 |
| Been there, bro...looks like you're eating a melon. |
It should go without saying now that, yes, I’m tinkering with the format. (Still searching for that Holy Grail post, doubt the quest will ever end.) Here’s the plan…
This post starts with a Big Picture State of the League hypothesis, then moves on to walking through the state of all the teams on either side of the Portland Timbers – in this case, the 7th-place Colorado Rapids down to the 14th-place Seattle Sounders. The primary goal in all this is to capture trends, states of progress or decline, that kind of thing, among the teams voted most likely to keep Portland 1) out of the playoffs, and 2) from doing anything once they get to the playoffs.
From there, I’ll move on to two conceptual sections I’m test-driving for future posts, something I’m calling Speed-Running the Eastern Conference and Western Conferences. The post will wrap up with a very brief (full disclosure: almost perfunctory) scouting report on the Timbers’ next opponent, Atlanta United FC. A couple new signings aside, that brevity is deserved on the grounds that Atlanta’s nine whole goddamn points below the Eastern Conference play-in line and not gaining ground.
That takes care of the preamble. Let’s kick this off with…
 |
| Golly. Both paths sure look tempting... |
I’ll start this section by acknowledging that Major League Soccer’s standings break into some loose version of three tiers most seasons. Keying off the current Supporters’ Shield Standings (i.e., these go stale as soon as Friday afternoon), I separate the tiers as follows:
Tier 1, East
Nashville SC, Inter Miami CF, New England Revolution, Charlotte FC, Chicago Fire FC, Orlando City SC
Tier 1, West
Vancouver Whitecaps, Houston Dynamo FC, FC Dallas, San Jose Earthquakes, St. Louis CITY FC, Los Angeles FC
That’s 1-6 in each conference, basically, and I’ll explain my thinking in the “Speed-Running” sections for each conference below, because putting the break between Orlando and Philly? I laugh at myself! Moving on…
Tier 2, East
Philadelphia Union (again, I know), New York City FC, FC Cincinnati, Red Bull New York, DC United, Toronto FC
Tier 2, West
Colorado Rapids, Portland Timbers, San Diego FC, Los Angeles Galaxy, Real Salt Lake, Minnesota United FC, Austin FC, Seattle Sounders
As you can see, I lumped more Western Conference teams in that middle tier than I did with the East and feel like I can defend it. Which I'll do as we pass over, let's face it, the dregs.
Tier 3, East
Columbus Crew, Atlanta United FC, Club du Foot Montreal
Tier 3, West
With apologies, Sporting Kansas City
Tier 3, East
Columbus Crew, Atlanta United FC, Club du Foot Montreal
Tier 3, West
With apologies, Sporting Kansas City
Some of that sorting feels more immutable – e.g., Nashville will stay in Tier 1, East as surely as Montreal has pissed away another season in Tier 3, East – but there’s no small amount of nuance and outright fluidity among and between the tiers. I’ll get to that later, but let us turn now to how that fluidity and nuance functions around my Portland Timbers.
Spinning Doughnuts in the West
Portland currently sits on 8th in the West, i.e., the top half of the play-in bracket with a two-point advantage over 9th-place San Diego. They sit three points behind Colorado and the last real playoff spot in the Western Conference, but, it probably bears noting that the eight points that separate the Timbers from 6th-place LAFC could very well shrink over the next four match days between Portland’s soft-ish upcoming schedule (again, v ATL, @ SJ, @ SKC, @ LAG, v COL) and LAFC’s sub-heroic form over their past eight games (1-3-4, with some very real points dropped, most recently (and embarrassingly) last weekend’s 1-3 loss at SKC). As goes LAFC, so goes most of the rest of the teams immediately above and well below the Timbers – i.e., toddlers with a couple belts of the Old Tyme remedies with a taste of heroin bumble less than those teams. As laid out below, it takes two fingers to count the teams with something like anything going on. Covering them in order:
Above Portland
 |
| Neither fun, nor productive, honestly. |
Portland currently sits on 8th in the West, i.e., the top half of the play-in bracket with a two-point advantage over 9th-place San Diego. They sit three points behind Colorado and the last real playoff spot in the Western Conference, but, it probably bears noting that the eight points that separate the Timbers from 6th-place LAFC could very well shrink over the next four match days between Portland’s soft-ish upcoming schedule (again, v ATL, @ SJ, @ SKC, @ LAG, v COL) and LAFC’s sub-heroic form over their past eight games (1-3-4, with some very real points dropped, most recently (and embarrassingly) last weekend’s 1-3 loss at SKC). As goes LAFC, so goes most of the rest of the teams immediately above and well below the Timbers – i.e., toddlers with a couple belts of the Old Tyme remedies with a taste of heroin bumble less than those teams. As laid out below, it takes two fingers to count the teams with something like anything going on. Covering them in order:
