The MLS Semi-Recent History...Ah, Fuck Me, I Did Power Rankings

We're going deep, people. And shallow.

This post begins the process of looking forward to Major League Soccer’s (normal, hopefully) 2023 regular season. There are a number of concrete things in the works – among them, a new team (St Louis CITY FC (I’m told capitalizing “CITY” is deliberate, so I’m following the form guide), the launch of a new TV deal (it ain’t cheap, but it’s cheaper than a year’s worth of SlingTV) – as well as some ephemeral things we’ll all imagine together, e.g., a post-World Cup bump or slump, depending on how the U.S. Men’s National Team does in the repressive, murderous shithole still known as Qatar.

That said, this look forward begins with a look back – specifically, to how all the teams in MLS have done over the past decade-plus of competition. I had grandiose dreams of getting all granular with this, posting mini-histories for all the teams and flagging key players, but decided that was both pointless, what with teams cutting players (and, more to the point, not yet adding new players), and against the spirit of where I want and hope to take future league-wide posts going forward...which assumes twitter survives the impulsive sociopath that bought it a couple weeks back. If things hold together from today into the future, I want/hope to take in the regular season action from a bird’s-eye view, i.e., something more narrative and, if I can get the screws in my brain just right, looser. Which segues nicely to this post...

The research was quick, dirty and asked just one question: where did all the teams that participated in MLS for any given year between 2010 and 2022 finish at the end of the regular season? That misses a couple things, obviously – the proverbial “peaking at the right time” theory that became fashionably cliche in the early-/mid-2010s, but also a very real phenomenon like post-season form – but the thing I really wanted to establish was how all the teams that will compete next year have done over a fair patch of time. Or even lately – which does come up and in the way that anyone who follows the league would expect.

Before getting into that, I wanted to note some fun stuff I discovered while poking around the past. For instance, Chivas USA competed in the league all the way up to 2014; they’re not competing today anymore, not directly anyway, but I’d completely forgotten that my Portland Timbers ever played that team. Related to that, both Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo played in the Eastern Conference from 2011 to 2014 - and both were very competitive in the East during that time (to the tune of placing 1st and 2nd in 2011).

Of perhaps more interest, the 2010 and 2011 seasons featured pretty goddamn wacky rules for playoff qualification. If memory serves, this followed from a fleeting obsession with total points as the ultimate arbiter of which teams deserved what. They didn’t go too nuts in 2011 – that season saw the top three teams in each conference qualify for the post-season, along with the four teams with the highest points total after that – but the league went all-in on the concept in 2010. That season, just the top TWO teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs followed by the next four teams, regardless of the conference. And that, kids, is how the Western Conference sent six teams to the playoffs while the Eastern Conference sent just two...and did I mention the league had only 16 teams that season? That year got weird, and all the way down to the Colorado Rapids besting FC Dallas in MLS Cup. The perils of drugs and/or getting loose with playoff qualification concepts...

Portland Timbers 2022 Review, aka, The Malaise Post

Aren't we all her? Only with beer?

I’m going to front-load the scandals that stalked the Portland Timbers/Thorns organization until it forced them to make the same choice they should have made half a decade prior. Nice as it felt to see Gavin Wilkinson and Mike Golub get their long-overdue comeuppance for years worth of cowardice and asshole-ism (respectively?), the muleheaded determination to let the wounds fester until something like the third investigation called sepsis by its name did what those things do: kill the host. Honestly, to persist in something that willfully destructive boggles the mind.

Fucking morons...

Now, had things worked out on the field for the Timbers the same way they did for, say, the Thorns, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this cardigan gearing up to bum you out. But, goddamn, if light brown and mustard yellow aren’t my colors...

Bluntly, I am excited about exactly one player on the Portland Timbers current roster: Santiago Moreno. That doesn’t mean I neither rate nor like anyone else: for all its issues, I don’t see a need to burn it all down and start from scratch (which wouldn’t work in any case); moreover, I’m open to the argument they under-performed this year. Going the other way, I lean toward thinking they didn’t – or, perhaps more accurately, they played to the level of available personnel. Staying healthy matters to any team, obviously, but the Timbers have operated on a late-stage Jenga level for longer than I like. And if losing one piece, or even two, means the whole thing comes down? Well, that’s when you know you’re doing something wrong.

The key missing piece was Felipe Mora. Portland’s transition game relied on his implausible knack (because fucker’s short) for receiving the first pass into the opposition’s defensive third and finding a good, and ideally unsettling, pass before defenses could clutter up the space. The Timbers attack could rarely break down a compacted defense even with Mora on the field, but the ball movement in the attacking third mingled buck-passing (take. or. take. a. fucking. shot. god. dammit.) with a sensation not unlike despair for much of 2022. A guy who pops into the twitter feed with the occasional comment argues that Gio Savarese organizes the attack to work for tap-ins. I think he’s sold me on that argument at this point. Even if he hasn’t sold me on his particular solution – i.e., build the team around speed – agreeing that something ain’t working is the first step to doing something different. Which, here, means anything.

MLS 2022 Season Review: Did the Product Deliver?

Good God, yes. Now stop shouting.

I know I said I’d post a Portland Timbers review/preview by the end of the weekend, but I say all kinds of things that smart people take with a massive fucking salt lick – e.g., I’ll never post this feature again, I’m checking out of twitter, etc. etc. etc.

With the season wrapped up and MLS Cup in the well-heeled hands of Los Angeles FC – who, for the record, I doubted to the end – putting a narrative bow on Major League Soccer’s 2022 felt like a more fitting post for this Sunday night. If you’re fishing for something tactical or stats-driven, close this post immediately and look elsewhere. I have a simple goal for this post, one that boils down to answering one simple question: did Major League Soccer deliver a quality product in 2022?

Before digging in, set aside whatever frustration you feel about your local team’s failure to achieve – that goes double for Timbers fans, who suffered one of those even-year grinds where nothing went right and they missed out on the good stuff. Going the other way, having low expectations going in to 2022 could mean you wound up something close to happy about your team’s season, even if they didn’t so much as see a flash of silverware....and, there, FC Cincinnati isn’t the only team that fits that description.

With all that in mind, let’s start by working backwards from MLS Cup 2022 to the end of the regular season.

First thing first, 2022 ended with the rare feat of both No. 1 seeds – LAFC and the Philadelphia Union – making the final. A quick, sloppy review of the final standings of seasons past shows (Source 1 and Source 2) that has happened just three other times in league history – DC United and the Los Angeles Galaxy in 1998, the New England Revolution and the Galaxy again in 2002, and the Chicago Fire and the San Jose Earthquakes in 2003. All of those happened during the first 10 years of the league’s existence, back when the league fielded between 10 team and 12 – which put less clutter between any one of them and the top seed. A No. 1 seed reached the final 10 more times, but, again, the hit rate clusters to the league’s early history. In the years after 2006 – aka, the league’s 10th birthday – only four No. 1 seeds clawed their way to MLS Cup – the Columbus Crew in 2008, the Galaxy in 2009 and again in 2011, and Toronto FC in 2017.

