St. Louis CITY FC 2-1 Portland Timbers: Paging General Buck Turgidson

Didn't get the joke in this character's name till I saw it spelled.

So, St. Louis CITY FC was about two times better, by some raw numbers? I figured they had a firm grip on the edge, but there go the judges handing them the decision...

St. Louis CITY FC 2-1 Portland Timbers
About the Game
The Timbers scored the first goal for the second match day in a row and by a cleaner strike from the same player – David Da Costa - within a mere foot or three of where he scored last week’s winner. Santiago Moreno played the (surprisingly easy) ball that slipped Da Costa behind St. Louis’ midfield, thereby challenging the defenders to do anything but back up. They backed off, allowing Da Costa to squeeze his shot through a tangle of legs not much bigger than a mousehole – and good for him!

Portland’s goal came more than a little against the run of play, even with St. Louis failing to mine many chances out of their possession and general upper-handedness. That also typified what passed for the game-state of the first half – i.e., the Timbers met St. Louis’ overall attacking prowess at a 1:3 of raw, undistinguished shots, while making something dangerous out of their best moments (e.g., that slick overlap between Da Costa and Jimer Fory that squeezed some sweat out of Roman Burki; per the full highlights, Da Costa woulda done better to pull back to Kelsy instead of shooting). Portland carried a 1-0 advantage into the halftime locker room…but the numbers were against them even then and that was the last happy memory I have.

Credit for the decisive moment goes to St. Louis’ Tomas Ostrak, who climbed his way up the spine of midfield, one vertebrae at a time, shaking off Timbers defenders on two of them, before forcing the ball forward to where Marcel Hartel (still a funny name) roofed it into Maxime Crepeau’s goal. That moment pinned the tail into the competitive heart of the game: whether Portland could keep finding their slashing paths to chances on St. Louis’ goal versus the weight of St. Louis’ attacking and counter-pressing pressure.

Portland Timbers Weekly, The Toronto Flop, the State of Things, the Smell of Chowda

I've tried everything. This xG is just too small.

At this (roughly) middle point in the Portland Timbers 2025 season, I hold the following to be more or less absolutely true:

1) the Timbers aren’t going to win the Supporters’ Shield;

2) the first team isn’t trophy-competitive and I don’t see anything on the current roster or in Phil Neville’s brain changing that; and

3) things aren’t actually going well at the moment.

If any here bearing witness object to #1, speak now or forever hold your piece and what drug does it take to produce hope on that scale? Even half-serious pushback on #2 would surprise me, but crazier things and so on. Which leaves #3…

Toronto FC 0-3 Portland Timbers
About the Game
A fucking disaster. A loss for the memory-hole. Something that – and this is with a nod to #3 – I still don't believe could have happened. Again, that's "could" not "should."

I braced for an off-day, I got soccer’s version of ennui. The Timbers went down early after an eager-puppy foul by Omir Fernandez led to a free kick for Toronto at the top of the 18. The gifts continued to flow when James Pantemis decided to become Second Wall, aka, the wall behind the wall, instead of covering the other half of the goal. Nothing of note improved from there for Portland. They ended the game with just four (fucking) shots, none on goal, and xG so small it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye.

For whatever reason, possibly because I finally ran out of words, I’m going to forego the typical blow-by-blow match reports. If you want to know, ask me about it in the comments or on Bluesky and I’ll flesh it out, but the short version amounts to the idea that they provide a snapshot of limited value. Relive them through the highlights if you gotta, also why?  Ahem. Wrapping up the game.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Sporting Kansas City: A Result

Taking miracles, in whatever form.

I’m weighing the game I wanted, maybe even expected, against the game that I got. That’s not taking me to dark places, exactly, and for reasons I’ll lay out, or perhaps just accept, below.

Conflicted feels like the right adjective for my thoughts on the Portland Timbers' 1-0 win over – to start picking at it – (still) 12th-place Sporting Kansas City, and yet it doesn’t. With that, let’s pop this zit.

About the Game
Control of the game, so long as you use the word loosely, slipped away from the Timbers at some point in this game. The question is when – and, to be clear, only when. Despite my headful of quibbles with this or that detail or player, the thought of Portland losing never crossed my mind. Pissing away two points, on the other hand, never left the table. Even that thought leaves things to unpack.

I saw three phases in the game, each bleeding into the next. With David Da Costa (typed that as David Dad Costa, kinda liked that) and Santiago Moreno buzzing under Felipe Mora, the Timbers got off to a good start. Antony produced the first big moment for either team with a diagonal run across the box and it came after a build up that felt sustainable. Portland put all of the same things together, and more, in the build-up to the, to call it by its full name, Brilliant and Only Goal of the game at the 10th minute: they worked the ball in, they pushed it up the left, moved it right, switched it back to the left, pushing SKC back the entire time; after, oh, 15-20 passes, it took a buffet of luck, timing and inspiration for Da Costa and Moreno (respectively) to score the winner and, by that, all three points, I hereby give thanks. Thus endeth Phase 1.

