A Statement on Merritt's Statement

Dick!

“Yates’ investigation found that Paulson knew of other alleged, non-sexual abuses as early as 2014, but did not act on the information. It also found that in a conversation with the Western New York Flash — after Riley and the Thorns parted ways — that Wilkinson blamed Shim for ‘putting Riley in a bad position’ and said that he would ‘hire (him) in a heartbeat.’ Riley was soon hired by the Flash, which later relocated and became the North Carolina Courage.”

“’In 2014, after Riley’s first season as head coach of the Thorns, the NWSL issued an anonymous player survey in which players identified Riley as “verbally abusive,” “sexis(t),” “destructive” and stated he “s--- on (the) players every day,”’ U.S. Soccer’s report reads. ‘The survey results were shared with NWSL Executive Director Cheryl Bailey, USSF President Sunil Gulati and (CEO and secretary general) (Dan) Flynn, but no one provided them to the team and no action was taken.’”

And that’s without getting into darker findings about the Portland Timbers/Thorns front office impeding the investigation, revelations that Timbers/Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson “not only enabled, but also vouched for [former Thorns head coach Paul] Riley,” a man who, even they now agree, used his position to manipulate and do all the abuses (sexual, emotional, professional, probably some others) during his time with the team. And, as the phrase goes, they knew.

Just over(?) 24 hours passed (does it matter?) before Paulson released a statement. He attempted contrition – he may even believe it – but the substance of the response amounted to an apology that, in context, reeks of insincerity. Moreover, taking the token step of removing himself and the other executives under suspicion (Wilkinson and Mike Golub) from all “all Thorns-related decision making” raises more questions than it answers – e.g., if they didn’t take a pay-cut and now have less day-to-day responsibility, how is that not like out-of-school suspension for a high school kid who doesn’t give a fuck?

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers: A Disturbing Glimpse into the Future (and Present)?

Pleasant? God, no. Accurate. Umm....

Bad game, bad result, bad entertainment and, most damning of all, the Portland Timbers played its third “low-energy game” in a row. The only thing saving Portland from a richly-deserved drop to sixth place is the rolling shit-show churning below them. And, so, with a hearty thanks to Real Salt Lake, Minnesota United FC, and, so far, the Los Angeles Galaxy, let’s stare at this turd only for as long as it takes to confirm its shape and composition (don’t worry; won’t use that for the image), and move on.

As the numbers show, that sucked. Aside from losing 2-0 to a half-awake Colorado Rapids team, Portland lost every statistical category besides possession, total passes and passing accuracy - and who gives a shit about those? - and the standard, sharper markers of persistent struggle and failure, clearances, fouls, yellow cards. The Timbers looked good for a draw, at best, up to the point where Colorado scored, but it was a slow bleed to nowhere but another Rapids goal from there…and it’s worth asking, did any Timbers defender have the foggiest fucking idea where any running Rapid was on Colorado’s insurance goal?

There’s nothing to analyze from that loss, honestly, no positives, no promising leads, no what ifs. Reading the cold, hard math, the Timbers will either get the six points of nine that they should get from their final three games (v San Jose, at RSL, v Austin), or they won’t - and let the flood wash over them if they fail.

I don’t have a lot of notes on this one, but, here goes.

The End of an Era…and All That Means
I’ve worried about how Diego Valeri’s career would end earlier than I should have - which is to say, I was wrong and he had a great 2020 - but I’ll be damned if tonight didn’t confirm that the end is nigh, if not already here. One strong shot off a practice-pitch corner aside, I wouldn’t have even known Valeri was on the field tonight. And yet he was, and for 76 minutes.

MLS Off-Season Weekly (01.05.2020): On Rebuilds & Kicking the Tires on the New Chara

HAPPY AND CONTENT.

Right, time to slide back into the routine. (Who knows? Maybe it’ll help distract me from all the fucking idiots lighting the world on fire.) Welcome to the first MLS Weekly of 2020…by which time humanity should have become less stupid, not more…sorry, the routine, the routine. Deep breath…now, BIG SMILE!

