Portland Timbers 2-1 Los Angeles FC & MLS Week 7: re Asking the Right Questions

MLS Week 7 felt like a good week for defenses to let a player run from the midfield stripe to goal. And that’s watching just one game over half of them.

As hinted at on Bluesky (not sure how many people who find this site are on there, but it feels like most), I’ve tweaked the formula for these posts…yet again, so we’ll see where this goes. Per the Next Five-Year Plan, there will be:

1) a post about the Portland Timbers game, plus the round-up of MLS action for the relevant week, six games will be covered, if more contextually than specifically; and

2) a preview post for the Timbers opponent for the MLS Match Day to come.

Social obligations have put this post a couple hours further behind deadline, so I’m cutting off the preamble there, whatever doesn’t make sense shall become apparent, the first shall be last, the meek will get the best seats at the opera and dolphins shall walk the Earth, moving on to this week’s main event, which had a sweet, sweet chaser…

Portland Timbers 2-1 Los Angeles FC
What Passes for a Match Report
Regular readers of my preview posts know that the real payoff is all the shit I get wrong. After making a firm, reasonably empirical case that LAFC wouldn’t rotate their roster much, they rolled in with most of their regular starters except Denis Bouanga and Nkoski Tafari resting on the bench, it looks like Son Heung-min didn’t even travel, and so on. That set this up as Portland versus LAFC’s Youth Academy, bench players and the two aforementioned starters, which kicked the game off with an opportunity for the fully-loaded Timbers and plausible deniability for LAFC.

Houston Dynamo FC 3-2 Portland Timbers & MLS Week 4 in Review: Of Daggers and DPs

Don't google images of Underoos 

Major League Soccer’s Week 4 handed me a tidy little theme and for that I am thankful. That could be me trying to squeeze a big idea into the Underoos I wore as a wee man, but I’m guessing it will resonate in both directions and in a tone that every MLS fanbase will hear and appreciate it. Unbelievably, that’s it for the preamble. Maybe I should start saying yes to every home improvement project, if only to spare everyone who finds this site from reading an Adrien Brody speech every time they click through to this site. (Anyone else watch The Oscars tonight? If so, please leave the good speeches in the comments; my wife and I yell over the entire show.)

Tuning in, now, to regular programming…

Results That Surprised Me (yeah, I have links for all of these; see below)
Atlanta United FC 3-1 Philadelphia Union (sunny no longer)
Chicago Fire FC 1-2 DC United (I rate DC highly as I.H.O.P. coffee)
FC Dallas 3-3 San Diego FC (weeeeeee!!)
New England Revolution 6-1 FC Cincinnati (Cincy leaping, not stepping, backward?)
Vancouver Whitecaps 6-0 Minnesota United FC (see, goal differential, Minnesota, uncharted)

I call that a good weekend, all in all, at least for anyone who tunes in for spills, chills, thrills and the odd face-plant. Even if the wild start to 2026 doesn’t continue, I doubt you could find even one MLS fan who would have predicted that the bottom three in the East for any week in the MLS 2026 regular season would include (bottom to “top”) Philadelphia, Columbus, and Orlando. The West has at least one surprise – who saw Minnesota looking up at 12 teams at any point this season? – but seeing the teams on either side of Missouri (e.g., SKC and St. Louis) tracks. There is one more team down there in sewers of the West, paddling amid the refuse, one I expected to see and feared to behold at once. Let’s turn to how they arrive at such a lowly station. Our story begins with a man named Philip...

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers & a Mini-Parade of Disasters from MLS Week 2

Mistakes were made, weight was lost. Or gained.

Welcome to the Week 2 wrap, both for Major League Soccer as a whole and my Portland Timbers! The first shall be firste (though they were seconde above), but I want to start this post with some programming notes that hit like revelations. (Not really, but hype is the coin of the realm in the 21st century.)

