Seattle Sounders 1-5 Portland Timbers: On the Right Side of a Snowball...

A peace I hope we all find...

Maybe there’ll be some benefit to spitting this out same day in my older years…

Let’s move this fast and keep it tight, people. The Portland Timbers kicked off their return to regular season action by kicking the holy shit and ever-lovin' stuffin' out of the Seattle Sounders. The 5-1 win felt like dunking by the end, even if the numbers pad the Sounders’ pain a little.

The Game, Very Briefly
It opened as I expected, with Seattle worked to get their attacking patterns going and they collapsed space effectively every time the Timbers worked the ball wide. The Sounders probably hit their high in those early moments (the five-minute interval agrees; see, the numbers), but their grasp on the game slipped away little by little. It started with the Timbers cutting out passes, disrupting Seattle’s inlets into he attacking third, but their game plan really got upended when…well, the Sounders got punched in the mouth.

The game turned from the second Jimer Fory floated that leading cross to Kevin Kelsy sprinting between two defenders to score Portland's first goal (wait for it, and so much of it). It took a double save, first by James “Canuck Wall” Pantemis, then by Kamal “Maybe Wily Veteran’s His Game?” Miller to hold Portland’s lead (has to be in here somewhere, maybe even here?), but Seattle never really recovered before the half. After the half? Shit broke all the way down…

I’ve used the phrase “five-minute fuck up” in the past and (with allowances for the fact all this unfolded in more than five minutes) Seattle’s defense served up a peach of an example tonight. First, their defense got beat at the back post – twice! – which allowed Miller to keep up the heroics. Four minutes later (still within bounds), Cole Bassett started and finished a goal off transition courtesy of a David Da Costa pushing then snapping across Seattle’s backline. Three minutes later (shit!), Kelsy bullied in a goal to complete his brace. That had the Timbers up 4-0 and rolling all. the. way. down the river.

Yeah, yeah, Seattle pulled one back from some garbage by Hassani Dotson, but ask Sounders fans how consoled they felt in the moment – especially with Alexander “No Nickname Yet, We Just Got Coffee Once!” Aravena kicking home a soul-shattering fifth goal for the Timbers in stoppage time.

The rest of the post is talking points, but I wanted to pull the biggest thought out of that speculative mob: I’m not going to read much into this performance – and for some reasons I’ll flag below – but I’m going to savor it like it was swimming in sauce and soma.

Talking Points
1) My Biggest Theory of Change
After the punch in the mouth alluded to above, Portland beat Seattle to the ball all over the field tonight. They haven’t done that so much this season; I’m not sure how much they’ve done that over the past few seasons. That simple act has all kinds of knock-on effects, up to and including the feeling a teammate has your back, which gives a player confidence try some shit. I saw a lotta shit tonight. Good shit.

Not Phil. Phil smiled.

1a) What Does It Look Like When a Coach Loses a Locker Room?
As implied below, I suspect a good amount of tonight has to do with an recklessly off-night for Seattle that followed from a down period that carried over from the other side of the World Cup break, but, yeah, the Timbers looked lively tonight, spunk even. With that in mind, is players phoning it in a symptom of frustration with a head coach? Do players argue over what is and isn’t going right, maybe form little cliques/factions, when some of them like what a coach is doing, while others don’t? File this under speculative, but perhaps relevant…

2) Turns Out There Was a Cliff
Continuing this blog’s long-standing tradition of getting something all the way wrong in the scouting report (see Key Point #4), I held that a little squad rotation wouldn’t hurt the Timbers; on Bluesky, I warned people to not read too much into missing Roldans. Like a dissenting opinion in a Supreme Court case, I also implied that a similar rotated lineup might have had a hand in Seattle’s 0-2 loss versus the LA Galaxy. Now, more than ever, trust the dissenting opinions. That’s about 60% a bit, but Seattle almost never looks that scrambled in defense. The Timbers did better than they often do to punish ball-watching and bad spacing – and that’s something to celebrate – but the Sounders defense all but invited them to the proverbial toolshed today.

3) Staking Righteous Claims
In the last thing I posted before the World Cup break, I noted that this looked like Kamal Miller’s best season for a while and dropped multiple hints that I’d like to see what Ariel Lassiter can do in the starting lineup. I feel like both players supported that theory tonight. Lassiter isn’t an elegant player, but he works and plays a simple (and crucially), collaborative game whenever he comes on – i.e., even if he’s not always the guy, I feel like he makes the players around him better. As for Miller, he just seems to be wearing the responsibility, not just better than anyone else, but well. Last, and very much not least, Kelsy already had my vote as starter, and he just earned it again.

3a) The Worst Thing About a DP
Sometimes I get the feeling a team burns a couple players’ time by repeatedly starting a DP over a (uhhh...) more affordable player who might make the team better. A front office has to justify the spend, I get it, and you want to give a player time to adjust, find their feet, not to mention a better way to be their very best selves…and yet the time comes when all concerned have to call a failed experiment by the name on the back of the jersey. I’m curious how many readers have guessed the players I’m alluding to here…now, a counter-example.

C'mon, who doesn't like tacos?

4) I Will Eat This Crow with a Smile, Keep Feeding Me
I doubt any Timbers fan has doubted David Da Costa harder and more often than I have, but the guy did more than enough and everything but score tonight. He wrecked Nouhou at least twice – no mean feat – before serving up Bassett’s back-breaking goal (as noted above, the fourth (or fifth?) broke Seattle’s soul). May Da Costa can keep doing so and shutting me up for as long as he wears Timbers green (or rose(?) or tan(?)).

4a) Never, Never Make Bold Statements Based on Just One Game
It’s okay. We all do this. To lay my cards on the table, yes, I have enough doubts about both Kristoffer Velde – and even Antony – and that inclines me to wanting to see Lassiter get a run of starts. I have long, well-documented history of not trusting Da Costa, but I can’t think of another player with the particular upside he showed tonight. Tonight did nothing to resolve my myriad midfield issues (for another day, four Hail Marys and 10 therapy sessions), but I see paths for useful experiments in the attack and hope to see them tested.

4b) I Don’t Know How Jack Cassidy Works
Over on Bluesky, someone heavily implied that Jack Cassidy doesn’t have the proper licenses to become Portland’s head coach. I don’t know if that’s true and I definitely don’t want to treat one game as the first step on a path to eternal dominance, but if one thing has been missing from Timbers’ performances for a few seasons, it’s coherence on both sides of the ball. With a nod to the kaleidoscope of variables in play, I’m not forwarding Cassidy as the first word to a solution to the Timbers’ several issues…but it would still be nice to have the option if this kind of thing carries forward.

5) One New Thing I Think We Can Trust
This happened as the Timbers worked back into the game, and mostly before the goal, but I saw them play short passes into overlapping runs into the space behind Seattle’s defense. Most passes went to Kelsy and those runs and passes stressed the Sounders’ back line. That’s good!

All in all, things just looked better tonight, in terms of spacing, speed of play, connectivity and confidence. There’s a word for that…shit, what is it? When things gather momentum, improve and expand? There it is! A lot of things about tonight felt like a snowball effect. God willing, it finds a bigger hill, keeps rolling, and gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Till the next one.