Above Portland
Colorado Rapids, 7th, 35 points
As noted more than once in these posts, the Rapids are solid at home and getting-rolled-by-Columbus-0-3-bad on the road. For reference, the Crew lost three home games around the win versus Colorado, including losses to Montreal and Red Bull. At 9-3-0, the Rapids comes close to automatic at home, but, with the exception of (a struggling) LAFC and, at the time, RSL, every team Colorado has beat at home going back to May was below the playoff line. While the particular opposition may matter, ultimately, the main thing you need to know is that the Rapids have five home games left and four on the road. The Timbers will have to outdo themselves to catch them – that, or crawl over LAFC if they keep falling. At time of writing, those two teams look like the only ones Portland has a real shot at passing. More on that below…
Below Portland
As noted more than once in these posts, the Rapids are solid at home and getting-rolled-by-Columbus-0-3-bad on the road. For reference, the Crew lost three home games around the win versus Colorado, including losses to Montreal and Red Bull. At 9-3-0, the Rapids comes close to automatic at home, but, with the exception of (a struggling) LAFC and, at the time, RSL, every team Colorado has beat at home going back to May was below the playoff line. While the particular opposition may matter, ultimately, the main thing you need to know is that the Rapids have five home games left and four on the road. The Timbers will have to outdo themselves to catch them – that, or crawl over LAFC if they keep falling. At time of writing, those two teams look like the only ones Portland has a real shot at passing. More on that below…
.jpg) |
| The internet enables dicks. |
San Diego, 9th, 30 points
At 4-5-1 over their past 10 games, San Diego slipped a touch against Portland’s 4-3-3. Dropping three straight (@ ORL, @ SJ, v PHI) did most of the damage – and last weekend’s 0-5 loss versus Philly seems reportable to a couple UN committees – but no small part of the broad picture points to a dynamic similar to Portland’s, i.e., they do better than the average offense on the scoring side and a little worse on the defensive side, all the way down to a break-even goal differential. San Diego also can’t get themselves going anywhere good and, as with the Timbers, playing on the road tips a little more sugar into the gas tank. To Portland’s advantage, San Diego has a slim three home games left, against six on the road. The fact San Diego hasn’t been so great at home (6-5-3) just tilts the odds in Portland’s favor a little more.
Los Angeles Galaxy, 10th, 30 points
When I talk about teams picking up good, meaningful wins, I’m talking about the Galaxy beating San Jose 1-0 and New England 2-1 at home. Those are good teams (or were before the ‘Quakes brutal mid-summer slump), aka, the kinds of teams your local team needs to beat to make good in this and any league. Good for them, and all that, but the Galaxy have gone 0-4-4 outside those wins over their past 10 games. Marco Reus and Joseph Paintsil have shouldered the burden of scoring and the journey has been lonely; Gabriel Pec has missed 10 games, Joao Klauss has missed most of the season, etc. Oh, and the Galaxy have played one more game (at 26) than every team except their cross-city/suburb rival, LAFC. After that, they’re barely better at home (4-4-5) than they are on the road (3-6-4) and, as with so many teams in this particularized sample, LA has dropped stupid fucking points all over. I mean…do any of these teams want to make the playoffs?
Real Salt Lake, 11th, 29 points
RSL hasn’t won a regular season game since mid-May. They’re 0-7-4 over that period and, while a sliver of that can be put down to struggles on the road (1-8-3), and a fairly challenging schedule (for the record, @ LAFC (1-3 L); @ POR (1-2 L); @ STL (1-1 D); v MIN (1-1 D); v FCD (3-4 L); @ ORL (1-2 L); @ COL (0-1 L); v LAFC (2-2 D); @ HOU (1-2 L); v NYC (0-2 L)), that is a definitionally a terrible, season-breaking run that nothing short of one of those runaway truck ramps can stop (Mountain West thing?). I can’t see RSL as a threat until such time as they cross the swaying bridge of winning just one game. Oh, and they just lost Diego Luna for something like 8-10 weeks (or a few months).