You know that moment in a track-‘n’-field relay, when the runner of the next leg gets up to speed in front of the runner from the previous one to build up momentum for the handoff? That was the change between Phase 1 and Phase 2. Sporting KC started finding direct passes through Portland’s lines around the same time the space for Da Costa and Moreno dried up. Their best chance(s) – perhaps for the entire game – came at the beginning of that phase in the form of three shots on Maxime Crepeau’s goal, most by Daniel Salloi, around the 15th minute. Crepeau made those saves and more, if without the confidence I like seeing from a ‘keeper (another came around the 61st minute, see the full highlights), but that didn’t chip away at my confidence in the result as the low-key siege SKC mounted against the Timbers defense for the remainder of Phase 2. Which brings this post to the most complicated part of the game, though not yet to Phase 3.

Portland Timbers 3-1 Houston Dynamo FC: Goal, Assist, Yellow Card

Closest I could get given the search...

A referee has to fuck up a lot to get a nod in any post I put up, res ipso loquitur, etc.. Also, congrats to the handful of people outside the greater Portland and Houston metro areas who saw the Timbers v the Dynamo and thought, “yeah, I guess I don’t have anything better tonight” because that was a pretty fun game to watch. Right? That was fun, right? What, you’re too big for salt water taffy now? Okay, big shot. Fine. (No, I’m not. You're the one going through separation anxiety!)

The point is, the game wasn’t boring, predictions of an incompetent Portland attack slap-fighting a dour Houston defense that barely noticed them held their own sad disco in my head as opposed to crossing over into and ruining the real world. I got a couple things wrong in my Scouting Report on Houston and I couldn’t be happier about it. Time to pick through the guts!

About the Game
The Portland Timbers got off to an electric start on their way to a 3-1 home win that looked like it could have ended 5-1 before the halftime whistle. After a ball squirted forward out of a tackle on Antony (probably) Jimer Fory broke down Houston’s right with everyone in orange furiously back-pedaling in time; his cross to Santiago Moreno actually found Daniel Steres first, but, per one of several themes that repeated/rhymed across the first half, he poked his clearance to Moreno, who fed Felipe Mora, who (probably) announced his wife was pregnant (everyone seemed happier than usual) after scoring Portland’s first goal. I know I wasn’t the only Timbers fan with dreams of jelly drops and a blow-out win dancing in my head over the next (literally) six minutes because Houston handed Portland at least two more tantalizing transition opportunities between the opener and Houston’s equalizer. There’s not much to say about the latter than why is Fory (barely) defending two players and great cross by Jack McGlynn (which means I got some things right in the Scouting Report), but it didn’t take long for the game to revert back to the Dynamo panicking and Portland taking advantage. Once Antony started and finished his run up the right for the Timbers’ second goal – tied together by an inch-perfect pass by Mora – it felt like the only question left to ask was how many more Portland could score. As it happens, the answer to that question was one. The Timbers scored just one more goal between the halftime whistle and the one that called the game – it involved the same players too, Mora and Antony – and that made for a gently nervous start to the second half. Assuming I’m not mashing them into some kind of omni-clip, I counted at least four times over the second half where Houston meticulously played the ball to the edge of Portland’s 18, and even got their toe in it, before the last, desperate shot went wide or smacked into Kamal Miller, Fory, of (most likely) Finn Surman. Houston head coach, Ben Olsen, added Erik Sviatchenko at the beginning of the second half, prompting the first of several “wait, why not start him?” questions, and that got the Dynamo’s feet under them for almost 25…vaguely menacing minutes. If I oversold Houston’s competence in the Scouting Report (I did), this was the place: this team works the ball up the field as well as any team in MLS – particularly when they heed Olsen’s pleas for “CALM” – but the end-result amounts to driving a freshly-paved highway that dead-ends into some Houston neighborhood built off-code and well beneath a flood-plain. A result can be lost in one bad moment – I get it – and, by the same token, any of Houston’s long progressive possessions could have ended with a second equalizer. Back in the real world, they didn't. Moreover, at least eight of them ended with four to five Timbers running at three to four Houston players prioritizing getting back to their own goal, by necessity, because the onslaught didn’t give them the luxury of setting up the optimal match ups. Carrying the point forward…

Houston Dynamo FC Scouting Report: The Wrong Kind of Sleeper

This would be badass. Also, not what we're getting.

Won’t lie, I’m dreading this one more than a little. And it has less to do with fear of losing – which, to be clear, is very much on the table – than trepidation about what I believe we’re all about to sit through. Starting with the raw data…

Houston Dynamo FC
0-3-2, 2 pts., 3 gf, 8 ga (-5); home 0-3-0, away 0-0-2
Last 5 Results: LLDLD
Strength/Location of Schedule
v FCD (1-2 L); v MIA (1-4 L); @ CLB (0-0 D); v RSL (1-2 L); @ SEA (0-0 D)