This post includes with updates on the state of the two teams I follow – FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers – and then I’ll wrap up with some odds and ends. I’d intended to close with an unlikely attempt at rekindling the dying embers of my interest in the U.S. Men’s National Team, but then realized I don’t have anything more to say than, I’ll watch friendly against Costa Rica at the end of January camp and see what happens. Moving on to regularly scheduled programming…

FC Cincinnati
Have done nothing of interest since signing that Swedish defender, and that wasn’t all that interesting. More, please.

Portland Timbers: Faith in the People and the Process
With Timbers fans past the “Two Charas” buzz, it feels like a good time to soberly (or not) reflect on the sum of the decision to add Yimmi Chara to the roster. To start by sharing something nifty I found only yesterday, if you google “Yimmi Chara,” a list of his stats will appear on the right side of the screen and, if you hit “View All,” you can to tick through the numbers Yimmi put up in each of his past seasons. You’ll see numbers in there that would get Portland closer to the Promised Land – e.g., that 11 goal, 3 assist season with Junior F.C. in 2017, or maybe that 11 goal season with Deportes Tolima back in ’14, or even the seven assist output in 2018 – and those speak to something the Timbers need – e.g., second-banana level on-field production behind first bananas like Diego Valeri and Sebastian Blanco.

Where I’ve seen people squirm, however, comes with questions about the length and cost of Yimmi’s contract. Stumptown Footy’s(?) Chris Rifer put out a pair of tweets that sum up the argument nicely:

The Space In-Between: Catching up on MLS, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati

Perfection is perfection, Mike Brady.

Major League Soccer’s offseason has lasted long enough for me. With an eye to keeping limber and toned, I’ll be tracking the league the same way I always do: once a week and from somewhere between a bird’s eye view and an airplane flight path. I will drill down on Thing 1 (Portland Timbers) and Thing 2 (FC Cincinnati) when there’s something to talk about with either – more on that below – but I’ll never see enough about any of the other teams to go granular on them. Fair warning.

Whether this starts a tradition or steps off from the wrong foot, I’m going to talk about MLS as a whole first – not least because the main point there applies to every team in MLS, including Thing 1 and Thing 2. (No, I’ll stop that right now…and has anyone ever done a version of that using penises for the “things”?)

When I read through (most of) Matt Doyle’s (aka, The Armchair Analyst’s) 2018 Global Review (which takes some time), two loose concepts kept surfacing: first, and most important, it gets a little easier every season for teams to lose touch with the pack in MLS, never mind the leaders; think your pudgier cyclists during the Tour de France. For those who journey through Doyle’s Labyrinth, you won’t read a naked and proud positive about any team until you get to the Number 18 spot (of 23 MLS teams), where he notes that Mauro Manotas balled out for the Houston Dynamo in 2018, scoring 25 goals across all competitions. The teams below Houston’s playoff-dodging squad are 2018’s pudgy cyclists – e.g., your San Jose Earthquakes, Orlando City SCs, the Colorado Rapids, the Chicago Fire, Toronto FC – the squads who put one foot in front of the other here and there last season, but never enough to really be part of the playoff conversation. Doyle used a really clean call-response to sum up Orlando’s season, but the same applied to them all (and Houston, honestly, and probably Minnesota United FC too):

“DISAPPOINTMENT: The whole season, really.”

Still, one team underlines the point about falling behind better than the rest: San Jose. They ended 2018 the worst team in MLS, none of their signings returned on investment, the head coach, Mikael Stahre, never really settled in and got yanked before the end of the season (having built no confidence), and Chris Wondolowski aged another year. Shit was bleak, basically, even if admirably scrappy. San Jose also won the Supporters’ Shield in 2012 with a sound defense and a set of brawlers for forwards. The league moved on, the ‘Quakes fell behind, and, despite some effort (but….the world’s longest outdoor bar?!), they haven’t yet figured out how to catch up. Every team in MLS: This could be you. You don’t want this to be you, so don’t let it be you.

Portland's Drunk-Strewn Path to the After Party: On Faith and Its Opposites

Cherished. Pointless.

I posted a piece a couple nights ago about how Darlington Nagbe presents as the most likely savior for this manic-depressive (if medication-modulated) 2015 season (reference to meds acknowledges that the highs haven't been that high, nor the lows that low – more later). The argument for this is messy and, as it turns out, large. Real, real large. To put that another way, nothing that comes below will clear the tangles cited in the title.