FC Cincinnati 2022 Season Review/Preview: Competence's Unexpected Dilemmas

The view from 2019-2021. Fucker looks massive.

I decided to park on a review of FC Cincinnati’s 2022 season for a variety of reasons – the choice to check out in mid-July among them (it’s possible my middle name, “Anders,” is Norwegian for “erratic”) – but not really knowing how to read their season-ending 0-1 loss to the now-MLS-Cup-bound Philadelphia Union played its part as well. In so many words, I understood Cincy had defied virtually every observer’s expectations, but couldn’t really place them in a league-wide context.

Seeing both Philadelphia and Los Angeles FC kick great lumps out of the opposition in their respective semifinals – though, just to note it, LAFC played a more one-way game – went some distance to filling in that blank. FC Cincinnati didn’t just have their best-ever season, they had a very good one. To lift a line out of Matt Doyle’s year-end review:

“’Everything from June 18 to Decision Day is the highlight’ also has an argument, as over that 20-game stretch, Cincy lost just twice. That’s the best of anybody in MLS.”

The bitter little boy who lives inside my head compels me to point out that 10 of those games ended as draws, a point Doyle concedes sotto voce when he notes that “Cincy dropped more points from leading positions this year than anyone but the Revs” (and is it just me or did five teams drop the most points from leading positions? I’ve read that stat somewhere for at least three teams). That bitter little boy missed a deeper truth that I thought I’d written at some point this season, but, because I can’t find it, here it is again: those ten draws meant that Cincinnati went toe-to-toe against all kinds of teams, six of them future playoff teams (including New York City FC), and gave away very little. Call that a long of saying that all those dropped points didn’t matter after Decision Day: what mattered was that Cincy showed they stood just as high as (literally) half the teams in Major League Soccer. And, when you’ve got that, getting into the playoffs amounts to having a chance in every game going forward. As Red Bull New York learned in the hardest of ways.

All that’s better than laudable. It’s beautiful, especially given the dark slapstick that came before. From there, the question becomes how to get better in 2023.

Red Bull New York 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Can I Make This a Tale of Good Versus Evil? Yes, Yes, I Can

Earlier today, I saw a tweet celebrating the fact Red Bull New York crashed out of the playoffs. If I had to write a concurring opinion, I’d mourn how far they’ve fallen since the Thierry Henry/Tim Cahill/Sacha Kljestan/Dax McCarty days. Like watching 11 drunken men trying to climb a goddamn greased poll, I tell you.

I don’t have a headcount of how many neutral Major League Soccer fans wanted FC Cincinnati to come out of the...is it a play-in, or a conference quarterfinal (does it matter)? At any rate, on a day when Cincinnati managed the more controlled approaches to goal, while the Red Bulls flailed in some fortunate something from distance, Cincy left Red Bull Arena with the ticket to the next round of the 2022 MLS Playoffs. And there was much rejoicing (yaayyyyyy).

I haven’t written about FC Cincinnati since...shit, July, but I’ve dipped in here and there to stay current. Between the opposition and the plethora of draws they played in the second half of the season, I fully braced to see today’s game slump into penalties. Instead, and with the housekeeping crew at McMenamin’s Kalama Lodge impatiently tapping at the door, I had the good luck to see Brandon Vazquez’s game-winner and to miss the overstuffed stoppage time minutes tacked on to the end of the game. I doubt anyone quibbled with the final score (have I mentioned it was 2-1 to Cincy yet?), I only know I found it satisfying.

Because Pat Noonan has trotted out something like the same line-up for as far back as I’ve noticed, there’s not a lot to say about the roster beyond, I think he’s on to something. Not every part of the set-up clicked – e.g., the Red Bull Collective did a great job of keeping the ball away from Vazquez and Brenner for something like 86 minutes (Brenner’s point-blank header, saved by Carlos Coronel notwithstanding), but an in-form player needs only a chance and a (again) collective breakdown on Red Bull’s right side gave Vazquez the one clear look he needed.

How You (And I) Should Have Known the Timbers Would Miss the 2022 Playoffs

This was how I told them apart. Now?

It becomes rarer with each passing season, but I still see people argue it’s impossible to support two teams at the same time. My rebuttal: it’s as easy as wanting one of those teams win every game and wanting the other to win every game except the ones where they play that first team. And that’s how I feel about the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, respectively, and I’ll never understand how that’s complicated.

Going the other way, and unlike past three seasons, watching the Timbers play all season while I watched/tracked Cincy had more value than it did in the past – i.e., most of the past three seasons saw the Timbers wake up sometime in late summer and roll into the playoffs, while Cincy typically started wilting somewhere around late may and continued to the end like some overwrought Shakespearian actor counting his wounds until he rather loudly expired. There has always been a whiff of ne’er the twain shall meet about the experience, in other words, but that changed with Major League Soccer’s 2022 season.

To start with the full disclosures, yes, I really did believe that both Cincinnati and Portland would make the 2022 playoffs. That bet panned out for one team – FC Cincinnati – but not the other...whose name shall go unmentioned. Both teams needed to get something out of their final game of the season - Real Salt Lake away for Portland and DC United away for Cincy. I read both of those games as winnable, hence the whole thing about both teams making the 2022 playoffs, but I also overlooked something, arguably out of habit. The thing that makes that remarkable was how obvious it should have been in retrospect. And that goes back to something I would never expected going into 2022 – i.e., how similar Cincy and Portland would be by season’s end.

First and foremost, Portland and Cincinnati tied a lot - 13 games per team, i.e., tied for second under 2022’s undisputed masters of sharing points, Columbus Crew SC (who had 16 draws and who also missed the playoffs). Another fun fact (and unless I miscounted): Cincy and Portland had only six clean sheets all season, a detail that points to something else that’s obvious - i.e., both teams gave up goals with very real reliability. By the final tally, Cincinnati actually gave up three more goals than Portland did, 56 to 53. Moreover, just four points separated the two teams. And yet Cincy’s in while Portland’s out. And yet, that’s not even the weird part.

A Statement on Merritt's Statement

Dick!

“Yates’ investigation found that Paulson knew of other alleged, non-sexual abuses as early as 2014, but did not act on the information. It also found that in a conversation with the Western New York Flash — after Riley and the Thorns parted ways — that Wilkinson blamed Shim for ‘putting Riley in a bad position’ and said that he would ‘hire (him) in a heartbeat.’ Riley was soon hired by the Flash, which later relocated and became the North Carolina Courage.”

