Portland Timbers in the Western Conference before interrogating the good and bad that will come from whatever result they get against SKC. With an eye to feng shui, notes on Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference will come first, followed by notes on the West, followed by the SKC preview. To answer the question no one asked, yes, I did abandon the idea of writing about just three games. What I can I say: restlessness makes me an unreliable narrator. With that, let’s get something out of the way:

Results I Ignored
TFC 1-1 SJ (Toronto’s burning home games on draws (5, 8 of 11 at home); San Jose will be fine)
ATL 3-1 MTL (good for Atlanta, seriously, but Montreal’s bad on the road)
PHI 0-0 NSH (Nashville will be fine; Philly’s fishing around their pants for a Wooden Spoon)
LAG 1-1 VAN (Vancouver will be fine and should stay in Vancouver, goddammit)

Moving on to…

Eastern Conference Notes
Still Nashville’s conference to lose – though I’m seeing rumors about injuries, even beyond Sam Surridge – which make the shifts below them more interesting.