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| Why, hello, Mr. Jackson... |
To riff on a regular obsession for this blog, definitions of the phrase “must-win game” probably number in the dozens. My thinking on it has evolved to another phrase – i.e., a result doesn't need to be fatal and chronic can actually be worse. Part of that turns on the fact that, in Major League Soccer, the only teams challenging for the Supporters’ Shield play must-win games week in and out. For the rest of MLS, the damage done by failing to win a "must-win" game lurks in a space between reputational and predictive. To explain by example, the Portland Timbers upcoming against Sporting Kansas City is a must-win game because losing to a team already tagged as one of the worst in MLS history, failing to bank those (still) easy points compels the Timbers to fight for them against bigger dragons. (Related, heartbroken for SKC fans; pulling for you crazy kids.) In other words, what starts as keeping up appearances can quickly become a lesson in the practical math of foregone points.
Based on how I see other people talk – and therefore think about soccer – makes me think I put more weight on the question of the opposition than most. Any team can win any given game, of course, but where each time is in terms of points, confidence, feeling like they’re making progress, etc. etc. at the time they meet means, like, a lot. Which brings the conversation to…
San Diego FC 1-2 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
When Andres Dreyer scored the penalty kick, called by the ref (correctly) for a Brandon Bye handball, a game that already tilted against the Timbers seemed poised to roll away from them. By my imperfect tally, San Diego had fired five shots inside the opening 20 minutes and they fired two more – including one Dreyer buries four times out of ten – before 25 minutes had gone. Kevin Kelsy quite literally stole a goal at the 26th minute – i.e., he picked the ball of the generally reliable Jeppe Tverskov’s toe and scored a smart one – but Dreyer’s goal still felt like regular order reasserting itself. Instead, reality turned regular order on its head.
Much of the first half featured San Diego pushing the ball into Portland’s defensive third and, after running into a little too much resistance, pulling the ball back to create the vertical space for another try. Think waves crashing on a beach. From the start of the second half, the waves started crashing further from goal and, until a desperate and delightful finish, they pretty much stopped coming in. It was as if the Mighty Thor drank deep from a horn with the other end behind San Diego’s goal…alternately, the Timbers just figured out how to manage San Diego’s attacking patterns and commenced to pushing their own campaign for all three points. I flagged shots good (Cole Bassett’s, circa mid-60s) and great (the shot Antony actually put in the goal that was called offside; the open net he missed, less so) in my notes, and Portland fired a few more besides (13 in all, 5 on goal; edged San Diego in the final numbers), most of which made the highlights.
Getting back to the preamble, teams will come to games that, whether by hosting the game or playing a team that’s going through some shit, they should win. These are the points fans mentally bank as they look at the schedule. The flipside are the games fans write off as zero points, or one of the local team gets lucky. For all that a road game at San Diego looked like the latter at the start of the season, that impression slipped away over the past four matchdays. As noted in the scouting report, San Diego looked vulnerable, both by score line and style of play (e.g., they leave a lot of vertical space open) and, yeah, that held up…but I still feel like the Timbers found a $20 on their way to work.
Big Thoughts & Notes
1) Life on a (Successful) Collective Farm
I don’t think I can explain the result in more meaningful depth than what I typed above. A couple players had key moments – e.g., Kelsy, Pantemis, Surman, but Bye was active (in ways both good and bad; see below) and Antony stressed San Diego’s high line the second he came on – but they still felt like the Super Workers of the Year 4 in a collective, ultimately successful effort. Pantemis aside, I can’t name one Timbers player who had a great one; this felt more like a game where everyone did their job well. I read some notes (Jeremy Peterman’s mostly, but...forgive me, Father, I dipped into reddit) about the Timbers’…god, what was the word? Intermittent press? Anyway, Portland forced some turnovers out of San Diego – good ones too – but that just brings me to…
A good collective effort goes a long way against a team on a (now) five-game, confidence-killing losing streak, but how far will it go at Real Salt Lake (I have some guesses below!), Miami, a rising Montreal team or a red-hot San Jose team that’s partying like it’s 2012? To bring the obsession full circle, a good season starts with your local team winning games you don’t expect them to. That’s where it starts at least, but that can sometimes lead to existing in a space where you expect the local team to start winning every game it plays. Portland has pocketed two such wins over the past three match days. That’s just pointing out a fact. To point out another fact: things looked really, really bad as recently as the loss at Minnesota. Like SKC, bad. The Timbers are in an interesting space right now. I mean…what happens if Portland makes a good run between today and the World Cup break?