“’In 2014, after Riley’s first season as head coach of the Thorns, the NWSL issued an anonymous player survey in which players identified Riley as “verbally abusive,” “sexis(t),” “destructive” and stated he “s--- on (the) players every day,”’ U.S. Soccer’s report reads. ‘The survey results were shared with NWSL Executive Director Cheryl Bailey, USSF President Sunil Gulati and (CEO and secretary general) (Dan) Flynn, but no one provided them to the team and no action was taken.’”

And that’s without getting into darker findings about the Portland Timbers/Thorns front office impeding the investigation, revelations that Timbers/Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson “not only enabled, but also vouched for [former Thorns head coach Paul] Riley,” a man who, even they now agree, used his position to manipulate and do all the abuses (sexual, emotional, professional, probably some others) during his time with the team. And, as the phrase goes, they knew.

Just over(?) 24 hours passed (does it matter?) before Paulson released a statement. He attempted contrition – he may even believe it – but the substance of the response amounted to an apology that, in context, reeks of insincerity. Moreover, taking the token step of removing himself and the other executives under suspicion (Wilkinson and Mike Golub) from all “all Thorns-related decision making” raises more questions than it answers – e.g., if they didn’t take a pay-cut and now have less day-to-day responsibility, how is that not like out-of-school suspension for a high school kid who doesn’t give a fuck?

Portland Timbers 1-2 Los Angeles FC: Acceptance

Fuck it.

May as well start where the game did – i.e., with the line-up the Portland Timbers chose to field in a, for them, semi-existential Sunday afternoon. They lined up the now-familiar back three, if with the personnel gently scrambled, and Juan Mosquera and Claudio Bravo on either side of Diego Chara and Cristhian Paredes in a four-man midfield. Mosquera and Bravo played as fully-modern fullbacks - dropping back to defend and running into the attack, as needed., etc. The slightest riff on the more of the same, in other words.

The real place of curiosity, at least for me, was the front line: Dairon Asprilla and Santiago Moreno on either side of Jaroslaw Niezgoda – or at least that’s how ESPN’s broadcast had it. Then again, I’m looking at the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey version The Mothership posted as official line-up, and who really knows at this point? Assuming I have it right – i.e., Asprilla, Niezgoda and Moreno up top – the big question going in was whether that set of players knew how to handle and/or finish shot creation. Based on what I saw online, the reaction was equal parts underwhelmed and confused; “consternation” sums it up nicely.

As for me, I greeted the line-up with...all right. The broadcast team hepped me to a couple things I didn’t know – e.g., Eryk Williamson had a compromised hamstrung – but I didn’t mind it or could at least find some kind of logic to it. That assumed, however, that Timbers head coach, Giovanni Savarese, held the same thoughts in his head – e.g., that he would play a cautious first half, then trickle in game-changers like Eryk Williamson and Sebastian Blanco to salt away the big, playoff-clinching win. In short, it all made sense to me so long as Gio did certain things at certain times. For instance, get his game-changers into the game with enough time to find it.

Back in the game that happened – i.e., the Timbers 1-2 home loss to Los Angeles FC - Savarese didn’t introduce Yimmi Chara and Williamson until the 74th minute. I can’t say that cost them the game (I don’t do counterfactuals), but that doesn’t feel like enough time for most attacking players to get hold of a game. Yimmi’s special - 90 minutes may not be enough for him - but I would have liked to see another 10 minutes or more for Eryk; it’s not like Jaroslaw Niezgoda did much outside one shining moment early in the 2nd half, after all. Moreover, Eryk strikes me as the kind of player who needs some time to figure out who’s picking up what he’s dropping; Niezgoda’s seems the same, for what it's worth, but I gave up on seeing Gio put him anywhere besides the front line months ago.

MLS Week 32/33 Countdown: Because I Had to Do Something to Get Me in the Mood

That's to say, people were still on the big boat.

Despite what you see online, I haven’t stopped thinking about our clumsy little domestic league, but, GODS, how the monstrous, charnel house that is Qatar 2022 (aka, the Winter World Cup) put the just, regular and long-established rhythms of the MLS regular season through the blender. In years past, October was the month for checking out on the league/pissing off for the anniversary. Thanks to FIFA hitting new heights of corruption and venality, it’s entirely possible I’ll miss the decisive moment of my Portland Timbers’ 2022 season. And that's after missing so many for FC Cincinnati down the stretch. On the plus side, if some very reasonable things break the right way, fans may get a Decision Day 2022 chock-full of momentous decisions.

And I’ll do anyone who finds this post the favor of not pretending I’m doing anything new here, results and schedules are my bag, I’m reaching in again and generally, etc. I am, however, going to sharpen the focus to back up two half-bold statements:

Why FC Cincinnati Will Make the 2022 Playoffs; and
Why the Portland Timbers Will Make the 2022 Playoffs

I went with “half-bold” because only one of those feels at all risky. So, let’s start with the safe one:

Why FC Cincinnati Will Make the 2022 Playoffs
First, and funnily, the positional range of teams in the Eastern Conference with a reasonable shot at making the playoffs has barely shrunk since Week 32. Due respect to the New England Revolution, but they have more teams above them than places in the lifeboat – i.e., they have to win out to top out at 7th and it would take every team above them failing to make it happen. Related, I only kept Charlotte in the mix due to their game in hand. With that, here are the teams I can call alive in the East without getting shady about it, their total number of points and their remaining opponents and where they play them:

FC Cincinnati, 46 points, v CHI, @ DC
Orlando City SC, 46 points, v @ NYC, @ MIA, v CLB
Inter Miami CF, 42 points, @ TFC, v ORL, v MTL
_________________ (aka, the playoff line)
Columbus Crew SC, 42 points, v RBNY, @ CLT, @ ORL
Atlanta United FC, 40 points, @ NE, v NYC
Charlotte FC, 38 points, v PHI, v CLB, @ RBNY

Columbus Crew SC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Comedy Gold

My birthday came early this year!

Did the Portland Timbers deserve their late, late equalizer? No, they did not. But that also feels like the wrong question for the moment. So, try this:

Was it funny? Yes, yes it was. I’d sit through a three-hour insurance seminar with an hour devoted to "team-building" and a bologna sandwich and Kool-Aid for a lunch if you told me I could see sad Caleb Porter at the end of it.

Still, smart shot by Santiago Moreno. And, oh, the whimsy of the assist coming off Bill Tuiloma’s head! As for Columbus Crew SC: I’d pity them under literally every other circumstance, but when your team needs a point (and FC Cincinnati needs someone to trip up there rival) you harden your heart and point and laugh....still, you gotta wonder which god Columbus pissed off...

As I said when I sat down to a frog in a tray way back in junior high, there’s so little to dissect here. Columbus played the better game, just slower than they needed to. Despite what the calendar says, the game as a whole had a mid-August vibe. With few exceptions – and those will be noted below – the Timbers played the first half as if they didn’t even want the points and they didn’t raise their game all that much in the second. A great feed to an increasingly anonymous Yimmi Chara and a flurry of corner kicks aside (all around the 58th minute), Portland rarely got close enough to see Columbus’ goal, never mind threaten it.

