Felipe's Farewell, Four Points Taken & a Familiar Serving Angst

Because this will include notes on two games, plus a half-assed Scouting Report on the game versus the Seattle Sounders this weekend (for reasons which I’ll explain), this post attempts to compress an abundance of thoughts into what will still be short post. I’m going to kick things off with Felipe Mora’s last game as a Timber.

Mora scored three goals over his last two games. To be clear, I committed to Team Kevin Kelsy early in the 2026 season, without regrets (doesn’t hurt Kelsy backed that up), but one can’t help but wonder what Mora could have done with more than 443 minutes. Scored a couple more goals, almost certainly, the man always works and I’ve always respected what he brought to the team, while also accepting he doesn’t fit the team the Timbers have evolved into over the past season or two (for good, and mostly ill). Making peace with departure still comes a lot easier than liking it.

The goals he scored – the first, a classic put-back versus FC Dallas, the second and third headed goals off corners(!) versus Real Salt Lake – all pointed to what made Mora effective as a player: reading the game, knowing where to go to receive a pass, sniff out a rebound or, almost comically, to find a gap between defenders half a foot taller than him to nod home. Didn’t even have to jump on that first goal against RSL…priceless…

Scoring that brace on Saturday put Mora within a goal of a now, deservedly-mythical Portland Timbers hat trick and – I’m pretty sure I mean it when I say this – I don’t think I even want to see a Timbers hat trick unless it comes in a moment that would have been as perfect as Felipe Mora scoring one in his farewell game. Had it happened, every person who attended that game live would have experienced one of those rare, privileged moments that gave meaning to suffering through 100 shit performances played under terrible weather and worse refereeing. A Mora hat trick would have ranked right behind the double post in the pantheon of “I’d go back in time and kill moments” in Portland Timbers history.

FC Dallas L'il Scouter: Going Prepared (to Avoid the Jump Scare)

4-2-0 road record, AAUGGHGHH!!

Respecting the fact I can only know so much about a team at glance, kindly accept this offering in the same spirit. That said, when you don’t know much, what else can you do but start with…

The Facts
Record & Related Stats
7-4-4, 25 pts., 15 GP; 30 gf, 22 ga (+8); home 3-2-4, away 4-2-0
Last 10 Results: WDDLLWWLWW (5-3-2)
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ DC (4-0 W); v STL (1-1 D); v LAG (2-2 D); v MIN (0-1 L); @ SEA (1-2 L); @ RBNY (2-0 W); v RSL (3-1 W); v VAN (2-3 L); @ SJ (3-2 W); @ COL (2-1 W)

A couple things jump out there (and apologies for any typos; I do those). I’d start with that 4-2-0 road record – especially with three of the four coming hot into the World Cup break – but I’m mostly struck by seeing a Dallas team improving as the regular season turns into summer. My memory could be faulty on here, but the Dallas teams I recall from the past 10 or so seasons past start hot enough to get people thinking they could have a strong one, only to have them slouch slowly to the playoff line and yo-yo on either side of it before making a wholly forgettable playoff run.

At the risk of repeating a prediction that seems to blow up in my face every other season…Dallas looks good this year.

The Lineup(s)
The (Moribund) Mothership tells me Eric Quill (good vibes) generally sends out his starting XI in a 3-4-3 (mostly like this one), but the broadcast had them in a 4-4-2 for the loss versus Vancouver that looked plausible based on the lineup (available here; first couple seconds are all you need, but Sebastian Berhalter scored a couple bangers in that one).

San Diego FC 1-2 Portland Timbers: A Strange Place, an RSL Scouting Report & an MLS Week 10 Review (Whew!)

Why, hello, Mr. Jackson...

I bit off more than I could chew this week, but the tardiness owes more to a busy weekend and needing to move shit around. I’ll change the things I can change, accept the things I can’t, and, at the end of it all, try to get these posts up by Monday. [Ed. - See programming note at the end, if you make it. Journey's long, mes amis.]

To riff on a regular obsession for this blog, definitions of the phrase “must-win game” probably number in the dozens. My thinking on it has evolved to another phrase – i.e., a result doesn't need to be fatal and chronic can actually be worse. Part of that turns on the fact that, in Major League Soccer, the only teams challenging for the Supporters’ Shield play must-win games week in and out. For the rest of MLS, the damage done by failing to win a "must-win" game lurks in a space between reputational and predictive. To explain by example, the Portland Timbers upcoming against Sporting Kansas City is a must-win game because losing to a team already tagged as one of the worst in MLS history, failing to bank those (still) easy points compels the Timbers to fight for them against bigger dragons. (Related, heartbroken for SKC fans; pulling for you crazy kids.) In other words, what starts as keeping up appearances can quickly become a lesson in the practical math of foregone points.  

Based on how I see other people talk – and therefore think about soccer – makes me think I put more weight on the question of the opposition than most. Any team can win any given game, of course, but where each time is in terms of points, confidence, feeling like they’re making progress, etc. etc. at the time they meet means, like, a lot. Which brings the conversation to…

San Diego FC 1-2 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
When Andres Dreyer scored the penalty kick, called by the ref (correctly) for a Brandon Bye handball, a game that already tilted against the Timbers seemed poised to roll away from them. By my imperfect tally, San Diego had fired five shots inside the opening 20 minutes and they fired two more – including one Dreyer buries four times out of ten – before 25 minutes had gone. Kevin Kelsy quite literally stole a goal at the 26th minute – i.e., he picked the ball of the generally reliable Jeppe Tverskov’s toe and scored a smart one – but Dreyer’s goal still felt like regular order reasserting itself. Instead, reality turned regular order on its head.

