Getting Reacquainted with the Seattle Sounders, the Kristofferson of MLS

Different one, no Streisand.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Hurts to admit this, but the Seattle Sounders managed to reach second place in terms of all-time success in Major League Soccer (based on the Joy Point Scale; methodology below*) and that’s with nine other teams having a 13-season head-start. They joined in 2009, just the fourth expansion team in the post-contraction era, but took only one season to fall in step with the first two (and their direct rivals), Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake; moreover, Seattle hoisted their first Supporters’ Shield (2014) the season before MLS’s third expansion team, Toronto FC, made the playoffs for the first time. And, in a flourish that feels unintentional in the way Kristofferson just could not stop outdoing Ash (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Seattle snatched its first MLS Cup on Toronto’s home field in 2016 (if in one of the shittiest finals in league history, btw). The Sounders had something gratingly close to a standing invitation to MLS Cup over the next four seasons - and they won two of them (2016 and 2019). Hell, they won U.S. Open Cup in each of their first three season in MLS, and then won it again in 2014, aka, the same season they won the Shield. Bottom line, Sounders fans have never experienced pain, only mild discomfort…the spoiled assholes. Seattle missed the playoffs for the first time (the first!) in 2022.

Best Season(s)

Tough call, but I’m guessing Seattle fans feel more pride about the 2019 team that beat Toronto 3-1 than they do about the one that beat a better version of the same team by the tips of Stefan Frei’s finger-nails in Toronto. Looking at the rosters for 2014 (Shield), 2016 (Cup) and 2019 (Cup) doesn’t give you a lot to work with in terms of tie-breakers. I have answers to all of these questions, but: who do you choose between Kasey Keller and Stefan Frei? Was Chad Marshall really a better defender than Roman Torres, or Xavier Arreaga or Yeimar? Did Obafemi Martins have more upside than Raul Ruidiaz? Then again, what’s the point in arguing about which player is better when all of them worked? Seattle has won eight trophies in its 15 years in MLS, including the league’s first‑ever CONCACAF Champions’ League trophy. So, yeah, hard to say.

Getting Reacquainted with the Los Angeles Galaxy, MLS's Very Own Nora Desmond

No longer ready for their close-up.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

The Los Angeles Galaxy started as the first Buffalo Bills of Major League Soccer. True story. They reached MLS Cup in literally half of the league’s first six seasons only to flop on the biggest stage. Those failures gave them the opposite of stage-fright: the Galaxy became the first dominant team in league history, making the playoffs every season over the first ten years – virtually always in the top 5 too. Hell, one of their “Bills” seasons saw them claim the Supporters’ Shield (1998), but they didn’t have to wait long for their first Cups, either: the first came in 2002 – which they paired with another Shield – then again in 2005. Their fallow seasons – 2006-08 – look like hiccups today because OG LA dominated the first half of the 2010s, chewing up and spitting out one trophy after another. The Galaxy didn’t become the team current fans know until 2017- the same season the Wooden Spoon slapped their bottoms for the one and only time in team history. By now, the glory years have faded enough to where you have to wonder if their fans even remember them. The Galaxy have missed the playoffs in five of the past seven seasons. Worse, they haven’t looked like doing much the two times they didn’t.

Best Season(s)

The Galaxy ran away with their ’98 Shield at a sprint that would have left Usain Bolt’s jaw on the ground, but their best years came between 2009 and 2014, when they won another Shield (2010) and reached MLS Cup four times and won three of them (2011, 2012, 2014; they were runners-up in 2009). Those seasons saw Landon Donovan and Roy Keane running absolute riot up top while absolute rock defenders like Omar Gonzalez and A. J. DeLaGarza held things down at the back in front of a succession of strong goalkeepers (e.g., Donovan Ricketts, Josh Saunders, and the underrated Jaime Penedo). Absolute juggernauts, I tell you, and I still hate them for it. Oh, and they won the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup in 2000, but that shit was so goofy that the Mexican teams didn’t pay it much mind…until 2001.

Long-Term Tendencies

Their very best seasons (1998 and 2014) saw the Galaxy do very well in defense and even better on offense, but they built their best seasons on sturdy defenses and Bruce Arena’s second great run as a head coach. [Sidebar: does anyone know what words or actions cost him the New England gig?] There’s a lot of reverting to the mean on either side of that, but nothing has defined the bad years (2017 to…well, now) like defensive fragility: they’ve been over the league average for goals allowed in six of the past seven seasons.

The "Getting Reacquainted With" [MLS Team] Project, Introduction and (Eventual) Index

[UPDATE: I pulling the plug on this series due to late intelligence that a handful of teams actually post live/archived streams of games from the 2024 preseason. And gods bless them for doing so. It's for the best because the mold on these posts grow furrier with each passing week (a little like the room of my oldest child, despite attempts to preserve with museum exhibit exactitude). I will, however, float some form of preview for my Portland Timbers before the season kicks off and slip a link to that preview where it belongs (at No. 15) in the section full of links. Finally, if you scroll down to the second "UPDATE" section below, I did close out this series in the best possible way for someone who is, admittedly, half-assing it. Wait, seriously? Half-assing isn't a real word yet?] 

This is the first post in an off-season project/series that will ultimately become an index for said series. The broad goal is to look back at the history of every Major League Soccer team that will compete in the 2024 season – the Orchid anniversary, from what I’m told, so get those gifts lined up – with an eye to connecting each team’s past with its present, no matter how short the former is.

If you loved me, I'd have this.

The posts will come out in the order of the teams’ historic success, something I calculated on a loose scale built around what I called “Joy Points.” I’ve been compiling the underlying data for that like a damn lunatic, if with couple tweaks and updates, since the pandemic put the league in hold for the first few months of 2020. At any rate, here’s the foundation for the math, new and old:

Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
CONCACAF Champions’ League Runner-Up: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs for the Majority of Seasons: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points
Wooden Spoon: -3 points (a heads up to FC Cincinnati fans...)

I appreciate that this system has flaws, that some people won’t agree with the numerical values I’ve assigned to each accomplishment and failure, but, to translate a little, I based the positives on degree of difficulty and the negatives on the amount of pain. Also, for those unfamiliar with one of the early Frankenstein-esque concepts, the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup – i.e., the regional club tournament from MLS’s 1996 founding to 2008 - was both weird and weighted in MLS’s favor for the first several seasons. Small surprise, then, that Mexican teams commenced to dominating the year after the Los Angeles Galaxy won the 2000 Champions Cup and have only needed to check the rearview in recent seasons.

To acknowledge something that will become obvious as the posts trickle out, yes, that methodolgy does reward some teams for nothing more than being in MLS since Year 1. Going the other way, that same system of credits and debits reveals how the expansion teams that hit the ground running rose to join the cream of the league. Personally, I found the way the numbers shook out in fascinating ways and, for all its faults, I hope other people do too.

So Long, It's Been a Slice: A Meditation on Twitter

Three dudes and a dream that'll never come true. Yep.

[WARNING: This post barely discusses soccer, MLS or otherwise. You’ve been warned, everything after this is on you.]