In their defense, Columbus didn’t do much better. They came within a stray shoulder of scoring an insurance goal, of course, and Cucho Hernandez got loose a couple times, but, apart from "that magic moment" when Kevin Molino put them ahead, I think the xG does a swell job of translating that sleeper of a game into numbers. Again, that felt like nothing so much as sitting through a long, pointless movie that slips in a great joke right before the credits rolled.

And, because I don’t think we learned much of anything today, let’s just do talking points and get on with our day.

MLS Week 32 (or Thereabouts) Narrative Preview: A Look at the Mid-Section

Today's area of interest.

With the finish line looming, I thought I’d circle back to where things are in the Major League Soccer playoff race. And, because I couldn’t handle the constraints of another twitter thread…don’t fence me in, baby…

Here, I’m less concerned with what’s ahead (with the unusual exceptions; see below) than where teams are going into, for most, their 32nd regular season game of 2022. About that, some teams have a game in hand right now – e.g., Orlando City SC, FC Cincinnati, Columbus Crew SC, Inter Miami CF, the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Seattle Sounders – but it’ll take a little aligning of the stars for most of them to make said game come good.

Moreover, this quick post focuses on the middle of the table – i.e., fourth place through tenth in both conferences. I don’t know how the question of who will finish first in each conference remains open – it’ll be the Philadelphia Union in the East and Los Angeles FC in the West – but figure it’s a math thing; the second-place teams look safe as well, even if the math’s a little tighter there, but the battle to finish third ain’t over…though it could get there in either conference or both if the results go a certain way this weekend. And yet all of that strikes me as far less important than the bleached-bones existential question of who will make the 2022 playoffs, hence the focus on (over-)broad middle of the table…

…which, truth be told, reminds of a mosh-pit at a Jimmy Buffett concert – i.e., inexplicable, hard to watch and by and large a race to nowhere. Now, for a closer, narrative look going by conference.

The Eastern Conference Scrum

While I still can’t see New York City FC going under – they’re still seven points over the line – they’ve stagnated badly enough to join the conversation. And if there is a theme to the East, stagnation ain’t a bad fit. Only two teams can lay a positive claim on momentum – Cincy and, of all teams, Atlanta United FC – but neither can argue they’re moving fast: Atlanta kept themselves relevant on the back of two straight wins (v Toronto FC and at Orlando), while Cincinnati has done nothing more than win games they should (v Charlotte FC and v San Jose Earthquakes). Orlando had a good run going till Atlanta tripped them up – four straight wins, a couple of them impressive – but it’s pretty goddamn bleak from there. Each of Columbus, Miami and New England have just one win in their past seven games and all them are fairly agnostic when it comes to whom they fail against and where they do it. With that in mind, here are the match ups for the relevant teams in the East (and where they stand on points, organized according to the standings):

Portland Timbers 1-0 Minnesota United FC: Say, That Was Lucky. And Ugly.

A metaphor (I couldn't find a better image to represent)

I feel like this was one of those nights where I saw every misplaced foot in defense, every stumble (remember, that one time, when Dario Zuparic almost fell on his ass watching Mender Garcia dance?), every over-hit pass, every touch that sent a ball flopping like a trout jumping for a mosquito, and more standing around and contemplating what some other player could do.

If anything went well during that first half, I either didn’t see it or failed to record it. And listening to the chatter from the broadcast booth was positively hallucinogenic. Felt like listening to goddamn propaganda half the damn time. And yet, I’m left wondering whether saw some darker, shadow-version of what everyone else saw tonight.

The one thing no one could miss: Dairon Asprilla power-glancing home a header from a Santiago Moreno free-kick. Yessir, that was the rock on which the Portland Timbers 1-0 win over Minnesota United FC was built...and then I rewatched said header and saw that Asprilla didn’t have to move at all to win it; Moreno casually dimed it onto his head while Minnesota’s near-side defender (looks like Luis Amarilla from the still I’m looking at right now; gonna savor the mystery) stepped out of the way. Think it’s Michael Boxall who’s asking the same question I am right now: what the fuck, man?

While it’s not 100% borne out by anything more concrete than the eye test and some parts of the box score, I’d call makeshift Minnesota the better team tonight. They moved the ball smarter, they teed up better chances (and a lot more of them) – I mean, I’m looking at the passing accuracy stat right now and suddenly wondering whether I even know how that’s calculated (and whether the Illuminati are involved) – and, all in all, believe a fair case could be made that, but for the Aljaz Ivacic/Claudio Bravo double save, like, five minutes into the game, this one would have slipped away from the Portland. Seriously, think of it: if either of those shots go in (or, for that matter, any of Minnesota’s five shots on goal, or any of their 21 shots), that’s the Timbers trying to breakdown an actually compacted Minnesota defense. And, based on what I saw out there tonight, I don’t think that’s a game Portland would have won...but instead this game wound up as a lesson in what happens when one team lets the other hang around for too long.

Honestly, if either Garcia or Kervin Arriaga could shoot; Arriaga’s wild swing to nowhere were a comic delight, but, this could have been Minnesota’s game at least half a dozen times over.

MLS Week 30(? Roughly?): The End-Run Review/Preview

Feeling equal parts grandiose and Luddite.

Not so long ago, I made myself swear I’d never do something like this again, while I also swearing that I’d figure it out one day, dammit. Ahem....

WHEREAS, everything below explains itself well enough; and

WHEREAS, it’s already a goddam whale of a post (but also a template I’m brainstorming);

LET IT BE RESOLVED, that’s it for the preamble, but for some light housekeeping. Below is information on every team in Major League Soccer. And, for this edition, I used very few sources – e.g., the (current) Form Guide, the (current) Conference Standings, plus a lightly-jumbled memory – and most of it is pretty damn big picture. That said, it also has the very simple goal of looking at 1) where each teams is in the standings and against their peers, 2) what they’ve done over the past 10 games, and 3) what they have left for games. That’s it....

Oh, and all the references to average or either side thereof references the present average number of goals coming and going across all teams in MLS: 42.8.

One last thing: assuming I carry this thing to the end of the season, you’ll start to see teams fall off the bottom. For what it’s worth, I’ve got seven teams listed as “The Dead” below – that’s against The Quick and The Lingering – but they’re mostly only present In Memoriam. Let’s just say I was generous.

Finally, are the teams ranked? Yeah, but only loosely.

