Wrapping Round One of the Playoffs & Pondering a (Potential?) Hole in the Timbers' Roster

This machine, like pundits, lies. I am all man.

With Major League Soccer taking its annual embarrassing mid-playoffs pause (mid-playoffs! nuts!), the urge to jump in and gently pick it apart got hold of me last weekend. The Portland Timbers started their pause a couple three weeks before that, and I’m going to close with some loose notes on that, but let’s start with the post-season.

First and foremost, and as much as it made me giggle immodestly, I’m not going to join in the circle-jerk around Inter Miami CF’s early exit from the 2024 playoffs as The Greatest Upset of All Time – not with the way crowned heads fell off across MLS’s Eastern Conference. Miami’s (admittedly shocking) fall versus(!) Atlanta United FC cleared a path wide enough for Columbus Crew SC to line-dance their way to a second straight title, but they crashed out against a revived Red Bull New York before that path even opened. I’m calling anyone who claims they saw that coming a liar, not least because the Crew survived a mosh-pit of a season and (and!) they beat the Red Bulls on the road, on Decision Day. With everything they had going their way – claiming second in the league after an achingly slow start, a coach all observers mooned over like a young, slim Frank Sinatra, and a roster deep as the Marianas Trench – seeing them get swept rises every inch as high on the Shock-o-Meter as Miami’s early ouster.

FC Cincinnati’s failure to capitalize was far less surprising – especially given that long stumble down the stretch. Having to rebuild the defense late in the season had a lot to do with it, but, from my vague look from a distance, the way the goals and confidence dried up did them in as much as anything. Those particular symptoms notwithstanding, Cincy’s demise highlights a recurring theme across MLS playoffs history the positive power of momentum and its damning opposite. Pat Noonan’s team had labored since the middle of July, which makes that less backing into the playoffs than commuting to and from work in reverse every day. To be clear, nothing about that felt inevitable – New York City FC trekked across their own wilderness before a three-game wining streak lifted them past the play-in (that was with them losing at Montreal on Decision Day in the mix) – and Cincy had enough chances and half-chances to score the go-ahead in Game 3. Maybe it’s something about how long the poison stays in your system after the snake bites.

All that fallout leaves 4th-seed Orlando City SC as the on-paper favorite in the Eastern Conference and, for all their issues (stop. dicking. around. with. the. ball), I wouldn’t bet against them. They barely survived the series against Charlotte FC, of course – hell, once Charlotte took a late lead, it took a brave man to bet against them – but who didn’t think it would take multiple blows (up to and including repeated assaults on the woodwork) to knock out the (lesser) Queen City's finest? Orlando will face the winner of the Hudson River Derby, of course – the Red Bulls and NYCFC – two teams capable of grinding a game to dust and/or a draw and, with the games going single-elimination from today to MLS Cup, that tips the game toward the favor of the immovable. Speaking of…

I don’t like this year’s playoff format – and I’m pretty sure that carried over from last season’s as well. To flog this poor horse one more time: your smarter playoff systems lean toward reducing the chance of flukes as it gets closer to the final and, personally, I just like the idea of goal differential carrying over within the series and deciding which team advances. Teams should be rewarded for blowing out the other when the games turn irrevocably real, just as they should be punished for catastrophic failure. I don’t mind having three games decide who goes forward and who ultimately wins the series, I just want the games to connect in some way, as opposed to playing a succession of isolated incidents.

Entertainment and purity don't always mix...

The one wrinkle I don’t mind: going straight to penalty kicks after 90 minutes. I don’t need to see players cramping up and gasping for air, not when I have a front row seat to the experience in my day-to-day.

Despite hiccups here and there – e.g., the Vancouver Whitecaps' stinging beat-down of Los Angeles FC in Game 2 of that series – momentum carried even further in the Western Conference match-ups. Houston Dynamo FC never managed to rise much above stubborn this season, so, personal animosity against the Seattle Sounders notwithstanding, seeing Houston get put down by an equally stubborn team with a slightly stiffer breeze at their backs added up. Related, no Western Conference team had the winds filling their sails quite like Minnesota United FC over the final weeks of the 2024 season. Real Salt Lake always puts up a fight, particularly under Pablo Mastroeni, who had them playing above where anyone pegged them, but it still seems worth asking whether he required TOTAL COMMITMENT(!) too soon over a season that, let’s face it, goes on for fucking ever…and, again, takes a pause at the stupidest possible time, e.g., smack in the middle of the goddamn playoffs. Guys, seriously, start earlier, make it a 32-game season – hell, switch to a fall-spring league – but the MLS “brain trust” needs to sort out the November international break situation not just soon, but in time for 2025.