I’ve been on Twitter long enough to forget how I used to promote posts to a larger public. True story. I know BigSoccer played a role at some point…speaking of, if you wanna see a dead body, visiting BigSoccer is the online equivalent of walking through a graveyard with all the graves dug up and the caskets open.

I doubt Conifers & Citrus could have worked without Twitter. I’m not entirely sure it will work without it, but I’m about to find out.

Like millions of people – a phrase I use with confidence for the first time, btw – I’ve been mulling deleting my twitter since Elon Musk bought it, near as I can tell, as the self-driving car of toilet paper. It’s less stupid than it was last spring, aka, the parade of bad ideas/threats that went on for months – don't know about you, but my first personal “fuck this” came with his two-day experiment with limiting the number of tweets non-subscribers could send or send – but fall roughed it up in its own way, maybe one that’s worse. To strain a metaphor…

I haven’t closed down a bar since my 20s (fine, mid-30s), but Twitter Musk.0 has recreated a Bizarro version of the experience. Some form of desperation defined Twitter from Day 1, obviously, but the tang of it stings the nostrils a little more with each passing week. Over half the likes I get lately come from – I don’t know, bots? lazy marketing for dating/soft-porn sites? – and 75% of the ads sell a slurry of crypto-currency, life-/investment coaching, and the kind of weird shit they used to advertise on late-night TV to lonely people with diminished impulse control. Unlike a bar, Twitter works to keep you in, not kick you out - and they do it appealing to your most lizard-brained fantasies...depressing, comes to mind…

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Columbus Crew SC: The Tragedy of Alvas Powell

From googling "tickle palace."

I don’t know what to call that besides a game that leaves you muttering, “c’mon, not like this.”

Last night, FC Cincinnati ended the best season in its – and I want fans and pundits to linger on this next word – brief history with a devastated and dizzied 2-3 loss at Tickle Palace against its dread rival, Columbus Crew SC.

First and foremost, nothing hit the gut half as hard as the blunt fact that Columbus deserved the win. Outside 15 minutes somewhere during the first part of the second half (sorry, I work real estate law), Columbus ran at a Cincy defense that toggled between adjectives all night: sturdy grew to heroic, before a quick journey through desperate yielded to a word I slipped into the conversation above, i.e., dizzied. One of the twits in the broadcast booth called the Columbus’ first goal a turning point, but I’d argue that the second pointed to where the game would ultimately end up. The only question was whether Columbus could get there before the final whistle turned the game over to soccer’s infamous tiebreaker, aka, the test of wills we all call a coin-flip, aka, the penalty shoot-out.

Columbus beat the whistle, of course, and Cincy didn’t look any better on the third goal they allowed than they did on the second. Or the first, for that matter. They didn’t just get outplayed last night; Cincy got beat. Thinking about what that does for the rivalry is the only positive I can take from the loss…

…going the other way, how dim that fire burns against what could have been had Cincinnati won ugly on the back of Aaron Boupendza putting a little more mustard on his best shot of the night? Back in the real world, Patrick Schulte came good in that moment and, I think most observers would accept that justice was served. However much it hurt to send Timmy upstate…

On a purely personal, slightly petty level, I have a notepad full of tantalizing questions that just went to waste – e.g., do you start Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji in the MLS Cup that will never happen? Or, if Obinna Nwobodo can go, do you start him or do you honor continuity and Yuya Kubo’s (sturdy?) service over the past two, three games? And to what percentage of a Nwobodo does that answer apply.

All those questions just got kicked to 2024.

FC Cincinnati 1-0 Philadelphia Union: (Back-Up) Paths of Glory

Again, that's 2 15/16th by one measure.

I wasn’t going to start this post with the question of whether FC Cincinnati’s big, CB-birthed late winner was or was not offside, but then I opened the phone and saw both the image and the measurement at right. Ian Murphy’s nod into the goal-mouth mosh-pit did look half a body offside in real time, but the call survived VAR’s second look and that ushered in Yerson Mosquera’s put-back and Cincy’s 1-0 win over the Philadelphia Union into the history books…

…that said, if that 2 15/16” measurement is accurate, that makes one hell of a statement on the OCD-madness of the post-modern offside rule. That is a fucking fraction, not a cheat-code.

Next thought: bring on Columbus Crew SC and getting the lighting dialed in because TQL Stadium is hosting a goddamn party next Saturday. A body usually has to go to Hollywood to get such perfect plotting.

To acknowledge the obvious, yes, this site fell off the FC Cincinnati beat in August of this season…and then again after the beginning of October. The explanation for that lapse in this boy scout’s duty speaks the thought that will carry this post to its conclusion – i.e., there’s not a lot to say besides, FC Cincinnati good, fire bad, and, whatever else you do, keep on lashing the hounds until they expire or reach the perfect destination, aka, MLS Cup 2023. Just two games stand between Cincy and one of the most thoroughly-redemptive doubles you’ll ever see in this budding whack-job of a league. As others have pointed out – which, here, means MLS’s in-house scribe Matt Doyle in the preview hit for last night’s game – the fact Cincy won anything at all in Year 5 constitutes enough of a miracle. The fact that the trophy in hand is the Supporters’ Shield – i.e., the one that requires consistent, almost grinding success – already gets the story of their 2023 season halfway to Hollywood.

Portland Timbers 2023 Post-Mortem, aka, I Was Strolling Through the Roster One Day...

Perhaps the greatest team player.

With this post, I intend to put the Portland Timbers’ whimper of a 2023 season to bed. My gods, where to begin…

For starters, I could dismiss the desperate optimism that percolated into the final preview post of the regular season: no matter what I and gods know how many others thought or hoped, 2023 was a hopeless, wet turd. Even had the Timbers backed into the playoffs, it wouldn’t have given any of us, be it fan, player, coach, or the guy that washes team’s laundry, anything more than the chance to say, “well, at least we had that.” If some parallel timeline exists where the Timbers lifted MLS Cup at the end of a mind-bending playoff run, many, many threads separate that loin-stirring paradise timeline from...well, this. Even if they started healthy and stayed that way all season, I’d put the Timbers’ meaningful chances of winning any trophy on the same level as a tiny snowball’s chance of rolling through a vast, flaming Hell without sweating off even one drop.

Changes are coming, of course. I believe we’ve all the seen reports that Portland will name the new head coach sometime in the next week and, for what it’s worth, I’m weirdly excited about this and completely willing to give whoever they hire a full, 17-game grace period, i.e., half of what I expect next season will be (surely, they can’t push that higher). That’s less to say I can't be disappointed by the announcement, than I can’t conceptualize the universe where they name someone so what-the-fuck (think Lincoln High’s soccer coach, and by slipping him a greasy $100) that I won’t give the new coach time to prove himself or herself. (I don’t believe any women have been named, but a woman wouldn’t count as a what-the-fuck hire for me.)