Between my wife’s unfortunate illness (the very same one that derailed the “Level Set” series) and the resultant too much time on my hands, this week’s review got a little out of hand. That’s to say, I consumed more soccer than I either want to digest or (ewww) send back up the other way. That same experience led me to the research concept for MLS Week 3 and, ideally for every week going forward:

Watching the full 90 of every Portland Timbers game, plus the full 90 (or 60 minutes, at a minimum) of the team that Portland plays the following weekend, plus 45 minutes each of two more games – both with at least one Eastern Conference team, tentatively – then a maximum (get it together, man!) of four…or five of the 10+-minute highlight reels that Apple TV appears to have embraced for the 2026 season. [Ed. - It will be just four; gotta tighten this shit up.] If that doesn’t get my eyes on enough teams to stay current with Major League Soccer week in and out…well, I can’t say I give a shit, because that feels ample to me. That will leave some blind-spots, of course, particularly around teams that bore me, but fuck it.

With that, let’s get to this week’s notes, comments, and appreciations. To kick things off, enjoy this...

Stupid Thought for the Week
I appreciate that the offside rule must be called by the letter of the law instead of its spirit, but I will never stop resenting that reality. Seeing an attacking player get called offside for having the tip of his knee ahead of the last defender’s will never strike me as anything but a violation of the spirit of fair play, but if there’s a slipper slope in soccer officiating, this is it.

Moving on to the meat…

Portland Timbers 3-2 Columbus Crew, Plus MLS Week 1 Notes/Theories/Bullshit

No, seriously. Buffets are almost always bad.

I’d call that a decent opening weekend. This post looks to recap portions of that, but it also doubles as a first step in to a different, still unsettled approach to digesting a reasonable amount of the never-ending buffet that the average Major League Soccer matchday has become in the 30-team era.

Still working on the model for that, but to get the main programming note out of the way, I noticed that the recaps offered through Apple TV all appear to have come in at around 10 minutes so far. Assuming that holds, MLS Wrap Up is dead to me. Some non-trivial number of fans seemed turned off by MLS’s in-house talent – aka, Sacha Kljestan, Dax McCarty, Bradley Wright-Phillips, Kaylyn Kyle and (for me, the insufferable) Kevin Egan – which, here, means they actively hated them, so it looks like they’ve turned that into a loose narrative told over a bundle of short highlight clips. Sure, the in-house talent said some stupid shit, and I may be alone in missing the banter, but all those people still said something amidst the blah-blah-blah and you simply lose all of that in a two-minute clip of disconnected highlights.

Ten minutes, on the other hand, gives a fella something to work with. For as long as (the notoriously cheap and unreliable) Apple TV keeps that up, the plan going forward will be to: 1) watch and report on my Portland Timbers every week and whomever they played; 2) watch 45 minutes of three other games, one more involving a Western Conference team and two involving at least one Eastern Conference team, plus 3) tentatively going with five 10-minute recaps for the other games that interest me…

…while it would be a little harsh to say the rest of the games can gently fuck off, I’m also not not saying that. With that, lets get to this week’s results starting with a section I intend to use as framing:

Level Set 9, Houston Dynamo FC: Slow and Steady Wins the Race, at Least Until It Loses It

Add "sexy" to all your searches.

What follows is a brief history of Houston Dynamo FC, 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
Houston Dynamo FC, who came in as the Houston Dynamo, weren’t MLS’s first second-wave expansion team (i.e., the ones that came after the 2001 contraction); calling them one doesn’t quite tally either because and they never had to go through the proper expansion team exercise of building from nothing. Moreover, they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose. The San Jose Earthquakes franchise had caught fire in the years before their ownership group yanked out their roots and moved them to the sweatiest bit of Texas. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history – e.g., Dwayne De Rosario, Brian Ching, Eddie Robinson, Pat Onstad, a human assist machine they didn't even know they had named Brad Davis, etc. etc. Between s ready-made roster and employing Dominic Kinnear, one of the best head coaches of the 2000s, they had the horses to kick off franchise history with back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. Minor stumbles aside, the Dynamo wouldn’t slip far out of contending over their first seven or eight seasons in the league. That’s a bit of trip, honestly, when you review the rosters that battled to losses in the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cups (just…how did that team get there in an 18-/19-team MLS?), but it also shows how far a good foundation (and a succession of stingy defenses) can carry a team. My personal highlights from the Dynamo’s glory years included the fingernail-rending battles they played in against Mexico’s CF Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup/League over the 2008 and 2009 seasons, games that marked the first occasion I genuinely believed MLS teams would eventually compete with Liga MX’s best. Sadly, their best days dried up and, aside from the odd hurrah here (U.S. Open Cup winners in 2018!), and the strong run outta nowhere there (2017 playoff semifinalists), Houston idled through the late 2010s and into the early 2020s, while the rest of MLS sprinted ahead. The question of whether they can get back up again remains open. For all the good decisions they made going into 2023 – due to the way he fits the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, pulling Ben Olsen, a good fit for the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, out of early retirement made all kinds of sense and adding Mexican legend, Hector Herrera, gave them someone to build around, if only for a few seasons – Houston still hasn’t found the attacking ace they need to make all that thuddingly responsible build-up play payoff. Closer than they have been, in other words, but still a player or two short of dangerous. Paging MLS [#.0]’s version of Ching or DeRo…