A Couple Strays
3) James Pantemis, Ride or Die
I think that choice has already been made, barring disaster, I just wanted to note my embrace of the choice.
4) Re-Re-Introducing Brandon Bye
Bye looked like the bee’s knees in his first several appearances, but this one looked more like the full and honest Brandon Bye experience I know from watching too much New England Revolution soccer (still have a soft spot; they’re one of the 5-6 emotional affairs I have most seasons). We all know the big negative – i.e., the handball – but he got beat and rescued in the same second a couple of times as well, while also putting in one of the more effective attacking shifts of the afternoon. Pobody’s nerfect, amirite? I pull for every Timber out of habit, but I’m still sold on this signing.
5) Half-Seconding an Opinion
Someone on reddit celebrated his belief Kelsy played harder this week than he has so far this season. I agree, for what it’s worth, while also thinking Kelsy starts every game running like he’s going to shake something loose. That energy dries up in a direct proportion to the Timbers’ chances, but I do think the kid’s ready to put in the work. I like Felipe Mora as an option, both starting and subbing, but I’d keep starting Kelsy on the balance.
That’s enough about the past. To quote The Hudsucker Proxy, the future is now…
Real Salt Lake, Recently, Generally
The Facts
5-3-1, 16 pts., 9 GP; 17 gf, 14 ga (+3); home 4-1-0, away 1-2-1
Past Results: LWWWDWWLL
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ VAN (0-1 L); v SEA (2-1 W); @ ATL (2-1 W); v ATX (2-1 W); @ SD (2-2 D); v SKC (3-1 W); v SD (4-2 W); v MIA (0-2 L); @ LAG (1-2 L)
Some weeks, Real Salt Lake looks like a bristling team of young go-getters (with positively incandescent futures!), but the numbers largely present them as a high-upside, high-effort team dunking on tiny opponents at The Stadium That Shall Not Be Named. The Portland Timbers travel to that nameless place, looking one promising result less like tiny opposition. Or, to key off all the above, how well did surviving San Diego’s press and benefitting from their self-doubt prepare the Timbers for battling against a younger, fresher press by a team fueled by Pablo Mastroeni shouting positive affirmations into their ears every day?
Mastroeni has fielded something very close to the same roster for four of the past five match days. The Dregs of the Mothership lay it out as a 5-4-1 (for example), but what I’ve seen from this team tells me it plays more like the 3-4-3s they show before the games on Apple TV. The constants have included Rafael Cabral in goal (responsible!), Justen Glad and Philip Quinton paired at the back with some combination of Lukas Engel (great signing), DeAndre Yedlin (great signing!) and Sam Junqua (he’s okay!); Noel Caliskan in central midfield, with Stijn Spierings more often than not (lately), and then just a fucking grab-bag of players that you’re likely to see running at or around the Timbers center backs and fullbacks – e.g., Zavier Gozo (more of a winger), Juan Manuel Sanabria (more of a defender?), Aiden Hezarkhani (definitely more of a winger), Morgan Guilavogui, and, lately, Diego Luna; those players have mostly run under the strong-starting rookie, Sergi Solans, but Mastroeni started Victor Olatunji in Saturday’s 1-2 loss at the Galaxy last weekend, and I don’t know enough to say, “yep, that’s Pablo’s guy,” so just assume some version of all of that is on the table on the attacking side. I’ll dig into the specific effects below, but the main thing Timbers fans need to know about RSL’s plug-‘n’-play lineup is that it has worked more often than not – e.g., they put more shots on goal than most - and almost every time at home. In terms of visual aids, I reviewed the highlights of: RSL’s 3-1 win over SKC (loosely analogous…please); rewatched their win/romp over San Diego, and finally took in their loss at the LA Galaxy.