Minnesota United FC, 12th, 29 points
Based on their respective records, the Loons saw RSL’s collapse and thought, what the hell? Who can find the bottom first? 1-5-4 over their past 10 games, inexplicably disastrous at home (2-4-6), a little under 1.5 goals/game and a little more on the defensive side (and with a hefty assist in that direction over their past five games – i.e., 15 goals allowed, i.e., 3.0 goals allowed/game), Minnesota’s close enough to gain ground, but, not unlike RSL, they need to start taking steps in the right direction if they want to do anything but suffer through the rest of 2026. The number of teams treating the bottom of the West’s table like a phone booth in the 1950s beggars belief. And I’m not even close to done yet. That said, put a pin in that for…
Austin FC, 13th, 29 points
I made the mistake of writing off Austin a mere three weeks ago. In the immortal words of Bobby Darin, oh, look at them now. I don’t want to oversell what Austin’s doing – the most positive run I can isolate boils down to 3-1-2 over the past six games – but that includes wins at Portland and, last weekend, at Western Conference-leading Vancouver (not quite it's own story, but...). Is it a little freaky that all four of Austin’s wins over the past 10 games came against Cascadia teams? Yes, and is it also time to purge any and all lingering affection you, personally may feel for Matthew MacConaughey? (The answer is yes, purge them all; do it for the team). I have neither the time nor the interest in nailing down whatever Austin’s doing right – that’s a project for future posts – but, of all the teams reviewed in the above sampling this side of Colorado, Austin is the only one that has shown any capacity to do something, anything positive. As such, I hereby extend my apologies for writing them off and dub them the team to watch…at least until any of the rest of them get their shit together. Including…
Seattle Sounders, 14th, 28 points
Do not trust even one damn thing until you have double-tapped everything about this revenant of a team. On the one hand, yes, Seattle’s winless streak has extended nearly as long as RSL’s (think one game separates them, so that race to the first win is on, people!), but the Sounders have picked up four straight draws, a couple against…decent (or least peer) teams in tricky venues (for reference, @ CIN (1-1 D); v CHI (2-2 D); v RBNY (0-0 D); @ LAG (1-1 D)), and that beats RSL’s 0-3-1 run over the same stretch (and Minnesota’s 0-3-1, and draws San Diego’s 1-3-0…ye gods, this shit is bleak; see the phone both, imagine no smiles, only pain). I think I saw something about Paul Rothrock missing a week or eight, but what is that but the last belly-laugh over the running joke that is Seattle’s ever-growing injury list? And pour one out for Pedro De La Vega. Brutal signing…
The point of all that is, no, the Timbers haven’t been great in recent weeks. Fortunately, they have been better than literally all the teams around them. Translating that into anything but the last real playoff spot or the hosting the play-in game will take not just a good run by the Timber, but an unhealthy amount of failing from one or (ideally) more of the teams above them. And what is that but a swell segue to the next feature in this post…
Speed-Running the Western Conference
The creamy, nougaty and somewhat pointless center has been covered amply in the above, so let’s turn our attention to the frothy top of MLS’s Western Conference. There’s no real need to cover the bottom: its name is Sporting Kansas City; the aforementioned romp over LAFC delighted neutrals, but they posted six losses and a draw between that and their last win. Ruining other teams’ season is their highest realistic aspiration for 2026. Sticking with LAFC…
Their hold on 6th will feel a lot more precarious if any of the teams below them could really get their shit together. LAFC went without a win almost as long as SKC – six games, most of them draws – and results like that hardly hint at doing major damage when the post-season rolls around. Small wonder a still-surging (and U.S. Open Cup Final-bound) St. Louis has overtaken them. Very much related, 5th in the West feels like a base camp on what could be a climb to the summit for St. Louis. Between watching them and Dallas back-to-back (notes here and here) and that crazy, star-less 6-0-4 run, I wouldn’t bet against St. Louis right now…even as I expect their results will dry up one day.