Notes from the Field
The fact Houston has yet to win seems relevant. On a more specific level, I see two types of games in Houston’s recent past: games against strong (or strong-ish) defensive teams – e.g., Columbus Crew SC and the Seattle Sounders, where they fire only about a half dozen shots - and games against…let’s call them more average teams – e.g., FC Dallas and Real Salt Lake, where they post more or less normal numbers and, you know, score goals (see links). For anyone who didn’t see that the Dynamo have scored just three goals this season, please direct (or, more properly, redirect) your attention to the above Information Box. In short, no one’s really lighting it up for Houston in 2025 – all three of those goals were scored by different players, each with different limitations (Amin Bassi, small; Nico Lodeiro, near retirement; Ezequiel Ponce, basic lack of support). Against that, don’t get too carried away with those eight goals allowed because Inter Miami CF scored half of them. Without those four goals out of the equation, Houston is a 1.0 goals against/game team. If you know the names of their starting central defenders, either seek help or admit you have a problem. I kid, I kid (also, I hereby admit I have a problem). Those players are fine, but I don’t think see them as the key to what makes the Dynamo a hard lock to pick. Credit for that goes to a full-team commitment to the fundamentals. Houston plays definitionally competent soccer and that does all kinds of good and useful things for them, up to and including making them hard to beat – and, against what the numbers tell you, creating genuinely high-percentage chances on goal, even if they don't produce so many. Or, in fewer words, Benny-Ball, baby.

Colorado Rapids Scouting Report: Of Mirages & Mobility

Oasis or thirst-induced madness?

They did slip a bit last season, but that’s so 2024. It’s time to talk about this season and the…

Colorado Rapids
2-0-2, 8 pts., 6 gf, 4 ga (+2); home 0-0-1, away 2-0-1
Last Results: DDWW
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ STL (0-0 D); v FCD (3-3 D); @ ATX (1-0); @ SJ (2-1)

Big Picture
Tricky to frame, honestly. The Rapids’ results have improved (see above) but the highlights tell me that they needed every inch of Zac Steffen to earn even a draw last weekend at the San Jose Earthquakes – and he made a minimum of three implausible saves, so here’s to hoping Steffen’s drowning his sorrows with the rest of the U.S. Men’s National Team’s after that choke versus Panama (karma, motherfuckers). I didn’t watch a ton of Colorado in real-time – just the San Jose highlights and about 50 minutes of their weird ‘n’ wild 3-3 home draw versus FC Dallas a couple weeks back – but I saw the Rapids defending to the opposition defensive third, even in the snippets against the ‘Quakes, and aggressively all over the field. Working those young legs, apparently, and those have carried them to a solid run of results, fourth in the Western Conference and seventh overall. Something else I noticed: Colorado leaves a fair amount (read: a lot) of vertical space between that skirmishing front line and the back four (arguably led to this Dallas goal). That hasn’t caused them to bleed goals so far – even with that draw versus Dallas, they average just one goal against/game – and I’ll pick at reasons not named Zac Steffen below. Against that, they needed all of Dallas’ flaws to get that home draw and I’d call them damned lucky to win at San Jose (could easily have lost by the looks of it). I wouldn’t go so far as to call their record a mirage, not yet, but the Rapids are factually picking points off direct rivals in their climb up the table.

Portland Timbers 1-1 Los Angeles Galaxy: Readings from a Spoiled Sample

This plus a couple geezers. Not great, man.

I saw the question of whether the referee should have awarded the Portland Timbers late in Sunday’s game posed a half dozen times on the Timbers subreddit yesterday and answered with a raging “motherfucker, YES!” It was a massive call to miss, no question – calling advantage on that play does actual violence to the word “advantage” – and, while having two more points wouldn’t have helped Portland in 2024, it would have lifted Portland into the playoffs in 2022, given them homefield advantage for the play-in in 2023.

I get the frustration, in other words, and a very stupid non-call can matter, even in MLS’s largely pointless regular season, but…and you knew this was coming…shouldn’t we all be more concerned with the fact that the Timbers struggled to manage a Los Angeles Galaxy B- team?

About the Game
To start with some positives, seeing Santiago Moreno back in the XI did the soul good – particularly after a couple of his early runs made it look as if he might win the game on his own. The team as a whole looked more comfortable on the ball and decently connected over several periods in the first half, even if all that running and kicking didn’t necessarily translate into anything particularly, or at all, meaningful – i.e., seeing halftime stats like three shots, one on goal for the Timbers, and five (apparently) wayward shots for the Galaxy sounded about right, as did both teams’ piteous xG. Portland even tried to press here and there, which attempt I described in my real-time notes as “looks/works half-ass, but not a total waste.” The fact that came against a veritable “who’s that?” of Galaxy players – e.g., Tucker Lepley, Isaiah Parente, and Harbor Miller (that last one begs the question of what his ancestors did for a living) – always left open the hope that the Timbers were just working out their angles before absolutely destroying the whelps. And, when Felipe Mora deflected a David Da Costa grass-cutter cross from Portland’s right to score Portland's one and only goal, that plan seemed in motion – and with a bonus of giving Timbers fans a glimpse of how Da Costa’s skill set could help the mission. That bright shiny feeling that lasted only until the second half turned into a stalemated slog. I had a sense that LA got the better of the game while the Timbers sucked back into defense as I watched, but still appreciate the confirmation from the official stats page. It’s possible Gabriel Pec hoisted too much weight onto his own shoulders – more below – but he created at least one goal-line scramble and the Galaxy fired some better shots from range between the 60th and 70th minutes. The Timbers defense held…firm-esque through all that pressure, which only made LA's equalizer, from a simple ball over the top to Christian Ramirez (wake up, Zac), more simmeringly infuriating. I just circled back to the highlights, which helpfully reminded me that the Timbers had a couple chances to get back in the lead, and that brings the game and summary back to the non-call on the penalty that started the post.