I don’t think I’ve made any secret of my belief that the general malaise and inadequacy starts with the roster – one that, to my mind, falls short individually, collectively, perhaps even interpersonally. No matter how much sense various snippets of reddit chatter make to me, I’ll leave that last one alone, and on the grounds that I don’t know how many hands it passed through before I read it, but my money’s on fourth-hand, once removed at best.

Portland Timbers 1-3 Houston Dynamo FC: Not Even Remotely Fun for as Long as It Lasted

This, but with her stepping on his hand.

The worst thing about the Portland Timbers’ 2023 season comes with the way it let them surface and actually see the life-raft before cruel gods, Houston Dynamo FC, et al, shoved their heads back under.

That metaphor came to me disturbingly early in Portland’s whimpering 1-3 loss to Houston tonight. The Timbers fell out of the lifeboat early and they never much looked like getting back into it. Just defeat painted in lurid orange all over Providence Park. I couldn’t call them a good team, never mind the better one, because Houston had both boxes checked by the time they scored the opening goal.

A one goal loss would have hurt, sure, but this gets back to the opening metaphor. Houston took a weed-whacker to every green-shoot of either relief (e.g., the halftime whistle) or hope (e.g., Dairon Asprilla coming on 14 minutes too late to yank the ever-struggling Yimmi Chara) that held any promise of turning things around for a team that never shifted all the way out of baffled. That each act took the form as concrete and immovable as a goal (relive the pain; it’s for morale or solidarity, I can’t remember which anymore) felt like the hand pushing Portland back under once, then twice.

Oh, well. There goes that season…

Fun and great as it was that Miles Joseph got Portland to where they would make the playoffs with a win, that same middling level of achievement left them hanging from a ledge, from which any slip whatsoever (e.g., a single, yet total loss) meant missing those same playoffs. I painted pinks and other pastels over this season until the cans ran out – gods return my eyes, I talked myself into believing the defense wasn’t cold percolating dogshit – but one word writes the Portland Timbers’ 2023 into the history books: fragility. Here’s to hoping I can make that word stand up, walk around and impress the swells.

Decision Day Preview: Bring All Your Best Marbles, 'Cause This One's For All of 'Em

Don't ask me how I know.

I just posted a scouting report for the Portland Timbers’ Decision Day opponent, Houston Dynamo FC, over on reddit. To translate the notes on Houston into marching order for the Timbers, I’d go with the Timbers need to play their cleanest possible game. To tighten up the phrasing, put a fork in Portland if they allow two goals, I’d put better than even money on Houston scoring one goal, but the main thing is to expect a game tighter than a wombat’s keister. Something else to expect, at least based on what I saw over the two games noted in the scouting report: Portland moving the ball pretty well only to see it all hit an elastic, yet firm wall about 25 yards from Houston’s goal.

To distill that even further, I harbor…sincerely real hopes of a Timbers win on Saturday – not like your uncle marrying someone really cool, like Bea Arthur when she was still with us, but something actually plausible – but I am, without so much as a second thought, bracing for a draw and an evening of clocking other results almost as much as I watch the game.

So, the usual yes, no, maybe, only without the net.

With all of those options, firmly on the table, I wanted to chuck my thoughts on what each would mean for Portland’s chances. Well, except for a win. Which would solve all the problems, heal all the woes.

Hold on. Just a quick aside: I get that disconcertingly large portions of the season blew chunks on a sucked raw egg, but the Timbers climbed out of the muck here and there. Why, for just over a month over April and May, they got their heads up with a road win over expansion darlings St. Louis CITY FC and home wins over Cascadia revivals, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps, on both sides of that. I don’t remember believing at that point, but like to think I did. And what about that home win over Columbus Crew SC, the one in mid-July right before the crushing loss to Houston, aka, Gio Savarese’s last, short straw? Sure, it took the Miles Joseph Miracle (coming to you on the Hallmark Channel) to lift the Timbers into playoff contention, but even those would have fallen short – also, hold that thought – without those earlier, seemingly meaningless Ws.

Club de Foot Montreal 1-4 Portland Timbers: A List of Things Not to Do in Future Sporting Events

That really feels more "on."

God have mercy on my soul, but I went back to see if I could find The One Wrong Thing that led to the Portland Timbers' crushing and potentially fatal 1-4 loss in Canada France to Club de Foot Montreal. I blame Reddit. Reddit is to blame…

Because Bryan Acosta caught so much flaming shit, I made the decision to watch where he was throughout the periods around the four goals Montreal scored last night – which, as careful readers already know, doesn't make a lick of sense because Acosta came off before L’Impact scored goals three and four. Those flies in the ointment aside, I had a theory I wanted to test, specifically, the potentiality that the Timbers defense/midfield failed due to the fact that they manned it with three players – Evander, Santiago Moreno and, yes, lumping Acosta into that bunch – who are, at a minimum, more inclined to think about what’s ahead of them than the flailing, half-panicked defenders behind them.

Before digging into what I saw, I had a lot of arguments from other people in my head before I sat down for the replay – e.g., theories about Montreal overloading the space either Juan David Mosquera or Claudio Bravo left open by pushing both too high and naked (i.e., without cover), gripes about Portland’s failings on transition defense, or something as simple as Larrys Mabiala being to old/slow for the game-plan – and that was on top of the narc-ish craving to blame it all on trying to fit Acosta into a No. 6 shirt that simply doesn’t fit him…

...wouldn’t you know, it was simpler than all that.

To be clear, Acosta does not appear to wear the No. 6 shirt comfortably or well – and do file that away for the future – but he really was in or around the places he should be in the crucial moments. That’s to say, he may not have managed the job well, but his positioning wasn’t the problem. Moreover, 1) that wasn’t the Timbers’ biggest problem, and 2) I’d put good money on Kwadwo Opoku burning 70% of MLS’s d-mids with the turn that created the chaos that led to Montreal’s second goal. And, to circle back to problems, the way Portland’s back three got stranded on that play was their biggest defensive problems yesterday afternoon.

FC Cincinnati 1-2 Red Bull New York: How Many Is Too Many?

Abomination.

Thanks to a 1-2 loss at home against Red Bull New York, FC Cincinnati killed the semi-pointless dream of claiming the single-season record for points in the MLS X.0 era. While I don’t like that anymore than you do, man, does it feel nice to have something to talk about besides, “yeah, still going really well.”

First things first, I wouldn’t freight this loss with a ton of meaning. Pat Noonan didn’t stir the starting XI, he shook it. I was about to digress to the culinary crime of a blended martini (hold on...has anyone...never mind), but he didn’t start any player that Cincinnati fans haven’t seen at some point in 2023. The issue – which assumes it was one – came with starting so many non-regulars. It fell well short of “who the fuck is that guy?” but, outside Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo, only Nick Hagglund and Raymon Gaddis had played more than 1,000 minutes coming in. Most of the rest have logged real minutes – e.g., 998 for Yuya Kubo, 880 for Alvas Powell, 844 (shit, when?) for Dominique Badji – but, again, most of that time came with more regulars in the eleven.