After a long, dark period of failure (1-7-4; Portland gave them that lone win, dammit), San Jose finally righted its ship over its past four games with two draws at Houston and Austin, followed by a win at San Diego and a home win versus Houston. Not only did that see them filch four points off a direct rival (shit! I was going to use "felch" for the image!), it booted them back into the top four. Despite best efforts meeting…something else (e.g., the Dynamo picked up five points of the past 15 on offer, after winning five straight before that), that didn’t get the ‘Quakes over Houston, so that space strikes me as something between competitive and neck-and neck. Dallas, even as they whelmed me less than St. Louis by the eyeball test (see notes here; didn't write up St. Louis), have won three straight. On the one hand, yes, the opposition wasn’t great (v SKC, @ MIN, v…POR), but Dallas’ 5-2-3 over their past 10 has them in the group chasing 1st place Vancouver. About them…
The ‘Caps are doing…all right lately. On the one hand, they kicked Dallas’ asses five times in Vancouver; they also lost to Houston at home the week before, 1-3 versus St. Louis two match days later, and they sputtered against Minnesota and LAFC earlier. 4-4-2 over their past 10 games has them trotting at a faster clip than much of the West, but if you’ve ever seen bottom feeders cleaning a carcass that fell to the sea floor…
The top of the West looks fairly fluid once you get higher than LAFC. I wouldn’t put a fat sack on things staying as they are, basically.
Speed-Running the Eastern Conference
This will go faster, running out of time, buckle up, put in your mouthguards, assume the position,etc…
At the risk of repeating my mistake with Austin, I’d write off Montreal, Atlanta and Columbus – at least anything but spoilers.
Moving on to Tier 2, pull Philly out of the sample and it’s just a lot of teams turning themselves dizzy and going nowhere. Both New York teams have a demonstrated ability to go weeks without a win (six for Red Bull on a 0-4-2 record, seven for NYC on 0-3-4), so expecting them to keep spinning makes sense. DC United and Toronto are tied on the most ties in MLS…moving on to the arrivals to the East’s middle tier, passing two ships passing one, and at some velocity…
If memory serves, Cincinnati cobbled together a couple good runs after the CONCACAF tourney sucked the life out of their regular season form early in 2026, lifting them as high as fourth or fifth at times. Their last good streak dried up with the August 22nd draw versus Seattle. The past three match days, meanwhile, have provided evidence that Cincy can’t hang with the East’s best, a wake up call that came in the form of road thrashings at Nashville and Philly, followed by last weekend’s wild-swingin’ 3-3 home draw versus Charlotte. That dropped them to a 9th that probably feels too secure for comfort at the moment. One part of that turns on the lack of threat from the teams below them (see above), but the other part turns on the team racing past them.
I doubt I need to tell anyone that Philadelphia eclipsed St. Louis as the hottest team in MLS. Where the first four games of their, now 8-0-2 run saw them squeaking out results against a string of weak-to-mid teams (v RBNY, SEA, ATL, at NYC), the Union has trampled slightly better opposition (v MTL and CIN, bookended between at RBNY and SD) over their past four, out-scoring them 15 goals to one. They’ll come against better teams eventually – though there is that 2-2 draw v Miami in there – and we’ll see where that goes, but Philly has breakneck momentum for now. Orlando can make the same claim on a 4-0-1 record over past five games – i.e., they’re preying on the stumbling and mediocre (v RSL (2-1 W); @ MIN (3-3 D); v SD (1-0 W); @ ATL (3-2 W); v TFC (3-0 W), but at least it’s them doing the eating.
Now, let’s get into why both those teams have a good chance of getting a sniff of the top 5, even if it’s just the bottom.
Guess how many games Chicago has gone without a win? I ask because the answer surprises me: the Fire haven’t won in five; worse, the only team they picked points from when it mattered was Miami, and that was a draw. I bring that up because the Fire sits an increasingly shaky five points over Orlando and six over Philly. Pulling back Chicago would get either team into the Top 5, so…
After months of consuming everything MLS put its way like some scourge of God, Nashville finally hit a bare patch that seems most explicable by fatigue – e.g., draws at NYC and Miami, a loss at Toronto last midweek. I don’t see anyone catching them, but Shield-winning teams do have a history of petering out before the finish line (MLS Cup) after the finish line (the Shield). As for the teams between Chicago and Nashville…
After riding a strong home record for so long (8-2-2 at time of writing, undefeated not so long ago), New England have shaped up their road form with four straight wins. They played (in order) DC, Columbus, the Galaxy and NYC, so it wasn’t storming the Gates of Hell or anything, but that good run of taking care of business boosted the Revs road record to a respectable 5-6-2. And they have more home games than road games left. Charlotte’s not so different putting together a 3-1-2 record on the road against…I’d call it similar opposition (RBNY, CHI, TFC, ATL, MTL, CIN), thereby showing they can get things done away from home. Both teams have good fundamentals – e.g., a +10 and a +9 goal differential, respectively, good defensive numbers (31 allowed v 36) – and that body of work makes them look like the kind of life partners that any fan-base would want to embrace. They’ll be hard to catch, even if catching Nashville looks likely as snow in August. (Yes, in the Northern Hemisphere!)
