Portland Timbers 1-0 Seattle Sounders: (Complicated) Glory! + League-Wide Shit!

Oh, I'm just getting warmed up....

I was out of town for the Portland Timbers checks-all-the-boxes 1-0 win over a (punch-drunk) visiting Seattle Sounders team, but tracked the game from afar on the socials (i.e., reddit and Bluesky). People bitching about the broadcast team (Taylor Twellman and Jake Zivin, I think) popped up here and there and…I just don’t get how anyone can’t screen out the chatter, never mind get caught up in the relative amount of praise they heap on one team or the other. In my experience, color commentary follows the “broken clock” rule, with some hacks hitting the mark more often the others.

Why start there? Perhaps because some thoughts and arguments floated below may fall short of expectations for proper fandom. Let that come as it does, I’m squeezed a lot into this one post. Because it has surely been kicked around both hard and long enough, I won’t burn too many words on last Saturday’s game – which, to be 100% clear, was pretty damn awesome and nifty…it just needs an asterisk, maybe two.

The (Righteous!) Big Picture
Apart from giving up what (giving the Timbers’ history) felt like two games worth of corner kicks in the first half alone, I don’t recall a time when Seattle looked to have the upper hand last Saturday. Even if Portland’s chances weren’t all gilt-edged, the thought process behind them shone through; half the time, they failed due to some combination of a runner being half a step ahead or behind or the angle on the pass 10-degrees off. With key starters like Felipe Mora and Jonathan Rodriguez absent courtesy of varying amounts of bullshit (now half-corrected!), that shouldn’t surprise anyone. With the chance creation that little bit off, the happy deflection that transfigured Juan David Mosquera’s goal into a thing of beauty felt right at home. As for the play that led to it, what was that but vintage Timbers soccer?

The brighter notes played on the defensive side of the ball, and mostly through Timbers defenders throwing themselves in front of the best chances Seattle created. Dario Zuparic stood out there, with his block on Seattle’s not-yet budding star Pedro de la Vega as a stand-out moment (if it's not in here somewhere...crime). Kamal Miller got caught behind the ball now and again, and both fullbacks got burned 1-v-1 more often than any Timbers fan wants to see (Mosquera, in particular), but all concerned recovered well enough and generally played for one another. Now, about all that…

A Digression on Seattle (Because I’m Aiming to Get More Global in These Posts)
Portland’s ongoing voodoo-that-they-do-so well on them notwithstanding, I’ve watched Seattle enough in 2024 to know they played something like shit last weekend. They’re typically more aggressive defensively and more connected to one another going forward. If I had to flag the one thing that hurt them the most, the Sounders defended far too passively in transition – i.e., their greatest failure came against Portland’s greatest strength – aka, the opposite to a recipe for success in any sport. On the attacking side, their wingers, the much-hyped de la Vega (so much preseason slobbering) and the relatively under-heralded Paul Rothrock, simultaneously provided much of the threat and underscored how far from complete the 2024 model of the Seattle Sounders have proved to be. Also, and this goes back to the point about the announcers, Twellman brought up how Seattle can’t possibly compete as long as they play Jordan Morris as a No. 9 and, close as he came, that tracks. Which segues nicely into the biggest question hanging over an otherwise glorious result. 

As indicated by Jordan’s goal-scoring drought, Seattle has struggled with scoring throughout the 2024 season – to the tune of being almost five goals scored below the league average (41.9 goals), for what it's worth. A strong defense (tied with Los Angeles FC for fourth-best with 32 goals allowed) has kept them afloat and competitive to the extent they are. The Timbers, meanwhile, have scored the second most goals in Major League Soccer behind Messiami (aka, Inter Miami CF), if with a handful of teams not far behind, while struggling on defense. While that may not exactly beg the question, it does at least suggest that this result played out more or less as expected – i.e., a good attacking team struggling to put a goal past a stout defense on one end, with the upside of defending against a crap attack on the other.