That totally showed up on the field – Cincy played most of the game in the wide expanses between in-synch, which they were not, and out-of-synch – but that didn’t hurt them as much and as fatally as the 20 opening minutes. As the Red Bulls demonstrated tonight, a little energy can go a long way and a lot of energy goes even farther. To tie that together, sure, the turnover in the line-up didn’t help, but Cincy dug a two-goal hole by a simple failure to match the energy-drink energy.

If this game has a mystery, or any real source of concern, that’s it: how did FC Cincinnati come into a game that, let’s face it, they could absolutely lose against a team that literally brands itself on high energy with, well, so little energy?

Credit where it’s due, the Red Bulls got hold of the game early. Over those opening 20 minutes, they pressed high enough to alternately frustrate and stuff a Cincinnati team that grew more disoriented and cautious with each misplayed pass out of the back. The defensive shape eventually compacted to where the hosts left all kinds of space in and around the edges of Zone 14. That burned them early when that ever-receding line left original (and impressively respectful) draftee, Frank Amaya, wide-open about 20 yards from goal...and he made it look easy from there. The same thing happened less than 10 minutes later, even if the gap opened in a different space, when the statistically-marginal Elias Manoel finished a John Tolkin cut-back from a pasture around FC Cincy’s penalty spot; this time, the back three had dropped deep while Cincy’s midfield failed to track Manoel or drop deep enough to cover: so, no, things did not go well on the defensive side.

Toronto FC 2-3 FC Cincinnati: And They Threw in a Shield...

This came up in a search for "early onset nostalgia." For real.

Take your hat off to Toronto FC for playing with more ability, and even pride, than they’ve managed through their long, dreary and biting 2023 regular season. Seriously, the only thing that saved them from playing like shit in their win over the Philadelphia Union was Philly playing even worse. Toronto played a strong one last night: their passing was clean, they stayed organized defensively and, for all the (many) shots FC Cincinnati fired, they by and large kept the visitors in front of them. Even the numbers show that the worst team in Major League Soccer played its best one pretty even.

The fact Toronto had to rally out of a two-goal deficit only makes that doubly-impressive. The outlines of another painful rout took shape early, when Cincy fired one shot after another toward TFC’s goal starting around the 20th minute – and too many from inside the box. All that knocking finally opened the door when Brandon Vazquez fired home from a couple steps in from the spot. Cincy doubled its lead eight just eight minutes later when Alvaro Barreal and Aaron Boupendza played in-out-and-back-in Toronto’s right side to create the shot that led to the deflection that (again) Vazquez put away.

Still, Toronto had laid the foundation; they only needed someone to build something on top of it. The sometimes-maligned Federico Bernardeschi set to work on that, taking charge of Toronto’s attack and doing to Cincinnati’s left what Cincy had just done to their right. He took the first ball inside, past first Vazquez then Junior Moreno and drove a shot at Roman Celentano...who, in a moment that probably still haunts the young ‘keeper, let it squirt from out between his legs. Jonathan Osorio spotted the loose ball before anyone else and poked it home to make it a 1-2 game. Bernardeschi struck again minutes later, this time cutting toward the end-line and around Cincy’s defense; his cross left Celentano flapping and Osorio, again, the first player to the ball. And could anything be more fitting than seeing local legend Jonathan Osorio score both of those goals?

Sadly (for them), the universe still works according to certain rules, one of them being that we all wake from our dreams. As everyone knows by now, FC Cincinnati walked off the field as the 2023 Supporters’ Shield winners last night. Toronto threw all the rocks they could into their path and Cincinnati stumbled over a few of them – e.g., momentum killing slop on the left from Barreal throughout the second half, uncharacteristically loose touches from Obinna Nwobodo; Vazequez and Boupendza hitting good clean looks to Toronto ‘keeper Luka Gavran as if the man had a magnet stitched into his chest – but the chances still piled on (most of the cleanest made the highlights), as did the pressure.

Los Angeles Galaxy 3-3 Portland Timbers: Bringing Home the Scraps

Not as fresh as you'd like, but still edible.

They could have curled up and passed out, but the Portland Timbers rallied on both the field and the scoreboard to tie the Los Angeles Galaxy 3-3 down in Carson last night. That said, I doubt any Timbers fan thought, “job well done,” on hearing the final whistle.

It has been a minute since I could drink in a full 90 (the win over Los Angeles FC back on September 9), so it’s possible I missed some disjointed, hesitant performances, but those words – disjointed and hesitant – paint the right picture. To their credit, the Timbers did put together the match’s first coherent moment – Felipe Mora chest-trapping a cross and pinging it into the yawning gap between LA’s Raheem Edwards and their centerbacks for Dairon Asprilla to run into; an open cutback found Santiago Moreno the doorstep for the game’s first goal (neat-o!) – but the Galaxy would equalize on a standing(!) header by Eric Zavaleta and settle into their game from there until...quite a ways into the game. They had the ball zipping to and fro by the 30th minute. Portland, not so much.

Missing a couple regulars likely played a role – e.g., Evander was out with an ankle(?) knock and neither Diego Chara nor his appendix could start – so maybe call the incoherence a testament to Evander’s growing influence on the team. Losing Cristhian Paredes at the mid-30s hardly helped (also, pulling for the guy to recover in time for his turn in the international spotlight), but the sort of global awkwardness had taken hold long before then. The usual sins followed from a team playing uptight – stray passes, disconnected movement, etc. – but those deficits can be redeemed (hallelujah!) when the team gives the proverbial 110%. Instead, the game’s long middle passage saw the Galaxy beat Portland to every 50/50 and the Timbers regularly at least one step behind.

And yet Portland still took the lead in the 38th minute when a...reasonably-worked, set-of-their-flaming-trousers move up the middle ended with a last-gasp cross bouncing off Zavaleta’s chest and into LA’s goal. Put a pin this moment because it pretty much defined both game and result.

Portland Timbers 2-0 Los Angeles FC: A Step (Over What May Be a Corpse) in the Right Direction

Night, night, gram-gram.

Because this game wasn’t that complicated, and because I’m about to check out until the end of September, I’ll keep the game summary for the Portland Timbers comfy-cozy 2-0 win over Los Angeles FC short.

It opened with a long, barren period – see the xG graph because it gets things mostly right – which left the game open for one of those pivotal moments. LAFC’s ‘keeper, John McCarthy, delivered with a swing and a miss at an Evander corner. His bobble bounced in front of the goal until Larry Mabiala did the simple thing of running toward it and heading it into the goal. Gods only knew what would happen from there, but it looked like a long stretch of nothing at that point.

I saw some chatter about LAFC getting back into the game during the latter half of the first one, but the only evidence I saw was an intermittently effective press and a couple smart shots from the left channel to the right post. All that didn’t amount to much – and I’m not the only one to think that; the on-screen halftime stats had the Timbers up 1.6 to 0.09 on xG (no typo on that zero behind the decimal).