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.

Getting Reacquainted with Houston Dynamo FC, MLS's Stubborn Workhorses

It got 'em there. Four times, in fact.

Thumbnail History
Houston Dynamo FC, then just the Houston Dynamo, weren’t MLS’s first second-wave expansion team (i.e., the ones that came after the 2001 contraction); calling them one doesn’t quite tally either because and they never had to go through the proper expansion team exercise of building from nothing. Moreover, they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose.

As noted in the previous chapter in this series, the San Jose Earthquakes franchise had caught fire in the years before their ownership group yanked out their roots and moved them to sweaty Texas. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history – e.g., Dwayne DeRosario, Brian Ching, Eddie Robinson, Pat Onstad, (my man) Brad Davis, etc. etc. Between that ready-made roster and employing Dominic Kinnear, one of the best head coaches of the 2000s, they had the horses to kick off franchise history with back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. Some minor stumbles aside, the Dynamo wouldn’t slip far out of contending over their first seven or eight seasons in the league. That’s a bit of trip, honestly, when you review the rosters that battled to losses in the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cups (just…how did that team get there in an 18-/19-team MLS?), but it also shows how far a good foundation (and a succession of stingy defenses) can carry a team. My personal highlights from the Dynamo’s glory years included the fingernail-rending battles they played in against Mexico’s CF Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup/League over the 2008 and 2009 seasons; those games marked the first occasion I genuinely believed MLS teams would eventually compete with Liga MX’s best, a hard goddamn sell in those days. Still, their best days dried up and, aside from the odd hurrah here (U.S. Open Cup winners in 2018!), and the strong run outta nowhere there (2017 playoff semifinalists), Houston idled through the late 2010s and early 2020s while the rest of MLS sprinted ahead. A jarring fall, given their history, and flashes of recovery notwithstanding, the question of whether they can get back up again remains open. For all the good decisions they made going into 2023 – due to the way he fits the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, pulling Ben Olsen out of early retirement made all kinds of sense and Mexican legend, Hector Herrera, gave them someone to build around, if only for (literally) two seasons – Houston still hasn’t found the attacking ace they need to make all that thuddingly responsible build-up play payoff. Closer than they have been, in other words, but still a player or two short of dangerous. Paging MLS [#.0]’s version of Ching or DeRo…

Total Joy Points: 18

MLS Round-Up: A Saucy Reset

This one’s going to be a blunt instrument a series of statements, a fair amount of it without showing most of my math. Suffice to say I had wee epiphany about why I bang on into the wee, foggy hours...

With the end of the season on the horizon, I wanted to post a read on the state of play since the…let’s call it gently(?) deceptive Leagues Cup wrapped up. Some of this follows from a personal failure to fully appreciate just how close we’ve come to the regular season – eight games left on the outside, and that’s only for four teams (Columbus, New England, LAFC, and Vancouver). It’s just six (nine teams, I think) to seven (16 teams?) for everyone else, which means shit got real two to three games ago depending.

Below, I lump all 29 teams into the following five categories, defined briefly below to make sure you catch my drift:

Contenders
The teams that look like they have a reasonable shot at reaching MLS Cup, whether by form (East) or conference (still East, but mostly West; more below).