The Quick
Philadelphia Union
Top-End Data: 1st in the East, 60 points, 21(!) above the line, straight-up killin' it on O and D, more blemished than flawed at home (10-0-5), and better on the road than most teams are at home (7-4-4). Have to be the new favorites, yeah?
Week 20 Theory
“I’d put money on more progress for Philly, even if it isn’t linear.” And then this happened...
The Last 10: WWWLWLWWWW (8-2-0)
Strength of Schedule: There are literally three consistent playoff teams in that mix, but when you’re taking care of that much business and running up numbers at a sprint (i.e., 32 goals for, 7 goals allowed) that’s not so much announcing intentions as threatening violence.
The End-Run: v ORL, @ ATL, @ CLT, v TFC
Updated Theory
Even with LAFC’s game in hand, between their form and that schedule, Philly looks to have the inside track to the Supporters’ Shield...not to mention an outstanding shot at momentum going into the games that truly matter. If the Union aren’t the consensus top contender...I don’t understand. My only concern: when’s the last time Philly played a tough stretch?

Portland Timbers 2-1 Atlanta United FC: The Raw Art of Sufficiency

In the same way this is food...

To start with the biggest happy picture, three straight wins goes a long way toward getting a team out the hole it dug over the first half of the season. The Portland Timbers’ 2-1 home win yesterday afternoon over a winded and dizzy Atlanta United FC capped that hop, skip, jump run of games and hoisted them a little higher over the playoff line. That the Los Angeles Galaxy played two games over the past week and pissed away four points in what arguably should have been winnable games makes it a little sweeter still.

Another happy thought: the Timbers have scored two goals in each of those three wins, which bought the defense a little credit for the one goal it has inevitably given up. All that’s the say, the foundation look good, at least until you take a closer look at it.

First, and to finally get to the game, Atlanta hasn’t been good all season – i.e., they leave three-game gaps between wins and this game came in a trough – they’re crap on the road (1-9-5), and they kicked off the game under the playoff line and there they remain. So that’s at least three reasons the Timbers did no more than what they should have yesterday. And, to their credit, they looked the better team. Atlanta had a nice, crisp, organized opening period where they took the game to Portland, though in retrospect all that activity wasn’t materially different than a ‘keeper bouncing and flapping on his goal line ahead of a penalty kick...and how apt is that metaphor?

To sing a couple more bars of praise, I like the way the Timbers took over the game. Both midfielders and defenders snapped at most things played toward them – even when they had to step ahead an Atlanta player to get there first – and that did a number on the visitors’ confidence in moving the ball. When they finally started finding and prying at little seams in the channels, the three-man back line of Bill Tuiloma, Dario Zuparic, and (about damn time) Zac McGraw held the right positions to cut out the passes or generally get in the way. Atlanta’s too-late goal aside – and pour one out for the late tragedy of Josef Martinez’s great MLS career – they managed just one other clean look on goal, e.g., that clever ball over the top by Santiago Sosa to Ronaldo Cisneros. And Aljaz Ivacic got his leg in the way of that one. Moving on to the caveats...

Portland’s attack didn’t look great. Missing Eryk Williamson had something to do with that, of course...at least until you remember that, for all his utility (i.e., help us, Eryk, you’re our only hope), the Timbers’ attack hasn’t look much better when he’s there. A good way to phrase the phenomenon came to be as my attention wandered during the second half yesterday (and, lo, it went far and freely): the Timbers have arrived at place where they cause goals, as opposed to creating them. I can’t remember the last time Portland did anything particularly impressive, never mind artful, on the approach to goal; as much as I admired the indirect inventiveness of Eryk’s assist on (I think) the second goal in the win over Austin, they haven’t waltzed one in over the last three wins. It’s been a lot of free kicks and, yesterday, penalty kicks.

Austin FC 1-2 Portland Timbers: A Passive-Aggressive Masterpiece

That was exactly the kind of win the Portland Timbers needed. I’ll elaborate below, but, between a late start tonight and a long commute tomorrow, I’ve got to keep this brief.

Big Picture: The Timbers attacks is...what it is this season (again, see below) and, barring a change I can’t see no matter how hard I squint, that makes the Timbers defense the key to whatever success they’ll enjoy. And the defense – writ pretty damn large, too (see below) – did a great, game-winning job tonight.

If the Timbers can follow the same script for the rest of 2022 – and this goes double given some of what’s happening above them (emphasis on “some”) – they could actually do something with a 2022 that looked poised to die out like the fire you stare at on a cold night when the tent seems too far away and the whiskey looks up for outlasting the fire. You know what that means if you’ve been there...

All that’s to say, the Timbers punched three points out of Austin FC tonight on a 2-1 win delivered, as I both see it and want to see it, by the defense. It took surviving, golly, three, four shots in the opening 10 minutes - by my count, Aljaz Ivacic, made three of his four saves three in that stretch – but it also took just one sharp, early punch to the jaw to discomfit Austin for most of the game. Bill Tuiloma delivered the blow shortly after Austin’s better moments, and with a defender’s attacking header on a set-piece that Eryk Williamson sent straight to his head, postage-paid and all. It was simple as you like, not to mention the first positive thing Portland had managed all game that wasn’t a save, but it gave the Timbers a lead and...

My main talking point for the game, or the continuation of it, is complicated. After Tuiloma’s go-ahead goal, the Timbers commenced to defending the lead and, honestly, I don’t know what to call what I saw but not so much pressing as loitering with intent on the edges of a melting line of engagement. I need to tighten up the name of the strategy, obviously, but it boils down to having a defensive player vaguely menace the opposition starting around 2/3 of the field away from goal. Sure, the Timbers had a couple moments where they did the classic press – i.e., players chasing hard at each successive passer (a great strategy when you time the releases right) – but, for the most part, it amounted to being...present as Austin tried to work the ball up the field. Time on the ball, but not enough, making every pass just a little harder, demanding that little bit more precision. Better, just when you thought you broke the line, it retreats and forces you to do it all over again. There’s something quietly brilliant in the concept, like guerilla warfare in soccer form.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Seattle Sounders: Think Happy Thoughts. And That's Mostly Directed at Me

The beeesssttt of both worlds...

The super-big, important thing to keep in mind – and I type those silly words with only a few trifling complaints about tonight in my head – the Seattle Sounders have been as bad as the Portland Timbers lately; worse (for them), they completely pissed away the first 40 minutes of the second half through not knowing what to do and fucking up pretty much everything they attempted. It was the opposite of impressive.

And yet, I am thankful because the Timbers needed tonight’s 2-1 win like a fish needs water and a mammal needs fresh air to fill its lungs. It’s mostly happy stuff from here on out, and I may be speaking for myself here, but I would be very, very cautious about reading a turn-around to a fitful 2022 season into this game. That’s to say, one can can’t talk about how iffy a team has been going into a game only to talk around it when said iffy team spends...let’s see, call it the 20th minute that Seattle started doing nothing, and I’d say that carried to the 80th minute, maybe the 75th at the earliest, so, yeah, by my count, the Sounders checked out for somewhere between 55 and 60 minutes of the game. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t count on any other teams to do that.

