MLS Week 22 Preview: On the Clout Maintenance Parade

Apt. And possibly copyrighted.

Gonna just kind of riff through the match-ups. Make it conversational...if in the espirit d'escalier vein.

Just to note it, I have two questions in my head when talking about any game: what is the likeliest result and how much would any other result matter?

To be clear, I mean the word “matter” in the context of Major League Soccer, a league where meaningful change occurs at geological speed. On with it...

Major League Soccer’s Week 22 kicks off smartly with the New England Revolution visiting FC Cincinnati – and no doubt scheming about how to batter or otherwise breach the walls of Fortress TQL. I imagine the U.S. Men’s pulverizing of St. Kitts & Nevis means Cincy won’t have Matt Miazga for another week, so maybe that’s the lever to finally crack Cincy’s home form. Only bad gamblers believe random events can be in any way “due,” so I’ll only say this: a Revolution win would make a good argument that they’ve pushed through their blues. Related/unrelated, FC Cincinnati has built a reputation they’re now damned to uphold until that burden falls from their shoulders.

That theme carries through a lot of the other games, or at least the good ones. I’d call...let’s go with “clout maintenance” as the primary theme of Week 22. To wit: Club de Foot Montreal will want to maintain his Cincy-esque home form – and their lifeline – by beating a limping New York City FC; the same goes double for the San Jose Earthquakes, who face the horror of waking up Sunday morning knowing that thousands observers will no longer say “yeah, but their home form,” with the same breezy confidence that people say, “yeah, but it’s a dry heat” (as you’re sweating off eight pounds just talking to them) if they hand even one point to the visiting/suffering Los Angeles Galaxy; finally, St. Louis CITY FC should expect to feel a similar heat (now, with humidity!) if they drop points to a visiting Colorado Rapids team with a straight-up shitty record of picking up any points no matter how hard the other team drops them. Another commonality in all those games: wins by any of NYC, the Galaxy or the Rapids won’t change many minds or raise low opinions.

MLS Week 21 (Probably?) Review: All the Thoughts I Had Before Falling Asleep on Monday

Okay, forward passes enable communism!

In order to get these league-wide wraps posted timely, I’m sticking with reviews and posting on Mondays (or Tuesdays). That simplifies the format (woot-woot), which goes something like this: I list all the games I look at – some of them longer than others (and [see the brackets] after every final score) – pass on the better notes that came to me as I watched what I watched in varying degrees of consciousness, embed a link to the MLSSoccer.com game summary in the final score (but otherwise don't link to shit), then move on to the next one. Now, please make sure your seat belts are fastened and extinguish any smoking materials, because this flight’s about to take off...starting with some loose thoughts that interrupted my fugue state...

At this point in the season, a growing number of games come down to which team of the two playing have more things nailed down. About 90% of that thought comes from watching Real Salt Lake and Atlanta United FC for long stretches – and, to flag which is which, RSL always looked like they had a chance to come back; Atlanta, meanwhile, played like a team that had been conditioned out of doing anything decisive by shock collars. Start watching for this. Also, don’t expect it to be a permanent condition. Only the good teams do that.

Something else that struck me this weekend: you don’t always see a goal coming – and not just in the “against the run of play” sense of the word. I think fans still get skittish about admitting this, but this game really can deliver a whole lot of running about and little more by the scores of minutes.

Finally, I imagine every week sees a Goal of the Week that wasn’t, but, Hector Herrera’s divine-but-for attempt against Austin? Better than 60% of the goals you saw and more inspired than all of them. R.I.P.

Well, that’s it for the chit-chat. Let’s talk about the games! Or at least the ones I care about.

Portland Timbers 1-1 New York City FC: No, It's Okay. Feel Disappointed. You've Earned It

I also want a new drug.

I fully intend to give the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 home draw against New York City FC exactly as much as it deserves and not 20 words more. We’ll see how I do...yeah, it's the same old shit, quality variable.

First, and pursuant to today’s earlier post, no, not good enough. On the plus side, Portland caught some breaks – e.g., Real Salt Lake continuing its soft home form against (the road-ready) Minnesota United FC, and Sporting Kansas City falling as flat against Chicago Fire FC as the Timbers did last Wednesday, i.e., they coughed up three desperately needed points...and isn’t the complaint in the end?

And that goes double, given the other results that went all wrong – e.g., Austin “managed the first half of the bookend” (see "today's earlier post") by walloping Houston Dynamo FC 3-0 tonight while the Vancouver Whitecaps smeared shit all over the Los Angeles FC narrative by beating them 3-2, in Los Angeles too. To loop back to today’s earlier post one final time, yeah, I missed over half the calls (see the paragraph above, as well as this one re Austin), but literally everything in that post relies on the Timbers doing something besides forever burying themselves in the sand (or whatever the hell weird kids do in the backyard sandbox; also, use rubber gloves, always) and, the Timbers simply haven’t done enough of something in this 2023 season. And so they remain below the playoff line.

