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| Don't google images of Underoos |
Tuning in, now, to regular programming…
Results That Surprised Me (yeah, I have links for all of these; see below)
Atlanta United FC 3-1 Philadelphia Union (sunny no longer)
Chicago Fire FC 1-2 DC United (I rate DC highly as I.H.O.P. coffee)
FC Dallas 3-3 San Diego FC (weeeeeee!!)
New England Revolution 6-1 FC Cincinnati (Cincy leaping, not stepping, backward?)
Vancouver Whitecaps 6-0 Minnesota United FC (see, goal differential, Minnesota, uncharted)
I call that a good weekend, all in all, at least for anyone who tunes in for spills, chills, thrills and the odd face-plant. Even if the wild start to 2026 doesn’t continue, I doubt you could find even one MLS fan who would have predicted that the bottom three in the East for any week in the MLS 2026 regular season would include (bottom to “top”) Philadelphia, Columbus, and Orlando. The West has at least one surprise – who saw Minnesota looking up at 12 teams at any point this season? – but seeing the teams on either side of Missouri (e.g., SKC and St. Louis) tracks. There is one more team down there in sewers of the West, paddling amid the refuse, one I expected to see and feared to behold at once. Let’s turn to how they arrive at such a lowly station. Our story begins with a man named Philip...
Houston Dynamo FC 3-2 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
To give my thoughts in the order that I had them:
1) I felt nervous about Houston’s front three of Guilherme, Ezequiel Ponce and Mateusz Bogusz the second I saw Houston’s starting XI, while also wondering about how a midfield of Lawrence (really?) Ennali, Diadie Samassekou, and Jack McGlynn would feed them.
2) Great to see David Da Costa out there and – hey! – there’s the new kid (hi, Alexander Aravena!), and good on Ariel Lassiter for grabbing his spot in Portland’s XI. (then I wondered who was missing from the lineup.).
And then came kickoff...
Everything Houston did looked promising until I noticed somewhere around the 30th minute that all that running and kicking hadn’t bought them anything. When Portland took the lead just before halftime on a goal with enough parts to make Rube Goldberg say, “too much clutter” (you might get the full of it from the snapshot), anything seemed possible…hold this thought. Houston would claw back one goal (Guilherme, Bogusz assist) and score one more for good measure (Andrade; more below, see, Thommy*), just as they’d done in Week 1 versus Chicago, only to see the Timbers equalize a few minutes later. That state of precarity describes the game I watched as well as anything. Both teams spent most of the 90 pulling off the minor miracle of looking like they’d never score a goal themselves but could give one up after the next two to three passes. The Dynamo still looked like the better team to me – particularly on the telling margin that kicks off the talking points - but all the goals in this game followed from some amount of applied pressure. Then, with the clock ticking into second-half stoppage, Nick Markanich got sent off for bloodying (cleating?) James Pantemis’ head, thereby handing the Timbers their first clear advantage of the game. I expected Portland to hold on for the draw at least. They didn’t, of course, losing on a free longball from Jack McGlynn, a half-exhausted Brandon Bye prat-fall (he'd been good!), a rare over-commitment by Finn Surman (in a game with more than I’m used to seeing) and a dagger of a winner from Mateusz Bogusz. That name brings me to the first of…
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| The author, contemplating Velde. |
1) Bogusz > Velde? (Wait...is this a question?)
