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...

Portland Timbers 2-0 San Jose Earthquakes: Ladies and Gentlemen, A Gift Horse

Sorry. Really trying to drive home the ugly.

I think the thing that surprised me most was the way San Jose fell off. For as far as they fell short of shaking the pillars of heaven over the opening 30 minutes, the Earthquakes found good looks on goal – e.g., a couple (super) early courtesy of Jack “The Unlucky” Shakan (he limped off early), and at least one that teed up a near-post rocket from still-favorite son, Jeremy Ebobisse. No real clear signs pointed to all that evaporating. And yet it did.

Flip to the other side of the same coin and you saw the Portland Timbers doing the soccer equivalent of chucking rotting fish carcasses on the field. Miles from the same page, unsure where to go, and by all evidence, continually surprised by every decision made by their teammates, Portland's attack STRUGGLED through the first 45 minutes. A single Timber could move the ball forward, yes, but only when San Jose’s defensive spacing fell apart to where the guy carrying it didn’t need to pass. The second he did pass it, the ‘Quakes had the ball with eyes pointed toward the Timbers’ goal.

Evander scored the opener. Just spitting that out feels good and correct because that’s how it happened on the field; it felt like one minute, Evander was firing hopeless farts toward Daniel’s goal, the next, he gave the Portland Timbers their one and only positive attacking moment of the first half - which is to say, it didn't feel like an event that closed the door on San Jose's period of dominance. This being the Leagues Cup, The Mothership’s stats page doesn’t have the xG graph, but I bet that Portland’s line nudged up 0.1 at most for that shot. It had "yeah, why not?" written all over it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a beauty – observe and hold that thought – but I think Evander was the only person in the stadium who saw that going in as he hit it. [Ed. - The story behind why he didn't celebrate the shot makes me like him more.]

The only question from that point was whether the San Jose Earthquakes could get themselves back in the game. I hinted at what happened above, in the first paragraph, but, for lack of a better word, everything just...stopped working for the ‘Quakes. Sure, they had that penalty shout when Cade Cowell broke loose – think this was somewhere around the 70th-75h minute(?) – with Juan David Mosquera chasing him down and David Bingham rushing toward him. Cowell went down in the area, no question, and I think Mosquera might have clipped his heel (didn’t make the (fucking) highlights? seriously?), but the fact Cowell had pushed the ball far enough in front for Bingham to take it clean was good enough for me to bless the non-call. Fun fact about me: I’m a hard-ass when it comes to calling penalties and a libertine on molly when it comes to calling offside...kinky, in other words...

FC Cincinnati 3-1 Nashville SC: The Hardest Easy Thing

Simplifies where you focus, really.

It starts with a question: did FC Cincinnati’s 3-1 win over Nashville SC look easy as the final score to you?

Answer however the spirit moves you, but, when you do, I’d encourage you to think as broadly as possible. Think of all the questions you want answered, basically, and go from there.

With all that in mind, here’s what I saw:

A Cincinnati team forever on the brink of breaking through versus a Nashville team forever falling short. Sure, Nashville knocked canyon-sized dents into their own chances when two of their players did two very stupid things in as many minutes – I’m talking stuff that someone who paid them to throw the game would tell them not to do, because it would telegraph the con (guys! call me!) – but they also might have had their better moments when they had the fewest players. But even that nods to the flipside of the final result – and the game.

Badly as they played – and put me in the “very” camp when it comes to a vote – Nashville still came within a penalty call that (rightly) fell apart upon review of tying this game (should be in here somewhere, if not blame them, not me). They produced flurries on either side of that and it all came after Taylor Washington got his second yellow for...he tried to grab the ball, I think(?), and Fafa Picault picked up his second yellow for, honestly, what do you call Picault’s lunge into Santiago Arias (right?)? A protest against uneven refereeing? A you-can’t-fire-me-I-quit cry for attention? Both came so close together that we never had time to figure out how one sending off would affect the game...