As for Miami, they look exactly like what they are: rich boys and their various toadies going through a bout of the blues. At 45 points, I think they have too many points to fall out of the top four, but they also have just one win, a ritual slaughter of Montreal, fwiw, over their past eight games. And that’s striking.
So, that speed run section will include more details in future editions, not least because the shifts will be smaller, but what’s above provides the broad concept. Closer notes on results for the teams within striking distance of Portland, whether from above or below, followed by a quick(er) wrap up of the rest of the leg. It’s sacrificing depth for breadth, with a focus on the Timbers thrown in like so much cilantro, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
I’m out of time, but, because a promise is a promise, even if you kind of half-ass it as you follow through, here is a…
Li’l Atlanta United FC Scouter
The Fact, Ma’am
Record/Numbers: 6-14-5, 23 pts., 25 GP, 29 gf, 43 ga (-14); home 4-7-1, away 2-7-4
Last 10 Results: DLLWWWLDLD (3-4-3)
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ CLT (2-2 D); @ NE (1-4 L); @ PHI (2-3 L); v RBNY (2-1 W); @ MIN (2-1 W); v SKC (2-1 W); v CLT (0-2 L); @ MIA (2-2 D); v ORL (2-3 L); @ DC (0-0 D)
As confessed freely above, I wouldn’t tell Atlanta they had a chance this season, not even to make them feel better for a minute or two. Why do that when they’ll just go back to their crummy reality…which, if you look at their past four results, pretty much covers it. It also feels worth putting a pin in the opposition in the set above and asking the Portland Timbers: do you want to be a New England Revolution when Atlanta comes to visit this Saturday, or a Minnesota?
Something else that jumps out in Atlanta’s numbers: those 29 goals scored over 25 games. Aleskey Miranchuk and Miguel Almiron – both still with the team, somewhat miraculously (turnover like speed-dating, I tell you) – account for nine of those goals, along with 13 assists between them. Throw Tristan Muyumba and Fafa Picault on that pile (seven goals, two assists, both Picault’s) and you have half of Atlanta’s goals on the season accounted for. Those guys were the danger men, at least until the beginning of August (and maybe that was the problem?), but Atlanta has since brought in Mauricio Amaro, Breel Embolo, and Giuliano Galoppo, all from abroad.
Feel free to click the links above – fwiw, Amaro looks like a prospect, while both Embolo and Galoppo have…pretty damn impressive resumes (but are they broken somehow? drug addicts? fear of flying? do they eat women and/or cats?) – but here’s the thing about Atlanta: I wouldn't put tanking Messi’s numbers past Atlanta what with their track record for lighting money on fire, annually, for what are by, all accounts, indifferent gods. Still, getting new players with those kinds of numbers and real teams in their past (if more for Embolo than Galoppo, whose goals tailed off since leaving Argentina’s Banfield) counts an X factor that Portland can only prepare for so much.
I wish I had more on Atlanta, but, having run out of time, I can only pass on my regrets. I don’t know what they look like when they line up, but how much does that matter given their record and what with the changes that likely followed from onboarding their latest once and, given Atlanta’s track record, former stars. I’ll admit I didn’t do much for homework, basically, but I think the best thing the Timbers can do on Saturday is play their game and, for god’s sake, don’t give up the first goal, goddammit.
If you got this far, congrats! You got through a whale! The next one will be shorter, promise. Till Saturday night…
At 4-5-1 over their past 10 games, San Diego slipped a touch against Portland’s 4-3-3. Dropping three straight (@ ORL, @ SJ, v PHI) did most of the damage – and last weekend’s 0-5 loss versus Philly seems reportable to a couple UN committees – but no small part of the broad picture points to a dynamic similar to Portland’s, i.e., they do better than the average offense on the scoring side and a little worse on the defensive side, all the way down to a break-even goal differential. San Diego also can’t get themselves going anywhere good and, as with the Timbers, playing on the road tips a little more sugar into the gas tank. To Portland’s advantage, San Diego has a slim three home games left, against six on the road. The fact San Diego hasn’t been so great at home (6-5-3) just tilts the odds in Portland’s favor a little more.