I have fewer notes on the game itself than I have random notes on things, but to wrap up the game...also, that's another lie. Damn my long wind....pah-fffftt....

First, I’d argue that Portland owed most of whatever success they had in the first half to more or less stuffing NYC’s equally flaccid attack. The sobering, dunk-your-face-in-a-sink-full-of-ice-water reality is that the Timbers struggled to create much more – i.e., I feel like the 1.0 xG posted to The Mothership’s stats page paints a fairer likeness of the Timbers’ game-long threat than the 1.76 xG that AppleTV flashed at the end of the broadcast. In literally any other season over the past (is it?) twelve, I could have looked at tonight’s shot generation – e.g., Claudio Bravo’s shot to the far post, Juan David Mosquera’s late slice over the crossbar, the great look a sharper Santiago Moreno would have put away (dammit!), orEvander’s last-gasp free-kick that pinged off the post – and transmuted that disappointment into some form of hope. In a season where the Timbers’ goals per game barely gets its nose above 1.0 goals per game, however, I can't make the stretch go so far. Again, this is a team under a playoff line pushed low enough to let freakin’ toddlers onto the Disneyland ride of their wildest, indestructible-youth, “cartoon figures never die, so how can I?” fantasies...and is there anything of any consequence after that?

Diagnosis/Prognosis: The Timbers' Future, Between Now and the Break

Feel like this needs to be bigger....

I had some time this morning, so I thought I’d do a little reasoned projection about what the Portland Timbers’ future looks like between today and the Leagues Cup - a tournament I’m looking forward to despite generally hating on concocted tourneys in the MLS Extended Universe. The question I hope to run down: what kind of chance does Portland have of going into that break above the playoff line?

Before anyone gets his/her/their hopes up, I don’t dive too deep into any of this. The only sources I consulted were the current conference standings (for a snapshot), the Form Guide (for past results and future games), and the list of MLS players called up for the Gold Cup. Also, shit(!), and in time to make some revisions, the most current player availability report (which any sane observer should only half-trust). With each team, I walk through the raw numbers and blunt facts – e.g., records (home and away), goals for and against, and who’s next for all the teams - and close each section with further notes, details and opinions. I call these “info-blurbs,” for the record. Finally, the sample ranges from sixth place FC Dallas to 12th place Minnesota United FC – i.e., the collection of teams within touch of Portland, i.e., the kinds of teams they can catch or escape.

For those uninterested in combing through the data (impatient bastards), let’s kick this off with a fun/bleak stat: every team save the Vancouver Whitecaps has a negative goal differential – and most sit at -5 or worse. None of these teams actually rate as good, in other words, which has real potential to make the answer to the question posed up top one of which team will fail the least between now and July 16. Now, for the big picture prediction and tentative answer to that question...

Vancouver and Sporting Kansas City count as Portland’s most immediate competition and, by my loose math, both of them look like good bets to get six points (or more) by July 16 – which will force the Timbers to keep a similar pace. Minnesota, idle since June 10 by the way, might enter the mix, but they’ll have to do it over the next three games or (as I see it) abandon some measure of hope. I expect Dallas to fall, and for a variety of reasons, but I doubt they can drop far enough for it to matter for the Timbers (barring a miracle run); related, I see Real Salt Lake leapfrogging Dallas and maybe even giving the San Jose Earthquakes and Houston Dynamo FC something to worry about. Finally, I’m going with Austin FC as the wild card in the mix. Their late mini-revival suggests they could make a little noise – or just get enough points to keep the Timbers below the playoff line.

Portland Timbers 1-2 Chicago Fire: Playing to Their (Damned) Level

Spinderella vibes.

What in the sweet, sweaty balls of Chubby Checker was that? A 1-2 loss at Providence Park to a team that is both historically and currently bad, obviously, but...well, how the fuck does that happen? Yes, even in a fucking “transition” season.

To recap, the Portland Timbers failed to capitalize on a glorious opening - one carried to potentiality by the divine wind of the gods (or gremlins in the turf tripping the Chicago Fire’s last defender), I might add – due its latest (literal?) record fucking signing losing the ball in his feet at the critical and yet somehow eternal moment (I yelled “Boli! Boli!” to no one in particular for felt like a full minute; in here somewhere, or least it should be), and then the Fire score a soul-stealer of a winner – what? – ten minutes later. To paraphrase a prescient, and now-curs’d man on twitter, “now watch [Kei Kamara] rise like a salmon to score.” And so he did.