Portland Timbers 1-4 Vancouver Whitecaps: The Brutal Laws of the Game & a Game to Aggressively Memory-Hole

So long as it feels better later, I'm good.

The rules of the game, when read and applied in black and white, make some calls unavoidable, even inevitable. I don’t know what Kamal Miller could have done differently in real time – i.e., Brian White’s first touch took the ball into the space into which Miller was running to catch up, he couldn’t do much to avoid some contact, so the real question was always going to turn on the kind of contact that occurred (you can toggle to the video here, but the link doesn't appear to change to the specific highlight) – but, no matter how many details you drop into the basic scenario, there is simply no getting around the fact that Miller was the last defender covering White, an attacking player running into a one-v-one against the ‘keeper, Maxime Crepeau.

I’m confident some Portland Timbers fan will undertake a frame-by-frame deconstruction to argue that White went down too easily and that another other fan will explore the practical physics of how much weight Miller’s hand would have needed to exert upon White’s shoulder in order to cause him to actually fall: by my reading, calling White for a dive presents the only alternative to the red card and I don’t see enough in what happened to sustain a flop.

Miller’s red card wasn’t the only mistake the Timbers made today; it was merely the first. It took several more to get to today’s lopsided 1-4 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps in Portland. Again. The smoldering question turns on how many of those mistakes followed from Miller’s red card against the balance of them that happened all on their own.

Before getting to that, or to anything else really, I want any Timbers fan who finds this post to keep one thought firmly in mind: as much as this result stings, maybe even embarrasses, it does not matter. It doesn’t matter even a little. Portland still has 33 games left to play and they remain very much alive on the bare terms of competing for an indulgently generous allotment of playoff slots. As MLS fans learn every season, and appear to unlearn after each regular season starts, a team can eat absolute clown-shit for three, even four months and still redeem the season with a good run in the playoffs – see, United FC, Atlanta, just one season ago (even if their own fans don’t entirely feel it). So, throw in the fact that the Timbers couldn’t field its best-possible team, take a deep breath, take the L (/spectator-sports equivalent of an enema), get out those binoculars so that you can take the longest possible view of the overall situation…

…which isn’t the same thing as thinking the Timbers are destined to have a good season, never mind a great one.

Portland Timbers 4-2 Los Angeles Galaxy: ADDRIAAANNNN!!!!

Best scene. No notes.

The subtitle for the preview I posted for this game referenced Rocky III. Anyone who has seen that movie fully appreciates its merry absurdity, the boxing sequences, in particular, where large men (and Sylvester Stallone), arms rippling with muscles, landed one head-removing blow after another. None of them had any effect, of course, until they did and every single boxer in the movie stood there, arms at his sides as he had no other choice besides taking it. Blocking a punch is and was for weaklings and commies in the Rocky Extended Cinematic Universe, apparently.

The Portland Timbers' rapturous 4-2 win over the Western Conference-leading Los Angeles Galaxy followed a similar script. Between the construction and particular competencies of both teams, I doubt this game could have ended any other way. As predicted in that preview (c’mon, let me have it; I get so many of these wrong), this game was destined to be a free-swinging brawl. The only open question was which team would land the most swings.

Now, because I’m both on the clock and old…

The Very Basics
That didn’t mean the game didn’t start with some tentative jabs, a period where both sides studied the opposition for openings. The Galaxy fired the first best shot somewhere around the 14th minute, but the Timbers fired the first shot to go in. Evander started getting frisky shortly after LA’s shot – an attitude Portland desperately needed on the night – and mere minutes after firing their first real shot, he played a center-to-touchline-to-center give-and-go with Jonathan Rodriguez, who found a pocket and nodded home a whistle-clean opener.

Portland Timbers 4-4 St. Louis CITY FC: To the Spoilers Go the Spoils

Tough one at the office today...

I can identify five criteria by which one can judge the Portland Timbers' 4-4 home draw versus the stain-stubborn St. Louis CITY FC team that came a-callin’ tonight.

1) A Bad Result
Because the Timbers suck on the road – not St. Louis bad, mind you, but pretty shitty – they need to get the best out of every home game. They did not.

2) A Great Response
Portland went down four times in this game – by two goals at one point, in heartbreaking fashion at another – but they kept punching back, firing a truly heroic number of shots and scoring a glorious late, late equalizer nine minutes past death through a deliciously vicious Evander free kick. They did better than never give up.