Playoff Team, Dark Horses
The teams that, if they fix this issue or that one, have some hope of knocking off one of the contenders and reaching MLS Cup. That said, the relevant issue makes it pretty damn unlikely they will not. [NOTE: The relevant issue is not brought up much, or at all, below. Feel free to check out!]

Playoff Team, Plausible +1
Teams with a respectable chance, maybe even a decent one, of winning a game in the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, brought to you by Audi (probably?), but I wouldn't expect much and/or shit from there.

Bubble Teams
Teams that, regardless of their present merit and future upsides, still has real shit to do if they want to reach the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, brought to be Hello Fresh!

The Dead
Teams that I feel confident will fall short of the embarrassingly low bar that MLS has set for reaching the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, brought to you Les Schwab Tires.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Seattle Sounders: (Complicated) Glory! + League-Wide Shit!

Oh, I'm just getting warmed up....

I was out of town for the Portland Timbers checks-all-the-boxes 1-0 win over a (punch-drunk) visiting Seattle Sounders team, but tracked the game from afar on the socials (i.e., reddit and Bluesky). People bitching about the broadcast team (Taylor Twellman and Jake Zivin, I think) popped up here and there and…I just don’t get how anyone can’t screen out the chatter, never mind get caught up in the relative amount of praise they heap on one team or the other. In my experience, color commentary follows the “broken clock” rule, with some hacks hitting the mark more often the others.

Why start there? Perhaps because some thoughts and arguments floated below may fall short of expectations for proper fandom. Let that come as it does, I’m squeezed a lot into this one post. Because it has surely been kicked around both hard and long enough, I won’t burn too many words on last Saturday’s game – which, to be 100% clear, was pretty damn awesome and nifty…it just needs an asterisk, maybe two.

The (Righteous!) Big Picture
Apart from giving up what (giving the Timbers’ history) felt like two games worth of corner kicks in the first half alone, I don’t recall a time when Seattle looked to have the upper hand last Saturday. Even if Portland’s chances weren’t all gilt-edged, the thought process behind them shone through; half the time, they failed due to some combination of a runner being half a step ahead or behind or the angle on the pass 10-degrees off. With key starters like Felipe Mora and Jonathan Rodriguez absent courtesy of varying amounts of bullshit (now half-corrected!), that shouldn’t surprise anyone. With the chance creation that little bit off, the happy deflection that transfigured Juan David Mosquera’s goal into a thing of beauty felt right at home. As for the play that led to it, what was that but vintage Timbers soccer?

The brighter notes played on the defensive side of the ball, and mostly through Timbers defenders throwing themselves in front of the best chances Seattle created. Dario Zuparic stood out there, with his block on Seattle’s not-yet budding star Pedro de la Vega as a stand-out moment (if it's not in here somewhere...crime). Kamal Miller got caught behind the ball now and again, and both fullbacks got burned 1-v-1 more often than any Timbers fan wants to see (Mosquera, in particular), but all concerned recovered well enough and generally played for one another. Now, about all that…

Portland Timbers 2-2 Houston Dynamo FC: A Word Search

At least they got a poem out of theirs...

The Portland Timbers…what is the verb here? Held on? Stumbled? Rallied? What verb best describes what the Timbers did or failed to do last night in their 2-2 draw against Houston Dynamo FC?

Portland crafted two gilded chances to take all three points late – and crafted matters here because neither Evander’s looping shot from range nor Nathan Fogaca’s second glorious header of the night came easy (relive the agony at the end of the full highlights) – but Houston also had a good goal rightly called back for offside just four or five minutes earlier. Kamal Miller even had a second bite after Fogaca’s header. All that after the 80th minute. Chances abounded at the end, but none became the goal to decide it.

Happily (because I hate cliches), this was no tale of two halves. The game pitted Houston’s steady, if imperfect game-plan against Portland’s opportunism. That some how translated into a freewheeling, swinging arms and legs affair – and I was delighted to have it – and read as two teams taking part in a game they sincerely believed they could win. Personally, I find that equal parts satisfying and disturbing*, but the one true thing I know: the points keep slipping out of the Timbers’ hands – and, ye GODS, how the Timbers needed two more points from this one – and 2024 has left bloody stubs where my fingernails used to be.