Los Angeles FC Scouting Report & an MLS Week 6 Wrap Up: To The Plan & Progress

"Reading Cliff Notes" taken very literally.

In the event others are ever tempted to try such foolishness, I’d argue that you can get almost as much from watching a 10-minute highlight reel than you get from parachuting in to watch a full half of two teams you barely know. The stray comments you catch from the broadcast booth is the only benefit of the latter and the former makes up a little ground by keeping in the best bits, plus a little more context. Think of it as a good, though not great, cut of meat.

In other news, a brain-wave on the way home from work has finally completed The Plan going forward for this site:

1) Portland Timbers Wrap Up posted no later than Sunday; and

2) a 50%-plus wrap up of the weekend’s results topped with a preview of Portland’s next opponent posted no later than Wednesday, but ideally on Tuesday (I did it, mom!).

A couple things recommend this shift, most personal, at least one practical, but that’s enough for the editorial notes because, this week, I’m on a damn schedule. Close readers will notice that the “50%-plus” figure in No. 2. The current goal has me including blurbs on six games in the weekly wrap ups. Those will be based on highlights, with a dash of historical context, but those six games, plus the Timbers game, plus a longer review of Portland’s next opponent will get my eyes on a total of 16 teams every week – i.e., just over half the league. In an attempt to get a jump on the future, I’m already revising The Plan for when Major League Soccer switches to a handful of regional conferences in 2027-2028 (that’s actually happening, right? I didn't dream that?), but I’ll cross that bridge next fall. In the here and now, though, The Plan means ignoring seven results every week. Covering those real fast, with links to The Mothership’s wrap ups embedded in each final score:

Results I Ignored (no real surprises here)
New England Revolution 3-0 Club du Foot Montreal (expected on both sides of the score)
Real Salt Lake 3-1 Sporting Kansas City (see above)
Charlotte FC 2-1 Philadelphia Union (Union=dead to me until they get at least a draw)
Inter Miami CF 2-2 Austin FC (very Austin season so far and ignoring Miami is my joint)
New York City FC 1-1 St. Louis CITY FC (mildly surprising; becoming St. Louis-curious)
Houston Dynamo FC 0-1 Seattle Sounders (wee alarms 4 Houston; Seattle boring again)
Los Angeles Galaxy 1-2 Minnesota United FC (expected; also good for the Loons)

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the Timbers’ opposition next weekend, with

Level Set 14, FC Dallas: Embracing the Ceiling, Perhaps Reality

FC Dallas Academy, Class of [Every Year].

What follows is a brief history of FC Dallas, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
FC Dallas, fka, the Dallas Burn have the singular honor of playing in the most WTF MLS Cup ever played. When they lined up against the Colorado Rapids – then competing in their second final – I have to believe that the collective response boiled down to, “sure, why not?” Apart from winning the 2016 Supporters’ Shield (and tying Red Bull New York on total points in 2015), FC Dallas have not enjoyed what most people – including what I'm guessing is a non-trivial percentage of their fans - would call obvious success. When it comes to actual silverware, they have the Shield mentioned above plus U.S. Open Cup titles in 1997 and 2016 (a great year, by their standards), aka, not much to fill the cabinet after 30 seasons. And yet they still gently undermine the entire “Joy Point” concept (see below for methodology*) because they rank ninth in MLS history based more for consistency than what any fan would recognize as joy. They racked up most of those points by just clearing low bar to make the playoffs over MLS’s first ten seasons – which took some fucking missing when the league had only 10-16 teams – and, while things have slowed down, they have generally made the playoffs every other season (or so) since then. More to the point, it’s not like Dallas hasn’t tried to keep up with MLS’s bigger, richer teams: hell, they swung hard to land one-time FIFA Player of the Year, Denilson, if at a bargain price; they very much got what they paid for. To their credit, they kept their chins up on either side of that debacle, with smart(er) signings like Ariel Graziani (his second stop) and Ronnie O’Brien, some of your better surprises of their eras, even if injuries ate too much of O’Brien’s career. Their hit-rate improved on the foreign signings side, even with some hitches, with league-elite players like David Ferreira and, less so (due to injury), Mauro Diaz, or even a higher-profile (if gently under-performing) player like Fabian Castillo. More than anything else, Dallas has relied on, and I mean this sincerely, top-notch budget signings – e.g., Michael Barrios, Blas Perez, and running one of, if not the most effective academy systems in these United States. The long list of graduates include Kellyn Acosta, Jesus Ferreira, Reggie Cannon, Brandon Servania, Ricardo Pepi, and, from the LA Galaxy’s 2024 MLS Cup team, Edwin Cerrillo. [NOTE: I like to limit links with active players; who knows where they'll go?] Moreover, Dallas’ belief in youth has kick-started some of the all-time great careers in MLS history (picking through this all-time list), e.g., Walker Zimmerman, Drew Moor, Clarence Goodson, Matt Hedges…I hope you’re seeing the pattern in there (see below). Against that, I’ve covered what all the above has given them and have no doubt that falls short of what both the organization and the fans of it want. Still, that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to the Eredivisie’s AFC Ajax, doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon…and yet, who can help but wonder how high they could rise if they kept some of those promising players two days after their 20th birthday.