First things first, I have yet to see RSL fall short of competent in any game or highlight reel that I’ve watched – i.e., yes, they’re on a two-game losing streak, but don’t get too comfortable with that. Maybe they laid down against Miami, who hasn’t (every team Miami has played at home so far, hey-oh…), but they pulled the Galaxy apart more than once and things were good-to-real-good before the last two results. Turning to the players who make that happen, Mastroeni has favored Solans so far and he’s repaid the faith by leading the team in goals, most of them on the backs of SKC’s and San Diego’s defense (Solans could have run it up at the latter). Zavier Gozo has been the other star lately, a legitimate terror up the right, who’s also capable of this beauty, which, just to note it, showed what Hezarkhani can do when he puts his mind to it. Uh, what else: watch the highlights for the win over San Diego if you want to see Gozo and Guilavogui terrorize a defense, Olatunji is a whole different problem in that he’s more of a box bruiser than Solans, but both forwards give the messy hydra’s head of RSL’s attack someone to play toward, when they’re not going for goal themselves. Moving further back, everything I’ve seen from Caliskan tells me he’s thriving in Utah…which begs some questions, and I’ve seen enough moments from Spierings to make me worry about (sing along if you know the words!!), yes, the midfield battle. RSL’s defense is fine – I think it’s better with Engel, fwiw – and, while it’s far from airtight, it has yet to give up more than two goals in 2026. On the tactical side, they will press the Timbers – not least because Portland presents as shaky – so there will be that to survive, but I think Mastroeni’s men gamble for the win enough to leave some openings in the other direction.
Bottom line, I’m not expecting a win on Saturday and I expect both of Portland’s fullbacks to have flashbacks for a couple weeks after the final whistle. Keep Jimer Fory home, by all means, and pray for a better week defensively from Brandon Bye. For what it’s worth, I think Caicedo can provide a midfield capable of playing around pressure, in the event it can’t play through it, but I’d like to see him play faster. I have a loose theory that things will get somewhere between okay and open if Portland can play past the first couple lines of RSL’s pressure and I expect those moments to be the big ones early. While I can’t see this game evolving into the slow pull out of arm-wrestling death that the win at San Diego proved to be, I want to see Portland play into the same theory – i.e., don’t fuck up, make them beat you, seize the chances as they come, fast as you can play them at first, but them more methodically after you get their number.
Moving on, and with one eye on the Week 8/9 wrap-up posted last Thursday and the other on putting a lid on the content I post to this space, I decided to limit myself to three topics going into each MLS Match Day. [Ed. - Terrible mistake, fwiw.] The post will wrap flagging odd results or weirdness in the big picture. I’m on the clock a bit this week, so excuse if I go astray, but when I woke up this morning, etc…oh, yeah. get up and dance…no one’s watching…
Topic 1: Yes, I’ve Been (Silently) Overrating the New York Teams
Whether through seasons past or a firm belief that any team with a sturdy defense and a good record home can go places in this crazy league, it doesn’t take much to sell me on New York City FC in any given season. On the other hand, it gets harder to do the same Red Bull New York as each passing season slips further from their glory, glory 2010 seasons, mostly because they’ve looked and played mid-ass seasons for half a decade - though, yes, they did make the playoffs (virtually every season) and in 2024 (right?) they reached MLS Cup. Fast forward to 2026, NYCFC went four unbeaten to start the season; Red Bull, meanwhile, won their first two, including an opening day road win at Orlando that had MLS’s Content Machine hyping their youth, and, after a bit of a stumble, they righted the ship with a 4-2 win versus Cincinnati and a road draw at Miami. Now, when a team starts well, or even if it recovers from