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| Her soul's somewhere in there... |
To be clear, the original argument still holds up. Any team that gets its shit together far enough ahead of Decision Day has the potential to get on a streak, get into the MLS Cup Playoffs and make some noise, maybe even snatch MLS Cup from a team that, based on their performance over the entire season, deserves it a little more. Thank gods the Supporters’ Shield still rewards that, no matter how little people value it.
The amendment/extension piece comes from something else, something that only stepped out of the background over the Portland Timbers’ past several struggling seasons. Upon reviewing their results, I started to notice the only teams Portland could beat were the ones either below the playoff line, or those slipping toward the wrong side of it. That is, the Timbers could only beat actually bad teams, or teams in bad form. Any time Portland played a team with even a little more than half of anything going on, two points or all three slipped away. I think my obsession with tracking results came before that, but this cemented the value of the exercise for me.
It’s not a perfect scale by any means. A crap team can beat a good team on any given day, of course, and even the best team can crap the bed. The thing to watch for is the persistence of the phenomenon – i.e., any season that sees your team reliably lose to the good teams deep enough into the regular season is a good one to give up on. It doesn’t mean they won’t make the playoffs – see the Timbers’ 2024 and 2025 seasons (on second thought, only look at the searing dead end of 2024 if you’re one of those freaks that watches replays of compound fractures…sicko) – it just means they will not make the final, they probably won’t even make the quarters, and they’re just the fodder on some other teams’ path to glory.
Which brings me to Portland’s 1-2 loss at FC Dallas tonight. I expected nothing, I got nothing. These are the days of our lives…
FC Dallas 2-1 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
Because I tend to zone out of matches where not a lot happens, I loitered until such time as I could circle back to the highlights. Seeing what went wrong on the two goals Portland allowed was the primary mission, but I had stray skeets about the Timbers looking like the better team in the back of my mind as I watched. I didn’t see much during much of the game, or even recall anything that supported it, until Portland’s little flurry around the 70th minute. In that sense, sitting through the highlights knocked loose a couple of Portland's brighter moments that got swallowed up in all the “blah” of all the running around and doing very little. The final stats backed up a respectable outing for the Timbers – though the fact a shot off the woodwork doesn’t count as a shot on goal both bears noting and begs for correction (thinking of Logan Farrington's second half shot there). The point is, Portland wasn’t totally helpless, they fired a few good shots through Velde and Aeriel Lassiter, plus something by Antony, and early enough to make a difference. Only it didn’t make a difference and I don’t think anything about it felt terribly unfair – i.e., a draw would have been a reasonable result, though not necessarily a just one. It’s not like the Timbers created chance after chance to equalize, never mind win at Dallas. They did, however, deserved to lose.
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| This is pressure. |
And that gets back to the larger premise that started this post. Dallas is in the midst of the best season they’ve had since, at best 2022 (when they finished 7th), but my records show they haven’t chased the top of the conference since winning the Shield in 2016 and finishing second overall the season before. Dallas has finished mid-table, at best, in six of the past seven seasons. They’re chasing first as I type, tied for second in the West with Houston, with both teams sitting just three points behind Vancouver (who plays tomorrow, and will still hold a game in hand, but they're sputtering ever so slightly). For all their (considerable) defensive troubles (e.g., they haven’t kept a clean sheet since August 1st and have allowed 17 goals in six games since then, aka, 2.83 goals/game, aka; yikes!) – Dallas keeps finding ways to win. I think they have some advantages over the Timbers – e.g., they have Musa (again, chasing Das Boot) and Farrington (9 goals, 5 assists) and a reliable maestro in Valiente (12 assists) - but the two teams' broad profiles rhyme more than a little.
Dallas’ overall numbers aren’t so different than Portland’s – i.e., they’re both scoring and allowing more than most – they’re just a little better on both sides of the margin of error. The players flagged above give them enough to keep a positive goal differential, and that trumps Portland’s breakeven record both in the standings and by 11 points at time of writing.
What do you know? There’s my Wee Aside on FC Dallas
I don’t really have talking points for this one. The above covers it well enough, both generally and specifically. That little buzz Timbers fans felt from the beginning of July through Leagues Cup, that little hope that sparked back to life when they beat San Diego 3-1, has dulled to a headache that, if their better selves don't keep showing up, could tilt into a hangover. One can’t call things bad, exactly – eight points from the past 15 available ain’t bad, and the 1-2 loss v Austin FC the sole damning flaw – but good doesn't fit any better. The big wins, the ones that give a fan the holy-shit hope that the season could end with a trophy parade? Portland’s not getting them. I want to see signs they will as much as any Timbers fan, but…
David Da Costa couldn’t play tonight, Jose Caicedo got bit by the “lower body” bug, we haven’t seen Juan David Mosquera since…April(?), Brandon Bye’s out for the season, I forgot Alexander Aravena was even on the roster, and I no goddamn idea what’s going on with Vincent Janssen. At least two of those absences hurt in a clear, immediate way (Da Costa and Janssen), another in a way that was immediate, but less clear (Caicedo), and who knows how far all those other absences held your 2026 Portland Timbers from the potential whispered into existence by one Nedland Grabavoy III, Esq.
They’ll get better (or more coherent) when Da Costa comes back and when they have Janssen running around like a proper forward. It’s possible they can carry on without Caicedo – as everyone pointed out, Joao Ortiz looked great over his perversely shortened time on the field – but I’d rather have Caicedo well enough. Worse, the backline is one injury away from permanent Miller Time (i.e., Eric Miller) if Ronald Hernandez succumbs to Portland’s equivalent of the Spinal Tap drummer curse.
That’s it for the rambling. If I had to sum up the present state of Portland’s season in a word I’d go with “precarious.” Tonight wasn’t awful, the Timbers fought to the end, and Ariel Lassiter fired enough shots on his own to pinch a point or three. Portland managed that with a trimmed roster and only a few options on the bench (one of them Lassiter, fortunately), and that makes me think tonight's roster can keep up the pace and give some regulars time to heel...
…tell me Da Costa and Janssen aren’t coming back and I might start poking around for a white flag.
I’ll have something at midweek, but it’s until the home game against Atlanta otherwise. Till then…
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