Los Angeles FC 3-2 Portland Timbers: A Long Journey to Nowhere and No Points

Up next, an endless lecture on wormholes...

Well, if that game didn’t barf up talking points like a frat boy sailing three sheets into the wind…

The answer to the question where to begin starts at the end of the first half with the Portland Timbers crawling into an 0-2 hole right ahead of the whistle. The entire half had…more or less sucked, but the Timbers had held on to where the optimistic sort could see them keeping things goal-less and having time to reorganize – particularly on the right side of defense where Juan David Mosquera faced acres of space to manage and a rampant Denis Bouanga to contain. Very much related, Los Angeles FC scored its first goal on the dozenth-plus time Bouanga got loose over there and cut a lethal ball across the area that slid well beyond the tips of Maxime Crepeau’s otherwise excellent fingers. When Portland’s Kamal Miller slid to meet it, he hedged the angle a couple dozen degrees inside and that put LAFC 1-0 up.

There’s nothing to do after that, of course, but to have all concerned dust themselves off, clear their heads and limit any further damage. Yeah, no, that didn’t happen. And I’m going to make a point here that will no doubt get me down-voted to oblivion on Reddit, but I’ll die on this hill: on the one hand, nearly all of LAFC’s most threatening approaches came from Mosquera’s side; on the other, that was always going to happen and what is the rest of the defense/team for if it isn’t to put out the fires he starts?

As anyone who read the scouting report below knows, I was bullish Portland’s chances in this game, if with terms and conditions. One big one: locking down the space where God, all the angels and everyone else knew they’d attack – i.e., through Denis Bouanga and at the right side of the Timbers defense. So, sure, Mosquera made two games’ worth of gaffes last night, but LAFC does not go into the locker room up 2-0 at halftime if just one other field player comes within a country mile of Timothy Tillman trotting up the middle of the field. With no one but an equally-exposed Crepeau to stop him, Tillman slotted home (only available in the full highlights, apparently) and that’s how Portland wound up in that deep hole. 

The final whistle blew on a 2-3 road loss for the Timbers, their (fer crissakes) seventh game(!) with one or fewer points – and, relevant to the overall situation, they’ve picked up zero points out of the balance of those games and just three (fucking) points from the last 21 on offer. And where can that leave a team but riding shotgun with the dregs of the league.

But, wait! There’s more! So much more! Not all of it good, but – hey! – some of it is!

Los Angeles FC Scouting Report, Hatred, Contempt & Gambling

Better at soccer, honestly...

I couldn’t get myself up for another deep dive into Los Angeles FC. Don't blame me. Blame the twits at Major League Soccer HQ, who forgot the adage about familiarity breeding contempt…

…related, LAFC fans have a lively persecution complex about everyone else in the league giving them short shrift and hating on them generally.

Some Basics
And…hey, it turns out I never actually previewed LAFC due to a mini-vacation earlier this month (#worth it), so may as well lay it all out. They currently sit on at 7th in MLS’s Western Conference on a 3-3-3 record, with a tight goal differential (+1), on the right side of average (11.3) for goals scored (15) and the wrong side of average for goals allowed (14). They boast a decent unbeaten record at home (3-0-2), which is all that matters for now because that’s where the Timbers will play them on Saturday (side note, they’re 0-3-1 on the road, which means Portland (or the ref that day, Rubiel Vazquez) gave them their first road point of 2024).

The Lineup
Head coach Steve Cherundolo lines them up in a 4-3-3 (like this one) as if he cannot do otherwise and the personnel remained stable through every game until last weekend’s draw v Red Bull New York when started Mateusz Bogusz over Eduard Atuesta in midfield for reasons I couldn’t sort out without getting into...lore, I guess. The back four typically features (left to right) Ryan Hollingshead, Aaron Long, (Timbers’ fans prime villain from the last match-up) Jesus Murillo, and Sergi Palencia. The usual midfield line-up has Tim Tillman and Atuesta on either side of famous car tire spokesman, Ilie Sanchez, while the front three has most often seen (again, left to right) Cristian Olivera, Bogusz and Denis Bouanga.

Another change in last week’s lineup: once and former New York City FC defender Maxime Chanot started in Murillo’s stead (I see something about a knock in Ye Olde Unreliable Availability Report) and, for what it’s worth, he looked something like incredible, dude can play, etc.

Columbus Crew SC 2-2 Portland Timbers: I'm Beginning to See the Light, Here it Comes, Woo-Oooh-Oooh

Here it fucking comes....