* Here’s why: I’d argue the way Houston came out to start the game makes a pretty strong case that Ben Olsen approached Portland as a team his could break. Sebastian Kowalczyk’s early opener supported the theory – and the fact this guy came within an offside flag of scoring a brace speaks to the chaos ball on the pitch. Fast, loose and open as the game got, it never achieved true Wild-West shoot-out status. Houston’s total number of shots comes close to reflecting the number of times they put a good attack together. As for Portland…was this even a moral victory?

Houston Dynamo FC 1-0 Portland Timbers: A More Complete Incompleteness

One way to "break" one's duck...

In my mind, the biggest question about last night’s game was which team would score first. The Portland Timbers came (god)damn close in the fourth minute when my personal Man of the Match, Santiago Moreno, found Cristhian Paredes loose on the right side of the six (gotta be in here somewhere), but Houston Dynamo FC gored the proverbial duck first, thereby taking a 1-0 lead they never surrendered. Timbers lose, Timbers lose, etc.

By the way, does anyone know where the phrase “break your duck” comes from? Yeah, I could google it, but what’s the fun in that? This stays poultry-heavy for a few, btw. Moving on…

Lacking as it was in some familiar areas - e.g., attacking verve and total concentration in defense - I don’t have a lot of gripes about Portland’s overall performance yesterday and, as a handful of people reminded me on the Timbers subreddit, they don’t often leave the “great” state of Texas with points. A point or three would have been nice, sure, but all things considered, I find it harder to argue that Portland deserved some slice of the points last night than to argue that Houston didn’t deserve all of them.

Given the way Houston has played under Ben Olsen, this one was always going to be grind. The Dynamo play a patient, methodical game and, to use a phrase I may have forgotten to get to in the preview, they can hold onto the ball until they behoove themselves (it can take a while sometimes) to swing into the attack. No less important, Houston tends to have its ducks in a row behind the ball as they push forward – and, outside some frantic moments over the opening 15 minutes, that held  last night. Feel free to chicken-and-egg this until you, a regular human, unlocks the ability to lay eggs, but Houston reliably had at least one player in the right place at all times and all night. Whether that followed from the Timbers’ lack of execution or from the Dynamo just having really goddamn good defenders – e.g., Micael exceeded my already high expectations and, bluntly, Phil Neville should have Juan David Mosquera watch video of how Griffin Dorsey plays the same position until further notice – I can’t say and it just doesn’t matter at this point.

The reason it doesn’t matter? The Timbers made the game’s one, fatal mistake and that’s all this game had in it.

Houston Dynamo FC Scouting Report: Leading with the Chin, Boldly

That's...a choice.

This Saturday, the Portland Timbers take their strong start to the 2024 regular season the home of 2023’s “who did what now?” surprise team, Houston Dynamo FC. I did some scouting, this is my report.

Some Basics

Despite being just two games in their Major League Soccer regular season, CONCACAF Champions’ Le…Cup play has Houston six “real” games deep into the young 2024 season. They have won just one, versus St. Louis CITY FC at home, but they’re stumbling more than they should for a team that has hosted four at home. In their defense, they’ve played good capable, teams in them all, St. Louis and Columbus Crew SC twice, as well as a lively Red Bull New York team once (as for the 6th team…wait for the reveal). Another big picture notable: Houston has scored in every game but one – their CCC Home loss to Columbus last week.

Head coach Ben Olsen has tried a few formations, but it looks like he leans toward a somewhat conservative 4-3-3 (sample); fwiw, I’m not sure what he’ll do against the Timbers, but I’m interested. I hung “conservative” on his line-ups because he builds (most of) his middle threes around Jan Gregus, Artur, and either Coco Carrasqulla or Amine Bassi as the “creative” third. The forward line has (somewhat) consistently involved Ibrahim Aliyu and Sebastian Kowalcyzk, but has had dudes rotate in and out, mostly by absence or circumstance. As for the defense, the primary constants are Steve Clark in goal and young Brazilian Micael (Santos de Silva) in front of him with either Ethan Bartlow or Erik Sviatchenko for a partner. The left fullback and/or left-sided defender has rotated its cast as much as The Love Boat (yay old people!) and, yes, absolutely, there's Griffin Dorsey on the other side...also, hold that thought...