The game ended according to everything but the final whistle fairly early in the first half. Portland scored an insurance goal so nice they insured it twice (seriously, watch it again for Santiago Moreno’s tulle-soft back-heel to Claudio Bravo alone) and LAFC only got worse from there. The Timbers had at least two more chances to dig them a deeper hole – and that’s on top of three more where a team that needed to make something happen would have pushed harder to make it so – and the game just kind of petered out from there. I mean that in the best way, honestly: there are few things I appreciate more in soccer than watching a team kill off a game softly, and the Timbers did that tonight. On a physical level, it didn’t take much more than a soap opera villain seeing that ill-gotten inheritance by leaning a little harder into the pillow smothering grandma’s face.

Seattle Sounders 2-2 Portland Timbers: We'll Always Have the Laugh

[DRAMATIC MUSIC!]

I’m going to start this post with two observations brought to mind by too much time on social media and too many years of staring at some version of the same thing one week after another.

Fans should appreciate perfection when they see it, as opposed to expecting it from any player. Because that’s just the world/humanity works, we’re none of us, etc. This mind-set is one of several reasons why I can’t coach. (“Hey, sometimes you just fuck up. No biggie. Love you, man.”)

Once (most) people make up their mind on a given player, he/she is either the shit or total shit. Once they think he/she is bad, all they see are the mistakes and once they think he/she is good, it’s nothing but the good stuff. It’s damn closer to binary. Swear to God.

As for the game, the high-comedic 2-2 draw between the Seattle Sounders and the Portland Timbers up in the frosty climes of the Puget Sound, I have more questions than I have answers, by which I mean I have only one real answer: I’d say about 75% of the success the Sounders had over the first half followed from the way they nipped at Portland’s collective heels over 2/3 of the field. Once they lost that, courtesy of a second yellow to Seattle’s Leo Chu, all you had left was two teams a year or two removed from their best days fighting over scraps. Hyenas versus vultures, basically.

To acknowledge something, Seattle got screwed hard by that sending off. Chu picked up his first yellow for one of the most randomly puritanical rules of the modern game – e.g., the shirtless goal celebration (WHY IS THIS A THING?) – and his second for, I shit you not, getting the worst of running headlong into Portland’s Zac McGraw. It takes so, so very much for me to agree that a referee’s decision decided a game, but Jon Freemon (a referee I do not know) cut off Seattle’s clearest path to success with an excessively legalistic reading of the rules and....just a bad call.

Don't get me wrong: knowing how pissy and bewildered Seattle fans are this morning is just the best. And that is what will have to pass for satisfaction on a night when the Timbers more or less stalled in their attempt to make the 2023 playoffs. Now, some more detail...

Portland Timbers 2-1 Real Salt Lake: Exciting in a Way You Don't Exactly Like

GOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

The title speaks to most of my thoughts about the game. And yet does that shoe really fit? And do we have to call in Cinderella for the tie-breaker?

On the chapter level, I don’t think tonight’s the Portland Timbers’ (glorious, radiant!) 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake requires any kind of detailed explanation. One decisive, isolated moment aside – here, I mean isolated as sighting a yeti riding the Loch Ness Monster – both teams struggled to stitch together anything terribly threatening and they both looked, for a lack of better phrase, like two groups of men contemplating their near-term fate.

That broad reality doubled the value of Santiago Moreno’s early go-ahead goal. Gods know it wasn’t pretty. Evander looked to have lost control of the ball, and too close on the left to make much out of it, until he saw Jose Mosquera loose and advancing on the back post. Evander’s cross strayed just past the toe of...what’s his name for RSL, landed in the slightly-hesitant path of Juan David Mosquera (frozen, apparently, by the lingering toe), he then pitched a cross into a wide-open gap into the beating heart of RSL’s defense, and Portland’s very own, long-troubled winger, Santiago Moreno, butted it home like a Bighorn in mating season, hallelujah, it was 1-0 to the Timbers.

I want to stop here to talk about Moreno, because he strikes me as one of the two real storylines for this game - not to mention the rest of 2023, and beyond. As any tuned-in Timbers fan knows, Moreno has had an angsty season, unsure of his role on the team, maybe even doubting MLS, God, and everything. As I watched him tonight, looking a little looser, more effective, maybe even a little more handsome, I got to wondering whether anyone on the coaching staff sat him down and told him that the slate is clean, the future is now, and so on. Set aside the question of whether saying such a thing is wise or deserved, part of me wonders whether it came up on practical grounds? To maybe knock things loose with a frustrated player, one perhaps in need of motivation? Reasonable hiccups aside, it worked. I’d call that Moreno’s best game of 2023...which doesn’t feel so brave, really. After all, that's one goal, one assist, one player.

FC Cincinnati 3-0 New York City FC: "A Damn Good, Exquisitely Well-Timed Win"

A still from TQL Stadium, August 26. (I kid, I kid.)

First, do an aging gentleman a favor and tell me that you needed to remind yourself FC Cincinnati wasn’t in orange yesterday. Every time the mind went drifting (as it does), I kept thinking Cincy suddenly looked wayward and baffled. It was New York City FC wearing orange, of course....but that wasn’t the weirdest thing I saw yesterday.

After a couple weeks of watching defenses assign either goon or goon squad to suffocate Luciano Acosta, seeing New York City FC opt against the obvious approach? Well, it was a decision. Nick Cushing (probably) directed his charges to go out and keep the shape, which allowed Acosta to do the whole float like a butterfly sting like a bee thing (“Joe Fraser can’t hit what he can’t see”; just read that full quote from Muhammed Ali this week and it really is a thing of beauty). Lucho Unlocked led to two decisive plays that commenced the scrambling of NYC’s defense on Cincy's first goal and that opened the backdoor on for Junior Moreno on their second. That amounts to a death sentence in a game where chances came often as the 25 bus (i.e., not often enough). The only major plot-point from there was NYC opting to defend space instead of players – most notably, Nick Hagglund - on a 58th minute corner kick. With that, FC Cincinnati walked off the field at TQL Stadium last night, 3-0 winners in what looked like a stroll.

And yet that impression was at least mildly illusory. Between wrapping up dinner (a decent tuna casserole, fwiw) and getting about 5 mg ahead of myself, I wasn’t totally locked in for the first 20 minutes of the second half – and that meant missing how close NYC came to either leveling the game, or pulling back one goal, something I saw (among other things) after re-watching the beginnings of the first and second halves this morning. The specific order and timing of it all escapes me, but Monsef Bakrar came within a quarter step of beating Roman Celentano on a near-post run to a deflected cross, (think it was) Julian Fernandez later forced Celentano to lay down to stop a shot from range and Keaton Parks put at least two great shots on goal over the course of the second half – one a five-hole shot, the other a header from just outside the six. That last sentence may very well contain the entirety of NYC’s attacking output for the afternoon, but, if you sprinkle in some dubious set-piece defending on FC Cincy’s part (lots of balls hitting ground, with some “danger! danger!” pinball thrown in), you’re just a couple but-fors away from a game that doesn’t look so comfortable.

