Charlotte FC Scouting Report: Yes, I'm Over-Committing Again

Blasphemy.

This one had to go up early due to outside life obligations. Which, rather incredibly, I still have…

Some Basics
Charlotte FC comes into the weekend loitering at 11th in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference (and 20th overall; at 22nd, your Portland Timbers), on 11 points with a solid home record (3-1-1) and a shit road record (0-4-1, fwiw, but that’s not important right now). They’ve won some real ones – e.g., the controversial 2-0 win over Columbus Crew SC in Week 5 (or Week 6, by the Inter Miami CF calendar) and, more recently, a 3-2 win over Toronto FC (hold this thought) – but one number jumps out for me more than the rest: the 10 goals they’ve scored in 2024. Given the sad state of the Timbers’ defense, what’s better than a feeble attacking team? (That’s right, karma. Bring it.)

The Lineup
Over their past six games, first year head coach Dean Smith has toggled between a 4-2-3-1 (for example) and a 4-3-3 (for example...and, shit, I forgot they signed Junior Urso), if with a slight lean toward the former for home games. The personnel moves around, though not wildly. Kristijan Kahlina consistently starts in goal and Andrew Privett in the center of defense. Privett has partnered with either Adilson Malanda or Bill Tuiloma (hi Bill!) for the most part and Ashley Westwood and Djibril Diani anchor the midfield in front of them. Smith fields a fair mash-up of players in front of that foundation, most often with Belgian midfielder Brecht Dejaegere in either midfield or the frontline, (old (35), and notably non-DP) Scottish midfielder Scott Arfield when he’s available, their new, flashy (aka, expensive) Israeli youth international Liel Abada on or around the left wing, and Kerwin Vargas on the right. Finally, expect to see either Enzo Copetti or Patrick Agyemang starting at the “1” in the 4-2-3-1 or in the middle of the three in the 4-3-3.

As of note as all that, Charlotte hasn’t had a “the man” since Karol Swiderski got loaned out at the start of this season(?). Their highest scoring players – Agyemang and Vargas – both have just 2 goals and 1 assist to their names and it’s a lot of ones and zeros from there. I’ll get into this more later, but I’d rather see Copetti in Charlotte’s starting XI than Agyemang. Speaking of…

Some Reviews from the Local (i.e., Charlotte’s) Subreddit
“Just again reminding people that [Copetti] spent most of his career as a winger and right back in lower division [Argentine] football. How he ended up a DP with a transfer fee is beyond me.”
- Dizzy_Dare_2353, front a post shitting on Copetti, far from a rare sentiment, fwiw

Getting Reacquainted with Charlotte FC, aka, What a (Stupid) Rule Change Has Wrought

Aww, cute! (But also profoundly embarrassing.)

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Charlotte FC joined the league in 2022. They missed the playoffs that season, but made them in 2023. After that, I have a nasty habit of picturing them as a team wholly composed of Brandt Bronicos. Oh yeah, and they lured Bill Tuiloma from my Portland Timbers and I was always something of an overzealous Tuiloma stan. He and I are both thankful that I never figured out where he lived while he was with Portland…

Best Season(s)/”Long-Term” Tendencies

2023, if with a Derringer’s bullet. The only difference I found between 2022 and 2023 was the fact that they scored one goal less in 2022 – i.e., 44 versus 45 in 2023. That’s literally it. Charlotte allowed the same number of goals both seasons (52) and finished 19th overall in both seasons. In other words, they fielded an utterly middling team in both 2022 and 2023, but, because MLS expanded the number of teams that qualified for the playoffs from a (half-)sensible 14 in 2022 to a comically expansive 18 in 2023, Charlotte cleared the lowered bar. Hold on, it gets better. Their defense actually performed worse against the goals allowed average in 2023, when the average for goals on both ends was 46.8, than it did in 2022, when that same average was 50.3.

Why’d MLS do it? I’m guessing they knew Messi was coming, so they lowered the bar for making the playoffs a little. Sure, that reads like a conspiracy theory, but, GODS, that’s an embarrassing thing to do in any case. To repeat the question that gets asked every fucking season, why does MLS bother with a regular season? Why do any of us? Worse, it's not like this did Charlotte any favors, who got slaughtered in the pointless play-in round.

Identity: Meh, almost distilled meh.

Joy Points: 0, which feels entirely and depressingly apt.

[Ed. – There is no point to a “names to know” section on a team entering its third season…]

Portland Timbers 2022 Review, aka, The Malaise Post

Aren't we all her? Only with beer?

I’m going to front-load the scandals that stalked the Portland Timbers/Thorns organization until it forced them to make the same choice they should have made half a decade prior. Nice as it felt to see Gavin Wilkinson and Mike Golub get their long-overdue comeuppance for years worth of cowardice and asshole-ism (respectively?), the muleheaded determination to let the wounds fester until something like the third investigation called sepsis by its name did what those things do: kill the host. Honestly, to persist in something that willfully destructive boggles the mind.

Fucking morons...

Now, had things worked out on the field for the Timbers the same way they did for, say, the Thorns, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this cardigan gearing up to bum you out. But, goddamn, if light brown and mustard yellow aren’t my colors...

Bluntly, I am excited about exactly one player on the Portland Timbers current roster: Santiago Moreno. That doesn’t mean I neither rate nor like anyone else: for all its issues, I don’t see a need to burn it all down and start from scratch (which wouldn’t work in any case); moreover, I’m open to the argument they under-performed this year. Going the other way, I lean toward thinking they didn’t – or, perhaps more accurately, they played to the level of available personnel. Staying healthy matters to any team, obviously, but the Timbers have operated on a late-stage Jenga level for longer than I like. And if losing one piece, or even two, means the whole thing comes down? Well, that’s when you know you’re doing something wrong.

The key missing piece was Felipe Mora. Portland’s transition game relied on his implausible knack (because fucker’s short) for receiving the first pass into the opposition’s defensive third and finding a good, and ideally unsettling, pass before defenses could clutter up the space. The Timbers attack could rarely break down a compacted defense even with Mora on the field, but the ball movement in the attacking third mingled buck-passing (take. or. take. a. fucking. shot. god. dammit.) with a sensation not unlike despair for much of 2022. A guy who pops into the twitter feed with the occasional comment argues that Gio Savarese organizes the attack to work for tap-ins. I think he’s sold me on that argument at this point. Even if he hasn’t sold me on his particular solution – i.e., build the team around speed – agreeing that something ain’t working is the first step to doing something different. Which, here, means anything.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Atlanta United FC: The Raw Art of Sufficiency

In the same way this is food...