Olsen has this bunch playing a methodical, arguably labored, possession game that sees them play north of 450 passes in every game. I see that The Mothership’s “Availability Report” shows their absences as “To be announced” (because it’s fucking useless and/or may require you to create an account, not unlike the still-absent Form Guide (fuckers!), I'm not paranoid!), but I believe that Hector Herrera remains injured and it looks like they loaned out one-time big-time signing to Sebastian Ferrera, but he never got off paper when it came to entering Houston’s plans for league domination. Oh, and they are wafer-thin at forward, so Herrera starting looks like the only wild card.

Getting Reacquainted with Houston Dynamo FC, MLS's Lost Nomads

What a dump. (IYKYK)

[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

Think of Houston Dynamo FC as the expansion team that wasn’t. They arrived in Houston in 2006 as the one and only team in MLS history to be relocated (right?) and they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and Troy Dayak, as well as long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history (all amply represented in the 10 Players to Know section below) and added at least one famous face, aka, midfielder and future (fragile) USMNT bubble-player, Stuart Holden. Blessed with a strong ready-made roster and one of the 2000’s best head coaches in Dominic Kinnear, the Dynamo kicked off franchise history by winning back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. When they finished 2nd and 3rd overall, respectively, over the next two seasons, Houston threatened to become regular contenders: two more trips to MLS Cup – in 2011 and 2012 – put a couple more teeth into the menace (and yet, if you look at the starting XI for both of those games (see links above), you’ll wonder how it happened). They had to console themselves with the U.S. Open Cup in 2013, but the future still looked bright…despite the second ninth-place finish in as many seasons. Then, out of somewhere close to nowhere, the wheels came off and caught fire: no matter how far the league lowered the bar, Houston would make the MLS playoffs just once over the next nine seasons – and even then, they squeaked in at 10th overall (2017). The end of that long walk through the wilds saw them end three straight regular seasons at 25th overall, the playoff line almost too far away to see and the Wooden Spoon whistling through the air close behind (fortunately, they had three of MLS’s historically (or lately-)worst teams running interference in each of those seasons). After at least a couple rebuilds, a series of bad calls on designated players, and no small amount of suffering among the fanbase, Houston Dynamo FC finally returned to the playoffs due to finally getting a big DP call right and pulling the right head coach (Benny Olsen!) out of early retirement.

Best Season(s)

Easy-peasy: the 2006 and 2007 MLS Cup seasons. Those early Dynamo teams weren’t necessarily elegant, but they were solid, well-coached and they had some of the best game-winners of their era pulling on an orange jersey.

Portland Timbers 1-3 Houston Dynamo FC: Not Even Remotely Fun for as Long as It Lasted

This, but with her stepping on his hand.

The worst thing about the Portland Timbers’ 2023 season comes with the way it let them surface and actually see the life-raft before cruel gods, Houston Dynamo FC, et al, shoved their heads back under.

That metaphor came to me disturbingly early in Portland’s whimpering 1-3 loss to Houston tonight. The Timbers fell out of the lifeboat early and they never much looked like getting back into it. Just defeat painted in lurid orange all over Providence Park. I couldn’t call them a good team, never mind the better one, because Houston had both boxes checked by the time they scored the opening goal.

A one goal loss would have hurt, sure, but this gets back to the opening metaphor. Houston took a weed-whacker to every green-shoot of either relief (e.g., the halftime whistle) or hope (e.g., Dairon Asprilla coming on 14 minutes too late to yank the ever-struggling Yimmi Chara) that held any promise of turning things around for a team that never shifted all the way out of baffled. That each act took the form as concrete and immovable as a goal (relive the pain; it’s for morale or solidarity, I can’t remember which anymore) felt like the hand pushing Portland back under once, then twice.