Just their style of play makes it easy to compare Mateusz Bogusz and Kristoffer Velde. Their attacking contributions probably ended on something close to a draw on paper, but I’m 85% certain I could get a unanimous vote as to which player had the more effective game. Bogusz wins in a landslide for me because, in the fewest possible words, they both try a lot of the same things, but Bogusz pulls them off. Yes, Velde scored a goal (Portland's 2nd) – and never has the phrase, “don’t think, meat” felt so apt (he also flailed that shot into the stands that led to Gage Guerra cleaning up on his missed PK (Portland's 1st goal), but doesn’t both that shot and the PK miss support the thesis?) – but he lost the ball countless time on aimless, try-hard dribbles, flailed wild shots into defenders and away from the goal, and just generally made decisions over a full, 90-minute-plus experience that leave me puzzled over how he ever comes good. Bogusz, meanwhile, tormented Portland defenders and midfielders alike, his play/cross led directly to Houston’s equalizer and, as hinted at above, he scored the late, late heart-blending winner. Long story short, Bogusz has it, Velde doesn’t (adding “for now” out of love). Signing a good designated player doesn’t automatically translate to success – see, Musa, Petar; Dallas, FC (despite**) – but signing ineffectual, or even bad DPs? If this league has a kiss of death, it may live in the same neighborhood. And that’s the theme for the post. Related…
2) Are the Timbers a “New” Team?
The Timbers have had close to a roster’s worth of turnover since 2021. All that change has produced several seasons of fits ‘n’ starts. Whatever continuity the team has from, let’s face it, its best seasons come from, at most, three holdovers: Diego Chara, Felipe Mora, and Zac McGraw (maybe Antony?). Still, plenty of guys have lasted for almost as long as the Phil Neville era, which started (surely, you’re joking) with the 2024 season (maybe hell does last forever). Plenty of players have come in on the attacking side in the past year or two after Phil’s arrival – there, I’m thinking mostly of Velde, Da Costa, and Kevin Kelsy – and more players filled in other deeper positions as well, e.g., Joao Ortiz, Jimer Fory, and even (semi-)explicit depth pieces like Lassiter and Omir Fernandez. A handful of those guys have at least one full season under their belts and, while the team has improved, it hasn’t improved much – see all the sputtering last season, particularly down the stretch (even if we’ll always have that fun win over RSL in last season’s play-in). As once-promising players keep leaving (see Evander, Santiago Moreno), new players keep coming in with fans’ hopes and allegiances transferring in a familiar, doomed ritual that all (most?) sports fans know so well. Velde probably still counts among that group, but this season saw the arrival of Cole Bassett, Brandon Bye, Alexander Aravena (he’s the big one, right?) and, most recently, Jose Caicedo. I’m not sure Alex Bonetig fits into that group – especially with Kamal Miller tentatively squeezing him out of the lineup – but he’s obviously new, so in he goes.
I suppose the question hanging over all that is why Timbers fans should trust it. As much as I think the balance of Portland fans have made up their minds on the question of whether the team has a competent coach trying to get the most out of bad/mismatched players versus competent players having an incompetent coach compelling them to do dumb things…I mean, hand to God, watching Da Costa and Velde on Saturday gets me back to wondering. Not enough that I want to see More Neville(!), but I can’t remember the last time I watched either of them without wondering what sold Ned Grabavoy (or whoever signs off) on them. Portland’s front office is visibly trying to improve the team, i.e., no one can fault them for not trying. It’s just not so obvious that they’re good at the job or, worse, that it’s not unreasonable to believe the sign every player an agent calls about or walks in the door.
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| Just waiting for those wings to come in... |
I have a handful of stray thoughts from there – e.g., I don’t know that Phil’s starting Aravena in his ideal position (this is a big one and seeing “Forward” next to his name doesn’t help), the continued mystery of how bad Neville’s teams have been at something fundamental as passing – but the last point I want to make is this:
3) The Timbers Are Terrible at Pressing
Regardless of what they tell the papers, I don’t think the Timbers so much as they set a very high line of engagement and send Gage Guerra (or Kelsy) to chase after the ball in the opposition defensive third. The only thought I have from there: if your team is bad at something, stop doing it. Just stop. Find an approach that better fits the personnel and work on that until you get it right, or as close to that as you can. Then again, maybe that’s why Portland’s so bad at passing.