FC Dallas 2-0 Portland Timbers: Another Bad Thing Happened in Texas

My personal wingman broods...

The vibes have been good around the Portland Timbers’ over the past few weeks. The dance between player and ball looked more natural and the defense tightened into a none (or few) shall pass knot. It felt real enough, but the idea that some of that improvement came from playing rusty Liga MX teams bubbled under every Leagues Cup broadcast.

In other words, I was looking forward to seeing Portland get back to the MLS regular season. I really was.

FC Dallas 2-0 Portland Timbers
The Game, Still More Briefly
Portland gave up two shit goals – though the first was worst of the two by far(, Mr. Crepeau…has even one of his haters thought to call him "Maximum Crapeau”?) – and didn’t do shit on the attacking end. To be clear, I could end this section right here and still have everything pretty much covered, but, to continue…

Pointing to what went wrong on the defensive side is easy as Pin the Tail on the Donkey without the blindfold, but untangling why every Timber appeared to get the vapors on entering the attacking third takes a little picking. Despite the reported (fucking crazy) heat, Portland’s players shifted around more than usual when they had the ball, not necessarily a well-oiled machine, but at least it moved. Dallas countered by either or both ceding possession (to the tune of 40/60) or/and dropping the defensive line deep enough that it always had the game in front of it. On a better day, maybe Portland finds one another and, from there, some decent openings; on Saturday, too many players looked like they wanted to take back every pass immediately after making it. Their best moments came when Antony broke from the depths to the surface, but that only happened (I think) twice, and David Da Costa taking a crack at finishing off one of those, then firing a strong shot from a fair distance (both probably made the highlight reel, but I'm way, way behind; also, a clip of the second goal; just terrible marking, see?).

That pretty well covers the attack Dallas had to “survive” and they just had to make the most of their shots from there. Without claiming expertise on the subject, this struck me as a typical FC Dallas performance – i.e., they don’t create a lot of chances and rely on their defense to see that the opposition doesn’t get many more. Last night’s three points lifts them closer to the play-in spots, but that hasn’t served them so good in 2025; 11th in still 11th. They do have some real quality pieces – e.g., Petar Musa’s a damn good forward (and would thrive on a better team) and Sebastien Ibeagha has aged well – and Logan Farrington, who I’ve seen play well, made a strong argument for The Man Behind The Man of the Match (The Vice-Man of the Match? The Wingman of the Match?), but they don’t have the same quality of player in every position and, as follows, feel incomplete as a team.

Portland Timbers 0-0 FC Dallas, aka, The Sum of Our Greatest Fears in 48 Minutes

Oh, it's coming, champ.

A should-win on Wednesday versus Austin FC that ended in a loss, followed by a must-win late this afternoon versus FC Dallas that ended in a gutless, goal-less, leg-less draw. Ye gods, egads, etc.

First question: how to put a bow on that much nothing?

Second question: when was the last time (verb tense entirely deliberate, btw) you could either believe or talk yourself into thinking that the Portland Timbers have a chance to end their season on the highest-possible high? Don’t know what that was for you, but for me it was a playoff (or play-in) win and a dream of bigger things (no matter how implausible)?

I was somewhat optimistic, personally, even through the loss versus Austin. That optimism took a square shot to the stones tonight and I can name the moment the blow landed: somewhere around two minutes after Felipe Mora’s best shot of the day, aka, the 48th minute or thereabouts. To that point in through both games, Portland had a firm handle on the game-states. They weren't scoring, sure...and, okay, Austin snuck one past them, but the Timbers were still doing good, productive, proactive things all over the field. And then even that dried up. If one accepts the conventional wisdom that Portland can't defend a lead, they need to be the team that outscores all comers. Instead, they've now gone 230 minutes without scoring. Closer to the point at hand, Dallas took over the game after that last best shot and that’s how they tagged ‘em both (both balls, I mean, paraphrasing Kingpin).

The Very Basics, aka, the (Perversely Happy) Flashbacks to the Austin Loss
Much like last Wednesday versus Austin, the Timbers rolled up the chances versus Dallas from around the 17th minute to the 39th. Mora blew at least two chances before steering his best chance wide, Jonathan Rodriguez almost caromed home a header off an Evander free-kick at the 22nd minute, and Evander tried everything up to and including (repeatedly) trying to salsa his way through the middle of Dallas’ defense. Both Juan David Mosquera and Santiago Moreno flailed some shots wide – one of them a hopeful bicycle attempt (Moreno’s) off one of Portland’s best flurries of night – but, for a second week running, the Timbers’ shot selection looked more desperate than wise or good. Finishing and finished product aside, the signs looked all right over the first half: the Timbers won every 50/50, not to mention most of the 40/60s, and they recycled the ball into Dallas’ end of the field over-and-over. Seeing a functioning recycling program felt good, guys…

MLS Week 23 Snapshot: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Where They Largely Don't Matter + Up From the Depths!

Best sidekick eva! Woo-woo!

Just like that, I’m on a roll. League-wide posts two weeks in a row. Woo-woo!

