Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers & a Mini-Parade of Disasters from MLS Week 2

Mistakes were made, weight was lost. Or gained.

Welcome to the Week 2 wrap, both for Major League Soccer as a whole and my Portland Timbers! The first shall be firste (though they were seconde above), but I want to start this post with some programming notes that hit like revelations. (Not really, but hype is the coin of the realm in the 21st century.)

Between my wife’s unfortunate illness (the very same one that derailed the “Level Set” series) and the resultant too much time on my hands, this week’s review got a little out of hand. That’s to say, I consumed more soccer than I either want to digest or (ewww) send back up the other way. That same experience led me to the research concept for MLS Week 3 and, ideally for every week going forward:

Watching the full 90 of every Portland Timbers game, plus the full 90 (or 60 minutes, at a minimum) of the team that Portland plays the following weekend, plus 45 minutes each of two more games – both with at least one Eastern Conference team, tentatively – then a maximum (get it together, man!) of four…or five of the 10+-minute highlight reels that Apple TV appears to have embraced for the 2026 season. [Ed. - It will be just four; gotta tighten this shit up.] If that doesn’t get my eyes on enough teams to stay current with Major League Soccer week in and out…well, I can’t say I give a shit, because that feels ample to me. That will leave some blind-spots, of course, particularly around teams that bore me, but fuck it.

With that, let’s get to this week’s notes, comments, and appreciations. To kick things off, enjoy this...

Stupid Thought for the Week
I appreciate that the offside rule must be called by the letter of the law instead of its spirit, but I will never stop resenting that reality. Seeing an attacking player get called offside for having the tip of his knee ahead of the last defender’s will never strike me as anything but a violation of the spirit of fair play, but if there’s a slipper slope in soccer officiating, this is it.

Moving on to the meat…