If that sounds like a paragraph’s worth of quibbling, fair. Just about every game includes moments like that and all that mischief got managed, so what to do but celebrate? Even with the Philadelphia Union and (impressively) Orlando City SC winning, Cincinnati now holds a ten-point lead in the Supporters’ Shield race and an 11-point lead over the rest of the Eastern Conference thanks to losses by the New England Revolution and St. Louis CITY FC, respectively. They also padded their goal differential by three, something that could break some useful ties when such things come up and that brightens the bigger picture a little. To expand on that...

Portland Timbers 2-3 Vancouver Whitecaps: We Have to Talk About Evander

A song for the situation...

On the one hand, the final 20 minutes of effort couldn’t rescue the prior 70 minutes of not-good-enough. On the other, it was good to see the Portland Timbers play with some level of professional pride. To float an idea I’ve never really formulated before, maybe every team plays 50% harder after the coach gets fired so they can prove it really was him and not them?

I can list all the not-good-enough from tonight’s game, but I’m leaning against doing it for two reasons: 1) it continued the same wretched trends from the season so far, and 2) change takes time. Hell, it’ll probably take a new coach. I mean, who’s thinking of the Miles Joseph era as anything but the bridge to the team’s real future? Hell, the man doesn’t even bark at the fourth official like a proper head coach. (Is that a 400-level course or more disposition, nurture v nature, and so?)

The game happened as it did – the Timbers defense dropped on the first swing, going down on a back-post goal by the Vancouver Whitecaps’ Ryan Gaul in the 13th minute; then went down one goal further when the ‘Caps broke through their ramshackle press; honestly, the game was probably over at that point – but every lecture starts with a thesis, so here’s mine: Evander lost this game for the Timbers. And not for the first time either.

Again, this is the man brought in to win games for the Timbers.

The crucial moment came when Evander stumbled through Richie Laryea – a player moving away from goal – inside the penalty area. Right before that happened, the Timbers had just pulled back one of the two goals mentioned above. I’ll get to Portland’s first goal down below, but the complete and utter dipshittery (sp?) of committing that foul on a retreating player inside the area and giving up a penalty kick? That is elite stupidity. Fuck it, maybe file this under a karmic punchline to everyone’s complaint about Evander not trying hard enough. At any rate, the Timbers probably ran out of road after the genuinely impressive Ryan Gauld (one man, two goals, one assist) buried the ensuing penalty kick (and for why a 0:47 highlight showing a penalty kick, but not one damn clip about the foul that caused it? Rummage, worms!) and once Vancouver went up 3-1. The game ended 3-2 in Vancouver’s favor and there it is: another game older and deeper in debt.

GiOut: A Requiem for an Era

If you’ve got time to listen to an old man ramble, by all means pull up a chair.

To start with the weird one, a large part of me thought it would never happen. I’ve seen fans calling for Giovanni Savarese’s head since at least the middle of 2021. Some of that baying, though not all, rested on a clear belief that he was a singular kind of problem, that his tactics bound Portland Timbers players in chains ‘n’ whips. It was his failure to appreciate the arsenal he had at his disposal, basically, and to deploy it to maximal, devastating effect against any and all opposition that held the team back.

That line of thinking very likely kept me off the “Gio Out” wagon for six months, maybe even more. I’ve seen Portland’s roster and that’s bug-fuck crazy.

It’ll go on like this till I peter out. Something about the whole thing has me feeling philosophical about spectator sports and people earning their daily bread with a barking peanut gallery judging everything they do. Anyway, back to it...

Some part of me genuinely did think the Timbers front office would keep Gio on for another season, maybe even more. Most of the analogies popping into my head involve furniture – i.e., dad’s favorite recliner – even if I can’t land them, but I hope the association makes some sense. Some others about a death in the family burbled up – and you can’t help but wonder how people relate to that metaphor – but I’m miles removed from that kind of fallout. I suppose it’s an idea of turning around and expecting to see something that’s always there, only to find it’s gone.

I’ve always liked Savarese. Seeing local journalists – e.g., Sam Svilar and Abe Asher – praise his openness and good nature helped that along, but, even when he and the team struggled, I wanted him, specifically, to turn it around. He seemed likeable enough for me to not want to see him fail.

I think the best answer to The Big Question – i.e., how much of 2022 and what looked (powerfully) like a dead-end 2023 season was Gio’s fault – is that we’re about to find out.

Columbus Crew SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: The Thing Before the Thing You Worry About

Too much of this, honestly...

It wasn’t the result, or even the final score, so much as the manner of the defeat that made FC Cincinnati’s road to the end of the regular season looks a little longer yesterday...I mean, can we just call this thing, hand them the Supporters’ Shield and start the playoffs? (If not, why not?) Most signs pointed to a Columbus Crew SC win – i.e., they hosted, they're good at it/there, etc. Cincy’s more or less complete inability to affect the game? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe some guy at the back laid down $500 on Columbus’ 3-0 win, but I doubt that particular bet drew much action by the time the opening whistle blew.

Columbus opened the scoring early (15 minutes in) when all the work down the flanks paid off by prying open gaps in the middle. Credit to the Aidan Morris (who I will never underrate again) for the efficient, high-quality finish – seriously, think about how many times you’ve seen that same opening either blown or collapsed, or, more often, the ball sky over the bar – but more credit to the Crew collective for putting in the work that made that opening.

They took even less time to score the second – a (clean) penalty kick called for an Alvaro Barreal handball (justified, if harsh; not clear on how much he planned it and he didn’t gain much by it in any case; also, arrgggh, you'll have to consult the full highlights to see the fucking call) – but not much had changed between Columbus’ first goal and that 23rd minute moment. Columbus stuffed (at least) 75% of Cincinnati’s builds and Cincinnati stopped (approximately) none of Columbus’. The hosts played out of the back at will, not infrequently by having Steven Moreira just carry the ball out of the back and across one line after the other. They passed it out other times, mostly without bother, and that’s the first segue.

Cincinnati defended very, very passively...for most of the game, honestly, offering only a shaking fist’s worth of resistance to Columbus getting into their half. A counter-punching strategy isn’t a wild call against a team that likes to use the ball, but it does absolutely require, y’know, the counter-punch. Apart from a half-desperate foray in the fifth minute built between Luciano Acosta, Aaron Boupendza and Brandon Vazquez one strained individual effort at a time, Cincy struggled to land anything. They scratched out a couple more moments – Boupendza almost poked a wrong-footed shot (hold this thought!) past Columbus’ Patrick Schulte, but he didn’t put anything on it a stiff breeze couldn’t have and the Crew SC defense scrambled admirably, in waves even. Stats, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie.

Houston Dynamo FC 5-0 Portland Timbers: A Game That Felt Like a Curse

Simple, basic. What was missing.

There is nothing to take from that but total failure. The Portland Timbers' 0-5 loss at Houston Dynamo FC was the eternal audition for the not-ready-for-prime-time players, only without the happy ending. It is not worthy of anything but derision and talking points.

Screed the Firste
Portland’s midfield spent the entire damn night behind the ball. Problems abounded all over the field – the Timbers arrived late to every challenge and played a step behind every pass Houston played, which very likely followed from the fact that damn near every Timber spent all night looking like nobody pointed to their marks (hold that thought, close) – but Houston got players behind the Portland’s midfield all goddamn night. It. Was. A. Disaster.