Short version, the Chicago Fire (the Fire!) beat the Timbers 2-1 tonight and, to paraphrase a great Dan Savage bit, this is not the match review I wanted to type tonight. Like I say to the dentist every time, let’s get this bullshit over with.

I didn’t see any clear reason why Chicago won tonight. Sure, they started the first half well, and the second, but, as suggested by The Mothership’s xG graph (which is to say I agree with it, and scroll down), no flashing red lights announced either team’s intention to score. Will Robinson was not in danger. My anxiety about the Timbers generally and damnable lolly-gagging bubbled over into the game thread about five minutes after I felt it; the time had come to push the game, push it real good...

...and that’s the story, isn’t it? This current – a word I mean in the hyper-present tense* - simply doesn’t have it in them to push the game, never mind real good (Don’t talk about the win over Seattle...not now). The grasping at straws continues – and full credit to Marvin Loria, a player I pick at every time I mention his name, for finally showing some kind of urgency with his stoppage time shot and forcing a corner kick, but that showed up 20 minutes past too fucking late. Just four, five minutes prior, I watched and wondered when I’d see any Timbers player show for the ball in a way that felt like a demand. I can’t name one player who showed a clear, unflinching willingness to take charge of this game.

MLS Baby Week 19 Review & How the East Is Getting Won and the West Is a Hot Mess

My process.

Hello and welcome to another week of soccer viewing and free association – though, in fairness, the “free” had a little trouble getting off the ground this week. Shakras all jammed up, people, and no combination of stretching and self-medication to loosen them.

Some notes before digging in. I already posted a long-form review of the Portland Timbers' puzzling, dull and goal-less draw away to the San Jose Earthquakes (short version, the Timbers may or may not have done all right against a strong, yet short-handed home team). Also, I caught the tail-end of New York City FC snatching a point from the jaws of defeat at home against Columbus Crew SC and, full disclosure, would have put my money on the visitors taking all three points when I checked out around the 85th minute (aka, too soon)...and yet, how many NYCFC fans feel better after that? Based on their 1-5-4 record over the past 10, it would take a conclave of the delusional.

I took longer looks at the rest of this condensed MLS Week’s action – and, yeah, I got a little misty about the days of 10-12 team league. The format’s the same – i.e., a link to The Mothership’s summary is embedded in every final score, where you'll find stats and highlights, and note the windows I watched in brackets in italics after it – and the notes follow. The methodology is pretty simple: turn on the game and let your brain ask questions like, “how many wins have they had lately?” or “what’s their goal differential again?” as you go. I’ll close with notes on (shit!) this Wednesday’s full buffet of games, but, before sharing my notes, I wanted to flag some big picture stuff I didn’t cover in my notes (e.g., how much more cleanly the Eastern Conference expresses its hierarchy than the Western does).

1) How the East Expresses Its Hierarchy (and the West Fails to)
In goals, basically. The average number of goals scored and allowed across MLS is 22.6. The average in the West comes in at a clean 21 “goal units,” while the average rises to 24.1 in the East. That’s a function of the fairly clean split between haves and have nots in the East. Your better teams – e.g., FC Cincinnati, Nashville SC, and the Philadelphia Union – have, not just wider goal differentials, but they’re above average for scoring and, perhaps more crucially, well below the average for goals allowed. Before any of you raise your hand to say, “what about the New England Revolution?” I’m tossing them into the same bucket at Columbus Crew SC and Atlanta United FC – i.e., the teams that succeed (insofar as they do) by running up the score. Along with St. Louis CITY FC, those are the three highest-scoring teams in the league...which brings me to the second half of this thought.

San Jose Earthquakes 0-0 Portland Timbers: When a Plan Comes Together...Somewhat

Everything in its place. Step One.

A kind of muddy result overall, if you ask me. The Portland Timbers created an advantage, yet struggled to exploit it; meanwhile, the San Jose Earthquakes have a decent argument that they can survive without some key starters – to be clear, that’s survive, not thrive.

A 0-0 draw by any other name, basically.

To credit a coaching staff that doesn’t often get it, Gio et. al. set up the team smartly, all the forks in the right places, and so on; to keep the credit flowing, they gambled on an approach and it paid off – handsomely, even. Given how much San Jose works up both flanks, playing four at the back made sense and starting Eric Miller, a purer defender than (the admittedly absent) Juan Davis Mosquera, neutralized Cade Cowell – at least until the ‘Quakes had him drop deeper to where he could receive the ball and attack the space in front of Miller. The gamble came with defending San Jose way up to their defensive third and, for what it’s worth, I believe Portland has a team that can do that in a way they haven’t in years. Italics in the word “defending” because I saw Portland collapse space as opposed to hunting the ball. That limited most potential over-committing, a good thing under most circumstances. One thing I want to note about that, both about tonight and going forward...