To start with the biggest happy picture, three straight wins goes a long way toward getting a team out the hole it dug over the first half of the season. The Portland Timbers’ 2-1 home win yesterday afternoon over a winded and dizzy Atlanta United FC capped that hop, skip, jump run of games and hoisted them a little higher over the playoff line. That the Los Angeles Galaxy played two games over the past week and pissed away four points in what arguably should have been winnable games makes it a little sweeter still.

Another happy thought: the Timbers have scored two goals in each of those three wins, which bought the defense a little credit for the one goal it has inevitably given up. All that’s the say, the foundation look good, at least until you take a closer look at it.

First, and to finally get to the game, Atlanta hasn’t been good all season – i.e., they leave three-game gaps between wins and this game came in a trough – they’re crap on the road (1-9-5), and they kicked off the game under the playoff line and there they remain. So that’s at least three reasons the Timbers did no more than what they should have yesterday. And, to their credit, they looked the better team. Atlanta had a nice, crisp, organized opening period where they took the game to Portland, though in retrospect all that activity wasn’t materially different than a ‘keeper bouncing and flapping on his goal line ahead of a penalty kick...and how apt is that metaphor?

To sing a couple more bars of praise, I like the way the Timbers took over the game. Both midfielders and defenders snapped at most things played toward them – even when they had to step ahead an Atlanta player to get there first – and that did a number on the visitors’ confidence in moving the ball. When they finally started finding and prying at little seams in the channels, the three-man back line of Bill Tuiloma, Dario Zuparic, and (about damn time) Zac McGraw held the right positions to cut out the passes or generally get in the way. Atlanta’s too-late goal aside – and pour one out for the late tragedy of Josef Martinez’s great MLS career – they managed just one other clean look on goal, e.g., that clever ball over the top by Santiago Sosa to Ronaldo Cisneros. And Aljaz Ivacic got his leg in the way of that one. Moving on to the caveats...

Portland’s attack didn’t look great. Missing Eryk Williamson had something to do with that, of course...at least until you remember that, for all his utility (i.e., help us, Eryk, you’re our only hope), the Timbers’ attack hasn’t look much better when he’s there. A good way to phrase the phenomenon came to be as my attention wandered during the second half yesterday (and, lo, it went far and freely): the Timbers have arrived at place where they cause goals, as opposed to creating them. I can’t remember the last time Portland did anything particularly impressive, never mind artful, on the approach to goal; as much as I admired the indirect inventiveness of Eryk’s assist on (I think) the second goal in the win over Austin, they haven’t waltzed one in over the last three wins. It’s been a lot of free kicks and, yesterday, penalty kicks.

Austin FC 1-2 Portland Timbers: A Passive-Aggressive Masterpiece

That was exactly the kind of win the Portland Timbers needed. I’ll elaborate below, but, between a late start tonight and a long commute tomorrow, I’ve got to keep this brief.

Big Picture: The Timbers attacks is...what it is this season (again, see below) and, barring a change I can’t see no matter how hard I squint, that makes the Timbers defense the key to whatever success they’ll enjoy. And the defense – writ pretty damn large, too (see below) – did a great, game-winning job tonight.

If the Timbers can follow the same script for the rest of 2022 – and this goes double given some of what’s happening above them (emphasis on “some”) – they could actually do something with a 2022 that looked poised to die out like the fire you stare at on a cold night when the tent seems too far away and the whiskey looks up for outlasting the fire. You know what that means if you’ve been there...

All that’s to say, the Timbers punched three points out of Austin FC tonight on a 2-1 win delivered, as I both see it and want to see it, by the defense. It took surviving, golly, three, four shots in the opening 10 minutes - by my count, Aljaz Ivacic, made three of his four saves three in that stretch – but it also took just one sharp, early punch to the jaw to discomfit Austin for most of the game. Bill Tuiloma delivered the blow shortly after Austin’s better moments, and with a defender’s attacking header on a set-piece that Eryk Williamson sent straight to his head, postage-paid and all. It was simple as you like, not to mention the first positive thing Portland had managed all game that wasn’t a save, but it gave the Timbers a lead and...

My main talking point for the game, or the continuation of it, is complicated. After Tuiloma’s go-ahead goal, the Timbers commenced to defending the lead and, honestly, I don’t know what to call what I saw but not so much pressing as loitering with intent on the edges of a melting line of engagement. I need to tighten up the name of the strategy, obviously, but it boils down to having a defensive player vaguely menace the opposition starting around 2/3 of the field away from goal. Sure, the Timbers had a couple moments where they did the classic press – i.e., players chasing hard at each successive passer (a great strategy when you time the releases right) – but, for the most part, it amounted to being...present as Austin tried to work the ball up the field. Time on the ball, but not enough, making every pass just a little harder, demanding that little bit more precision. Better, just when you thought you broke the line, it retreats and forces you to do it all over again. There’s something quietly brilliant in the concept, like guerilla warfare in soccer form.

Toronto FC 3-1 Portland Timbers: Unbalanced, Undone

Jaroslaw Niezgoda says "Hi."

I’ll start with a confession: I didn’t get the usual granular [ed. - what? listen to yourself, man!] read on the Portland Timbers in their 1-3 loss at Toronto FC because I was catching up with an old friend (#WorthIt). Still, I think I saw enough to state that things did not go well, and with some confidence. Anyone who disagrees may speak now or forever hold your........no takers, eh? Small surprise. The box score reduces that reality into numerical values, none of them good; I remember seeing the shots distributed at 7 shots to 0 sometime during the first half and hoping that improved in some way...but nope. Jaroslaw Niezgoda sends his regards from the remote desert island you can see on Portland’s passing map....

As argued in every preview-esque thing I tweeted going into this game, I expected a track meet in this one – i.e., two defensively-impoverished teams trading blows from the starting whistle to the one that called it a night. What we got instead was a Toronto team probing the Timbers defensive flaws like a dermatologist determined to eradicate acne and Portland playing the role of the face on which said “doctor of science” operates. The defense failed to get their lines right and to a point that left little pockets that Toronto’s freshly-arrived European contingent to exploit in a deeply uncomfortable way. And did they ever...