3) The Deeper Problem: Why That Was Required
With allowances for the truism that every goal your team scores is brilliant, every one they allow an embarrassment, the Timbers defense let in some dogshit goals tonight, and so many of them. I doubt it’s worth ranking them in terms of incompetence (and yet, what the Hell, from the most incompetent to the least: 1) Araujo’s dumb tackle (2nd goal; gotta watch the full highlights; Eduard Lowen PK); 2) Simon Becher unmarked in the box (1st goal); 3) Cedric Teuchert free and naked as the day he was born in Zone 14 (3rd goal); 4) Nokkvi Thorisson's step-inside assassination), because it’s the variety of failures that hurts. That's like Achilles  having four heels, instead of just the one.

4) The Primacy of the Individual
The Timbers executed a marvelous, fluid movement to score their first goal, aka, the one that made it interesting. A move that started with Santiago Moreno catching a stray pass at the center stripe and ended with a tap-in by Jonathan Rodriguez, but the best parts of it passed through Evander and Felipe Mora, who fed Rodriguez with a brainy, perfectly weighted pass to the back post. I’d call that an outlier, because all the other goals a) looked pretty goddamn scrappy and relied on the kind of spontaneous inspiration and technique – mostly through Evander – that’s tough to replicate. That idea – Portland needing something special from someone to make anything happen – was all over this result.

Portland Timbers 4-1 Nashville SC: Maybe We Can Have Nice Things?!

IYKYK

Just not hat tricks. Hey-OH!

Jonathan Rodriguez’s failure to top the brace he’d built through the middle of the first half with a hat trick turned to slapstick by the end of the game. Fuck it. So long as the Portland Timbers win enough games without them, I can lay down for my final rest with nothing left to check in that particular box.

For those who didn’t watch, the Timbers straight-up ran over Nashville SC tonight with a 4-0 win at Providence Park. If I had to name a defining moment for the night, I’d go with the “HOLY SHIT” huddle Nashville ‘keeper Joe Willis called after Portland’s fourth goal went into the (or his) bottom left corner for the second time.

The only real question to ask about tonight: at what precise moment did the point of analyzing this game leave the building? After the third goal? The fourth? The (holy shit, justified!) red card? (Which is in here somewhere, or better be.) If there’s a story besides the game slipping away from Nashville five three-to-four minutes at a time between the game’s 18th and 35th minutes, I couldn’t name it.

It was fun and all – which was genuinely nice, not to mention fresh – but, no, the only thing to talk about is how hard Nashville fell on their faces. To wit…

Portland scored its first goal on a turnover and by capitalizing on a literal 4-v-2.

Daniel Lovitz/Nashville gambled everything on cutting off Juan David Mosquera’s escape and, failing at that, the Timbers scored their second goal in a 4-v-3 with Eryk Williamson with all of time and space to command from the right.

Portland Timbers 2-0 Vancouver Whitecaps: Is This Progress?

Glad to be back home.

Five wins in the last eight games, suddenly 6th in the West sure as Brooke Shields was Suddenly Susan in a sitcom I neither watched nor fully understood in terms of concept and timing. The Portland Timbers won walking away (also) 2-0 against the Vancouver Whitecaps tonight, thereby keeping their Cascadia Cup Dreams primed for the filling and suddenly looking like they’ve learned how to put one foot in front of the other (hold that thought). Better still, JPants picked up his/the Portland Timbers' 3rd clean sheet of 2024 – which makes one wonder (hold that thought, also) – and, better than all that, the entire game played out comfy as a well-worn pair of PJs.

Hold on…

Is it new format time? Yes, it’s new format time. Also, welcome back to the old gym. Hope it smells like memories! Right, back to the new format…

If I Had to Summarize This Game for Someone
Tonight’s game started as so many have: with the Timbers laboring to play the ball out of the back and ceding both possession and control. Vancouver’s Sebastian Berhalter teed up a few solid chances over the opening 20 minutes or so and that inject a little “what could have been” into this game if, say, Fafa Picault or Alessandro Schopf (probably?) could head the ball fer shit. The Timbers snatched after floor scrapings throughout that period, with the choicest pickings coming from Jonathan Rodriguez poking a couple (feeble) shots toward goal from the back-post.

Then suddenly, some light supernatural meddling met the yips for Vancouver and, three lucky bounces and one cool finish later, Portland went up on a cool-as-you-like finish by Rodriguez. And that goal changed the game, at least in my mind. Twenty-six-plus minutes would pass before Schopf got sent off for his second stupid yellow card (gotta be in here somewhere, surely), but Vancouver was, at most, marginally better before his red card than they were after it. Felipe Mora delivered an insurance goal that made me feel as good about the assist as I did about the goal (another thought to hold), but the ‘Caps had 52+ minutes to rack up some shots and they only managed seven, with just one on goal. Vancouver barely showed up tonight, carrying forward a run of form that has seen them slip down the standings like a water buffalo struggling in quicksand.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Sporting Kansas City: It Ain't What You Do, It's the Fact That You Did It

To any Portland Timbers fans feeling underwhelmed by last night’s 2-1 win over Sporting Kansas City, please see the lament from a handful of SKC fans at right.