Screed the Seconde
Cristhian Paredes played high for the first 60+ second of the game and...just why? What requirement did that respond to? What was he doing up there besides wandering around like a child lost at a Target. Had he moved around with the purpose of a kid scoring free samples at a Costco, maybe. But that?

Excuse the Firste
Growing pains. I get it. My voice cracked in ridiculous and embarrassing ways too.

The Timbers had new players in key positions, and it showed. I’m talking like underwear affected by black light under a sheer white bathrobe (picture this on a man. C’mon, this is a family blog; and, shockingly, there's no google image for this). I don’t believe I ever grokked the actual formation (ehhh, mabye?) beyond thinking “why is Paredes way up there,” but new-kid Bryan Acosta looked somewhere near as lost with regard to his special purpose on the field tonight as Miguel Araujo did – i.e., fucking miles into the woods, with neither food, water nor compass, and a total aversion to roughing it a la Bear Grylles (sp? fuck it).

MLS Eastern Conference Reset

Due to the long, long tail below, I’m going for an all-time short preamble for this post, just as I did for the Western Conference Reset. The goal here is simple: remind readers where all the teams in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference left off going into the Leagues Cup break (which I experienced less than I should have; pour one out), pass on short note as to how each Eastern Conference team did in that tournament, flag any (potentially? arguably?) notable comings into and goings out of the roster, and look ahead to the next eight games or so for all involved.

Here are the sources I consulted: the current conference standings, the bless’d and holy Form Guide, the group stage standings and knockout round brackets from the Leagues Cup, as well as the list of results, and the “all transactions” page on MLSSoccer.com.

I believe the rest speaks for itself, so, with no further ado...allez cuisine!

FC Cincinnati
15-2-6, 51 pts., 23 games played; 39 gf, 25 ga (+14); home 11-0-1, away 4-2-5
Last 10 League Results: WWWTWLTTWW
Strength/Location of Schedule
Cincy played six of their past 10 games on the road and, while they took a bit of a hit when they lost some players during the international break, they picked up where their 2023 season left off with a road win over Red Bull and a home win over the occasionally (now newly) impressive Nashville SC.
So, How’d Their Leagues Cup Go?
Wouldn’t ya know, Nashville knocked off Cincy in a penalty kick shoot-out where everyone more or less showed up. That’s a warning shot in my book (as argued here), but Cincy’s 100%-safe for the post-season, so it’s a matter of landing on the infallible winning formula – and that’s more about MLS Cup than the Supporters’ Shield. Barring a face-plant, Cincinnati should get the Shield, but more teams have figured out more things about them since the start of 2023, so...
Fresh Moves
None during the break. Aaron Boupendza arrived prior (though I am still sorting out my feelings...).
Expectations for the Stretch Run
A bit beefy on immediate re-entry – e.g., four of the next six on the road (@ CLB, @ ATL, @ PHI, @ MTL), but they’ve got some padding for the two home games (v NYC (pulling for a thrilla!), v ORL). It’s pretty standard stuff from there, but, with the padding Cincy has fluffed behind their butts (8 points over the Revs; hello down there!), they’d have to face-plant through the floor to lose the Shield...and I hope I didn’t jinx it.

MLS Western Conference Reset

Due to the long, long tail below, I’m going for an all-time short preamble for this post, as well as the one for the Eastern Conference. The goal here is simple: remind readers where all the teams in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference left off going into the Leagues Cup break (also, re Leagues Cup, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em), pass on short note as to how each Western Conference team did in that tournament, flag any (potentially? arguably?) notable comings into and goings out of the roster, and look ahead to the next eight games or so for all involved.

Here are the sources I consulted: the current conference standings, the bless’d and holy Form Guide, the group stage standings and knockout round brackets from the Leagues Cup, as well as the list of results, and the “all transactions” page on MLSSoccer.com. Oh, and I watched a lot of the highlights from the Leagues Cup.

I believe the rest speaks for itself, so, with no further ado. (And, goddamn, here’s to crushing the preamble.)

St. Louis CITY FC
13-8-2, 41 pts., 23 games played; 43 gf, 27 ga (+16); home 8-3-1, away 5-5-1
Last 10 League Results: WLTLLWWWLW
Strength/Location of Schedule
Tricky to read, honestly, due to the five wins in that mix: v HOU, @ SJ, v COL, @ TFC and v (pre-Messi makeover) MIA. And anytime they’ve come against one of the West’s better teams, regardless of venue – e.g., @ FCD, v RSL – they’ve lost. Maybe it’s that simple?
So, How’d Their Leagues Cup Go?
Not at all well, really. The fates dealt them a tough hand – i.e., Columbus Crew SC on the road and Mexico’s famous Club America at home – but, since this is a discussion about long-term prospects against your better teams....
Fresh Moves
Nothing major. They signed an Icelandic winger with highly-tenuous ties to the Icelandic national team named Nokkvi Thorisson and picked up defender Anthony Markanich from the Colorado Rapids.
Expectations for the Stretch Run
St. Louis plays five of their next eight games on the road, most against the decidedly middling middle of the Western Conference, but, honestly, their record speaks for itself at this point. And seeing them sort things out going into the Leagues Cup break gives me enough faith that they’ll stay somewhere around the top of the West. They’ll avoid the worst fate – i.e., missing the playoffs – in any case.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Monterrey: Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?

Feelin' it. (With due and necessary innocence.)

The Portland Timbers started yesterday’s Leagues Cup Round of 32 game in a defensive posture so deep and passive that I worried Gio Savarese had them out with specific and deliberate orders to defend first, second, and third, so long as the situation demanded it. When Monterrey commenced to camp in Portland’s half over the first five minutes of the game...well, I’ll speak for myself here, but I was already writing the first couple sentences of this post, nearly all of which centered on how I made peace with an 0-3 loss.

When the final whistle blew, Portland had conceded just one goal – one that, to continue the record from the alternative universe of doom and sadness, followed from a cascade of errors, many from the unlikeliest of suspects (e.g., and in order, Zac McGraw, Diego Chara and Claudio Bravo) – and they came within one late, great chance by Dario Zuparic of sending the game to penalty kicks (see the official highlights, surely). That wasn’t to be, sadly and dammit, because the Portland Timbers lost the game 0-1 to (from what I gather) Mexican titans, Monterrey.

That’s not what the post is about. It’s about how the game we all actually watched started about 14 minutes in.

After surviving those opening five minutes, the Timbers played straight to Monterrey’s end the first time they got on the ball. Franck Boli, in particular, became a channel-running pest: on two occasions between the 10th and 15th minutes, he received the ball and, after flummoxing a defender or two with as many cuts and feints, he fired shots that sailed just wide of Monterrey’s goal. His second shot rolled close enough to the right post for them to decide they couldn’t risk him firing a third, so a couple Monterrey defenders chopped him down before he could fire it. The entire stadium wailed for a foul (rightly so), but none was given (Leagues Cup, man; different set of rules) and Monterrey, now on the ball, launched a counter up their right.