The preamble for this series/concept went up in last week’s post, so I’m going to just refer anyone who wants to know the “why” of this post back to that one. To give the short version, these aren’t detailed posts for two related reasons:

1) the details generally don’t matter; unless…

2) they either rhyme with or emphasize trends that have been going on for a while.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never flag details – i.e., three of the talking points below are only in here because I spent more time on a result that tickled my fancy – but these posts will mostly traffic in trends. Fans of deep cuts can always mosey over to Matt Doyle’s weekly columns (which I only skimmed this week; on a schedule), or lose as many hours as they’re willing to burn in the distinctly non-local MLS Season Pass archives, but it should take more than some random dude scoring a banger (e.g., Cristian Dajome, for a still-woeful DC United team) to make this short-list…which, for the record, is still longer than the specs said it would be. Dammit.

With that in mind, let’s dig into the notes for MLS Week 23 (again, yes, this is Week 23, look at the current standings (effective for reference only through Wednesday morning, July 17, which a bunch of games get played). Here are 10 Things That Happened on or Before MLS Week 23:

1) Nothing Happened to the Supporters’ Shield Race, Ignore MLS Content
I don’t have a sense of the overlap between the people who find this tiny corner of the internet and who subscribe to the MLS Kickoff newsletter, but Monday’s edition dug into race to the Supporters’ Shield – specifically, all the league-topping teams that lost games last weekend. The list includes, FC Cincinnati (waylaid by Charlotte FC! (see below)), Real Salt Lake (drummed out of Providence Park (see below)), the Los Angeles Galaxy (who couldn’t get going at FC Dallas (see below)), and, in the one game that actually felt like it mattered, Los Angeles FC, who got all but drawn-and-quartered against Columbus Crew SC in LA. Here’s the thing: that didn’t change anything about the relative position of any of those teams. Not one of them. Did a couple distant rivals gain ground on all of those teams? Sure, but only one team looks like it has a real shot at catching up with the pack…hold on...

The Portland Timbers, at My (First) Break of 2024

It's early and the outcome is uncertain.

Between being 24+ hours late and a lack of inspiration, I never got around to posting something on the Portland Timbers’ 2-3 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps. On the whole, that loss borrowed details from the handful of games that came before – e.g., the borderline paralytic slow start called back to the loss at New York City FC and, with a nod to the home loss to the Philadelphia Union, Portland's defense found fresh, new ways to give up stupid goals. The only thing missing was the failure to put away good chances that pissed away the piteous road loss at Houston Dynamo FC.

With that in mind – and because I’m taking the next week off - of which, damn the timing, because the road game at Sporting Kansas City strikes me as the most important game of this young season – I wanted to put a pin in where things stand for the Timbers in…let’s call them the teenage years of the 2024 MLS season.

To start, I see these as the dominant questions facing the team:

1) Defensive Boners. (That’s right, I called ‘em boners.) The Timbers gave up six goals over the past two games. Each revealed a unique flaw in Portland’s defense, depending on how you held it to the cold, hard light of a slow-motion replay, but, to skip the metaphors and put it bluntly: giving up even two goals hobbles a team to limping; giving up three is the soccer equivalent of a death wish. It just has to improve. Like next weekend.

2) Will Portland’s Real Midfield Please Stand Up? Because I live and participate on the Timbers subreddit, I hereby acknowledge that plenty of Timbers fans hold a version of Portland’s midfield in their head that is both ideal and available to play. More or less. (How is Eryk, btw?) I’m taking the fact that multiple candidates exist as evidence that the question of the ideal midfield has not yet been settled. I can’t name one myself, I just know that my best current midfield has some game-wrecking teeth in it…which means, sure, I’d try to start Cristhian Paredes and David Ayala, or even keep starting Diego Chara and experiment with those two as second-half subs. The bigger issue revolves around…

MLS Week 1 Vibez Review: It's Okay to Enjoy It, Even If It Doesn't Mean a Damn Thing

His eyes are my eyes, rn.

Welcome to the first one of these quick-hit reviews that, with breaks for vacation(s) and sanity, I plan on posting every week of Major League Soccer’s 2024 regular season – and beyond! (Which, here, only means posting through the playoffs). Before getting into anything at all, here are the results from MLS Week 1:

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Real Salt Lake (actually watched all of this one; just too late to fold it in)

Columbus Crew SC 1-0 Atlanta United FC

Los Angeles FC 2-1 Seattle Sounders %

Charlotte FC 1-0 New York City FC

DC United 3-1 New England Revolution %

Orlando City SC 0-0 Club du Foot Montreal *

Philadelphia Union 2-2 Chicago Fire FC

Austin FC 1-2 Minnesota United FC %

FC Dallas 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

Houston Dynamo FC 1-1 Sporting Kansas City *

St. Louis CITY FC 1-1 Real Salt Lake

Portland Timbers 4-1 Colorado Rapids

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Toronto FC

Nashville SC 0-0 Red Bull New York *

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Inter Miami CF

First, I’ve embedded links to The Mothership’s game summaries under each final score. Second, the above has a pretty simple index:

% means I went beyond the highlights and box score and actually watched 45+ of the game in question.

* means I ignored the game entirely.

[No Symbol] means I checked the highlights and the box score and maybe read a thing or two (which doesn’t mean I remembered it).