Oh, well. There goes that season…

Fun and great as it was that Miles Joseph got Portland to where they would make the playoffs with a win, that same middling level of achievement left them hanging from a ledge, from which any slip whatsoever (e.g., a single, yet total loss) meant missing those same playoffs. I painted pinks and other pastels over this season until the cans ran out – gods return my eyes, I talked myself into believing the defense wasn’t cold percolating dogshit – but one word writes the Portland Timbers’ 2023 into the history books: fragility. Here’s to hoping I can make that word stand up, walk around and impress the swells.

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.

Houston Dynamo FC 5-0 Portland Timbers: A Game That Felt Like a Curse

Simple, basic. What was missing.

There is nothing to take from that but total failure. The Portland Timbers' 0-5 loss at Houston Dynamo FC was the eternal audition for the not-ready-for-prime-time players, only without the happy ending. It is not worthy of anything but derision and talking points.

Screed the Firste
Portland’s midfield spent the entire damn night behind the ball. Problems abounded all over the field – the Timbers arrived late to every challenge and played a step behind every pass Houston played, which very likely followed from the fact that damn near every Timber spent all night looking like nobody pointed to their marks (hold that thought, close) – but Houston got players behind the Portland’s midfield all goddamn night. It. Was. A. Disaster.

Screed the Seconde
Cristhian Paredes played high for the first 60+ second of the game and...just why? What requirement did that respond to? What was he doing up there besides wandering around like a child lost at a Target. Had he moved around with the purpose of a kid scoring free samples at a Costco, maybe. But that?

Excuse the Firste
Growing pains. I get it. My voice cracked in ridiculous and embarrassing ways too.

The Timbers had new players in key positions, and it showed. I’m talking like underwear affected by black light under a sheer white bathrobe (picture this on a man. C’mon, this is a family blog; and, shockingly, there's no google image for this). I don’t believe I ever grokked the actual formation (ehhh, mabye?) beyond thinking “why is Paredes way up there,” but new-kid Bryan Acosta looked somewhere near as lost with regard to his special purpose on the field tonight as Miguel Araujo did – i.e., fucking miles into the woods, with neither food, water nor compass, and a total aversion to roughing it a la Bear Grylles (sp? fuck it).

MLS Week 24 Preview: What to Watch When You Can’t Watch the Timbers

How I roll... (also, yesss....)

[Sung to the tune of “When I Root", even if the meter’s a bit off.]

The Portland Timbers won’t be in “action” until next Wednesday when they get in the second half of their sleepwalk through Commerce City, CO, but that won’t stop the world around them from shifting. Various Western Conference rivals – some more immediate than others – will take the field this MLS Week 24. This post looks at where the relevant ones have been…and where they’re likely to end up after this weekend.

To finish the thought on that word, “irrelevant,” I’m pulling Real Salt Lake (and therefore RSL v Orlando City SC) and FC Dallas (and therefore Colorado Rapids v Dallas) from the sample – and on the grounds both sit too high in the table to matter for a Timbers team that’s struggling and with no “mightily” about it. And, yes, bad results for those teams in those games, plus the Timbers picking three points in the back nine of next Wednesday’s game will haul both teams back into the mix. Until that unlikely and likely hideous event, however…

With those ruled out, the following games from the MLS Week 24 slab should hold some interest for Timbers fans (listed in the order they’ll be played):

Minnesota United FC v Austin FC
Houston Dynamo FC v Sporting Kansas City
Los Angeles Galaxy v Philadelphia Union
Los Angeles FC v San Jose Earthquakes

Those first two count as two-fers – i.e., both teams are close enough to Portland in the standings for any result to matter – while the only thing that really matters with the other two is what happens with (or, ideally, to) the Galaxy and the ‘Quakes. Before picking through the relevant data, all this comes with one major caveat: any team that’s anywhere near the Timbers in the standing is almost certainly as erratic as Portland and therefore not good. I know dick about “the underlying numbers,” but do know that all those teams come in on or under average on the attacking side (25.0 goals for) and, with the exception of Houston and Minnesota, all allow goals on the wrong side of the average in the West, 26.7, or thereabouts. As such, any and all predictions should be taken in the spirit of a something between calling a coin flip and predicting the number that will come up on…let’s go with a ten-sided die. Again, I don’t do predictions, just expectations.