Real Quick Game Summary
Neither team did much over the first half, even if, in keeping with the final score/numbers, Portland did a little more. There was feeling up, out and everything in between and the Timbers getting the best traction with long balls to Jonathan Rodriguez. SKC had space to play – and that made them look better at times – but Portland erased that at the start of the second half by pushing their line of engagement into SKC’s half. That rattled out a turnover in a good place that Portland exploited through some next-level play by Evander (love the way he swims through that first challenge) and the kind of subtle cross Portland pays him to deliver. Even if the final result lacked for elegance, SKC equalized by paying the Timbers back in the same currency – i.e., they just got on Portland as they tried to play out of the back – but Portland ultimately got their foot on the ball and found the winner through Evander after playing volleyball between the channels (video below). They had to wait a few for Drew Fischer to bless it – as he should have, because Antony wasn’t active in the play – but both the goal and the win stood up, if with a late, great save from Maxime Crepeau to haul it over the line.

Now, before anyone gets carried away about last night’s defensive performance, know it came against a team that, counting last night's loss, hasn't won in eight games and that has lost its last five. Sporting Kansas City is a bad team. I can’t say how much they lost when Erik Thommy went out, but I’m highly confident it didn’t help. The Timbers had to win this game. And, credit to them, they did. The next one’s coming soon and, gods willing, I’ll squeeze in something on that, but I’m going to close this post with (new feature/concept!):

Columbus Crew SC 2-2 Portland Timbers: I'm Beginning to See the Light, Here it Comes, Woo-Oooh-Oooh

Here it fucking comes....

I don’t believe in moral victories, as a rule, and I’m not going to take that route for this review. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that the Portland Timbers didn’t play a damn good and wonderfully entertaining game tonight. In fact, the fact they punched even with, for all their present faults and fatigue, a consensus-best team in MLS raises Portland’s 2-2 draw at Columbus Crew SC into disappointment territory. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, etc.

Going the other way, consider how disappointed Columbus fans feel tonight and, to float a guess I may or may not confirm the The Massive subreddit tomorrow, how flaming pissed they are at everyone’s favorite ref, Ted “Drunk” Unkel. In a press conference after the Timbers’ frustrating home draw against Los Angeles FC last weekend (who's ready for the encore?), head coach Phil Neville voiced some hope that calls would break his team’s way over the run of the season. I’m not saying that process tilted toward justice tonight, I’m not saying I care, I only know Felipe Mora either had more time on the ball tonight or he got the call when he got knocked down (if by sleight of body, here and there). After that, Unkel called the usual game that only he sees through whatever contacts he’s wearing…like a goddamn random number generator with a pocket full of reds and yellows, I tell you…

Most and best of all the things about tonight’s game, yes, Roman gladiator guy, I was entertained. Both teams rewarded their fans with two top-shelf goals a piece – more on that later – the game had a lively one-team-giveth-the-other-taketh-away tension, and, typing strictly as a homer, the Timbers played their second solid game in a row. It’s not showing in the standings – hello(!), 11th in the West – and I hope to see the Timbers get all three points next week at LAFC with the desperate fervor of a 10-year-old battling against all the odds and even more doubts that the Tooth Fairy still pays a fiver-per-tooth, but I’m closer to believing the Timbers have a competitive team than I’ve been since that little flutter of hope the Timbers had during Miles Joseph’s short, interim reign. Hell, I’m willing to shout that all the way back to 2021.

To their credit, Portland exceeded the broadly conservative approach I laid out in my scouting report. Even better, they granted my wish for more robust defending over an opening 20-25 minutes that saw them go up 1-0 on top of frustrating the bejesus out of the Crew.

Columbus Crew SC Scouting Report: We Have Seen the Enemy and All I Can Say Is...Shit.

Yes, that is Wilfred Nancy.

Full disclosure, I haven’t spent much time on Columbus Crew SC this season. Didn’t see the point. They’ve been getting results…until recently (but they also got arguably the biggest result) and the roster remains…stacked. At any rate, I have done some scouting and here is my report.

Some Basics

Columbus currently sits at fourth in the Eastern Conference (7th overall, fwiw) on 13 points and a 3-1-4 record. They remain stoutly unbeaten at home (3-0-1) and stubborn on the road (0-1-3; also, the loss at Charlotte FC has been dismissed as, in a word, bullshit) and boast one of the deepest and, currently, healthiest top-to-bottom roster in MLS and, in Wilfred Nancy, they have a head coach that gets the neutrals drooling. One can’t really blame the local fans for being content to the point of cockiness…and yet there are some questions.

They’re winless over the past four league games and arguably dropping points when they shouldn’t e.g., at Charlotte (loss), at a badly-hurting Nashville SC (a draw), and, insofar as you buy them, v DC United (draw). If you dig in a little deeper, you see a fall-off from 2023’s killer attacking pace of 1.97 goals/game; with just 10 goals scored in league play all season, they’re puttering around at 1.25 goals/game and, if you hit the link about contentment above, you’ll see creeping concerns that things ain’t the same without Cucho Hernandez. Then again, most signs point to him returning to the lineup after a wee suspension for some kind of tomfoolery.