I rate Judson highly enough that I didn’t expect much falling off on seeing San Jose’s starting roster tonight versus last week's, but the sum of the game begs the question of how much Carlos Gruezo and Jamiro Monteiro make the ‘Quakes tick. A midfield three with those two and Jackson Yueill has plenty of bite, plus some good ideas about how to get forward...which points to a real question about tonight’s li’l joust.

To highlight my biggest takeaway from tonight’s game, and I noted this in tonight’s game thread, the Timbers played the best full-field team defense I’ve seen them play all season. The optimist wants to believe that happened because the Timbers collapsed space with the tidiness of an in-prime K-pop act; the pessimist wonders how different that would have looked with Gruezo and Monteiro on the field: the eternal question of cause and effect lurks somewhere in the middle of all that, therefore I don’t feel like we really got an answer to the question, have the Timbers turned a corner of, gods forfend, actually improved?

The Late, Late, Late MLS Week 18(?) Review: We're Free Associating Now, People...

Knocking not recommended...

You reach a point in the season where the specific reasons that any one thing happened matters far, far, far less than the sum of the things that keep happening.

Or, to go with a spin on the popular phrasing, your local team bears a striking resemblance to their results.

Also, I just watched Houston Dynamo FC wrap up a 1-0 win over Los Angeles FC – and on the road to boot. I see the red card (but also didn’t see it) and I didn’t see the one goal, but, 1) funny result! and 2) I whistle past the idea that LAFC has the blues below...maybe that’s me being guilty of getting stuck on the “LAFC is good” narrative instead of really engaging with what I’m looking at. Again, why futz with how much the numbers “love” a given team? Why turn one’s back on the empirical evidence?

Very much related, there’s this annoying tic in soccer commentary, and sport commentary generally, that refuses to engage (sorry for the verb repeat) with the very obvious premise that both the opposition and venue make every game unique for your local team. The discussion carries on as if they play [MLS Opponent], like there isn't a massive difference between, say, playing Nashville in Nashville versus playing Colorado...pretty much anywhere. Sorry to bang on about that, but I’ve become obsessed with this argument in recent years, and with a Teddy Kaczynski level of intensity, only without the letter bombs. This is my grand theory of most things, people...

At any rate, I’ve stripped down my weekly review formula to match what I tend to get for readership on these posts. So, rather than indulge in fancy writing and grand theories, the content that below amounts to a series of exercises in word association as I watch either games or highlights. I note which is which next to each header, The Mothership’s game summary is embedded in every final score, etc. And I’m barely editing the phrasing and readability can go to hell. Oh, and careful readers will notice I didn’t touch on every game below. I did that in the interest in time and sanity. Right, let’s get into it.

Summertime Sadness, aka, The Thing That's Wrong with the Timbers

Mood, man.

When was the last time the Portland Timbers actually excited you?

That answer varies based on your own experiences and personal predilections, naturally, and encompasses everything from how pissed you are about front office malfeasance to how The Product plays on the field. I’ve got my gripes with the front office – and gods know I’ve aired them – but this post deals strictly with The Product.

I’m going to start with last Sunday’s home win over FC Dallas, but won’t burn a lot of time on it, you saw it or you didn’t, etc. Portland played all right: they made Dallas ‘keeper Martin Paes work (and barely allowed Dallas a shot); they scored a smart goal, Evander lofted his cross just so into the seam where Franck Boli made his run – and that run opened up a lot of the goal for the finish, good high-percentage stuff in other words. [Ed. - I have no damn idea how The Mothership measures xG, but am quickly becoming obsessed with it.] Going the other way, Dallas played like tired shit – that’s against the clean win they picked up at home midweek over St. Louis CITY FC They played through St. Louis’ pressure, which can come at G-force, and took three points on the back of two good goals. All in all, I wouldn’t get too deep into how much Portland limited Dallas’ shots, they don’t generate a ton (even in a win), and so on. I don’t mean to imply it wasn’t a good result – in context, it tickles the belly of “fabu” because they looked nothing like guaranteed going in and I’ve seen players like Alan Velasco and Jesus Ferreira fuck a defense up. It’s the context around it where...I have concerns.

Sure, Portland ended the game over the line, and in something crazy like 8th place, but they share that lowly podium with (literally) four other teams and, as I see it, the broad arc of the Timbers’ season bends toward where they started the week, i.e., below the playoff line. And that brings me to the grand thesis:

There ain’t a lot to get excited about on this roster. I’d go so far as to argue that the Portland Timbers are in the midst of a “transition year” that has somehow lasted for two seasons.