The Late, Late, Late MLS Week 18(?) Review: We're Free Associating Now, People...

Knocking not recommended...

You reach a point in the season where the specific reasons that any one thing happened matters far, far, far less than the sum of the things that keep happening.

Or, to go with a spin on the popular phrasing, your local team bears a striking resemblance to their results.

Also, I just watched Houston Dynamo FC wrap up a 1-0 win over Los Angeles FC – and on the road to boot. I see the red card (but also didn’t see it) and I didn’t see the one goal, but, 1) funny result! and 2) I whistle past the idea that LAFC has the blues below...maybe that’s me being guilty of getting stuck on the “LAFC is good” narrative instead of really engaging with what I’m looking at. Again, why futz with how much the numbers “love” a given team? Why turn one’s back on the empirical evidence?

Very much related, there’s this annoying tic in soccer commentary, and sport commentary generally, that refuses to engage (sorry for the verb repeat) with the very obvious premise that both the opposition and venue make every game unique for your local team. The discussion carries on as if they play [MLS Opponent], like there isn't a massive difference between, say, playing Nashville in Nashville versus playing Colorado...pretty much anywhere. Sorry to bang on about that, but I’ve become obsessed with this argument in recent years, and with a Teddy Kaczynski level of intensity, only without the letter bombs. This is my grand theory of most things, people...

At any rate, I’ve stripped down my weekly review formula to match what I tend to get for readership on these posts. So, rather than indulge in fancy writing and grand theories, the content that below amounts to a series of exercises in word association as I watch either games or highlights. I note which is which next to each header, The Mothership’s game summary is embedded in every final score, etc. And I’m barely editing the phrasing and readability can go to hell. Oh, and careful readers will notice I didn’t touch on every game below. I did that in the interest in time and sanity. Right, let’s get into it.

MLS Week 10/11 Review/Preview: Deep in the Season (and on the Disco Round)

A tapestry...of cats! (I'm crazy cat people, no judgment)

Yes, I’m changing the format. Can we just....not do this again, Cassie?

First, and because I think that’s where the demand is, I’m stuffing most of the actual data into the preview section – and, as always, the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati both get “chunky” previews, even if I’ve slimmed them down a bit. Second, I’m accepting defeat and embracing the dread and feeble bullet- point format. What can I say? It just works better than a trying to stitch a long and winding tale out of disparate parts.

And, wrapping up the preamble, because the editorial board has decided I don’t bring enough beef to the reviews, I’m thinning those out to the point of emaciation – and, to be clear, this has nothing to do with laziness (I’m nothing if not a masochist (call me)) or an aversion to reading an epic into a single result. Very much related, what we have now are results – i.e., cold, hard data that knocks down every “but the underlying numbers” and “when [Your Team’s Disappointing DP Here] comes good” you see laced into every match report, very much including the ones I write...

...and yet, as every fan of Major League Soccer knows, all it takes to get to the beginning of beautiful season is a three-game winning streak.

Now, I’m going to note and comment on all the games in MLS Week 10 – i.e., that is give you the result, a link to resources that will tell you more about it, and then add very few words about how much said result made...the Earth...move...under your feet. Finally, I shit you not, I am totally committing to bullet points.

MLS Week 10 Review(...even if there are hella 9s out there, even a couple 8s under “GP” in the table)
Nashville SC 3-1 Atlanta United FC
This one should have put all, or at least most, doubts to bed that Nashville has announced itself in the East, but Atlanta’s still fine, just fine, if without showing any signs of contending.

Columbus Crew SC 1-2 Inter Miami CF
Good for Miami, obviously (and they’re gonna need it; Jean Mota down, repeat, Jean Mota down), but the interesting thing’s what happened to Columbus over their past two games.

DC United 3-0 Charlotte FC
Is that Charlotte I see swirling down the toilet?