Los Angeles Galaxy, 10th, 30 points
When I talk about teams picking up good, meaningful wins, I’m talking about the Galaxy beating San Jose 1-0 and New England 2-1 at home. Those are good teams (or were before the ‘Quakes brutal mid-summer slump), aka, the kinds of teams your local team needs to beat to make good in this and any league. Good for them, and all that, but the Galaxy have gone 0-4-4 outside those wins over their past 10 games. Marco Reus and Joseph Paintsil have shouldered the burden of scoring and the journey has been lonely; Gabriel Pec has missed 10 games, Joao Klauss has missed most of the season, etc. Oh, and the Galaxy have played one more game (at 26) than every team except their cross-city/suburb rival, LAFC. After that, they’re barely better at home (4-4-5) than they are on the road (3-6-4) and, as with so many teams in this particularized sample, LA has dropped stupid fucking points all over. I mean…do any of these teams want to make the playoffs?
Real Salt Lake, 11th, 29 points
RSL hasn’t won a regular season game since mid-May. They’re 0-7-4 over that period and, while a sliver of that can be put down to struggles on the road (1-8-3), and a fairly challenging schedule (for the record, @ LAFC (1-3 L); @ POR (1-2 L); @ STL (1-1 D); v MIN (1-1 D); v FCD (3-4 L); @ ORL (1-2 L); @ COL (0-1 L); v LAFC (2-2 D); @ HOU (1-2 L); v NYC (0-2 L)), that is a definitionally a terrible, season-breaking run that nothing short of one of those runaway truck ramps can stop (Mountain West thing?). I can’t see RSL as a threat until such time as they cross the swaying bridge of winning just one game. Oh, and they just lost Diego Luna for something like 8-10 weeks (or a few months).
 |
| Can we all be at the bottom!? |
Based on their respective records, the Loons saw RSL’s collapse and thought, what the hell? Who can find the bottom first? 1-5-4 over their past 10 games, inexplicably disastrous at home (2-4-6), a little under 1.5 goals/game and a little more on the defensive side (and with a hefty assist in that direction over their past five games – i.e., 15 goals allowed, i.e., 3.0 goals allowed/game), Minnesota’s close enough to gain ground, but, not unlike RSL, they need to start taking steps in the right direction if they want to do anything but suffer through the rest of 2026. The number of teams treating the bottom of the West’s table like a phone booth in the 1950s beggars belief. And I’m not even close to done yet. That said, put a pin in that for…
Austin FC, 13th, 29 points
I made the mistake of writing off Austin a mere three weeks ago. In the immortal words of Bobby Darin, oh, look at them now. I don’t want to oversell what Austin’s doing – the most positive run I can isolate boils down to 3-1-2 over the past six games – but that includes wins at Portland and, last weekend, at Western Conference-leading Vancouver (not quite it's own story, but...). Is it a little freaky that all four of Austin’s wins over the past 10 games came against Cascadia teams? Yes, and is it also time to purge any and all lingering affection you, personally may feel for Matthew MacConaughey? (The answer is yes, purge them all; do it for the team). I have neither the time nor the interest in nailing down whatever Austin’s doing right – that’s a project for future posts – but, of all the teams reviewed in the above sampling this side of Colorado, Austin is the only one that has shown any capacity to do something, anything positive. As such, I hereby extend my apologies for writing them off and dub them the team to watch…at least until any of the rest of them get their shit together. Including…
Seattle Sounders, 14th, 28 points
Do not trust even one damn thing until you have double-tapped everything about this revenant of a team. On the one hand, yes, Seattle’s winless streak has extended nearly as long as RSL’s (think one game separates them, so that race to the first win is on, people!), but the Sounders have picked up four straight draws, a couple against…decent (or least peer) teams in tricky venues (for reference, @ CIN (1-1 D); v CHI (2-2 D); v RBNY (0-0 D); @ LAG (1-1 D)), and that beats RSL’s 0-3-1 run over the same stretch (and Minnesota’s 0-3-1, and draws San Diego’s 1-3-0…ye gods, this shit is bleak; see the phone both, imagine no smiles, only pain). I think I saw something about Paul Rothrock missing a week or eight, but what is that but the last belly-laugh over the running joke that is Seattle’s ever-growing injury list? And pour one out for Pedro De La Vega. Brutal signing…
The point of all that is, no, the Timbers haven’t been great in recent weeks. Fortunately, they have been better than literally all the teams around them. Translating that into anything but the last real playoff spot or the hosting the play-in game will take not just a good run by the Timber, but an unhealthy amount of failing from one or (ideally) more of the teams above them. And what is that but a swell segue to the next feature in this post…
.jpg) |
| Beauty is in the eye of, etc. |
The creamy, nougaty and somewhat pointless center has been covered amply in the above, so let’s turn our attention to the frothy top of MLS’s Western Conference. There’s no real need to cover the bottom: its name is Sporting Kansas City; the aforementioned romp over LAFC delighted neutrals, but they posted six losses and a draw between that and their last win. Ruining other teams’ season is their highest realistic aspiration for 2026. Sticking with LAFC…
Their hold on 6th will feel a lot more precarious if any of the teams below them could really get their shit together. LAFC went without a win almost as long as SKC – six games, most of them draws – and results like that hardly hint at doing major damage when the post-season rolls around. Small wonder a still-surging (and U.S. Open Cup Final-bound) St. Louis has overtaken them. Very much related, 5th in the West feels like a base camp on what could be a climb to the summit for St. Louis. Between watching them and Dallas back-to-back (notes here and here) and that crazy, star-less 6-0-4 run, I wouldn’t bet against St. Louis right now…even as I expect their results will dry up one day.