...and yet, can you think of a time when Nashville ever really looked in this game? They scored the first goal, but that blew through a vast fucking desert like the last tumbleweed in the world, a singular sign of life in a vast, expansive nothing. Nashville struggled to step into Cincinnati’s defensive third under any kind of control, which means they struggled to find Hany Mukhtar, and that’s how Nashville ends a game with six shots total and just one of them on/in goal. And that’s more or less what I mean by “forever falling short.” 90% of everything Nashville tried fizzled out. Maybe it’s simple as having no Plan B for the Plan A, aka, “Get Hany the Ball,” but, again, Nashville made their best attacking moments during a last-ditch push for the equalizer – i.e., after Mukhtar came off. More than anything else – and this thought is by no means original to me – Nashville ended the night as a team in desperate need of a Big Think...

...so, why did it take FC Cincy so long to put that team away?

Portland Timbers 3-2 Columbus Crew SC: The Night of the Side Netting

To start with a personal note, I watched the Portland Timbers loin-stirring win over Columbus Crew SC from an angle I’d call “a coach’s view.” Seats for the game fell into my lap and planted me six rows up from the field around the top of one of the 18s, not great for a full-field view, but it did get me up close and rather intimate with everything that went up the Timbers’ right in the first half and everything that came down their left in the second. Just different, basically, and oddly refreshing.

Impressively and rightly high in the search results.

To stick with the theme, what a way to commemorate the celebration of a Timbers legend. I’m guessing someone made the “let’s sign Diego Valeri to a one-day contract every week” joke for the first time around the 30th minute. It had legs up to the 65th minute – i.e., when Columbus’ Lucas Zelarayan scored a second rather beautiful goal – but Timbers fans couldn't burn more than 15 minutes trying to repurpose the original joke as gallows humor before Sebastian Blanco answered the tense and expectant calls raining down from the stands to just shoot the fucking ball...

...and, to close out the opening section, I was close enough to feel Yimmi Chara’s crippling indecision in the eternal seconds before Blanco slammed home the game-winner - which, like the first, punched into the side netting of Columbus' goal. The game ended 3-2, the Timbers hit the Leagues Cup break with a fresh reminder that they can, in fact, play this game and a stadium-sized crowd went home grinning and stoned on a massive hit of Member Berries. Once were kings, etc.

I didn’t commit the thought to any public place, but I went into yesterday’s game convinced the Timbers had to score the first goal to get even one point. That came partly from instinct and partly from a belief that they couldn’t afford to fall behind in a drag race against this Crew team, but I didn’t appreciate how right that was until I checked into it this morning. Portland scored first in five of their six wins in 2023 (the outlier? the win over Seattle) and, fun fact, have a 5-2-2 record across those games. It’s as if they need that blessed margin of error to keep the game and their shit together, a 100-yard head-start on the metaphorical quarter mile.

Red Bull New York 1-2 FC Cincinnati: Tactics & Strategery

No, I can't explain the W references...

Sometimes I get strategy and tactics confused. It’s less a question of knowing what one word/concept means versus the other, so much as deciding where one meets the other on its way in the other direction.

I had a whole narrative banged out for this game. It had smart little sub-plots, intrigue between the characters, maybe even a touch of hubris. Then FC Cincinnati went and won the damn thing with a late goal by, yeah, I’ll say it, my favorite who likes to match orange & blue, Obinna Nwobodo. [Ed. - The Mothership didn't provide much for individual highlights, so you'll have to dig into the full ones if you want video on, say, the penalty calls.]

Cincy beat a rising(?) Red Bull New York team in its own house, but that’s not the important thing about this game; moreover, just naming Nwobodo opens up a path to talking about what happened in last night’s 2-1 win. [Ed. – Fuck me, man. Just spit out the final score.]