I don’t believe in moral victories, as a rule, and I’m not going to take that route for this review. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that the Portland Timbers didn’t play a damn good and wonderfully entertaining game tonight. In fact, the fact they punched even with, for all their present faults and fatigue, a consensus-best team in MLS raises Portland’s 2-2 draw at Columbus Crew SC into disappointment territory. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, etc.

Going the other way, consider how disappointed Columbus fans feel tonight and, to float a guess I may or may not confirm the The Massive subreddit tomorrow, how flaming pissed they are at everyone’s favorite ref, Ted “Drunk” Unkel. In a press conference after the Timbers’ frustrating home draw against Los Angeles FC last weekend (who's ready for the encore?), head coach Phil Neville voiced some hope that calls would break his team’s way over the run of the season. I’m not saying that process tilted toward justice tonight, I’m not saying I care, I only know Felipe Mora either had more time on the ball tonight or he got the call when he got knocked down (if by sleight of body, here and there). After that, Unkel called the usual game that only he sees through whatever contacts he’s wearing…like a goddamn random number generator with a pocket full of reds and yellows, I tell you…

Most and best of all the things about tonight’s game, yes, Roman gladiator guy, I was entertained. Both teams rewarded their fans with two top-shelf goals a piece – more on that later – the game had a lively one-team-giveth-the-other-taketh-away tension, and, typing strictly as a homer, the Timbers played their second solid game in a row. It’s not showing in the standings – hello(!), 11th in the West – and I hope to see the Timbers get all three points next week at LAFC with the desperate fervor of a 10-year-old battling against all the odds and even more doubts that the Tooth Fairy still pays a fiver-per-tooth, but I’m closer to believing the Timbers have a competitive team than I’ve been since that little flutter of hope the Timbers had during Miles Joseph’s short, interim reign. Hell, I’m willing to shout that all the way back to 2021.

To their credit, Portland exceeded the broadly conservative approach I laid out in my scouting report. Even better, they granted my wish for more robust defending over an opening 20-25 minutes that saw them go up 1-0 on top of frustrating the bejesus out of the Crew.

Columbus Crew SC Scouting Report: We Have Seen the Enemy and All I Can Say Is...Shit.

Yes, that is Wilfred Nancy.

Full disclosure, I haven’t spent much time on Columbus Crew SC this season. Didn’t see the point. They’ve been getting results…until recently (but they also got arguably the biggest result) and the roster remains…stacked. At any rate, I have done some scouting and here is my report.

Some Basics

Columbus currently sits at fourth in the Eastern Conference (7th overall, fwiw) on 13 points and a 3-1-4 record. They remain stoutly unbeaten at home (3-0-1) and stubborn on the road (0-1-3; also, the loss at Charlotte FC has been dismissed as, in a word, bullshit) and boast one of the deepest and, currently, healthiest top-to-bottom roster in MLS and, in Wilfred Nancy, they have a head coach that gets the neutrals drooling. One can’t really blame the local fans for being content to the point of cockiness…and yet there are some questions.

They’re winless over the past four league games and arguably dropping points when they shouldn’t e.g., at Charlotte (loss), at a badly-hurting Nashville SC (a draw), and, insofar as you buy them, v DC United (draw). If you dig in a little deeper, you see a fall-off from 2023’s killer attacking pace of 1.97 goals/game; with just 10 goals scored in league play all season, they’re puttering around at 1.25 goals/game and, if you hit the link about contentment above, you’ll see creeping concerns that things ain’t the same without Cucho Hernandez. Then again, most signs point to him returning to the lineup after a wee suspension for some kind of tomfoolery.

The Lineup(s)

Unless I’m mistaken, Nancy has yet to deviate from a 3-4-2-1 formation, even when he rotates the squad dizzy as he did last week at Real Salt Lake. Were I a betting man – which I’m not, on the grounds that me putting money on anything means the opposite will happen – I’d expect Columbus to play the same lineup they did for their March 10 game against Chicago.

Portland Timbers 2-2 Los Angeles FC: A Meditation on Cherry-Flavored Cough Syrup

This image was called "cuddling a cow," also, yes!

Thus endeth another case study in what might have been. The game turned on a justified red card to Portland Timbers goalkeeper, Maxime Crepeau (it sure looked like Claudio Bravo kept Los Angeles FC’s Denis Bouanga onside; more on him later), and all it took from there was Mateusz Bogusz’s 51st (damn good) minute free-kick to lead to Solomon splitting the baby at one point a piece. Not much happened between there and the final whistle, if with one exception.

The Timbers got lucky to escape with the 2-2 draw because Nathan Ordaz committed no crime ahead of what looked like a last-gasp winner for LAFC. I’m a good partisan and, as such, I don’t blow air into the cow’s nose when it doesn’t shit in my living room, or however that saying goes. To put that another way, Portland may have got lucky on that one call, but they made their luck otherwise and that feels like an improvement over several of the games I’ve seen so far this season. Also, who invited the fucking cow?