I didn’t mind that so much – I expected it, in fact, based on a review of the short footage Lorenzo Insigne provided after his arrival – but still felt some optimism that the Timbers would make Toronto’s heretofore shaky defense sweat just as much as Portland’s....but it was not to be, not in 90 minutes and probably not 180. My frustration with the Timbers attack has by now been thoroughly documented and explained in as many ways as I can think of it (I like to keep things fresh), but that did not prepare me for what we all witnessed tonight – aka, as close as a team can get to a no-show after stepping on the field. Flawed as the Timbers attack has been this season, I don’t think it ever slumped to something as helpless as three shots total, with just two on goal.

Thankfully(?), one of those two shots on goal went in. Moreover, it went in off the foot least likely to do anything useful – aka, Josecarlos Van Rankin’s – and, Timbers fans, can we all just take a quick breath and savor the only thing that went right tonight? Portland made at least two smart attacking moves tonight, both delivered by (what else?) quick decisive moves into/across Toronto’s 18 and both ending in shots on goal. Sure, Yimmi Chara fired straight at Alex Bono’s right shin, but the move was there, even if Yimmi wasn’t all the way. Going the other way, can a team win a playoffs-worthy number of games when creating just two good attacking moves? It depends on the quality of the defense behind them, obviously, and that’s where the worm turns and the conversation shifts to all the things that went so terribly wrong tonight.

Portland Timbers 3-0 Colorado Rapids: In Which I Get Carried Away...

Shh. Shhh. SHHHH!! I...I got this. (And they did)

The first thing I want to say was that this felt different from the bawdy romp over Sporing Kansas City...back whenever the fuck that happened. I mean, SKC fell apart where the Colorado Rapids merely crumbled. Now, the real thing...

After watching Colorado’s Michael Barrios torment any New York City FC defender who ventured out to face him on their left, I’d already keyed on the Barrios/Claudio Bravo duel as a key to the game. Bravo did better than worse throughout the first half – I mean, he lunged here and there; he’s a chronic lunger – but he bit into a 48 oz. Porterhouse twice - one of those monsters they where they'll pay for your dinner if I keep it down - early in the second half and I figured it would take only one Rapids goal to start the Rube Goldberg machine of the Timbers’ unraveling; seriously, if Barrios ever got the upper-hand in that one, I’d be writing about a different game.

I wasn’t so much Bravo holding on – though he did – than the Timbers attack swarming the Rapids’ area like aggrieved hornets for a solid 10-15 that decided the game. Call Bravo’s little flutter (along with Santiago Moreno giving away the ball twice) the storm before the calm. I’m not entirely clear on which insurance goal deserves the most credit for knocking the collective wind out of the Rapids, but the game ended with both a whimper and a final 3-0 win for Portland.

The outcome looked less clear for the first 40 minutes. I don’t think the Rapids ever had better chances, but they had enough of them; the Rapids chose to open the space, even when that meant giving space as well, and both teams’ attacks benefited. While the game as a whole had its ins and outs, its beginnings of theories, that kind of thing, my top take-away was that the Timbers won for the first time this season by being good instead of lucky, or even gently blessed; to bring in a data point, I think The Mothership’s xG call gets it right. I’ll go to my grave arguing the Timbers had to get something going on offense in the first half of 2022, and they finally got that crucial critical mass of attacking momentum – there, I give most credit to Yimmi Chara and Santiago Moreno – to keep the Rapids attack honest, which, here, means conservative. Even after the edge slipped away toward the end of the second half, Moreno put in the hustle to chase a late, half-aimless through-ball. He got around the Rapids’ last man, got a clean touch on the ball, then got all of William Yarbrough (and without a whiff of malice). To continue a thought from the twitter thread, that might have been the singularly most obvious concussion call I’ve ever seen, and I wish the man a speedy and total recovery. Because that bell got rung.

The resulting penalty kick – tidy as you like by Sebastian Blanco – might have put the Timbers in the driver’s seat, but I started at the middle of the game, and the whole Bravo/Barrios duel, as a way to...acknowledge, I suppose, the moment when everything could have gone wrong. And it didn’t. Those five-to-ten loose minutes had a real drunk-teenager-walking-on-the-edge-of-a-tall-building energy, an experience highlighted by the double save by Aljaz Ivacic (c’mon, hop on the wagon), but Portland shook it off, got the upper hand and kept it up till the final whistle.

Los Angeles Galaxy v Portland Timbers Preview: The Things You'll Settle For...

The Portland Timbers return to regular season and the unfashionable precincts of Los Angeles this Saturday afternoon where they’ll face a lately what-the-fuck Los Angeles Galaxy. I’ll flag some particulars shortly, but, first, some facts:

Los Angeles Galaxy
Record/Basics: 7-5-2, , 4-3-0 home; 17 gf, 15 ga, +2
Last 10: WWTWLWLTLW (5-3-2; 3-2-0 home)
Oppo: @ POR, @ LAFC, @ CHI, v NSH, @RSL @ ATX, v FCD, @ MIN, v HOU, v ATX

What We Know About Them
After starting the 2022 season as points-poachin’ 1-0 bandits, the Galaxy spent the whole damn month of May messing with Texas. The results came back mixed - more below – but, until they crumbled like so much apple-smoked bacon at home against Dallas and Houston, the Galaxy ranked among the most disciplined defenses in MLS. The attack, on the other hand, slowed down once the early-season hype-buzz around Chicharito wore off; The Mothership’s staff scribes want it a little too bad, sometimes. You’re not reading about any given Galaxy playing running away with anything because they haven’t – up to and including LA’s latest grasp at a household name, Douglas Acosta.