Now, I’ll do two things through the rest of the post. Third(?), will be a long paragraph – perhaps even a run-on sentence - that flags your more interesting results for the week just past. Everything under that goes under the titled The Grand Narrative. Fourth (now that I’m rolling with it), I’ll close on notes on all the games I either reviewed (%) or glanced at ([No Symbol]). Ready, set, go!

MLS Week 1 Preview, Getting Hyped on Thin Gruel

Solid show, btw.

At the risk of defeating the point of this post, I’m going to start by acknowledging that none of what’s below matters at all. By allowing nine (fucking) teams from each of its two conferences to qualify, Major League Soccer has made a conscious choice to devalue the regular season to a point where I wonder why anyone bothers to tune in before August. How well a team does through, say, April could be rendered meaningless by a cratering collapse or raging success in September; I can’t stress enough how much the results from MLS Week 1-20 just don’t matter. I've reached the sad place of pining for the 2024 Leagues Cup, because I think it's my first, best chance to feel anything of consequence before September. Stakes, people. They matter...

So, why do this? I mean apart from the fact that I just really like watching soccer?

First and foremost, I’ve chosen this as a hobby. Second, in the same way a sword-maker sharpens the sword over and over until it can cut through trees (apparently; Blue Eye Samurai lays waste to trees of all sizes as if that was the point of the show), seeing MLS’s 29 teams 34 times before they arrive at games that actually matter, aka, the playoffs, gives you a pretty clear bead on which of those teams have a shot in hell at lifting MLS Cup. That number has been whittled down to, at the very most, four or even three teams over the past couple seasons, which, again, highlights just how many meaningless games are played in this league plays year after year…and yet, is that so different than what the majority of teams experience in the English Premier League every season? Hold on…maybe spectator sports writ large are the problem?

To make this even weirder, this will be the only league-wide preview post I do all season. The current plan is to post weekly Vibez Checks at the end of each “MLS Week,” which (swear to God) will be just a loose rundown of what I saw in the games and what I see for patterns in the results. On the research side, I see myself watching two full games every week – one involving the Portland Timbers, the other involving their next opponent – long chunks (45-60 minutes’ worth) of the three games that most interest me, plus whatever else I get to after that. Unlike past seasons, I really do want to keep all this on a “vibes” level – i.e., expect the random name drop (as in, “holy shit, this guy’s killing it”) and general notes (as in, “Atlanta’s on a streak that bears watching”), as opposed to in-depth blow-by-blow coverage from this game or that or deep dives into the latest analytic stats on the market. Gods willing, people who find these posts will get a breezy read and the jokes will land.

To the extent this post has a purpose, it’s about hyping me up for First Kick 2024. Some of the commentary doubles as soft predictions for what I expect from each team, but I’m also approaching all that from something like a headline level (and the intelligence gathered from this incomplete series). With that, let’s look at what we’ve got on the platter.

Getting Reacquainted with FC Dallas, MLS's Consummate B (or B-) Students

How's your Italian, young man?

[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

FC Dallas, fka, the Dallas Burn undermine the entire “Joy Point” concept (see end of post for methodology*) because they rank seventh in MLS history more for consistency than what any fan would recognize as joy. Choosing their best season required no more thought than choosing between the two seasons they actually won a trophy. Dallas rose to these lofty heights the same way Red Bull New York did – i.e., by being in the league for as long as they have and consistently making the playoffs. Unlike the Red Bulls, I don’t believe anyone outside their most committed fans (meant, here, as both committed and “committed”) have ever uttered the words, “I think this is Dallas’ year. They did reach MLS Cup once, in 2010, but they lost to…the Colorado Rapids. (When people tell you that MLS is a weird league, believe them.) And yet, and to their very real credit, Dallas have missed the playoffs just seven times in 28 seasons (including one season they got tagged by the Wooden Spoon (2003)) and they finished in the top half of the table in (literally) half the time. Not a bad run, all in all, but not a great one, and not what any reasonable person would describe as “joy.” If one had to grade the Dallas franchise what could you give them but a B, or maybe even a B-. On the plus side, they do have that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to Ajax in the Eredivisie…makes you wonder how high they could rise if they kept some of those promising players two days after their 20th birthday. Or thereabouts.

Best Season(s)

The 2016 season, easily, and with nod to the prior season as a sign of things to come. I had to check back to both rosters to remember who suited up for them in both years (2015 and 2016) and, small coincidence, those same players are well-represented (if not over-represented and via a cheat) in the 10 Players to know section below. Those sections speak to another general truth about FC Dallas: it’s less that they never make ambitious signings than that they often miss the mark when they do, sometimes wildly. At any rate, Dallas won both the Supporters’ Shield and the U.S. Open Cup in 2016, which means their fans felt actual joy once – which I suppose beats the usual experience of salivating over the latest academy kid that they’ll say goodbye to right around the time they remember his name...

MLS Week 22 Preview: On the Clout Maintenance Parade

Apt. And possibly copyrighted.

Gonna just kind of riff through the match-ups. Make it conversational...if in the espirit d'escalier vein.

Just to note it, I have two questions in my head when talking about any game: what is the likeliest result and how much would any other result matter?

To be clear, I mean the word “matter” in the context of Major League Soccer, a league where meaningful change occurs at geological speed. On with it...