The Lineup(s)

Unless I’m mistaken, Nancy has yet to deviate from a 3-4-2-1 formation, even when he rotates the squad dizzy as he did last week at Real Salt Lake. Were I a betting man – which I’m not, on the grounds that me putting money on anything means the opposite will happen – I’d expect Columbus to play the same lineup they did for their March 10 game against Chicago.

New York City FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Notes on a Palm Springs Scuffle

The Timbers ran the gauntlet today. And survived.

Just some quick notes on the Portland Timbers 1-1 draw versus New York City FC to pass on. It’s only preseason and there’s still the regular season slog to get through after all.

First, I have no actual complaints. The performance walked a line closer to fine than good, but it cast some glances in a brighter direction and left me with nothing more than quibbles to enter into meeting minutes. The Timbers gave NYC a hand on the ball (hey-oh!), and they got broken down all the way 10-15 minutes later (left two guys wide open at the back post, Santiago Rodriguez and Malachi Jones), but unless I missed something else in the first ten minutes of the second half (shower ran long), that’s pretty much everything from Les Pigeons.

The Timbers, meanwhile, regrouped nicely after going down a goal. Better, they calmed down some problems before they turned into issues (see 1b) below). After a first half where they could only find forward momentum in wide areas and struggled a touch with getting started out of the back, Portland came out settled for the second half and got to where they could throw some weight around. When their goal came – roughly 47 minutes after NYCFC’s opener – it was more opportunistic than constructed, but, again, preseason. Stuff like that only rises to an issue if it persists...and isn’t that the worry? Still, glad Santiago Moreno made the most of his defender’s slip and god bless the NYC defense for losing Felipe Mora at the back post. Seeing the Timbers send a little more menace the opposing goal would have felt better, but it is what it is, which is one point.

That takes care of the overview. Now, to tick through some details…

1) Midfield, Arrangement

So, that was probably something like a 4-2-3-1, right? Maybe a 3-4-2-1? What I picked up (generally) was Zac McGraw, Kamal and Eric Miller holding down defense, Jaden Jones-Riley in a fairly back-to-front role on the right, Eryk Williamson and Diego Chara sitting deeper in midfield, with Moreno and Antony on either side of Evander a little ahead of them, and all that with Mora up top? Even if they lined up a little different, I didn’t mind it. I like Moreno more advanced, generally, and Antony looked more comfortable to me than he did last season. Seeing the latter did the heart good because, call me crazy, but I’d like to see the Timbers up the fear factor in opposing defenses.

Portland Timbers 2023 Post-Mortem, aka, I Was Strolling Through the Roster One Day...

Perhaps the greatest team player.

With this post, I intend to put the Portland Timbers’ whimper of a 2023 season to bed. My gods, where to begin…

For starters, I could dismiss the desperate optimism that percolated into the final preview post of the regular season: no matter what I and gods know how many others thought or hoped, 2023 was a hopeless, wet turd. Even had the Timbers backed into the playoffs, it wouldn’t have given any of us, be it fan, player, coach, or the guy that washes team’s laundry, anything more than the chance to say, “well, at least we had that.” If some parallel timeline exists where the Timbers lifted MLS Cup at the end of a mind-bending playoff run, many, many threads separate that loin-stirring paradise timeline from...well, this. Even if they started healthy and stayed that way all season, I’d put the Timbers’ meaningful chances of winning any trophy on the same level as a tiny snowball’s chance of rolling through a vast, flaming Hell without sweating off even one drop.

Changes are coming, of course. I believe we’ve all the seen reports that Portland will name the new head coach sometime in the next week and, for what it’s worth, I’m weirdly excited about this and completely willing to give whoever they hire a full, 17-game grace period, i.e., half of what I expect next season will be (surely, they can’t push that higher). That’s less to say I can't be disappointed by the announcement, than I can’t conceptualize the universe where they name someone so what-the-fuck (think Lincoln High’s soccer coach, and by slipping him a greasy $100) that I won’t give the new coach time to prove himself or herself. (I don’t believe any women have been named, but a woman wouldn’t count as a what-the-fuck hire for me.)

I don’t think I’ve made any secret of my belief that the general malaise and inadequacy starts with the roster – one that, to my mind, falls short individually, collectively, perhaps even interpersonally. No matter how much sense various snippets of reddit chatter make to me, I’ll leave that last one alone, and on the grounds that I don’t know how many hands it passed through before I read it, but my money’s on fourth-hand, once removed at best.

Decision Day Preview: Bring All Your Best Marbles, 'Cause This One's For All of 'Em

Don't ask me how I know.

I just posted a scouting report for the Portland Timbers’ Decision Day opponent, Houston Dynamo FC, over on reddit. To translate the notes on Houston into marching order for the Timbers, I’d go with the Timbers need to play their cleanest possible game. To tighten up the phrasing, put a fork in Portland if they allow two goals, I’d put better than even money on Houston scoring one goal, but the main thing is to expect a game tighter than a wombat’s keister. Something else to expect, at least based on what I saw over the two games noted in the scouting report: Portland moving the ball pretty well only to see it all hit an elastic, yet firm wall about 25 yards from Houston’s goal.