Notes on Recent Form
The home loss to Dallas ended before it started – and didn’t improve overly – but the Galaxy also coughed up an early goal to Houston, and I’d call scoring early, or at least first, the key to cracking LA's defense, but then they went and had that comeback win over Austin. And yet......the only thing I can see a Galaxy fan loving after this last stretch is Dejan Joveljic, but one wunder-game v Austin by one player does not save a season. The fact that Jonathan Bond bailed their asses all the way out in that draw at Minnesota lends further weight to the argument that LA didn’t do much better than survive May 2022. Despite playing three games at home – at least two against teams lower in the table – the Galaxy collected only three points of nine from a favorable layout. The road win at Austin at the head of the run softened the blow, and the late pile-on at home prettied up the Galaxy’s goal differential, but, on the recent evidence, teams from anywhere but Austin have some reason to think they can punch a point or three out of the Galaxy.

Notes on Past Meetings of 2022
The 1-3 loss in Portland contained a lot of the Timbers’ 2022, honestly: a fullback getting sent off (Pablo Bonilla, who, like nature, finds a way to go where he must), a glorious Bill Tuiloma free-kick, and an unhealthy helping of too little and too late. And, without knowing them like their fans do, it seems to represent the 2022 Galaxy too – i.e., a sort of bland, half-anonymous stability waiting on a something special from two or three players. In this case, a Raheem Edwards cross (he’s their leading assist-man, btw) found Chicharito, who had lost Portland’s defense (so, so easy) and that shipped all three points to Los Angeles.

Portland Timbers 0-2 Philadelphia Union: A Meditation on an Attack

Is he angry because he doesn't know where to go?

Someone else fired the Portland Timbers’ first shot on goal - I don’t remember who it was, but also, does it matter? - but Bill Tuiloma got their best one. The fact he fired it well past the 80th minute, may have even been after the 85th, says plenty, but I’m less concerned about the specific identity of the man who fired it than I am by the fact that Timbers can’t seem to generate offense without the ball coming forward at just the right angle and to an attacking player in just the right space. You?

The last 10 minutes of the Timbers' 0-2 home loss to the Philadelphia Union gave a glimpse into an alternate universe where Portland threw caution to the wind for the full 90 minutes and made Philly sweat through every one of them. Or, more likely, the Union drew the obvious conclusion from the Timbers first 20 attempts to break them down after they'd compacted the defense and figured they could ride it out. Maybe it was something the Timbers started to do, maybe it was something Philly stopped doing, and a maddening snitch’s adherence to the rules by referee Allen Chapman aside, both Union goals felt like alarms that went off ten (or five) minutes too late to get to work. It took Portland too long to get going - which, here, means all the way going - while it seemed like the Union could revive their method at will. There was no point during this game…which I joined late due to a wrinkle in a stupidly specific rule in NASCAR, one that bears a grating fucking resemblance to Allen Champman standing gape-mouthed with an index finger cocked to the earbud in his ear like he was trying to see where he hit the right note in a Double-Mint Gum jingle…ahem, when I thought Portland had a credible shot at actually winning it.

I mean, bravo on the goal that Chapman called back against both the letter and spirit of “clear and obvious error” (failing to be a prick on behalf of pricks; Chapman’s an evil wizard), but sure as I see the Timbers damn-near even on shots and one-fourth of average in shots on goal (two; they got two), the attack just plain sucks right now. Shut your ears to the siren song of the Sporting Kansas City sacrifice, ‘twas the dream of the song, etc., yeah, yeah, yeah; for the love of all the over-rehearsed weirdness I’ve watched over the past…I’m going with ten games, which includes the wins over SKC and Vancouver, Portland has completely lost track of how to get to goal. They do better in transition, obviously - that’s why I lead with Tuiloma and his chance - but I’m getting close to calling the formula for stifling the Timbers something perilously close to fool-proof.

Being a mere 20% less obvious might help. How many Timbers attacks enter the critical phase (aka, anything inside the opposition’s defensive third) with a ball into the corner? Even if I admit that me answering “all the time, like every fucking one of them” is a product of watching for something and seeing it to the exclusion of all else, that’s all I see to the point where I think Gio might have branded that useless stab at everything but the dartboard. As much as it stood out tonight (luridly), a standard Timbers attack against a compacted defense tends to look like so: the ball goes into one corner (usually with nothing happening near the goal), and then comes back out to a supporting fullback; the ball goes centrally from there, a couple flirtatious in-and-outs to the top of the 18 and back follow before the ball goes centrally again, from whence it goes to the outside channel with the most open space; after that the receiving player flails the ball at some point either toward or above the middle, and to three guys making the text book runs, one near-post, one centrally, one far post. And so on forever, until nothing at all happens. On most plays when the cross wasn’t on, I saw Timbers players come out of the middle to support the wide player. It happened without any rhyme or reason that I saw. Just people throwing money at charities and hoping it all goes away (not being righteous; I resemble that metaphor).

San Jose Earthquakes 3-2 Portland Timbers: Lost, and Never Found

Won't lie. I wanted to do better with this....

Have you ever seen one of those old movies, or even a parody of one, where a central character whispers a dozen farewells on his/her way to the beyond?

The Portland Timbers gave their best homage to that trope tonight in a slow-fade 2-3 road loss at the San Jose Earthquakes. The foreground the blunt reality, San Jose wanted it more. Their energy was better, they contested the ball faster - or, in far too many cases, at all - and they just, for lack of a better word, competed tonight in a way the Timbers only did either one player or one moment or a time and, yes, the “or” in that clause is 1,000% conscious, deliberate, not a typo, etc.

As documented in two or three places, I expected goals in this game. Moreover, I expected the game to turn on which team scored the most goals - i.e., basic logic meets basic math - and it did. And, finally, I don’t know what happened to the Timbers tonight, I really don’t. Rather than say they gave up…tempting as that is, I feel alright letting them off the hook with, they couldn’t see the path forward, so they tried to walk directly into the trees. Big ones too.

Where to begin with dissecting this one? And is there a point to the project? Hold on. I'll find one or two...

To make up for cavalierly shitting on San Jose’s defense going into this one, I hereby acknowledge that Tommy Thompson, aka, The Goal-Less Wonder, waltzed his way to one step inside the penalty spot before a there-but-for-the-width-of-Bill-Tuiloma’s-boot the Timbers would have gone down 4-2. After a certain point - here, I’m thinking rather pointedly about the ‘Quakes’ second, jail-break-perfect counterattacking goal - everything about the game rhymed with that moment. Even the laws of gravity seemed to tilt against the Timbers from that point forward and, yes, now confirmed, Portland did something less than half of shit over the course of that second half.