Given how late this is, I’m going to cut things short and speed-run the rest of this post. Before that, I have a final note on Houston. While I do like the Dynamo’s DPs – Guilherme and Bogusz look ready to help them and I’ve see Ponce play a strong game or two – I don’t see them rising much about where they are now (8th). And that feels like the kicker about Saturday’s result: Portland lost to an average team. It was on the road, sure, but the short version of this goes something like: average met average and the team with the better DPs won. That’s how it’s supposed to work, of course, but being on the wrong end of it still sucks. With that, let’s move on to the next team the Timbers play…
Regarding the (Los Angeles) Galaxy
Full disclosure, I only managed to half-watch 2/3 of the Galaxy’s 1-2 (really?) home loss at the hands of (checks notes) Sporting KC, but I did take the time to (re)watch the Galaxy’s 3-0, over-before-it-started rout of Charlotte FC and I re-read my notes on the Galaxy’s equally lopsided loss at Colorado. The easiest takeaway: it all comes down to Gabriel Pec. The Brazilian wrecked Charlotte’s left and middle enough to generate two days’ worth of skeets asking whether Tim Ream was too old (the answer: maybe, but he was always slower than Pec). If memory serves, Pec scored one and teed up Joao Klauss for the other two. On the flipside, his sending off at the beginning of the second half at the Rapids ultimately led to them running away with the game over the final 10 minutes. The team doesn’t die without Pec, but it shudders as if a ghost walked by when both he and Paintsil are out of the lineup – and, if the most recent report I saw still applies (two weeks stale, fwiw) Paintsil will miss this Sunday (hamstring). They’ll still have Marco Reus – who has looked a step above serviceable since the second half of 2025 – and I rate, maybe even overrate, Klauss and agree either of those players can absolutely score on Portland’s clearly spongy defense. Should *Erik Thommy start again (as he did v SKC; here’s the rest), I’d add Portland’s terrible/absent defense of Zone 14 (and environs) another worry – see Exhibit A from last weekend – but, in a better world, it would just be defending set pieces from there, or keeping out sloppy fuckers like the one the Galaxy scored versus SKC. That felt more plausible without Pec in the lineup...but he's likely to be in the lineup (maybe hold Fory deep and attack the space behind Pec?). I don’t rate the Galaxy as a better team for all kinds of reasons - I think Maya Yoshida can get beat for speed and Miki Yamane strikes me as exploitable too (knowing Velde plays that space…make me believe, big guy) – but I’d like it a lot better off the question of which team is better didn’t feel like a push, or even a shrug. I’m guessing their central midfield’s more coherent than Portland, if not outright better – big, if measured Edwin Cerrillo fan over here – and I think it’ll improve the more they lift Justin Haak into it. The more important thing, though, is LA’s team as a whole and the fact it has the structure and drilling to manage a game. If the Galaxy can get that going, I’d worry about this game playing out like the Houston loss.
The rest of this is just a data-dump about the rest of the stuff I watched. You won’t get any links except in the final score (and I simply must get the “live” links in a more contrasted color) and it’s just going to be a real quick blah, blah, blah regardless of how much I watched. Besides, you can usually find the factual support for most arguments I make through those links. With that…let’s roll…
Atlanta United FC 3-1 Philadelphia Union (20-35; 45-70)
Watched a lot of this one and don’t regret it much - when there’s a mud wrestling match on, why would you watch anything else? – but the mud wrestling analogy only holds if the script has Atlanta shoving Philly’s face in the mud over and over again. Worst case, the parts of the game I watched showed Atlanta at their best; probable case, that still explains how Atlanta won the game and the rants I saw from Philly fans in the hours after tells me how much they did. His name doesn’t show up next to a goal, but this was very much The Miguel Almiron Show. Dude killed it. And the Union.
Current Takeaway
Two bad teams entered, one less bad team left. Philadelphia looks dysfunctional/real bad.