But full credit to the Timbers. They had their own period of figuring out which way is up (pssst...it’s up), they even went down a goal on a set-piece that said “HELLO” like a whiff of cat-piss (speaking from experience), but Portland did something tonight that they haven’t done since...I’m going by memory here, but I’d say either the home win over the San Jose Earthquakes or battling road draw at Minnesota United FC – i.e., make the game play out on their terms. Most of that, if not all of it, turned on the defining fundamental in all sports: the art of execution. And, as I often do, I must confess to heresy as an auto-da-fe.

All the way up to the exact second Eryk Williamson ran into Yeimar Gomez Andrade’s legs (and blow it out yer ass, Kasey Keller), I couldn’t see a path to the Timbers first goal. A very large part of that actually went back to Williamson, a player who, at least tonight showed a lack of mobility that I’ve not seen since OG MLS-legend, Carlos Valderrama. God’s honest, I watched Eryk all night and the man barely moved. With the game winding down and everything (which, here, means another fucking draw) on the table, I saw Williamson occupy a space in the channel two-three yards above the top of the 18...and that’s it. He literally stood there and directed traffic. The ball came in and out of that space a couple times, Eryk stepped vaguely toward, but, again, that’s it.

Sporting Kansas City 4-1 Portland Timbers: Are My Psychological Preparations Paying Off

Denmark smells like something crawled up its ass and died and brought a yeast infection along for laughs. Things smelled rotten three, four games ago.

Proof!

Here I was all primed to throw out a “I’ve written them off before” lifeline, one that included water‑wings that read, “if they put together a run, not only would that get them into the playoffs, it’d get ‘em there running” (they’re big water‑wings), and then I remembered that, in this season of fetid evil (aka, World Cup year, Qatar edition), the Portland Timbers have only seven games left to go. Between tonight’s result and the most basic math, a “run” would amount to them winning, say, five games of seven down the stretch. By any count, that means starting with a W next week...I mean, with the way the Sounders are playing...

About that result, the Timbers 0-3 road loss at the quite lowly Sporting Kansas City. Yeah, yeah, 1-4 road loss, but when the official webpage can’t get it right (see right/caught you, MFs!!), I feel all right calling the second half a 1-1 draw. Sebastian Blanco’s late consolation came four score minutes and four goals too late, sure, but had Portland played the first half like they played the second, well...we’d have something better to talk about, now wouldn’t we? The stats page backs me up on that too, especially the progress of the xG. Meanwhile, back in reality...

Because I was finishing off a really killer pork chile verde (nailed it), I couldn’t really drink in the details of each of the goals Portland’s allowed. Having just put my eyes and heart through them all again, I’d rank them as follows, the most egregious to the most forgivable: 3rd (all that standing?!), 1st (at least everyone pitched in on the fail!), 2nd (SKC got a bit lucky, but I’m giving an assist to the positively drugged defensive reaction), and 4th (shit happens when your pants go down). The simple story of this game goes something like this: after doing very little for 30 minutes, the Timbers fell apart for fifteen minutes. If I were the coach, I’d make the defense sit through the first and third goals 20 times between now and Friday night. I started the review tonight and I’d add on five more viewings any time the team complained.

Would to gods I had more than a couple positive things to say about Portland’s offense. To their very real credit, it took only a minute or two after the halftime whistle for the Timbers to create good chances; to his very real credit, SKC’s ‘keeper, John Pulskamp, stopped all the good ones. Portland added two more quality shots before the clock ran out – Dairon Asprilla got one, Blanco (who had a decent night after mo’ better support came on) got one more – but that still adds up to one slim shot more than SKC had goals.

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 25: Keeping Up with the Joneses, Working the Room

My wheels of steel in the 70s.

Teams across Major League Soccer scored plenty of goals over MLS Week (probably) 25. And, as with last week, all those goals didn’t do much besides throttle a couple of dreams. With one exception - a rather pathetic one too - the rich teams got three points richer, the poorest teams saw what little credit they had run out, and, again, with a couple exceptions, the Joneses fought tooth-and-tong to keep up with one another in the middle.

In other news, I can’t explain the games I chose for longer review, so I won’t. It is what it is, aka, less than what it could be, but....never mind. The original impulse came from a good place, for what it’s worth. When I looked at a couple results, a thought came to me, one inspired, perhaps, by the/my Portland Timbers’ 1-3 (bad, as in neither close nor good) road loss to Toronto FC: which teams are shaping up the ones who will trip-up some other team’s last, desperate grasp at the playoff line? I’ll round up results/thoughts from the little-long-playing video review sessions below, but first, I wanted to mention the games I didn’t watch and why (I linked to the game summary in the score).

Philadelphia Union 4-1 Chicago Fire FC
A) The game summary never got the full highlights posted, B) the only thing that surprised me was the magnitude, C) I should have done the little-long-playing thing with this one, because this result took a hard shot at Chicago’s moment, and D) I have no excuse, this one even fit the fucking profile, sorry, and E) I’ll do better. Maybe.

New England Revolution 1-0 DC United
“The Revs took care of business at home, riding an early Carles Gil goal to a 1-0 win over visiting D.C. United, who never truly threatened.”

From Matt Doyle’s weekly round-up. Felt sufficient.

Red Bull New York 0-1 Orlando City SC
My understanding of both teams boils down to they can beat or lose to anyone, case in point. Also, heard Pato went down. Also, this (Doyle, again):

“But there is no Bradley Wright-Phillips on this team, and there is no Sacha Kljestan on this team, and I’m not even sure if there’s a Daniel Royer on this team.”

Toronto FC 3-1 Portland Timbers: Unbalanced, Undone

Jaroslaw Niezgoda says "Hi."

I’ll start with a confession: I didn’t get the usual granular [ed. - what? listen to yourself, man!] read on the Portland Timbers in their 1-3 loss at Toronto FC because I was catching up with an old friend (#WorthIt). Still, I think I saw enough to state that things did not go well, and with some confidence. Anyone who disagrees may speak now or forever hold your........no takers, eh? Small surprise. The box score reduces that reality into numerical values, none of them good; I remember seeing the shots distributed at 7 shots to 0 sometime during the first half and hoping that improved in some way...but nope. Jaroslaw Niezgoda sends his regards from the remote desert island you can see on Portland’s passing map....

As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...

I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.

Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.

MLS Weakly, Week 24, aka, the Week Animal Spirits Went Wild (for the Most Part)

Hear ye! Hear ye! Don't sleep on the shitty teams!

MLS Week 24 was a fun little fucker. That said, the following teams failed to have fun: DC United and Red Bull New York (tied 0-0), the Portland Timbers and FC Dallas (tied 1-1), with dishonorable mention going to Club du Foot Montreal and Inter Miami CF (tied 2-2; though credit to Miami for stealing two points and earning one). So little followed from all those results - i.e., the present fate of all concerned remains unchanged - that they're hardly worth commenting on.