After a long, dark period of failure (1-7-4; Portland gave them that lone win, dammit), San Jose finally righted its ship over its past four games with two draws at Houston and Austin, followed by a win at San Diego and a home win versus Houston. Not only did that see them filch four points off a direct rival (shit! I was going to use "felch" for the image!), it booted them back into the top four. Despite best efforts meeting…something else (e.g., the Dynamo picked up five points of the past 15 on offer, after winning five straight before that), that didn’t get the ‘Quakes over Houston, so that space strikes me as something between competitive and neck-and neck. Dallas, even as they whelmed me less than St. Louis by the eyeball test (see notes here; didn't write up St. Louis), have won three straight. On the one hand, yes, the opposition wasn’t great (v SKC, @ MIN, v…POR), but Dallas’ 5-2-3 over their past 10 has them in the group chasing 1st place Vancouver. About them…
The ‘Caps are doing…all right lately. On the one hand, they kicked Dallas’ asses five times in Vancouver; they also lost to Houston at home the week before, 1-3 versus St. Louis two match days later, and they sputtered against Minnesota and LAFC earlier. 4-4-2 over their past 10 games has them trotting at a faster clip than much of the West, but if you’ve ever seen bottom feeders cleaning a carcass that fell to the sea floor…
The top of the West looks fairly fluid once you get higher than LAFC. I wouldn’t put a fat sack on things staying as they are, basically.
 |
| No, I do want to cut that class. |
This will go faster, running out of time, buckle up, put in your mouthguards, assume the position,etc…
At the risk of repeating my mistake with Austin, I’d write off Montreal, Atlanta and Columbus – at least anything but spoilers.
Moving on to Tier 2, pull Philly out of the sample and it’s just a lot of teams turning themselves dizzy and going nowhere. Both New York teams have a demonstrated ability to go weeks without a win (six for Red Bull on a 0-4-2 record, seven for NYC on 0-3-4), so expecting them to keep spinning makes sense. DC United and Toronto are tied on the most ties in MLS…moving on to the arrivals to the East’s middle tier, passing two ships passing one, and at some velocity…
If memory serves, Cincinnati cobbled together a couple good runs after the CONCACAF tourney sucked the life out of their regular season form early in 2026, lifting them as high as fourth or fifth at times. Their last good streak dried up with the August 22nd draw versus Seattle. The past three match days, meanwhile, have provided evidence that Cincy can’t hang with the East’s best, a wake up call that came in the form of road thrashings at Nashville and Philly, followed by last weekend’s wild-swingin’ 3-3 home draw versus Charlotte. That dropped them to a 9th that probably feels too secure for comfort at the moment. One part of that turns on the lack of threat from the teams below them (see above), but the other part turns on the team racing past them.
I doubt I need to tell anyone that Philadelphia eclipsed St. Louis as the hottest team in MLS. Where the first four games of their, now 8-0-2 run saw them squeaking out results against a string of weak-to-mid teams (v RBNY, SEA, ATL, at NYC), the Union has trampled slightly better opposition (v MTL and CIN, bookended between at RBNY and SD) over their past four, out-scoring them 15 goals to one. They’ll come against better teams eventually – though there is that 2-2 draw v Miami in there – and we’ll see where that goes, but Philly has breakneck momentum for now. Orlando can make the same claim on a 4-0-1 record over past five games – i.e., they’re preying on the stumbling and mediocre (v RSL (2-1 W); @ MIN (3-3 D); v SD (1-0 W); @ ATL (3-2 W); v TFC (3-0 W), but at least it’s them doing the eating.