I, like a lot of people, have waited patiently for the Timbers to find a rhythm and start doing something with it this season and assumed they would. Even if I didn’t trust it, I hoped that Portland’s 7-2 win over Sporting Kansas City had knocked off the rust…but, no. Moreover, assuming you stick with the implicit premise of my review - i.e., that an early goal invites teams to play toward Portland, which opens up space for their counter - well, the wheels fell all the fucking way off that one tonight. Once San Jose landed on a method to stuff the Timbers transition outlets - related, does anyone think that’s some state secret by now? - the game ended as a contest. For the record, that happened somewhere around the 65th minute. Or the 70th, in the event I want to spare anyone’s blushes.

Portland Timbers 7-2 Sporting Kansas City: A Viking Funeral for a Dinghy at Sea

Oh, how I laughed. So, so loud.

When I went to see the live-action Speed Racer, I went in with expectations as low as I was high. I walked out on Cloud 9, wearing one of those smiles that doesn’t go away till you fall asleep and, I’m guessing, pupils big as saucers. I expected nothing, basically, and walked out feeling like a won the lottery. Then again, the same thing happened with Cats. Cats was fucking terrible, but, goddamn, did I have fun watching it…

That’s the only experience I can come up that matches what happened tonight in the Portland Timbers positively rolling 7-2 win over Sporting Kansas City. Everything thing I’d seen and read going in prepped me for SKC to compact its defense and for the Timbers to smash tiny fists against it for 90 minutes, plus stoppage time. Instead, the second half happened, and very early on.

Because drawing talking points out of a blip within a blip feels like the greatest fools errand since the invention of the snipe hunt, I won’t let the magic of seven goals scored carry me too far in either direction; I’ll neither hype the result, nor wallow in its flaws. In the biggest of pictures, the fact that SKC has sucked more than their share this season falls well short of a state secret, so I didn’t expect anything more from them than energetic resistance. And, to give a general opinion, how have they not moved on from Peter Vermes? His shit’s been baking in the sun for a year or three by now…

In my mind, the entire game turned on SKC handing Portland the first goal, and so cheaply too. The defenders parted and, lo, goal opened wide for Bill Tuiloma. Nothing about that goal made sense; all that time to organize and you let a guy shoot free from eight yards out. The game didn’t end there, of course - they had a whole damn second half of slapstick ahead - and SKC briefly threatened to get back into it. I put that period into the space between the 10th minute and the 25th, and it produced a couple shots from range, but not much more. Things loosened up a bit over final 20 minutes of the first half, but neither team did much; as recorded in one strand of the mini-multiverse of twitter threads I had in this game, I begged for someone, anyone to find inspiration around Portland in the first half, because I could not.

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers: Kindly Stop Saying "Unbeaten in Three"

In a word, the strategy feels off...

A sum of the sum of things. As in one example of several things. I think that gets to the marrow of it.

Would it help if Timbers attackers did better with their rare chances? Of course. When the call came, neither Marvin Loria nor Santiago Moreno answered (shit…there was one more chance I’m forgetting, but…). Loria, at least, had a dynamite moment of half-consciousness proficiency at the end of the first half, and off the Portland Timbers’ best chance of the day (helluva shot, kid), but Timbers attackers mostly fired the ball over William Yarbrough’s goal like they thought that was the point of the game. To float a theory, when your team isn’t great at finishing chances, that only raises the importance of creating more of them - i.e., if you only score once in every 30 chances, getting to 30 chances as quickly as possible feels like the shortest distance to goal. This being the age of analytics, a necessary disclaimer: I don’t know the Timbers’ goal:chance ratio. I only know they don’t generate a lot of good chances (40 shots total over their last three games), and that makes every chance a little more sacred.

Speaking of creating chances, the Colorado Rapids’ xG spiked for the first time after Diego Rubio got sent off in the 63rd minute. And, sadly, that's what it looked like in real time. The Timbers, meanwhile, flat-lined for the next 10-15 minutes thereafter and generally pissed away a man-advantage for the last 30 minutes of the game. The Big Bad Wolf howling at the brick house. And that seems to be a theme for 2022.

That inspired the title, by the way. After three games unbeaten, the Timbers got beat tonight - 2-0 at the Colorado Rapids - but I can’t remember the last time Portland looked like beating any team. Playing at that level puts their ceiling at draws, most of them goal-less, and that’s not a great place to be for a variety of reasons, up to and including entertainment. Worse, they haven’t exactly played the cream of MLS during that time - i.e., at Houston, v Real Salt Lake, and, tonight, at Colorado, aka, as close to middling (and yet still higher than the Timbers) that it gets - and that adds up to 282 minutes, plus stoppage time and in reasonably playable conditions, since the Timbers have scored a goal. I never thought Colorado on the road would be easy, but the few chances Portland got seemed to surprise (and baffle) them as much as they did me and it’s been the same thing for a while now: they don’t make chances, they grasp at them. So long as a team plays like that, the defense needs to have a perfect evening, maybe even something Disney magical…and yet the 0-2 final score speaks for itself…

Porltand Timbers 0-0 Real Salt Lake: A Stat That Screamed Volumes

Look, just hear me out...

For once, I can honestly say this won’t take long.

Second, the facts: the Portland Timbers drew Real Salt Lake 0-0 at Providence Park last night. Neither team deserved more than one point, though, all things considered, RSL had the two best looks at goal and therefore the better claim on all three points. (Also, it really says something when the video secton of the game summary includes no individual highlights.)That said, after enduring this game, I feel like I could make the beginning of a case that some draws should see both teams awarded zero points; maybe leave it to a panel of international judges to decide, as in Olympic ice skating, only screen them to make sure real-world political alliances don’t slip any mischief into the final analysis.

To linger in that alternate universe, if I had to argue the Timbers’ right to one point to those judges, the case I made would go something like this: they posted decent numbers and put enough shots on frame to meet some bare standard for competence; moreover, a (reportedly) dodgy hip forced them to play without their lucky rabbit’s foot, aka, Diego Chara. Finally, and this is a personal note, they did one thing I asked of them in my preview for this match [Ed. - that’ll be the last one I post this season; those are fucking up the writing schedule.]: multiple Timbers shot the ball from range, with Cristhian Paredes taking the two best cracks, with honorable mention to Bill Tuiloma.