Major League Soccer’s Week 22 kicks off smartly with the New England Revolution visiting FC Cincinnati – and no doubt scheming about how to batter or otherwise breach the walls of Fortress TQL. I imagine the U.S. Men’s pulverizing of St. Kitts & Nevis means Cincy won’t have Matt Miazga for another week, so maybe that’s the lever to finally crack Cincy’s home form. Only bad gamblers believe random events can be in any way “due,” so I’ll only say this: a Revolution win would make a good argument that they’ve pushed through their blues. Related/unrelated, FC Cincinnati has built a reputation they’re now damned to uphold until that burden falls from their shoulders.

That theme carries through a lot of the other games, or at least the good ones. I’d call...let’s go with “clout maintenance” as the primary theme of Week 22. To wit: Club de Foot Montreal will want to maintain his Cincy-esque home form – and their lifeline – by beating a limping New York City FC; the same goes double for the San Jose Earthquakes, who face the horror of waking up Sunday morning knowing that thousands observers will no longer say “yeah, but their home form,” with the same breezy confidence that people say, “yeah, but it’s a dry heat” (as you’re sweating off eight pounds just talking to them) if they hand even one point to the visiting/suffering Los Angeles Galaxy; finally, St. Louis CITY FC should expect to feel a similar heat (now, with humidity!) if they drop points to a visiting Colorado Rapids team with a straight-up shitty record of picking up any points no matter how hard the other team drops them. Another commonality in all those games: wins by any of NYC, the Galaxy or the Rapids won’t change many minds or raise low opinions.

Diagnosis/Prognosis: The Timbers' Future, Between Now and the Break

Feel like this needs to be bigger....

I had some time this morning, so I thought I’d do a little reasoned projection about what the Portland Timbers’ future looks like between today and the Leagues Cup - a tournament I’m looking forward to despite generally hating on concocted tourneys in the MLS Extended Universe. The question I hope to run down: what kind of chance does Portland have of going into that break above the playoff line?

Before anyone gets his/her/their hopes up, I don’t dive too deep into any of this. The only sources I consulted were the current conference standings (for a snapshot), the Form Guide (for past results and future games), and the list of MLS players called up for the Gold Cup. Also, shit(!), and in time to make some revisions, the most current player availability report (which any sane observer should only half-trust). With each team, I walk through the raw numbers and blunt facts – e.g., records (home and away), goals for and against, and who’s next for all the teams - and close each section with further notes, details and opinions. I call these “info-blurbs,” for the record. Finally, the sample ranges from sixth place FC Dallas to 12th place Minnesota United FC – i.e., the collection of teams within touch of Portland, i.e., the kinds of teams they can catch or escape.

For those uninterested in combing through the data (impatient bastards), let’s kick this off with a fun/bleak stat: every team save the Vancouver Whitecaps has a negative goal differential – and most sit at -5 or worse. None of these teams actually rate as good, in other words, which has real potential to make the answer to the question posed up top one of which team will fail the least between now and July 16. Now, for the big picture prediction and tentative answer to that question...

Vancouver and Sporting Kansas City count as Portland’s most immediate competition and, by my loose math, both of them look like good bets to get six points (or more) by July 16 – which will force the Timbers to keep a similar pace. Minnesota, idle since June 10 by the way, might enter the mix, but they’ll have to do it over the next three games or (as I see it) abandon some measure of hope. I expect Dallas to fall, and for a variety of reasons, but I doubt they can drop far enough for it to matter for the Timbers (barring a miracle run); related, I see Real Salt Lake leapfrogging Dallas and maybe even giving the San Jose Earthquakes and Houston Dynamo FC something to worry about. Finally, I’m going with Austin FC as the wild card in the mix. Their late mini-revival suggests they could make a little noise – or just get enough points to keep the Timbers below the playoff line.

A Casual Fans Preview, MLS Week 9: Notes on Everything & a Showdown at the Big Tickle

Yessir, shivering, sir.

The further into the 2023 Major League Soccer season we get, the more predictable things seem – long-term, at least. And yet there’s this...

FC Cincinnati v Portland Timbers: Shivering with Antici...pation

Cincy: 5-1-2, 17 pts., 10 gf/9 ga, 2nd in East; Last 5: TWWWL (respectable strength of schedule)

Portland: 2-4-2, 8 pts., 10 goals for, 13 goals against; Last 5: LTTLW (more respectable)

My gods, where to begin?

Last Saturday was Freaky Friday, for one: the team you were sure would lose won (hello, Portland!), while the one that begged the question, “can they do it?” answered with a sulking “no.” In their defense, I read somewhere that St. Louis wildly over-performed its xG and I feel like I get that, even if I don’t entirely get xG. So, big picture, the home team wants to get back on track while the visitors want to keep things going.

Both teams also hope to get key – or, in Portland’s case, enough – players back on the field and kicking. Cincy had to play without the three-months-from-exit Brenner and Luciano Acosta last weekend – the wild card and conductor, respectively – while the Timbers finally managed to field players they’re counting on to carry them to a good season, e.g., team talisman, Dairon Asprilla, and new Ivorian striker Franck Boli. I have no clue on Acosta’s timeline for recovery, or Brenner’s for that matter (hell, I don’t even know what kept them off the pitch), but also figure Pat Noonan will want them against a Timbers defense I rate somewhere between sufficient and good enough.

For my money, the real question comes with how much and, honestly, whether Portland has improved in terms of competence and comfort on the ball. If that’s real, Cincy will have a game on their hands. Or should. More to the point, I believe the Timbers odds of actually winning this game will follow whatever improvement they’ve made on those very basics with the persistence of a shadow.