That said, the last game doesn’t entirely belong with the two former – in his (far more thorough) weekly round-up, Matt Doyle took a dim view of DC v RBNY (“...it’s more interesting to talk about all that than to talk about this game, which was… not great. Yeesh”), and can confirm Portland v Dallas flirted with barely-watchable – but, commentary confirmed what I got out of a glimpse of Montreal v Miami, e.g., that Montreal owed the draw to a late (but apparently) rare brain-fart by their ‘keeper, James Pantemis. Moreover, even if they fell asleep this Saturday, Montreal have kept a playoff-worthy 5-3-2 record over their past 10 and they looked 10 points better than Miami; the same can't be said for the other five teams in the discussion. If anything, that draw trumpets a message to the rest of the league – which, some of them did not get: take no game for granted.

Turning, now, to the bright, shiny, record-breaking results and words I never thought I’d type....

After a ho-hum first half, FC Cincinnati straight-up took over the game against the Philadelphia Union coming out deserved 3-1 winners over the East’s (still) top team. Their big players (e.g., Brandon Vazquez, who got a freakin’ ode in Doyle’s column, and Luciano Acosta (see set up on 2nd goal)) delivered and an increasingly strong supporting cast (e.g., Brenner (see Lucho’s link) and Alvaro Barreal combined on goals that flayed Philadelphia’s league (again, still) league-best defense. I only tuned in for the best bits (aka, the 45th minute to the 80th), but FC Cincinnati 4.0 will score goals on your defense: if you pull the goal-less road game at Columbus Crew SC from the sample, Cincy hasn’t been shut out since mid(-fucking-)April. Philly stirred to life after Cincy’s second –i.e., pressing, forcing mistakes, creating chances, etc. - but the Orange and Blue managed it well enough. Cincinnati needed the win, obviously, and it shouldn’t blot out questions about all the draws that preceded it, but they’re over the playoff line and with one of the biggest obstacles to their first-ever post-season cleared. And Philly’s fine, of course. Every team has an off day...

Portland Timbers 1-1 FC Dallas: The Limitations and Blessings of "Eh, Good Enough"

Explain that entire civilization and make it POP.

Had FC Dallas’ Paul Arriola not flubbed on one-and-a-half breakaways, had Jesus Ferreira not been called offside on Dallas’ best team attack, had Aljaz Ivacic failed to see the same player’s shot curl around Larrys Mabiala at the tail-end of their best chunk of the game, and had the Timbers not worked the ball smartly from right to left – and for once – to set up their best chance from open play, I could have started watching that game around the 85th minute and walked away without feeling I'd wasted 85 minutes of my life.

MLS Week 24 featured all kinds of good, compelling games, many of them with scores ending in results positively begging for a longer look. This was not one of them.

On a weekend when chaos reigned, the Portland Timbers served up another plate of the same-ol’-shit, a ho-hum motherfucker of a 1-1 draw at home against a team that, say it with me, “is above them in the standings, but not playing their best at the moment.” I’m at the point where the words “unbeaten run” have become a triggering event. If you want to find something to feel good about in this one, you’ll have to sift through a ton of dirt. And archaeology feels like a good metaphor for this one: sometimes you have to look at a potsherd and expand on it to explain a whole goddamn forgotten civilization. Or maybe you just chuck the potsherd and figure it was worth forgetting.

Tthat’s my cue to admit to missing just about everything besides Dallas’ still-later equalizer. As noted in the game thread, I thought Matt Hedges nodded home the equalizer; in reality, it came off Diego Chara’s head, and I can’t think of a louder way to whisper, “maybe you’re cursed” than that. Unlike many a Timber, Chara had a decent night, i.e., leading a defensive line that had, comedic fuck-ups notwithstanding (see Arriola’s two spurned chances), managed Dallas’ feeble attack well enough. I touched on Dallas’ salad days above – the first 20 minutes of the second half, give or take – but, again, it took Portland’s worst moments to give them their good ones.

Going the other way, at least they had them. If you take the chance flagged in the mess of a run-on sentence that started this post and maybe the chance that teed up Portland’s late, yet not late enough penalty kick, the Timbers didn’t do collectively much all night, 16 shots and five shots on goal be damned. The few things that happened for either team came in individual moments – again, see the above run-on sentence. With only a few exceptions – e.g., Santiago “Wee Wrecking Ball” Moreno on the attacking side, Dario “Hack the Bone” Zuparic on the defensive side, a couple bail-outs from Ivacic and Marvin Loria finding the rare openings – everyone in green and flat yellow fell somewhere between good enough (e.g., Bill Tuiloma, David Ayala), undistinguished (e.g., Yimmi Chara) and invisible (e.g., Jaroslaw Niezgoda, but also look at that passing map).

Timbers v FC Dallas Preview: Don't Stop...Believin' (Hold on to That FEE-eee-ling!)

Don't fuck with the Jesus...

With the Portland Timbers approaching the now-or-never moment of the season – and they just let a moment go last night – they’ve got FC Dallas coming to visit on Saturday. On the plus side, Dallas has by and large followed the same script – i.e., start strong, then.....fade away - that has dogged their entire history.

In a fun twist, they’ve turned that grand narrative into micro-narratives for their games lately. I’ll get to that below, but let’s start with the basics:

FC Dallas
Record/Basics: 9-7-9, 36 points, 6-3-3- home, 3-4-6 away; 33 gf, 26 ga, +7 goal differential
Last 10: LTLTTLTWWL (2-4-4, 1-2-2 home, 1-2-2 away; high side of middling)
Oppo: v VAN, @ ATX, @ LAFC, v MIA, @ HOU, v NYC, v ATX, @ RSL, v LAG, @ SEA

What We Know About Them
They’re perennial contenders for MLS’s most effective development/selling team – a model that has consequences for their consistency, obviously – but Dallas also serves as the stomping grounds for MLS 2022 MVP candidate, Jesus Ferreira, as well as another USMNT-bubble player, the indefatigable Paul Arriola. Matt Hedges, one of MLS most reliable long-term CBs, anchors a backline that, as evidenced by the numbers, doesn’t allow a ton of goals. The who’s who gets a little thin from there, but still includes Paxton Pomykal, the eternal Comeback-Player-of-Next Year (though he has had a decent run this season), and Timbers fans will recognize at least one right back, assuming the start him (Marco Farfan.

Notes on Recent Form
As repped in numerical form above, pretty shaky – and regardless of venue. Their schedule hasn’t been easy by any means – and the wins they posted (0-1 at Real Salt Lake, and a 2-1 home win over the Los Angeles Galaxy) had the added bonus of taking all the points from rivals – but a frisky, upwardly-mobile team gets more than a third of the points out of that stretch. That said, both wins came recently and the way Dallas rotated their starting XI at Seattle (pretty thoroughly) floats a plausible theory that they rested starters for the Timbers because they felt better about getting points against them (or, alternately, they saw Seattle as vulnerable (fairly, given their recent record) and gambled). In other words, they might have shaken off a bout of midsummer doldrums just in time to ruin a Rose City Saturday afternoon.