Now…if I was the prosecutor…

To start, the fact that Paredes (a box-to-box midfielder) and Tuiloma (a central defender) fired Portland’s best shots means a whole bunch of dudes didn’t show up for their shift last night. Santiago Moreno cut inside and clipped a decent shot toward Zac MacMath’s goal, but that one, like nearly all the rest, looked something a teammate would fire at him in warm-ups. Too many players - to name names, Dairon Asprilla, Eryk Williamson, Yimmi Chara, and, yes, Sebastian Blanco - continue to look rusty, something that simply won't do one-quarter into the regular season. The defense did all right, collectively, but Claudio Bravo will miss next week’s game at the Colorado Rapids due to a stupid, yet very on-brand tackle in the (fucking) corner of the field (the dark side of eagerness), and…just…for why Josecarlos Van Rankin? The argument that the Timbers can’t do better in that position just depresses me at this point. I mean, have the Timbers tried walking through the stands to ask for volunteers, because random, solicited tryouts stopped feeling irrational at the beginning of April. Related, I going to need some rose-colored glasses and a couple cocktails laced with ecstasy to make me feel good about the fullback situation next week.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Austin FC: Forest Versus Trees; Even If I Can't Get that Metaphor Straight

We are in a good place, and we love each other.

Started a new tradition tonight: I didn’t write down notes of any kind until the second half. Except on twitter…also, there wasn’t much to say about that first half. It was a classic vague, mutual groping, a feeling out period that went on a little too long without going anywhere. Nothing of real note stood out, at least not beyond Austin FC having a lot of the ball and the Portland Timbers getting the best look. Bottom line, all that played to the Timbers strengths, only at an angle that arguably benefited Austin’s strengths more than Portland’s.

Now, I’m not a fan of the halftime speech. That could because I’ve never heard a real stem-winder, at least not one that didn’t involve me as a half-negative argument for inspiration (again, the frame was, “if he can do it”; true story, at least twice), but whatever Giovanni Savarese said before he sent his charges back onto the field, whatever adjustments he made, I’d put the number that worked at somewhere between 60-80%. The other part of that equation, and the one I’m least equipped to make: what adjustments to Josh Wolff make to what Austin did?

For all the noise that came between the whistle that started the second half and the one that ended it, the loudest came in the 62nd minute when Bill Tuiloma got a big step in front of whoever the hell wears Austin’s No. 4 jersey (Ruben Gabrielsen, huh), and powered home a point-blank header off a pretty-as-you-like Yimmi Chara set-piece to put the Timbers up 1-0. Some sweaty moments aside, if fewer than one might think, that was all the Timbers needed to pick up their first win of 2022.

Tuiloma had a wonderful game. Give or take 10 minutes after he scored, he cleared an absolute, no questions asked Austin goal off the line, and during a scrum that had Timbers defenders flying around their own area like clay pigeons. And that’s one of my take-aways from today: the Timbers bent their defense to the breaking point, but made sure that it didn’t. Tuiloma and Zac McGraw deserve a tip for all the clean-up they did today, but they got a decent lift from Josecarlos Van Rankin’s best game of the season, plus a…well, let’s just say we’ve got something to think about after Justin Rasmussen’s wholly impressive first-team debut. As much as I hate making judgments off a tiny sample size, I wasn’t nearly as impressed by Rasmussen’s defending - which wasn’t bad at all - as by his composure on the ball. Good passes forward, smart slip passes under pressure…suffice to say questions abound and the answers don’t seem so obvious all the sudden…

…no. No. Don’t give in. Cool your jets. It’s one game. It’s one game. Moving on…

Los Angeles FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Poised on a Thread

Zac McGraw made me feel as safe as that tree tonight. Srsly.

But for a tap-in that only looked inevitable after it went in, the Portland Timbers would have left…whatever Los Angeles FC calls their home stadium 1-0 winners. Seeing as the exception has already been noted, yeah, LAFC scored a late equalizer - off a tap-in - and wound up with a 1-1 tie that feels…I’m going with complicated.

There was a lot to like in this game from Portland’s point of view. For one, they held a (fairly) front-footed, compact shape together for 90+ minutes today - and how often do Timbers fans get to say, “our defense won it for us today!” Portland’s one-man strategic reserve, Bill Tuiloma, played a role, as did Aljaz Ivacic - he looked confident today and made at least two beauty saves - but if Zac McGraw didn’t make at least one starter feel antsy tonight, they didn’t watch the game I did. Athletic, smooth, but smart more than anything else: Gio appeared to have tasked McGraw with putting out fires before they could ignite and the man got his Smokey Bear on straight.

Claudio Bravo looked super-sharp, at least until he took a dumb-shit tug on LAFC's Cristian Arango and got sent off…Josecarlos Van Rankin, meanwhile...I don’t know what that guy can do to make me comfortable but, whatever it is, he has yet to start doing it. I tell you, the guy looks as nervous as I feel every time an attacking player squares him up.

The returns diminish as I tick through the names from there. There’s no taking away the divine improv-glory of Yimmi Chara’s blind-looper of a goal, but the game-state ran him down to where he couldn’t find a pass. That left Dairon Asprilla as the only viable outlet for about 65+ minutes, but he got lonelier and lonelier for as long as (most of) the starting unit stayed out there; he got some more chances to run after Sebastian Blanco came on for Jaroslaw Niezgoda (who had moments, but…), but even that only happened after LAFC stepped to the edge of all-in to find a goal. Back on the happy side of things, I thought Cristhian Paredes put in a solid shift (while still believing he got subbed just in time), and Diego Chara just keeps on keeping on and in a way that makes me questions all kinds of things. Elsewhere, I’m still wondering whether Santiago Moreno was on the field tonight, or whether he just sat down on the field now and again with a look on his face that said, “can you believe this shit?” out of contractual obligation.

If that feels like putting the cart before the horse, I apologize, but I’m mostly processing this game as an opportunity both unearned and blown. Let me explain…

Portland Timbers 2-2 New England Revolution: Bouncing Back Against the Bullies. Twice.

Remember, the Timbers survived this...