FC Dallas 1-1 Portland Timbers: Better.

Dallas translated through bowling.

After a season that has started with what can only be called incompetence – which, at times came in the flaming variety - it felt pretty damn good to see the Portland Timbers achieve the opposite in yesterday’s 1-1 draw at FC Dallas.

Over the Timbers’ first five games of the season, I had to dig at least shoulder-deep into the barrel to pick out good performances. Zac McGraw’s name has come up in most games – take a bow, young man – Dario Zuparic almost as much, but the list has generally been short, allergic to padding and concentrated in the defense. The larger problems, not to mention the outright failures, have come at the collective level – i.e., players, even league legends (see, Chara, Diego) looking shaky playing the ball forward and an attack grabasstic up to the point of mutual incomprehensibility. Hope walked lightly on the land, in other words; outside of a couple promising starts that only felt more heartbreaking by promising more, her feet may have never even touched the ground.

Weighed against such a lowly level, the Timbers knocked it out of the park in Dallas yesterday. Without declaring this draw an actual turn-around, and with a full acknowledgement of the final score duly acknowledged, I’m content to call Portland’s first (more or less) quality game of 2023 a kind of win.

For all that, Dallas tends to offer a shifting yardstick. I noted in the preview that people rarely rate them as a contender and games like this get at why. They struggle to string together good results, which means they struggle to generate real, season-shaping momentum. Now, had Jesus Jimenez not strayed offside, thereby cancelling out the insurance goal/tap-in that Alan Velasco scored almost immediately after Dallas went ahead after Facundo Quignon made good on three minutes of pressure and as many corner kicks in the 74th, I feel confident saying that Portland would have been, in fact, fucked. So, yeah, Portland caught a break or two. Moreover, there was more than a little but for the divine (delighfully pissy) grace of Aljaz “All the Jazz” Ivacic, because the Timbers’ defense gave Dallas several cracks at both go-ahead and insurance goals...and gods only know why Portland would start anyone but Ivacic anytime he’s available at this point. If you haven’t seen some of his saves, do yourself some good and make your heart a little bigger by dipping into the highlights from this one.

A Casual Fan's Preview, MLS Week 6: Of Bloodlettings and Impostor Syndrome

It's raining Mcmansions.

First, holy shit, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to have numbers – REAL numbers, from xG to records to goal differential – to help shape this discussion. No more building houses on clouds, people, it’s gonna be glorious. If nothing else, I should help tighten up the copy, Ahhhhhhhhhhh-meeeennnnnnnnnnnn!!

At any rate, it’s the same old format – i.e., the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati get longer previews and then smoosh all the rest of it into categories that expand or contract per my personal requirements – only updated for another week. At first glance (and it is that), I see a little intrigue, some faint whiffs of desperation and, frankly, a couple games that I expect to slip from the memory of even the most ardent local fan by the end of Saturday night. I’ll get into all that, but let’s turn to my two personal main events. For what it’s worth, I decided which team to start with by flipping a coin...it’s getting weird out here...

FC Dallas v Portland Timbers
Because we’ve had so little of it, here, in the upper left-hand corner of Oregon, allow me to start with the good news. I just caught word (typing this Tuesday freezing the thought in amber) that Evander, David Ayala and Dairon Asprilla participated in full training on (or perhaps starting) Tuesday, all in the hope of playing Saturday. What? I didn’t say how good the news was...

I kid, I kid. Even if Evander hasn’t set my cockles ablaze and I can’t say I’ve ever seen Ayala play a game that made me feel anything but anxious, I’m happy for the options. Seeing Asprilla in that mix feels better, if only because he’s more of a known quantity; he has arrived/plateaued at a solid second-banana level of contribution – which, sadly, was good enough to make him Portland’s leading scorer last season. Having more of a presence up top, or even just an attacking player able to do more than run(/get swallowed up) by the channel (never to be seen again), certainly can’t hurt an attack that currently clocks exactly one goal per game. Turning, now, to what whoever lines up for Portland will be up against...

First, and for anyone who has ever questioned my reasons for asking the Form Guide to join me in holy matrimony, I’d started mapping out an argument for how “this Portland team could never score on Dallas, a team back-stopped by a steel-plated Alamo.” As it turns out, they’ve allowed a goal in every game of 2023. Not crazy enough that Portland fans should get their hopes up – they’ve allowed six total - but the goals get in their net, even at home.

The Casual Fan's Review, MLS Week 5 + A Stirring 'n' Studly Win for FC Cincinnati

Bet the housh on Houshton...shh...shhh! Listen, listen....

To kick things off with a brief editor’s note, I’ll be dialing back to the Total Coverage next week. Getting eyes on everything doesn’t seem to matter what with the season having a couple weeks under its belt and some early trends taking shape (why, hello the Form Guide!). The next five-year plan presently involves watching the usual – the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati, a real pain/joy, yin-yang experience so far this season – plus chunks of three or four other games, depending how many I can fit in and/or feel motivated to watch.