a stumble (e.g., an 0-3 home loss to Montreal and getting railed 1-6 at Charlotte; see, New York, Red Bull), treating the next bad result as an aberration or a “bad day at the office” becomes the default frame, intentionally or not. That can only last so long, of course, say when the Red Bulls’ “stumble” looks more like “the norm” after losing to Montreal by three goals a second time, gasping to keep ahead of a middling DC United team at home, then losing/failing to capitalize on a three-man Cincinnati defense that included exactly zero regular starters (Andrei Chirila is 17) and a guy who normally starts in midfield (Samuel Gidi). Things are somehow going worse for NYCFC: Every result that has happened since their Week 4 home win over the Rapids – e.g., 1-1 draw versus St. Louis; 0-2 loss at Vancouver; two more chances at getting all three points at home (where NYCFC is traditionally reliable) pissed away in a 1-2 loss versus Charlotte and drawing a 4-4 slugfest versus Cincinnati – made their place among the elite look more like a misplaced assumption than reality. I don’t mean to crap on Montreal, particularly not with them looking like a team capable of making home count for something, but there are games that any team wanting to make a plausible claim to the word “good” has to win and having a 2-6-0 Montreal team on the other side of the field is one of those games. Red Bull actually gave a decent account of themselves at Cincinnati last weekend, particularly by the numbers. I don’t know how Cincy survived Red Bull at the back – they got a good number of shots, maybe too many fell to Cade Cowell, a player who can always find a chance, and spurn it just as easily – but their real problems came from failing to contain Pavel Bucha (wide right, of all places) and letting Evander get loose in the 18. Neither team’s situation constitutes a crisis, one could even argue they’re the very definition of average in MLS’s Eastern Conference circa 2026, but, after wonder how high they’d rise, I expect midtable results and performance for both teams until further notice.
Casting our attention, now, to the poorer precincts of the Eastern Conference…
Topic 2: 2025’s Eastern Conference Bigshots, Today
The Week 8/9 Review post (see link in the preamble above) identified four Eastern Conference teams, each of whom did all right in 2025: Cincinnati, NYCFC and Philadelphia reached the Eastern semis, a real accomplishment; and, sure, Columbus lost to Cincy in the previous round, but the series was a war, and, okay, admittedly Orlando limped into the Eastern play-in only to have a rising Chicago team briskly kick them out of it; still (deep breath!), all of those teams made the 2025 playoffs, or thereabouts, and all four of Orlando, Cincy, Philly and Columbus have died in the first nine, ten weeks of 2026. Even with both Orlando and Cincy dealing with injury crises/shitshows, I’m still stunned to see these four teams gasping for air under the weight of the East. So, I took in some highlights, ran those against the latest trends, and found…
I covered Cincy above – suffice to say, they put that win together with duct tape, but that’s still winning a must-win – and I can cover the other three teams over two results: Columbus’ 2-0 win versus Philadelphia and Orlando’s 2-3 loss at DC United. If the highlights can be trusted (the final stats merely hint at a different story), Philly chased Columbus with more energy than accomplishment. It was Max Arfsten Day for Columbus – the Crew got some use out of pushing him against the Union’s high line with a run inside Philly’s left back – who scored one goal and led to Nathaniel Harriel’s own goal. That one-trick maneuver came off often as it needed to, not least because scoring has been Philly’s Achilles Heel in 2026. The only people who know Philly’s current leading scorer are their diehards, but the fact it’s Danley Jean Jacques says plenty. After a three-week period that hinted at a turnaround – a 2-1 win at Montreal, followed by a let-down draw versus DC and last Wednesday’s fighting road draw at Toronto – the more that win at Montreal looks like a lucky break and the more the limits of “battling” enters the chat.