Now, let’s get into why both those teams have a good chance of getting a sniff of the top 5, even if it’s just the bottom.
Guess how many games Chicago has gone without a win? I ask because the answer surprises me: the Fire haven’t won in five; worse, the only team they picked points from when it mattered was Miami, and that was a draw. I bring that up because the Fire sits an increasingly shaky five points over Orlando and six over Philly. Pulling back Chicago would get either team into the Top 5, so…
After months of consuming everything MLS put its way like some scourge of God, Nashville finally hit a bare patch that seems most explicable by fatigue – e.g., draws at NYC and Miami, a loss at Toronto last midweek. I don’t see anyone catching them, but Shield-winning teams do have a history of petering out before the finish line (MLS Cup) after the finish line (the Shield). As for the teams between Chicago and Nashville…
.jpg) |
| This guy explains life partners... |
As for Miami, they look exactly like what they are: rich boys and their various toadies going through a bout of the blues. At 45 points, I think they have too many points to fall out of the top four, but they also have just one win, a ritual slaughter of Montreal, fwiw, over their past eight games. And that’s striking.
So, that speed run section will include more details in future editions, not least because the shifts will be smaller, but what’s above provides the broad concept. Closer notes on results for the teams within striking distance of Portland, whether from above or below, followed by a quick(er) wrap up of the rest of the leg. It’s sacrificing depth for breadth, with a focus on the Timbers thrown in like so much cilantro, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
I’m out of time, but, because a promise is a promise, even if you kind of half-ass it as you follow through, here is a…
Li’l Atlanta United FC Scouter
The Fact, Ma’am
Record/Numbers: 6-14-5, 23 pts., 25 GP, 29 gf, 43 ga (-14); home 4-7-1, away 2-7-4
Last 10 Results: DLLWWWLDLD (3-4-3)
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ CLT (2-2 D); @ NE (1-4 L); @ PHI (2-3 L); v RBNY (2-1 W); @ MIN (2-1 W); v SKC (2-1 W); v CLT (0-2 L); @ MIA (2-2 D); v ORL (2-3 L); @ DC (0-0 D)
As confessed freely above, I wouldn’t tell Atlanta they had a chance this season, not even to make them feel better for a minute or two. Why do that when they’ll just go back to their crummy reality…which, if you look at their past four results, pretty much covers it. It also feels worth putting a pin in the opposition in the set above and asking the Portland Timbers: do you want to be a New England Revolution when Atlanta comes to visit this Saturday, or a Minnesota?
Something else that jumps out in Atlanta’s numbers: those 29 goals scored over 25 games. Aleskey Miranchuk and Miguel Almiron – both still with the team, somewhat miraculously (turnover like speed-dating, I tell you) – account for nine of those goals, along with 13 assists between them. Throw Tristan Muyumba and Fafa Picault on that pile (seven goals, two assists, both Picault’s) and you have half of Atlanta’s goals on the season accounted for. Those guys were the danger men, at least until the beginning of August (and maybe that was the problem?), but Atlanta has since brought in Mauricio Amaro, Breel Embolo, and Giuliano Galoppo, all from abroad.
Feel free to click the links above – fwiw, Amaro looks like a prospect, while both Embolo and Galoppo have…pretty damn impressive resumes (but are they broken somehow? drug addicts? fear of flying? do they eat women and/or cats?) – but here’s the thing about Atlanta: I wouldn't put tanking Messi’s numbers past Atlanta what with their track record for lighting money on fire, annually, for what are by, all accounts, indifferent gods. Still, getting new players with those kinds of numbers and real teams in their past (if more for Embolo than Galoppo, whose goals tailed off since leaving Argentina’s Banfield) counts an X factor that Portland can only prepare for so much.
I wish I had more on Atlanta, but, having run out of time, I can only pass on my regrets. I don’t know what they look like when they line up, but how much does that matter given their record and what with the changes that likely followed from onboarding their latest once and, given Atlanta’s track record, former stars. I’ll admit I didn’t do much for homework, basically, but I think the best thing the Timbers can do on Saturday is play their game and, for god’s sake, don’t give up the first goal, goddammit.
If you got this far, congrats! You got through a whale! The next one will be shorter, promise. Till Saturday night…
No comments:
Post a Comment