Portland Timbers 1-1 Nashville SC: That One, Necessary Step

Go on, ya little shit. Those stairs ain't gonna climb themselves.

I have more a string of notes than I do a coherent thought about that the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 home draw against Nashville SC.

First, Nashville scored – and the Timbers really do need to clean-up the set-piece defending; swear to God I saw Larrys Mabiala lean in for a power-header and miss it clean – then, the Timbers came back, and on the same kind of goal I picture when you hear someone use the word “patient” when describing an attacking build-up. Turns out the line between forcing it and dicking around is a thin one.

And, as much as anything else, the Timbers have gotten better about getting on the right side of that line lately – and the numbers back this up; Portland has averaged 2.0 goals/game over their past ten games, and haven’t been shut out once – aka, the same period that has me feeling better about their chances.

Again, there’s not a lot to analyze about this game. Both teams did a lot better over a first half that happily coincided with a time when both teams played with some combination of thinking they could win the game and knowing they have to start getting wins. It wasn’t until 70 minutes into the game that I realized I had nothing to say about how either midfield defended, and it wasn’t until the 75th that I realized that had everything to do with the fact that both teams focused more on attacking than stopping the other team from doing the same.

The sub-text that runs over the paragraph above is that Nashville started stepping to the ball and higher up the field. Portland hadn’t been great on the ball all game (a concern!), but Nashville forced a succession of turnovers early in the second half and that knocked Portland on their heels, and I don’t think the Timbers got back on the front foot at any point thereafter. Actually, take that back: they found it twice in the game’s dying minutes, first with Jaroslaw Niezgoda hitting a ball a mere 5 km below needed velocity, and then Nathan Fogaca (more on him later) not quite getting around his breakaway just a couple minutes later.

The Timbers had two late, great shots at a winner, but they only had those shots because Aljaz Ivacic made at least “that’s my guy,” saves (plus at least one weird one). You can sum up the game a couple ways.

MLS Weakly, Week 23: Late, Late Goals and a Lot of (Pointless) Draws

Have at you! (also, thanks, 200353484!)

I gave up watching FC Cincinnati for this? A dogpile of draws, some of them lightly rancid, and what can be described as status quo ante, a collective holding of serve, or, more bluntly, at best a thimble-full more than a whole lot of nothing. Pfft.

That’s not to say I didn’t cheat: once I saw that Cincy and Inter Miami CF combined for the second eight-goal game/draw in MLS Week 23 – my Portland Timbers and Minnesota United FC had the other one (and here are my long form notes on that one) - I used that as an excuse to take a longer look at how a second oddball game happened in one midsummer weekend.

Both games required some coach-breaking defending in order to reach their final, 4-4 scores. I saw a headline where Miami coach Phil Neville accused his team of defending like “toddlers” or “children” (don’t know, didn’t read it), but, also, can confirm. Miami, in particular, pushed the “bend-don’t-break” concept to its limits and all over their defensive half; they didn’t defend so much as take up positions and wait for a turnover. That said, the game featured some lovely goals: the sometimes-maligned, oft-subbed Gonzalo Higuain bagged a first-half hat-trick for Miami (his free-kick was dynamite in inverse proportion to Cincy’s wall being gappy shit, but his run/finish of Alejandro Pozeulo’s feed for Miami's second was something), while Brenner started and finished Cincy’s first goal and Alvaro dimed a cross to Brandon Vazquez for what should have been a game-winner for Cincinnati. It was a tragedy to see Cincy’s legs desert them on Miami’s late, late equalizer, but credit to Miami generally and congrats to Christopher McVey for coming back from the dead to score it (seriously, kid looked like he could barely jog five minutes prior).

Imagine all that running and scoring and having it amount to so little. Cincinnati are factually having their best-ever season and they’re still above the playoff line, but they haven’t won a goddamn game since late June. Having suffered through (most of) three seasons (I got bored toward the end of 2021, but also missed nothing but pain), I know Cincy has never had a better team - Vazquez has been a revelation and, with the way Barreal’s come around, having him on the field with Luciano Acosta and with Brenner killing it as something close to a false-9 they can, as I like to say, fuck up a team – and yet. And yet. 1-1-7 in their last nine games. Wish I was making that up. Half-alive, half-dead.

And that whole “running-through-mud” theme expands nicely and fairly to MLS Week 23. A weekend stuffed with mid-table clashes and chances for mid-table teams to strut their stuff against either presently or historically weaker opposition, i.e., games crying out for a result, and with most teams moving like pawns in chess: one step at a time and toward uncertain outcomes.

Minnesota United FC 4-4 Portland Timbers: Rose-Colored Shades, Baby....

Yes, and that sunset.

Despite its loin-stirring grandiosity, I have no grand analysis to share about the Portland Timbers 4-4 road brawl early today at Minnesota United FC. I mean, what’s there to say about a demolition derby besides “a bunch of shit ran into another bunch of shit”? And yet I, like nature, find a way...

To answer the obvious question – i.e., did I lose faith? – of course I did. What other response can one have to seeing your team’s defense take two wet shits on an already-soiled mattress? Apologies for the crudeness of the metaphor – and I hope the sub-text that Minnesota’s first goal didn’t bother me nearly as much as the other two – but I started the outline of another yes-I-am-nervous post immediately after the halftime whistle blew. Also, as evidenced by a tweet floated into public domain early in the second half (see my game thread), I didn’t feel much better until Sebastian Blanco scored his second goal of the match – from open play too – which brings me to the only real take-away I have from this game.

Nothing has my bowels bounded up all season like the Timbers inability to score. Given that, seeing them score four goals – and seeing Blanco, of all the players on the roster, come alive? – there’s nothing to call both things but what I’ve been waiting for since First Kick and and/or that live-broadcast de-pantsing of Sporting Kansas City earlier in the season. Having that to look at helps me look past all kinds of flaws, which helped because Portland had plenty tonight. That said, and on a very fundamental level, all it takes for me to believe the Timbers can go somewhere in any given season is a reliable path to goal. And, if I’m being honest, a semi-reliable path to goal carries me a couple steps closer to interested. Now come the caveats. Because of course I have caveats.

Only two observations from my preview post for this game came through: 1) that the Loons, much like the Timbers, are at their best on the break, and 2) that they haven’t been all the way present lately. I didn’t expect the latter to come good as early as it did, but that paled against Minnesota’s defensive collapse over the first 20 minutes of the second half. Few soccer-writing cliches get the ready pass that “a tale of two halves” gets, but I don’t know that anyone has adequately explained the why/how the fuck of a team dominating one half (as Minnesota did in the first half) and then nodding off in a way that would make Sleeping Beauty say, “damn” in the second. How does that switch go off, and is there someone we can pay to make that happen in every Timbers game that happens between now and the end of my life and/or when I lose interest?