To distill that even further, I harbor…sincerely real hopes of a Timbers win on Saturday – not like your uncle marrying someone really cool, like Bea Arthur when she was still with us, but something actually plausible – but I am, without so much as a second thought, bracing for a draw and an evening of clocking other results almost as much as I watch the game.

So, the usual yes, no, maybe, only without the net.

With all of those options, firmly on the table, I wanted to chuck my thoughts on what each would mean for Portland’s chances. Well, except for a win. Which would solve all the problems, heal all the woes.

Hold on. Just a quick aside: I get that disconcertingly large portions of the season blew chunks on a sucked raw egg, but the Timbers climbed out of the muck here and there. Why, for just over a month over April and May, they got their heads up with a road win over expansion darlings St. Louis CITY FC and home wins over Cascadia revivals, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps, on both sides of that. I don’t remember believing at that point, but like to think I did. And what about that home win over Columbus Crew SC, the one in mid-July right before the crushing loss to Houston, aka, Gio Savarese’s last, short straw? Sure, it took the Miles Joseph Miracle (coming to you on the Hallmark Channel) to lift the Timbers into playoff contention, but even those would have fallen short – also, hold that thought – without those earlier, seemingly meaningless Ws.

Los Angeles Galaxy 3-3 Portland Timbers: Bringing Home the Scraps

Not as fresh as you'd like, but still edible.

They could have curled up and passed out, but the Portland Timbers rallied on both the field and the scoreboard to tie the Los Angeles Galaxy 3-3 down in Carson last night. That said, I doubt any Timbers fan thought, “job well done,” on hearing the final whistle.

It has been a minute since I could drink in a full 90 (the win over Los Angeles FC back on September 9), so it’s possible I missed some disjointed, hesitant performances, but those words – disjointed and hesitant – paint the right picture. To their credit, the Timbers did put together the match’s first coherent moment – Felipe Mora chest-trapping a cross and pinging it into the yawning gap between LA’s Raheem Edwards and their centerbacks for Dairon Asprilla to run into; an open cutback found Santiago Moreno the doorstep for the game’s first goal (neat-o!) – but the Galaxy would equalize on a standing(!) header by Eric Zavaleta and settle into their game from there until...quite a ways into the game. They had the ball zipping to and fro by the 30th minute. Portland, not so much.

Missing a couple regulars likely played a role – e.g., Evander was out with an ankle(?) knock and neither Diego Chara nor his appendix could start – so maybe call the incoherence a testament to Evander’s growing influence on the team. Losing Cristhian Paredes at the mid-30s hardly helped (also, pulling for the guy to recover in time for his turn in the international spotlight), but the sort of global awkwardness had taken hold long before then. The usual sins followed from a team playing uptight – stray passes, disconnected movement, etc. – but those deficits can be redeemed (hallelujah!) when the team gives the proverbial 110%. Instead, the game’s long middle passage saw the Galaxy beat Portland to every 50/50 and the Timbers regularly at least one step behind.

And yet Portland still took the lead in the 38th minute when a...reasonably-worked, set-of-their-flaming-trousers move up the middle ended with a last-gasp cross bouncing off Zavaleta’s chest and into LA’s goal. Put a pin this moment because it pretty much defined both game and result.

Seattle Sounders 2-2 Portland Timbers: We'll Always Have the Laugh

[DRAMATIC MUSIC!]

I’m going to start this post with two observations brought to mind by too much time on social media and too many years of staring at some version of the same thing one week after another.

Fans should appreciate perfection when they see it, as opposed to expecting it from any player. Because that’s just the world/humanity works, we’re none of us, etc. This mind-set is one of several reasons why I can’t coach. (“Hey, sometimes you just fuck up. No biggie. Love you, man.”)

Once (most) people make up their mind on a given player, he/she is either the shit or total shit. Once they think he/she is bad, all they see are the mistakes and once they think he/she is good, it’s nothing but the good stuff. It’s damn closer to binary. Swear to God.

As for the game, the high-comedic 2-2 draw between the Seattle Sounders and the Portland Timbers up in the frosty climes of the Puget Sound, I have more questions than I have answers, by which I mean I have only one real answer: I’d say about 75% of the success the Sounders had over the first half followed from the way they nipped at Portland’s collective heels over 2/3 of the field. Once they lost that, courtesy of a second yellow to Seattle’s Leo Chu, all you had left was two teams a year or two removed from their best days fighting over scraps. Hyenas versus vultures, basically.

To acknowledge something, Seattle got screwed hard by that sending off. Chu picked up his first yellow for one of the most randomly puritanical rules of the modern game – e.g., the shirtless goal celebration (WHY IS THIS A THING?) – and his second for, I shit you not, getting the worst of running headlong into Portland’s Zac McGraw. It takes so, so very much for me to agree that a referee’s decision decided a game, but Jon Freemon (a referee I do not know) cut off Seattle’s clearest path to success with an excessively legalistic reading of the rules and....just a bad call.

Don't get me wrong: knowing how pissy and bewildered Seattle fans are this morning is just the best. And that is what will have to pass for satisfaction on a night when the Timbers more or less stalled in their attempt to make the 2023 playoffs. Now, some more detail...