I did some preliminary research on the Red Bulls yesterday, stuff I chose not to post on the grounds that I was looking at it last night, Cincy played them last night, etc. Most of what I learned dealt with characteristics that simultaneously define and limit them as a team. Famously, they press, they play “energy drink soccer,” etc. But it’s also not that – and I have to credit Calen Carr for giving me the right thought process during RBNY’s stomping of Atlanta United FC a few weeks back. They don’t press so much as they try to dictate where on the field the game gets played; to borrow another phrase Carr uses all the time, “they tilt the field.” “Pressing” and “energy drink” soccer conjure mental images of players chasing ball and players like headless ‘roided-up greyhounds and that misses it; if you watch them, the move close to the ball, often at a walk, then they start with the chasing. They mind their Ps and Qs before setting the defensive posture to “MY BALL!”

That strategy (right?) worked very well through the first half. Cincinnati didn’t do much over the first 25 minutes of the game and they couldn't do anything for the next 20. New York (I know it’s New Jersey....just roll with it) got and scored their penalty at the beginning of that period – and, just to note, I wouldn’t have called that, letter of the law be damned; sure, Hagglund’s hand strayed to face, but Kyle Duncan wasn’t gonna make shit out of that, he didn’t really unbalance him, etc. – but they way they controlled the game struck me as more significant. Cincy barely got across the center-line until something like the 46th minute when they (don’t remember who) finally fired a decent shot from a quality chance on goal and, yes, I do think that’s how xG should work. (I’ve got issues all over...)

MLS Week 24 Review: Wings of a Sparrow, Ass of a (Filthy) Crow

Ready...aim...

Once again, I’m totally committing to a formula of watching (nearly) every Portland Timbers and (going forward) every FC Cincinnati game and going deep on any game involving their next opponent. As the social media ground...moves...under my feet, I move with it.

As for the rest, I’ve been trying to figure out how to write my Major League Soccer weekly roundups as narratives, not just because I feel like that’s my forte (humor me), but because I believe that beats trying to extract/conjure singular...details, anecdotes, stats...just fucking things for a bunch of games and about a bunch of teams I couldn’t possibly absorb. The goal for this post is to tell four inter-related, inter-woven stories about the MLS Week that just passed – Week 24, in this case – and to leave it there. Taking it all in from a bird’s-eye view, in other words. The subject for the four stories will be self-evident from the titles, thus endeth this part of the preamble.

WHEREAS...just fucking with you. Legal assistant joke. At any rate...

The second part of this post – and, here, the sloppiest – is nothing but the raw notes I produced by watching the highlights (the little seven-minute jobbers), and looking at things like the stats pages, the line-ups when the highlights didn’t provide them, and the (holy, bless’d) Form Guide. With this edition, I only decided to include said raw notes about seven games into the process, so I didn’t type those with readers in mind. The change comes when I started typing "TRENDS" and "GAME" in the notes/summaries, but I didn't really fully commit to the concept until the Colorado/Dallas game. So, yeah, expect gibberish, but also expect the “raw” notes to read a little less raw in future reviews.

Right. On with the stories.

Notes on MLS East
I’d call Club de Foot Montreal taking another nibble out of their lifeline (i.e., their home record) and Nashville SC getting all existential about whether they’re anything without Hany Mukhtar as the biggest stories in the East for MLS Week 24. Honorable mentions abound – e.g., a deserved New England Revolution equalizer against Red Bull New York (again, what is VAR but the same bullshit delivered after a long delay?) – but they remain honorable mentions because, e.g., that equalizer wouldn’t have changed the world or any major narratives or anything.

MLS Week 24 Preview: What to Watch When You Can’t Watch the Timbers

How I roll... (also, yesss....)

[Sung to the tune of “When I Root", even if the meter’s a bit off.]

The Portland Timbers won’t be in “action” until next Wednesday when they get in the second half of their sleepwalk through Commerce City, CO, but that won’t stop the world around them from shifting. Various Western Conference rivals – some more immediate than others – will take the field this MLS Week 24. This post looks at where the relevant ones have been…and where they’re likely to end up after this weekend.