Some longer-term facts point to a counter-narrative – one supported by my theory about Seattle having a crap night, btw – with the one about how steadily they’ve scored of late in both league play (1.7 goals/game of their past 10) and Leagues Cup (1.5 goals/game in the group stages and 3.5 goals/game in the knockouts) standing at the heart of the thesis. Twellman's No. 9 obsession feels less relevant here and generally than the weight of the averages above against Seattle's overall defensive record. It followed largely from a general failure to show up, sure, but the Sounders' failure to match even one goal scored feels like the bigger story for this result. I don’t mean that up to short-change a good defensive outing by the Timbers, or maybe not just to. I am, however, a fan of tempering expectations where it makes sense. Seattle really did look flat and that matters a lot because…

 

I count five, minimum.

It's Neck and Neck and Neck and Neck
Delighted as I was to see the Timbers rise to 6th in the current Western Conference standings, that still leaves them in what amounts to a four-way tie in the middle of the table with Seattle, Houston Dynamo FC, and the Vancouver Whitecaps. Just to note it, their 40 points puts them just four points ahead of Minnesota United FC after the latter’s (predictable, ugly) win over the San Jose Earthquakes, aka, 2024’s basement-dwelling freaks, but also just four points behind the Colorado Rapids, thanks to their rather more impressive 3-2 road win over FC Dallas (more below and later on reddit).

To get a better sense of what Portland’s up against, I spent a little extra time this week on Colorado v Dallas, Vancouver’s 1-0 win at Austin FC, and Houston’s 2-0 road win at LAFC. First and foremost, yes, the fact that all of the above wins came on the road injects a little heebie-jeebies into the thought process. Of the three – and this has everything to do with Colorado’s edge in the standings – I’d call Vancouver’s win the most worrisome. That’s less about the ‘Caps dominating Austin, than the fact that Vancouver has the West’s best road record (7-4-3; for your nightmares, that’s one thin hair better than Houston’s 7-5-2) and a freaky hybrid style that toggles between pressing and possession regardless wherever they are. They also ran up the shots, but their lone goal relied on a series of fortunate events, as opposed to just the one Portland needed for their decisive moment and Austin, while not a bad team, is not a good one. Moreover, Danny Pereira (who I’ve seen play really, really well) had a shit night, they’re playing Sebastian Driussi as a No. 9 (as opposed to Gyasi Zardes?), etc.

I’m confident that anyone who follows MLS half-closely already has the correct read on Houston – e.g., methodical AF, living and dying on the margins – and that will hold until it doesn’t. They got a garbage goal from new(ish) DP Ezequiel Ponce (who looks like a good add, fwiw) and a kill-move goal from their other new acquisition, Lawrence Ennali…who I just read is out for the season with an ACL tear. At any rate, and impressive as beating LAFC looks on paper – which, to be clear, Houston did comfortably – if Seattle looked leggy against Portland, LAFC looked a couple steps closer to the grave against Houston. Still, between Houston’s structure and respectable recent results in league play suggest Portland will need to keep collecting points at a steady clip to keep up with them.

For all Morris’ woes, and despite what happened last weekend, recent history suggests Seattle will compel the Timbers to keep a similar pace. And that test starts this upcoming weekend versus…

I got faith and/or rhythm.

A Wee Colorado Rapids Preview
To be clear, every self-respecting Timbers fan should BELIEVE that their local team can roll into The Dick and punch three points out of the Rapids. Other teams have beat them, but no one else (LAFC arguably excepted) have shown Portland’s capacity for leaving them beaten and dizzy after 90 minutes…and yet…