Nagbe played a good game this past Saturday. The dead-end dribbles made their usual cameo, but Nagbe put a pair of thoroughly respectable shots on goal; that's on top of playing in Lucas Melano for the Portland Timbers' best attacking sequence on the night, a good shift for anyone. And yet, as all Timbers fans know, none of those three efforts, or any of the others, went in.  As noted in that same post, this is the sum of Portland's season. With Nagbe, specifically, impressive moments, even relevant statistics, don't matter against the broadly well-justified, oft-repeated knock on Nagbe: what good is all that game-changing talent if it fails to actually change the game?

I've carried image at right (and above) in my mind for about a month. I have a collector friend or two, the kind of guys who buy their favorite toys twice, one to play with and the other to save in pristine, packaged condition for a presumed later payoff. The investment piece pans out sometimes, but, other times, it ends with nothing but a grown man carting around kid's toys embarrassingly deep into adulthood. Even with his reputation taking hits (like this one!), Portland still possesses one of the most coveted toys in all Major League Soccer. Nagbe had one visibly great season (see 2013), one that had Timbers fans dreaming/drooling about future seasons. What we got instead were the past two seasons, which shifted the whole goddamn mess back to potential. It's as if some shady collector stuffed our Darlington back in the original packaging and shoved him back on the shelf for everyone to admire for...I dunno. By which I mean, I just don't know. What I do know is that I was always the kind of kid who ripped that toy straight out of the packaging because, honestly, the fuck's the point of a toy if you don’t play with it?

That same image was to top one of the most vicious hit-pieces to ever percolate up from the fetid sink of doubt and worry that bubbles in the depths of my body. The plan was to tick through each position on the Timbers line up and list the players from around the league – that is, just within MLS – that I rate higher than each player on Portland's roster. Look, I love these players and absolutely want them to succeed, but only two struck me as hard to shift in the end – Diego Chara and Nat Borchers. So, yeah, ugly post borne of ugly thoughts and, yep, Nagbe inspired it. And yet I can still call him Portland's likeliest savior. When it comes to questions of faith and certainty, Hamlet has nothing on me...

Lucas Melano, and Why He's Wrong for MLS and the Timbers

Yes, Number 175. No, just Number 175.

Thought I'd try something different today; I mean as opposed to retching out every last thought I have on some aspect of the Portland Timbers' strengths, weaknesses, limitations, or awful goddamn haircuts (hey, at least we're better than the New England Revolution – e.g. Major League Soccer's #1 coiffurial shit-show), until I'm on the floor dry-heaving, I thought I'd try a genuinely single-subject(-ish) observation. I have dreams of going brief and more frequent, but that requires listening to the little boy who lives in my mouth (Randall*) when he tells me that, yes, I really can leave out that sentence I just fell in love with, or that paragraph that, for whatever reason, I that I think is the skeleton key that unlocks the Rosetta Stone (NOTE: not how that happened at all).

(*There's Judy, too, obviously. I'm just not sure who she is yet, or where she lives.)

At any rate, exploring a single topic today – e.g., how signing a player Lucas Melano doesn't make sense under the MLS salary model.

While this has been kicking around my head for a week or so, I'd like to begin by giving credit to this week’s Portland Timbros' podcast for refining the argument. The relevant part came with the discussion of how the presence designated player shapes, or even outright warps, the game-day roster. That part of the argument only hits my point on Melano sideways, but, y'know, credit where it's due.

I'd also like to make clear that nothing predictive, condemnatory (well, I'll be, that is a word) on Melano as a player informs this position. One of the first unwritten rules of MLS is that All Players Will Require Time to Adjust to MLS, for one, but there's the fact that he's young to boot (and eager and fine, like a two-year-old thoroughbred rattling the gates at the Breeders' Cup). I never expected greatness from Melano from the first touch (though, to be clear, I do appreciate the eagerness).

To disclose my honest opinion, yeah, in my book, Melano has underwhelmed. Kid looks choked up out there, uptight; he plays the game like he's got to take a shit for the full 90. Even so, I think he'll come good fairly early in 2016. This assumes he comes good at all. He better come good, goddammit; in MLS terms, $5 million is pre-market-bust-level leverage. And, yet, it's not just the money. I'm thrilled to see the Timbers spend big (and let the record show that I just stifled a metaphor). If not that, then what?