If I had to name the most maddening element of the Timbers 2024 season, it follows from the fact that every result comes loaded with too many caveats to make sense of where things stand with them. Today, it was the red card, but it has been playing from a hole measured by one to three goals in earlier outings. This game provided the usual divide of positives and negatives – and I’ll get to some of them (jetlagged AF, honestly) – but my biggest personal positive comes from the Timbers going up, first, 1-0, then 2-1 on two…respectable goals from open play. I’m shading both of those, and for reasons I’ll get into, but, all in all, today’s draw might have been the Timbers most complete game of 2024.

If you’re with me, let’s run over this hill screaming! Aaaauugggghhhhh!!

The Portland Timbers, at My (First) Break of 2024

It's early and the outcome is uncertain.

Between being 24+ hours late and a lack of inspiration, I never got around to posting something on the Portland Timbers’ 2-3 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps. On the whole, that loss borrowed details from the handful of games that came before – e.g., the borderline paralytic slow start called back to the loss at New York City FC and, with a nod to the home loss to the Philadelphia Union, Portland's defense found fresh, new ways to give up stupid goals. The only thing missing was the failure to put away good chances that pissed away the piteous road loss at Houston Dynamo FC.

With that in mind – and because I’m taking the next week off - of which, damn the timing, because the road game at Sporting Kansas City strikes me as the most important game of this young season – I wanted to put a pin in where things stand for the Timbers in…let’s call them the teenage years of the 2024 MLS season.

To start, I see these as the dominant questions facing the team:

1) Defensive Boners. (That’s right, I called ‘em boners.) The Timbers gave up six goals over the past two games. Each revealed a unique flaw in Portland’s defense, depending on how you held it to the cold, hard light of a slow-motion replay, but, to skip the metaphors and put it bluntly: giving up even two goals hobbles a team to limping; giving up three is the soccer equivalent of a death wish. It just has to improve. Like next weekend.

2) Will Portland’s Real Midfield Please Stand Up? Because I live and participate on the Timbers subreddit, I hereby acknowledge that plenty of Timbers fans hold a version of Portland’s midfield in their head that is both ideal and available to play. More or less. (How is Eryk, btw?) I’m taking the fact that multiple candidates exist as evidence that the question of the ideal midfield has not yet been settled. I can’t name one myself, I just know that my best current midfield has some game-wrecking teeth in it…which means, sure, I’d try to start Cristhian Paredes and David Ayala, or even keep starting Diego Chara and experiment with those two as second-half subs. The bigger issue revolves around…

MLS Week 6 Review, an Early Assessment of the Standings

EXTREME Seal Experience was the best I could do...

Between nearly every team in Major League Soccer having five to six games in the bank (Don's Golden Boys, Miami, have seven), a week off coming up for me, and another so-so self-destructive game by my Portland Timbers this past weekend (and should that read “so, so destructive” or “so-so, destructive”?), I’ve decided to use this Week 6 review to take stock of where things are all round. As for the point of it all, it comes from a thought exercise around where Portland fits into the big picture of the Western Conference – i.e., how much room for experimentation/failure they’ve got. The same exercise should work the same for your local team, too, so I went nuts and fleshed out some data for the Eastern Conference as well.

I think the format and information speaks for itself. Every team in the league is listed below and blurbed over in the order of the present standings, along with their record and top-level statistics. The next line talks about how closely I’ve watched the given team this season – there, G = watching a 50+ minutes of a game plus checking the box score and H = reviewing the highlights and checking the box score – and, as you’ll see, I ignore multiple games entirely (they’re not paying me, I’m getting too old for this shit; now picture me swinging on a vine with an explosion in the background). The final section in each blurb gives a vague, overall impression of the team I’m what I’m basing it on.

With that, time to dig in, starting with the…

Western Conference

1st - Los Angeles Galaxy

Facts: 12 pts., 3-0-3, 13 gf, 9 ga (+4), Home 1-0-2, Away 2-0-1

How Well I Know Them: HGHGG (i.e., two highlights reviews and three game reviews)

The Overall Impression: Balanced, capable, and they’ve got a third-hand kind of attack to throw the punch you can’t see coming: everything I’ve seen and read treats the Galaxy as legit. To anyone arguing they haven’t played a tough schedule, I’d counter with everything looks tough to a team that’s missed the playoffs four of the past six seasons. Barring traumatic injury [Ed. – NOTE: Read this though into literally every entry below.], the Galaxy may not finish this high, but they look like a great bet to finish high – i.e., the top 3.