There’s an obvious, even delightful silver lining to all the above – e.g., everything from the Conference semifinals to the path to MLS Cup feels far more wide open, wind-swept and interesting than it did when these 2024 playoffs started. I like Minnesota’s chances of shocking a defensively-dodgy LA Galaxy team almost as much as I like Seattle’s chances of outlasting LAFC (also, can I put in an order to have the Earth open up and swallow both teams?). Back in the East, the Hudson Derby feels like an actual crapshoot (I like the Red Bulls’ chances, but also know I’m biased) and, for all the form they carried into the post-season, Orlando has a long, searing history of choking and generally falling short and what does Atlanta look like if not in the mood? So, yeah, I’m looking forward to the next round of games…two weeks from now. Complicated as those games are to read, they have nothing on…

A portrait of the author. Tuesdays, after 10 p.m.

What the Unfair Hell Is Going on with My Portland Timbers?
Joy checked out of Mudville a long fucking time ago – as noted in my fitful 2024 season wrap-up, it arguably slipped out after those back-to-back home losses to Austin and Dallas – but things have already moved from glum to precarious in Portland’s early off-season. As anyone with the energy to find this blog already knows, Evander, aka, the only household name left on the Timbers’ roster, started to make loud noises about wanting to go elsewhere before they returned the autopsy on that final home disgrace “at” the Vancouver Whitecaps…which gets me to wondering, was that the worst loss of his entire career? Just speaking as someone who carries around several morgues’ worth of personal and professional failures in my head, that makes me deliriously curious…

I’ll start by making one thing clear: I have neither knowledge nor insider dope around the question of whether Evander stays or goes, and I can’t get shit out of those tarot readings, but, I have two thoughts to share in this wholly premature moment: 1) no team can operate around a star player who wants to be elsewhere, not if they want to succeed, and 2) what the hell, maybe this fixes something?

To answer the obvious objection, of course it won’t be easy to replace a 15-goal, 19-assist player. Between those numbers and the front office/ownership the Portland Timbers have*, I’m setting the odds of them finding a like-for-like replacement to levels you get from a random lottery scratch-it – and that’s at a minimum. And, for the record, I just added getting a bead on what Evander’s goal contributions looked like as a second off-season assignment in a futile, even posthumous quest to determine what went wrong with the Timbers’ 2024 season. (This could be answered with “more things than did,” but evidence makes an answer feel like science, so…)

In the weeks since Portland’s 2024 season ended, I’ve heard and read all kinds of theories as to what went wrong and how to fix it for the next one. Unsurprisingly, not one of theories landed on, “hey, let’s get rid of the guy who contributed to just over half of the goals we scored,” but I’m closing this post by saying that I’m open to it and to offer some preliminary thoughts as to why – I mean, besides acknowledging that he may just want to leave. In no particular order…

Where my Excalibur nerds at?

1) The Old Wound/Obsession
People who follow this space know how much I obsess over the construction and functioning of any team’s midfield. With that in mind, and this starts as a loose theory: what if moving Evander (and, to be noted, for a fuck-ton of money, if only in MLS terms) helps the Timbers arrive at a more coherent and better-constructed midfield set-up? Even as I don’t think he ever defended like one, Evander played his on-paper No. 10 role more like a guy playing as a No. 8. Talented as I believe Evander to be (remarkably? incredibly?), that’s a tough profile to fit into any roster. He more than made up for it in numbers, but I wonder how much that free radical (to use a word) vibe complicated things around him, and on both sides of the ball.

2) You Just Need Good
Point me to any MLS roster (well, not any MLS roster, but I still think you’d be surprised), and I’m guessing I can find you some form of impact player – even if it’s one that doesn’t touch the bottom of those long…silky shorts that Evander wears (related, anyone else get lost in those soulful, sensitive eyes this season?). I could have labeled this argument “1a),” because what I’m arguing here is that the Timbres don’t need some name they can slap on a marquee for things to work out - and that goes double for any player who can help reshape the roles in the Timbers midfield. We’re operating in a league where more or less random players like Robin Lod, Djordje Mihailovic, or even Jared Stroud can pitch in real contributions. More to the question at hand, what could a player like that do with Santiago Moreno besides, Juan David Mosquera a couple steps over and Jonathan Rodriguez and Felipe Mora hunting for service in front of them? Why not dream, people?

Bottom line, I continue to see a significant amount of incoherence in the Portland Timbers’ preferred midfield, even down to the substitution patterns. And, to be clear, my inability to find a way to fit them together is not the same way of arguing that it can’t happen. If Evander comes back next season – and, for the record, I think he’s worth the salary bump, bits of the above notwithstanding (I contain multitudes) – I’ll be happy to see him. If he doesn’t…yes, I will totally see that as an opportunity to take a fresh look at the current roster. Here’s to hoping that Phil Neville, et al, are turning over the same things and that they’re up to making more out of them. Till the next one…