Related, I outright skipped the following games:

Charlotte FC 1-1 Red Bull New York
San Jose Earthquakes 0-0 Toronto FC
Minnesota United FC 1-1 Vancouver Whitecaps

Part of that was running out of time, the other part follows from seeing these teams as known quantities. To float the loose theories, Minnesota’s plugging along nicely, I’ll watch them when I have to (probably), San Jose looks broadly all right but you just kind of sense the ceiling above, while Charlotte FC pulled out of the nose-dive...that’s it, i.e., they won't go down in a fiery crash, but who knows after that? I haven’t really worked out the two Canadian teams, but I’ve already watched both and expect to see both play footsie with the playoff line all seasons. Again, that’s expect. I don’t do predictions. Not unless I’m feeling saucy...not yet...

Now, for the team/game I’ll never skip, FC Cincinnati and whoever they happen to play on any given MLS Week. [Ed. - At least not unless I opt to take an entire weekend off.] For the record, I have organized the results below in the order of how I read their significance. Most weeks, Cincy’s result is only up top because I decided to lead with them every week, but they earned top spot up here. Better still, they done good!

Nashville SC 0-1 FC Cincinnati: Good Shit’s All Around [Full 90]
The most telling detail that comes to mind about this game is the fact that FC Cincinnati ran down Nashville’s total number of shots in a gradual, grinding way. They had the late-game flurry that Nashville never managed to produce – i.e., the flat line that runs across the latter’s xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page speaks the truth. And right where you see Nashville finally tick upward somewhere in the early-80s, you see Cincy slip further away a couple minutes later. That was the flurry, and the game.

The Casual Fan's Preview, MLS Week 5: They Could Have Framed It Better

International "duty" calls.

It’s that special time of week, the Pro-Am festival of grasping after the right talking points and, often, outright making shit up about what to expect from your local team in the MLS Week ahead. (Per Science, an “MLS Week” lasts just six hours (the longer timeline is, predictably, a lie) and weighs just a little less than a small Maine Coon Cat.) Yessirs and Yes’Ms, it’s Preview time.

I liked MLS Week 4, I did, but it didn’t do MLS Week five a ton of favors – by which I mean the match-ups didn’t really come together. Most of the offerings involve increasingly desperate teams getting a little more desperate, several of them in settings and/or against teams that you don’t see throwing them a bone. It’s not all sad trombones; maybe one of those teams who picked up their first win of 2023 last weekend, or even the one or two who hinted they may have a little something raises the noise a couple decibels. We’ll see, we’ll see...

Oh, and to make the entire exercise even less clarifying, just about every team in MLS will be without some of their best players this weekend. While by no means exhaustive, this column gives a fair taste of how many kids ran off to Senior Skip, aka, international call-ups (aka, “international duty,” aka, “ID”). Quick shout to U.S. Soccer, helluva job with the scheduling and platform. Way to bury the product, dipshits. And shouldn’t you be hiring, like, a bunch of people? At any rate.

I’ll touch on every match below – I may even try to stuff a couple together in preposterous (wow, I haven’t used that word in years) conceptual boxes – but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. As for process, I watch a fair/stupid amount of MLS soccer every week and post some notes on it; here’s Week 4’s review (again). After that, it’s just staring at the current standings and the bless’d and holy Form Guide and seeing if that knocks loose something useful. Again, Science.

But, just like every week, I start with longer previews for the two teams I follow. Just to pretend, like one of those parents who pretends they don’t have a favorite kid, I’ll list the previews in the order they kick off this weekend.

The Weakly, MLS Week 3 Preview: Observations and Expectations on a Slow Bus to an Expanded Station

My money's on Pennsylvania...

Seems like it was only yesterday since I wrapped up MLS Week 2, and yet here comes MLS Week 3, barreling toward the 2023 post-season with the speed and urgency of a Greyhound milk-run puttering from Maine to Cincinnati, Ohio (which I do not recommend, btw). A couple early narratives have taken shape – and I’ve laced those into the notes on Week 3’s games below – but, as we all know, there’s plenty of road ahead and they added a new wing to Cincinnati’s bus station. [NOTE: This is not accurate, please do not rely upon. So far as I know, Cincy built its Greyhound station in the 1950s and promptly forgot it existed.] In case it's not clear, all the above is a tortured analogy for the long regular season and expanded playoffs...

I cobbled together the observations below based on what I saw last weekend (my notes on that), some glassy-eyed staring at the soon-to-be invaluable Form Guide, and some stray stuff I’ve picked up, mostly from half-reading Sam Jones’ Daily Kickoff newsletter...whoa, just realized I haven’t so much as glanced at a Matt Doyle column since First Kick...

To be clear, I don’t really do predictions. It’s more kicking around expectations and pulling for results that amuse, baffle and, on the best of days, titillate. Anyhoo, there’s plenty below, so I’ll shut up and get to it. Starting with the two teams followed in this space, and in the order they’ll play on Saturday.

FC Cincinnati v Seattle Sounders
If someone told me to kick a dent into Seattle’s reputation, I’d try the three following arguments:

1) They’ve played both games at home.

2) One of the teams they hosted, the Colorado Rapids, has a history of being their punching bag (18-7-2 all-time) and Colorado’s Lalas Abubakar played part in two of those four goals. [Ed. - Fun fact: the Sounders actually have a losing historical record against Real Salt Lake at 11-12-5.]

3) Neither Colorado nor RSL has what FC Cincinnati has in the attack...when it’s rolling.

A lot of that boils down to another way of asking, how optimistic do you feel about Cincinnati in 2023?