You can cut anything on as many angles as you like. For instance, you can call the Portland Timbers 2-2 home draw against the New England Revolution a failure to rebound from their MLS Cup 2021 loss. Or you could call it a strong result against 2021's record-setting Supporters’ Shield-winning team, and with some major starters - e.g., Larry Mabiala, Dario Zuparic and Felipe Mora - missing, and one regular starter/talisman - Sebastian Blanco - only available as a late sub.

The frame I choose: a short-handed Portland team went down to the Revs twice and came back just as many times with two genuinely beautiful, well-worked goals. One of last season’s heroes, and a favorite son to boot, equalized on the only successful version of the half-impossible play the Timbers tried to pull off all night (i.e., street ball up the gut), while one of last season’s workhorses scored the second equalizer with something beautiful and unexpected. Better still, last year’s attacking promise - aka, Santiago Moreno - combined to set up the first equalizer and generally showed a lot of what he could do.

Those compelled to find fault (and I’ve got one in my head; he lives in the left or right side of my head, still working on his residence) can find it, but I’m rolling with a narrative of resilience. New England scored its first goal at the end of one of those periods that have plagued the Timbers since 2019: one of those spin cycles where they get under a ton’s worth of pressure, where every clearance goes either awry or out for a corner and someone from the other team steps into the path of every outlet pass. Any which way the ball bounces, it spells the Timbers back under pressure. That happened for 10 whole goddamn minutes in the first half - from around the 30th minute to just past the 40th. The wheels spun fairly off during that period and that presented the Timbers with one of the greatest and best sporting cliches of all time: how does the team respond?

And that gets to why the resilience narrative works best in my mind. After struggling to pass out of the back like a man struggling to pass a kidney stone at the end of the first half, Portland/Gio Savarese found the reset from a decent opening 20 minutes to start the second half. From the great move early in the second half that freed Dairon Asprilla for his first, frustrating miss to the similar set-up he put away for Portland's first, the Timbers regained control of the game and set the tempo. And, yes, after Asprilla scored they planted foot on banana peel and let Sebastian Lletget score a go-ahead goal - and just minutes after their equalizer. Their heads could have dropped to their laps in that moment (wait…are you…never mind), sure, but they kept them up, high even, and persevered. As with any bicycle kick, Yimmi Chara’s goal was anything but inevitable, but, in my mind, that came off for the reason to so many Timbers attacks (including the first goal) had failed: they finally spread the field wide enough in the attacking third to open up space for passes. When Asprilla worked the ball to Josecarlos Van Rankin wide on New England’s left, he had the time and space to tee up a tricky cross. And that’s how the ball bounces to a largely vacant back-post and a moment Yimmi Chara will never forget and/or bore his kids with after every bad game they have in high school.

Real Salt Lake 1-3 Portland Timbers: Easy, Breazy, Kinda Sleazy

Call it a general sentiment.

I don’t know how many times the Portland Timbers’ defense scrambled over the 13 minutes I spent staring at a(n at best) regional football game, but I saw at least two instances after it. Between that and the black box of the opening 13, I didn’t know what to think about the Timbers’ chances early.

Even after Sebastian Blanco cleaned up an oopsie with a standing (well, leaning) header, putting the Timbers up 1-0, I didn’t see any reason to think the game would slip out of competitive…then Blanco forced a fuck-up out of Aaron Herrera, putting Portland up 2-0. The game ended there if you ask me. While I have no doubt RSL out-shot the Portland (and I was right), the Timbers defense never gave them a look even one-seventh as good as the sitter RSL handed Blanco. Put it this way, you can’t build a sound home when you get the angles that wrong.

With that, the Timbers walked out 3-1 winners, sole beneficiaries of RSL’s largesse on the season, and, if I’m not mistaken, immovably in fourth-place in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference.

I’m not sure the game deserves much than that. It crapped out as a contest around the 65th minute, RSL clawed back the one, but I doubt even their fans give a shit about it. They handed it to Portland. And I mean that in at least two ways - i.e., RSL defended with neither a net nor a plan, something Blanco can tear to shit all on his own…and he did, but doesn’t that beg the question, what can we really take from this one/win? I mean, the Timbers beat RSL with a Dairon Asprilla tied behind their backs. The rest files under…

Loose Ends/Theories
Take a Bow, Utahans
To start, I just want to say how impressed I am that RSL had they season they did with that avalanche of bullshit over their heads. I hope they make it…just glad it didn’t come at the Timbers’ expense.

The Rest They’ve Earned
I’d rest starters for the Austin game. The result won’t change a damn thing and it should give the depth of the depths a shot of confidence in case the call comes down…then again, a bad result could shatter their confidence to dust, so…eh, I say go for it. Blanco’s the only player I’d play on principle - he needs the reps at this point - but sit I’d sit anyone else who could use it. That thought starts with the last name Chara, but I’m very open-minded on the rest…does Portland even have a third forward?

Portland Timbers 2-1 Sporting Kansas City: Seeing a New Face in a Bad Mirror

An aesthetic and practical metaphor for Portland's defense.

You know what was most satisfying about the Portland Timbers temporally-vital 2-1 win over Sporting Kansas City last night?

Seeing the Timbers win the game on the kind of goal that ruined their 2020 season - and arguably the half season before that - was deeply satisfying, almost healing. The ball into the attacking third was good, but not spectacular, the ball after that was more hopeful than wise, but it still pipped through Andreau Fontas’s high five-hole, giving Marvin “Human Frustration” Loria the chance to run it down for something close to a tap-in. letting in that kind of messy shit has become Portland's stock-in-trade, but if SKC wants to take it off their hands, I'm good. That ugly bugger finished Portland’s come-back and gave me a flush of optimism for the season ahead. All in all, I’d call the win far more comfortable than pretty, but it wasn’t all that comfortable either, and that’s square one for my talking points:

“Something else that struck me: SKC’s goals looked like dunks - i.e., they forced the kinds of breakdowns that any good team can finish, they kept finding the right pass, etc.”