I’m not sure what I expected from Orlando – gods know that nothing in their overall record going into Week 10 pointed to success – but I figured if they could follow up their impressive 4-1 win over Charlotte at midweek with a win over DC, maybe that pointed to the first steps of a turnaround. One important note about that Charlotte win: Orlando had a handful of starters missing – e.g., Marco Passalic, Eduard Atuesta, Wilder Cartagena – which translated to needing some major contribution per young Brazilian signed in 2025-26 offseason. Orlando got them, incredibly, so the question turned on pulling off a repeat. The attack put in the effort (see this goal), maybe got a little lucky (this goal), but Orlando lived up to their actual average for goals allowed by giving the hosts three, including two after the 80th minute (DC's big-money DP even got into the game).
Put all that together, almost nothing recommends either Philly or Orlando for future success. Orlando at least the hope of healing as their first-choice starting players do. I’ve got nothing for Philly and, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure what I have for Cincinnati or Columbus except this:
Five teams in MLS’s Eastern Conference sit on 12 points with a 3-4-3 record and a variety of goal differentials, most of them not so good, none of them actually good. Those teams include 11th-place Red Bull New York through 7th-place New York City FC, with DC, Cincinnati, and Columbus in between and in that order. Those five have Toronto exactly one point ahead, with one draw traded for the other teams’ losses, and a goal differential just as marginal. Charlotte, at 5th place on 14 points, have a little padding, but that five-team pile-up on 12 points speaks to why I talk about the East having a soft underbelly. Four points from three games counts as a run in that space, at least so far, so that’s basically up to fifth place up for grabs.
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| There's a dozen more keys in the beard. |
The Texas teams – Austin, Dallas and Houston – were the other centerpiece to the Week 8/9 wrap, specifically to the extent the last two teams held at least one of the keys to Portland’s fate on the big old janitor’s keyring in the sky. That’s to say, yes, I wrote off Austin a mere two days before they dropped a 2-0 home win on the Houston Dynamo. Hard immovable numbers made a case for that – e.g., Austin hadn’t won since Week 2, going 0-4-3 over that stretch, they managed just 1 1/3 goals per game, etc. – and Houston had two wins’ worth of a breeze at their backs; meh wins, sure – at Orlando and versus San Diego, both 1-0 – but that tracked as winning ways against Houston’s recent disciplined, unspectacular best. Based on what I watched, it took just one half, one damned good goal (heckuva finish Jaden Nelson) and a happy accident (but Myrto Uzuni is visibly more comfortable this season!) for Austin to get past Houston and make a mockery of my prognosticatory capabilities. You can discount at least two of Houston’s shots on goal as they went straight out Brad Stuver, so the main points of interest here are Hector Herrera working himself back into the team and the pair of raging fits goalkeeper Jonathan Bond threw, one for each half I think.
As for Dallas, I don’t expect them to beat Seattle in the Emerald City – and that applies for the foreseeable future – so what’s in my head about Dallas has less to do with this particular result than Dallas’ recent history. They played a decent game by the numbers, beat Andrew Thomas once and made him sweat hard one more time on the way to a 1-2 loss (all probably in here). For reasons unbeknownst to me (and I’m not looking into it), Dallas rotated the bejesus out of the starting XI – a choice that suggests writing off the game or prepping for a game they need more. The only game I see in their future is away to Red Bull New York; even with the gentle dumping on Red Bull entered into the record, it’s still a road game, and Dallas is not good on the road, historically, a detail that keeps drawing me back to the fact they’ve played seven games at home versus, now, three on the road. As it happens, Dallas will play nine of its first fifteen games at home, all before the World Cup break, which translates to 11 road games on the other side. Fun fact: Dallas’ first regular season home game after the World Cup window doesn’t come until September 5th.
So, what’s all that rambling crap about? I think it boils down to a loose theory that Timbers fans should take the longest possible view and for as long as it makes sense. Based on the early returns, Portland can keep up with the pack by winning one in every three. Every Timbers fan wants more than that, of course, of course, but you gotta keep winning the games you don't expect if you want to go anywhere good.
Programming Note: After covering the Timbers' most recent result and their upcoming opposition, I'm going to limit myself to three more games. The approach above felt all over the place and stiffed readers on details. That's 10 teams to focus on each week. Less than I like, but all I'm willing to commit to. Till next Sunday or Monday!
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