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| We have the technology, we can deconstruct him. |
1) Closing the book on the Portland Timbers’ 2024 season with a handful (or so) of questions, ones that may or may not stray into the wilds of hypothesis. Don’t expect firm foundations like statistics and/or hard pitches for this or that player. To get one premise out of the way, 1a) I’m open to all kinds of fixes for what ails the Timbers, even as I accept I’ll be lucky to get three players and some tweaks to the coaching formula.
2) To serve as a preface for quick histories of every team that competed in Major League Soccer’s 2024 season (if with some really stupid twists). I’m still working on what each chapter will look like – e.g., lump the 29 teams into half-arbitrary categories? burn myself out by posting one chapter for every team, knowing full well that I’ll overwrite every chapter (and abandon the project)? – but my only promise is that the Portland Timbers will get the same treatment in the final chapter in that between-seasons series.
2a) I’m ignoring the New York/New Jersey Real San Diego FC United Burn Wizards (does San Diego’s team have a name yet?) because, to paraphrase a German exchange student who once berated me, they have no history. (The actual quote, and he was barely standing for this, but still said it to me directly, “you have no culture.” The same man used to say "sauber" every time he farted.)
My earlier post-mortem on the Timbers’ 2024 (aka, Timbers 2024 Post-Mortem, Part I) covered a fair patch of ground in terms of anatomy (the roster) and physiology (mechanics), so nearly all the points below look to bigger questions and beg further questions about how to fix them.
With that, sit and enjoy…what amounts to a second autopsy. Because the first didn’t return anything diagnosable. Won’t take long.