Monterrey’s man – was it Maximiliano Meza or Stefan Medina? – almost reached the halfway line before Diego Chara 1) reclaimed the ball and clattered him clean to Providence Park’s (possibly cancerous) turf, and 2) signaled with the volume of a siren and the brightness of 100 flares fired simultaneously that Portland came to play yesterday, and with a very real amount of belief.

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Nashville SC (4-5, Shit!): Operation Fun-Suck

Acosta in green, all day yesterday.

I hopefully type “I’ll keep this short” to start these posts, but I think I’m going to pull it off this time...hey, nailed it....

FC Cincinnati tripped out of the inaugural edition of the Leagues Cup courtesy of a single missed penalty kick by Matt Miazga. If Nashville SC owed that thin crack of a margin to swapping in Elliott Panicco for Joe Willis immediately before the shoot-out, credit head coach Gary Smith for making a smart call. Because Nashville was perfect on their penalty kicks, Cincy only had to miss one. With that, a game that ended 1-1 regulation (still no home losses for Cincy, hyper-technically) tipped to Nashville 5-4 on PKs.

Nashville got one more thing perfect, or nearly so: smothering Luciano Acosta for over 3/4 of the game. While they didn’t man-mark him, Nashville reliably kept at least one player tight on Acosta – a defender when he pushed high, a midfielder when he dropped back – passing him off from one player(s) to the next, often by pointing at him like he never stopped farting throughout the game. That held up any time Acosta drifted into the middle of the field and only let up when the ball moved to the opposite side. Between that and Nashville compacting into a 5-3-2 tight enough to squeeze into their defensive third, Cincinnati struggled to do much of anything the entire game. I would say credit to Nashville if it didn’t make the game so goddamn unwatchable. A game killed, with malice (and great planning) aforethought...

More than anything else, this game provided a glimpse of the kind of soul-sucking bullshit riddles Cincy will need to solve if they want to lift MLS Cup. The odds that the first team or two they face in the MLS playoffs will take a similar approach to Nashville’s, if not bite it directly, are too low for the house to take them – i.e., this will happen. As such, the question for Pat Noonan et al becomes how to keep the attack lively when teams put a shadow or two on Acosta.

Cincinnati’s push for the equalizer suggested a couple approaches: playing with more urgency and begging more questions of the defense. This took the form of pushing more passes into Cincy players posted up against Nashville’s compact line(s), something they only started doing in earnest (by my count) after the 70th minute, with Obinna Nwobodo leading the way. Clearing Acosta out of that space helped, not least because the clutter didn’t accumulate when he wasn’t in the middle. Noonan loosened things up further when he replaced Alvas Powell with Bret Halsey, i.e., a player with at least some attacking upside. (And don’t dismiss Powell’s contribution entirely, because he showed his talent for open-field defending in a one-v-one against Hany Mukhtar.) Add a couple heads to the hydra, basically, or don't always demand the same one do all the biting.

Portland Timbers 1-2 Tigres UANL: Three Team Round Robins Are Kinda Dumb

Possible metaphor for capitalism...

I’m going to let the game thread handle the play-by-play for the Portland Timbers...yeah, I’m going to call it disappointing 1-2 home loss to Tigres UANL. I’ve started 100 posts with “I’ll keep this short” only to delete it after I’ve run over by a mile and a thousand meters, but, seriously, this result doesn’t tie into anything besides the present (current?) tournament, there’s no question left but whether the Timbers make the first round and...hold on, I have some breaking news...

The Timbers have, in fact, already qualified for the second round. And, yeah, that makes sense: With Portland still on a +1 goal differential, a Tigres win would kill San Jose’s chances of topping that and vice versa, and San Jose can’t pass them on points even if they won a penalty shoot-out...wow, a three-team round-robin set-up is kinda dumb. Tidy, but dumb.

To briefly summarize the game (again, please also consult the game thread for additional material/insights), the game started with some light groping, only then the Timbers got into a rhythm – seriously, they countered in a way that gave me whiffs of nostalgia – and, before you knew it – POW! (ZOWEEE!) – they went up 1-0 on a cracking free-kick by Evander (c’mon, a non-celebration celebration is still a celebration). Not content to be the hero of the play, Evander made the fool decision to pantomime a swing that grazed the top of a Tigres player’s head, which right got him sent off for a second yellow, two yellows make a red, etc.

Won’t lie, didn’t love what followed – see below – but, the Timbers dodging two fairly reasonable penalty calls aside (don't think either made the highlights, so...), Portland handled playing a man down...let’s go with capably. You don’t have to love what you don’t hate and, honestly, it held together until it didn’t. The decisive moment came when Juan David Mosquera let Jesus Angulo bolt past his shoulder at the back post with the goal yawning wide before him. Tigres scored and the game effectively ended. If memory serves and the numbers add up, Portland managed just one more shot on goal after that and, in my mind...I guess I’d say they did some things I wouldn’t have.

FC Cincinnati 3-3 (4-2) Sporting Kansas City: My Butthole Is Still Puckered

The bar for a bad performance, in green and black.

I doubt any team in Major League Soccer can make as strong a case that they should “save it for league” as FC Cincinnati. When you’ve got a shot at a record-setting season, I mean, why not?

At the risk of overselling the argument, what happens to Cincy’s chances of winning the Shield (which I covet) if, say, both Matt Miazga and Obinna Nwobodo went down?

Cincinnati fans may or may not have got a glimpse of that in yesterday’s freakishly nervy, overtime, skin-of-their-teeth-and-chinny-chin-chins 3-3, plus 4-2 in PKs win over a Sporting Kansas City team that usually slums in every house they visit. SKC came within a minute of winning the game outright, but, per the recent run of results, they self-sabotage often and with alacrity. Now...the tale of the tape.

The conversation about how much squad rotation hurt the cause starts with Nick Hagglund’s nightmare start, which featured two mistakes so glaring and close enough together as to give aid and comfort to the reigning MLS King of Boner performances, Austin’s Kipp Keller. Hagglund bookended his three-minute nightmare with a net-bursting own-goal on the front end and a blown marking assignment on a set-piece on the back end that gifted SKC’s Danny Rosero a point-blank header – the Mullet of Mistakes, if you will (that’s, uh, business in front, par...never mind).

Cincinnati responded on the field before it showed up on the scoreboard. They worked the historically vulnerable right of SKC’s defense with their own historically (very much) preferred left side of their attack like an early-80s pro wrestler struggling to get into the figure-four leg-lock – and do hold that thought because it became a major theme of the night. SKC punched back harder than expected: in keeping with head coach Peter Vermes’ theory of where they are, Kansas City does, in fact, move the ball quite fluidly; they got from their end of the field to Cincinnati’s well throughout the first half, sometimes artfully. One sequence in particular – e.g., the one that ended with Johnny Russell almost breaking in but-for Yerson Mosquera’s trailing leg – had the broadcast declaring this one of SKC’s best games of the 2023 season. “Vintage Sporting Kansas City” they called it...