Columbus Crew 0-1 Nashville SC (1st half,
I only caught the first half in the end, which time featured a headless Nashville (i.e., they rested Hany Mukhtar, Sam Surridge, and Cristian Espinoza for bigger, better, pinker things) petering out in midfield against a reimagined Columbus team that rarely got much further. Espinoza came on as a second half sub and scored the winner – which, for the record, I still haven’t seen – but the Crew have scored just four goals in 2026 and I saw all the reasons why running around in yellow for 45 minutes.
Current Takeaway
Nashville have so far picked up where they left off before the 2025 playoffs. Not a perfect start, but a really good one – e.g., four times as many goals scored as goals allowed and they’ve allowed just two. They haven’t faced an early high achiever yet, but give it time?
FC Dallas 3-3 San Diego FC
An actually incredible number of offside calls, an unusual number of penalties (all of them good by me), and Petar Musa the star of it all**. The guy can literally do it all – poacher’s goals, creating his own, link up play, pulling wide and playmaking – so it’s good to see him get the official Gold Star from The Motherships’ in-house hacks (i.e., Player of the Week honors). Heavy rotation in San Diego’s starting lineup hangs at asterisk after the result (also resting players for bigger, better, Liga MX things; though curiously not Valakari, who, like Nashville’s motor, Edvard Tagseth started last weekend), but they got a night out of Alex Mighten (drew at least one PK) that should make their fans feel better about busy weeks.
Current Takeaway
Beyond noting that Dallas has played a tough early schedule ( v NSH, @ LAFC, v SD) and that they did the thing and beat the only wobbly team (Toronto), nah. Too many variables.
Chicago Fire FC 1-2 DC United
This one’s less fresh in my memory, but my wobbly notes include the following two takeaways: 1) Tai Baribo looks like a good bet to make them better, with Joao Peglow getting some form of honorable mention (“Peglow effective”); and 2) I described DC’s second, winning goal as “pure rugby.”
Current Takeaway
I want to like Chicago more than their 1-2-1 start, but getting the feeling DC wanted it more hearkens back to the problems that limited the Fire in 2025. This result feels less about where DC is than Chicago.
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| Build the statute, figure out how to make it float. |
I’m quietly pulling for Austin’s budget rebuild, almost certainly more than I should (Facundo Torres, Jaden Nelson, Joseph Rosales (almost scored!) and – why not? – Jon Bell (who did score!)), the highlights told me that RSL ran these guys over and backed up a couple more times than the final score indicates. Brad Stuver was just one of several goalkeepers who stood on their heads in MLS Week 4 (7 saves undersells it, surely), but....shit. Who were the others?
Current Takeaway
RSL looks good for their nine points, and Austin for their four.
New England Revolution 6-1 FC Cincinnati
Maybe Gerardo Valenzuela's stroll of a goal was the final insult it took to stir New England to their better selves? Going the other way, maybe Cincy’s bad and/or Pat Noonan has lost the locker room? Valenzuela completed his turn as this game’s star attraction with his 69th-minute sending off, but this thing was over well before Act II (i.e., New England was up 4-1 by then). For what it’s worth, I saw Miles Robinson steps behind the play more than once; worse, Griffin Yow’s goal (NE’s 5th) had American Samoa v Australia vibes.
Current Takeaway
Like a lot of other teams, Cincy rested some key players (e.g., Pavel Bucha, Kevin Denkey, I’m guessing Ender Echenique), but they started enough players, particularly in the back and in midfield, that this shouldn’t have happened.
I watched the Vancouver Whitecaps kick the piss and paste out of Minnesota – as shocking result as any that happened this weekend, and if Sebastian Berhalter isn’t the best player at his position in MLS, I can’t think of who’s better – but I’ve got to get this posted and go to bed. I have new floors and new carpets all over the place (and all the shit to get back in place as a result), but I’m only a couple steps closer to figuring out what I want to do with these weekly posts…
…the quick-shot stuff feels really satisfying, especially when I can lard it with context. Putting a pin in that and looking forward to a week that’s quieter in multiple ways. Until the next one…
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