The Rapids’ genuinely impressive (dare I call it inspiring?) Leagues Cup run aside, that has coincided with Colorado best, most consistent run of form in league play all season. They played a couple soft games over that stretch – e.g., home wins over Sporting KC and a ripely shitty Club du Foot Montreal – but 7-2-1 over 10 games rarely happens by accident. Moreover, it takes some hairy wontons to come out of the fullest possible slate of tournament games, a lot of them character-building nailbiters, and follow it up with a pretty damn vital win on the road. Against that, Dallas had a couple chances to go up – in fact, they got all over and up into Colorado after Petar Musa and Jesus Ferreira came on – and those goals could have changed plenty, the Rapids have built up some real resilience over the course of this season. I very much doubt the Timbers will play the same team they sucker-punched way back in Week 1 (fun fact; Keegan Rosenberry’s role looks considerable adjusted).

The Timbers kicked the holy shit out of Colorado in Leagues Cup play, of course, but they didn’t have Djordje Mihailovic for that one and, to be clear, that does and has mattered for them. I expect him to add a sharper dimension to the good-to-solid players they have all over the field – e.g., Rafael Navarro, who is a pretty damn complete forward, and Zac Steffen in goal – but, to flag three things that struck me most in the win over Dallas:

1) They got line-clearing ball progression by having Connor Ronan, Mihailovic and Oliver Larraz hoofing diagonals to Calvin Harris and Jonathan Lewis to the corners. It was a rugby-style approach, but it did the trick. Neither player is great – e.g., you don’t see many players blow finding excellent positions like Lewis – but isolating both/either of them against Portland’s fullbacks will have all kinds of advantages for Colorado.

2) Don’t get too excited if you see Jackson Travis starting over Sam Vines at left back, because he looked cool and confident for a third-time starter with just five games played in MLS. Also, Vines had a stellar, late Leagues Cup.

3) Chris Armas had the luxury of calling Omir Fernandez, Cole Bassett, and Darren Yapi off the bench. Every one of those players has real upside – quickness for Fernandez, the “mobile big-man” thing for Yapi, and Bassett is a damn good No. 8 who has slipped out of the starting scheme – which means they have the flexibility to change the game.

Giving most of the players named above time on the ball spells trouble in my mind and I can’t see the Timbers sustaining any kind of steady press at altitude. As such, this one looks like a tricky one for any team caught in the middle of a foot-race that I expect to continue until the end of the 2024 regular season. Again, my faith in Portland's overall project remains strong, but, like my personal patron saint, Doubting Thomas, I will always struggle to believe things until I have seen them. God bless the empiricists, even if He ultimately damns them, etc.

That’s all for this one. I have aspirations to turn these into league-wide reviews going forward, but I still have some things to work out when it comes to timing. Real quick, though….

1) The Philadelphia Union’s recent form moved me to check out their 2-0 road win over Red Bull New York. While some of that follows old patterns – e.g., think I heard something about Red Bulls not having a win in that rivalry since 2019 – Mikael Uhre played a blinder on top of scoring the opener. Also, anyone who watched The Mothership’s/Apple TV’s review show heard something about Red Bulls frequent meetings with the woodwork. Insofar as those rumors held up, Philly fired a minimum of two near-misses over the same period that the opposition made love to the woodwork. By that I mean, Philly deserved the win and, as I see it, has a better than fair chance of getting into the post-season, particularly with the immediate opposition above them (Atlanta and Toronto) limping a little.

2) The following results were predictable to the point of not mattering one iota, on the grounds that the losers are in free-fall, whether generally or circumstantially:

FC Cincinnati 4-1 Club du Foot Montreal
Orlando City SC 3-0 Nashville SC
Real Salt Lake 2-0 New England Revolution

And Miami stomping Chicago Fire FC isn’t news, it's a Tuesday humping the sun that sets every night. That said, I wish I had time and bandwidth for a longer look/kick-around of St. Louis CITY FC’s win over the Los Angeles Galaxy, because I’m starting to think St. Louis may prove to be the late-season buzzsaw any team should be desperate to avoid.

Okay, now that’s really all for this one. For this space, it’s probably till next Tuesday. Till then….