I pulled that comment from my MLS Week 7 review, specifically, the notes on Kansas City’s 3-2 win over Houston Dynamo FC because it gets to what has grown into a massive, which, here, means borderline pathological, pet peeve for me: for all their faults (hold that thought), SKC has been really good at pulling teams apart - as suggested by their (now) league-leading 17 goals scored. And I’d argue that’s how anyone concerned about Portland’s defense last night should apply that thought - i.e., wherever they looked ragged and panicked just remember they played a team that is good at that thing. Maybe I’ve danced around this point, maybe I’ve have tapped the proverbial sign about it, but, barring anything short of a ruthlessly effective system (e.g., Barcelona’s glory years), it’s…just weird to expect perfect control, composure and consistency from every player on [your team] in every game, especially when they play different teams with different players every week, players who have different strengths and weaknesses, and who do different things on and off the ball, and on and on and on. Every conversation about a team's success and failure should keep the quality of opposition as something as a main talking point. But I digress…or do I?

The other side of SKC is written into that final score against Houston - e.g., the two goals they gave up (and to Houston). They’ve given away goals all season. Differences in style notwithstanding (see the possession numbers), I’d go so far as to say they’re starting to resemble the Timbers in way both good and bad. A team that can’t keep out the opposition can only find success by out-scoring them; both Portland and Kansas City have the weapons to pull that off (player availability assumed), so this one boiled down to the question of who could pull it off on the night. Sure, Sporting pinned in Portland several times last night, but one Timber or another managed to get in the way (see the balance of blocked shots), whereas KC let Dairon Asprilla (get well!) have two cracks at scoring the opener. Portland’s defense wasn’t flawless - they got caught in one of their patented “can’t clear the danger” spin cycles in giving up the opening goal - but they held firmer over the full 90 than SKC and that was enough.

Portland Timbers 1-2 Seattle Sounders: Spurning Gifts

FUCK YOU! (A metaphor)

A handful of metaphors come to mind for this one - including a decent painting ruined by someone dragging a smudge of ink across it - but that one feels right for telling the story of that confounding damn thing we all watched a few hours ago.

I’m seeing a light split in opinion online, mostly around the question of whether or not the Portland Timbers controlled a game they ultimately lost 1-2, and in more ways than one. On the latter, Jeff Attinella’s (at time of writing) freak injury around the 70th minute, which left the Timbers in goalkeeper purgatory, i.e., a space where you factually have a goalkeeper, but do you? - no offense to Hunter Sulte, but you’re not really supposed to go that far down the depth chart to find a guy to push between the sticks, at least not outside a feel-good movie with that right outcome, but here we are. There was also Diego Valeri getting stuffed on a penalty kick by Stefan Frei, then getting handed a second chance on the penalty, only to shank that one off the post, then knock back his own rebound. (I’ll just go ahead and admit I forgot that’s a no-no.) My frustration with this game comes from/with that moment. I’ll get to that…

I hereby note the box score, mostly on the grounds it shows an even game (but do give that passing map a gander), but also because it shows something I wouldn’t have guessed, i.e., Portland firing as many shots as Seattle. A few only come back to me because I wrote them in my notes - a pair by Marvin Loria (more later), in particular - but my primary recollection of this match sees Timbers’ players giving-and-going all around the 18, sometimes poking through the odd ball, but mostly moving around a lot to get an obstructed view of a goal, only from a different angle. The thicket of Seattle defenders never left the front of the goal and Portland’s attackers seemed bound by some silent agreement that they’d bash through that or lose trying. When I tweeted, “shoot the ball, please,” it didn’t come from nowhere.

Still, between that set of factsd and what Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said at the half, I’d call that a kind of control: Portland won most of the 50/50s, I don’t think Seattle wanted to lose the ball where they did, or as often, and Portland didn’t have much trouble advancing the ball. In my book, that’s control. All that delivered some chances - e.g., a cut-back from Valeri that Jeremy Ebobisse will bury when he’s match-fit - but it mostly applied pressure on Seattle’s defense and kept them on the back-foot. And, when a team plays from the back foot, they sometimes make mistakes - e.g., Seattle’s Shane O’Neill to roll forward a lazy pass that Eryk Williamson stepped into and fed to Ebobisse, leading to a Timbers’ penalty and a chance to take the lead. Which, given the Timbers’ struggles with getting a clean look, counts as a gift.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Portland Timbers (Fine, DC United)

These don't have a snooze button. There is no snooze button.

Well, are we all prepared to pretend Thanksgiving dinner came off all right this week?

[Ed. - Fwiw, the walkout by the Emerald City Supporters was the right response in my book; funny things could happen when MLS decides to make the ambience more appealing to right-wing supporters. I’d love to stop talking about this shit too, but here’s the thing: it never came up until the league started enforcing the ban.]

A fairly experimental Portland Timbers line-up came up against a fiercely organized DC United defensive set-up – especially in the second half – and the Timbers mostly peppered it with blows both glancing and wayward (looking at you, Jorge Moreira). Forced to choose between shooting into a thicket and trying to get around it, the Timbers tried the latter to fairly useless effect. On the plus side, Portland scored all the goals today – even the one the entire goddamn refereeing apparatus failed to spot (keep bringing the quality product, MLS) – they just scored them for DC, and so the game ended 0-1 against the Timbers, who no longer look like the 2nd-in-the-West “lock” more than a few of us dreamed of earlier this season…y’know, before some great thinkers decided to complicate the enthusiasm.

DC deserves credit for playing in the first half, because they didn’t do that so much of it in the second half. They didn’t have to either – see Paul Arriola’s near-miss on Andres Flores’ gift – because they looked ready and capable of keeping Portland out of the goal for another 250 minutes.

Portland held the upper hand throughout, but Bill Tuiloma’s own-goal at the 25th minute rightly tripped the “oh, shit alarm.” With the way they defend (well), a DC lead always had the potential to steal a result, and DC had found ways to unsettle Portland’s defense before the goal – e.g., Paul Arriola carving a seam up the gut. The goal followed from Ulises Segura getting around some scrambling defenders and hitting the cross that Tuiloma chipped in. The halftime whistle felt like hitting the snooze button, but the sense the Timbers would ever wake up slipped away bit by bit, starting with whistle to start the second half sounded. First came an awkward back-pass, then came Eryk Williamson’s yellow card; these were not the thoughts and motions of a locked-in team. The field generally tilted in Portland’s favor from there, but, hard as I hoped for it, I stopped expecting them to win around the 70th minute, and figured they’d fall short of a draw when Tomas Conechny’s fresh Argentine energy fizzled against the same low-block force-field that Portland could only cross into and over with toddler-like power and precision. That was around the 80th minute, but probably a little after.