To finish the thought on that word, “irrelevant,” I’m pulling Real Salt Lake (and therefore RSL v Orlando City SC) and FC Dallas (and therefore Colorado Rapids v Dallas) from the sample – and on the grounds both sit too high in the table to matter for a Timbers team that’s struggling and with no “mightily” about it. And, yes, bad results for those teams in those games, plus the Timbers picking three points in the back nine of next Wednesday’s game will haul both teams back into the mix. Until that unlikely and likely hideous event, however…

With those ruled out, the following games from the MLS Week 24 slab should hold some interest for Timbers fans (listed in the order they’ll be played):

Minnesota United FC v Austin FC
Houston Dynamo FC v Sporting Kansas City
Los Angeles Galaxy v Philadelphia Union
Los Angeles FC v San Jose Earthquakes

Those first two count as two-fers – i.e., both teams are close enough to Portland in the standings for any result to matter – while the only thing that really matters with the other two is what happens with (or, ideally, to) the Galaxy and the ‘Quakes. Before picking through the relevant data, all this comes with one major caveat: any team that’s anywhere near the Timbers in the standing is almost certainly as erratic as Portland and therefore not good. I know dick about “the underlying numbers,” but do know that all those teams come in on or under average on the attacking side (25.0 goals for) and, with the exception of Houston and Minnesota, all allow goals on the wrong side of the average in the West, 26.7, or thereabouts. As such, any and all predictions should be taken in the spirit of a something between calling a coin flip and predicting the number that will come up on…let’s go with a ten-sided die. Again, I don’t do predictions, just expectations.

Minnesota United FC 4-1 Portland Timbers: Bye-Bye Scarecrow, Bye-Bye Tin Man

And on and on until you (or the Timbers) die.

Like a car peeling off one tire after the other over 90 slow, aching minutes. As if a car could do a strip-tease before catching fire and careening into literally the nearest ditch.

The Portland Timbers utterly surrendered against Minnesota United FC tonight, and in the finest literary tradition: slowly, then all at once. The game ended 1-4 and, for all we know, started there in the right cosmological universe. All I know is that, once the game took a turn around the 35th minute, it kept driving in the same direction as if no barriers, be they natural or man-made, stood to stop it. Like every left turn in the Dakotas and every bit as God-forsaken.

To make one thing clear from the start, the Timbers never looked like winning this game. Tripping their aimless, collective way to a tie, maybe, but winning it? A team can’t score a goal until it can move the ball in some general direction thereto – a shared activity miles beyond the capacities of this forced experiment of a Timbers line-up. And I’ll pick that apart later...

It was possible to believe in that knees-knockin’ tie until sometime shortly after the 35th minute. After as many minutes of probing what they perceived as Portland’s weaknesses – a lot of it through Bongokuhle Hlongwane and toward Larrys Mabiala - Minnesota started pressing in earnest, throwing numbers forward and putting the Timbers defense under sustained pressure. To echo the popular cliche, Minnesota’s first goal was coming before well Portland’s Diego Chara clipped it into the net at the 43rd minute. Both my brain and heart checked out (so that’s...the Scarecrow and the Tin Man) after Emanuel Reynoso slipped what will go down as one of the more disputed olimpicos you will ever see at the (first half) 49th minute. And, to lay my cards on the table, I am Team Olimpico. The ball was curling in before Aljaz Ivacic punched it into the goal instead of away from it.

That was 0-2 to Portland going into the half and, whatever you were doing (you crazy ding-dong), I gave up by then.

To prove I’m no heartless bastard, yeah, the Timbers clawed back at least one goal. As much as anything else, Franck Boli proved he can score a goal if someone can tee him up right; this goal looked like Boli’s other best, cleanest shot of the season, one that came on the other side, and I don’t think that’s a mistake...and I’ll pick this apart later as well. At any rate, and whether you love it or dismiss it, Portland showed enough fight to bring the game to 1-2 and whispered “I’m not dead yet” loudly enough for the world to hear.