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.