Portland Timbers 0-1 Atlanta United FC: The September of Our Discontent

Where does it say that "my ass can't pay"?

Is it possible I banked the points before the Portland Timbers cashed the check? Absolutely and with bells on. I was trying to convince both myself and the teller it would clear just fine all the way up to the 25th minute. The bluff came undone a few minutes later and all the promises of Portland’s 2026 roster couldn’t tape it back together again for another pass. It might even jeopardize next month’s rent.

The question now: how much time do I spend on this?

Portland Timbers 0-1 Atlanta United FC
What Passes for a Match Report
After a night cap of poking around other results for slivers of hope, I just picked through the highlights and sifted the final stats for anything that might have slipped my mind. For what it’s worth, I think the Timbers whiffed another good chance that recalled the back-post opportunity Ariel Lassiter side-netted and someone teed up Vincent Jannsen for an offside attempt in the second. I also believe that covers everything. 17 shots by the Timbers? No shit?

For all that, Portland looked better prepared for the chaos of the opening 20 minutes; as noted in last night’s game thread, Atlanta looked all over the place. Kristoffer Velde has it in him to force a moment of magic in those situations (hold that thought), but it was Atlanta’s Aleksey Miranchuk who did the conjuring at the 28th minute. Finn Surman’s outlet wasn’t the best choice, by any means, but Portland had the defenders to manage the mischief, so no alarms sounded when Jimer Fory’s toe-poke missed the cross. It all went to shit – and I do mean it all went to shit – when Miranchuk chopped open an inside lane and looped a shot into James Pantemis’ goal. The Timbers fell down in that moment and, like they say on the TV, could not get back up.

Portland had some free kicks – Velde’s was decent, Lassiter’s less so – Velde almost nodded home on some smart combination play around and through Atlanta’s left by Lassiter and Cole Bassett – and I think that reads every promising moment into the record and includes the rest by implication. Atlanta got hold of the game after Miranchuk’s goal and their grip never slackened much. Most of the snarling the Timbers managed rose out of the never-ending spat between Velde and Matthew Edwards – and I’d hand the mind game between to the latter on points. Atlanta laid a deep boggy trap for any attempted transition on the defensive side and created the better chances to the final whistle. The end.

Portland Timbers, at the Break: Was It Underachieving?

something's gotta give, something's gotta give, something's...

To open the post with a question, does the Portland Timbers conscious uncoupling from Phil Neville render all that came before it even partially irrelevant?

Answer: Some combination of we’re about to find out and we’ll only know if the new hire makes the current team rise above lower middle-table class.

As I thought about what I wanted to write into the record during the moral injury timeout of Major League Soccer’s 2026 season, aka, the 2026 World Cup, I came up with a couple different approaches – e.g., reviewing every goal allowed this season to see if I could get a handle on whatever ails the Timbers defense (28 goals allowed so far, 2.0/game), or mining themes out of all the posts I’d written since First Kick 2026. On the theory that Neville’s departure renders all that at least partially irrelevant, all that’s going out the window.

Related, I’m not going to bother picking at the bones of the rotting camel carcass that ended Phil’s tenure, last Saturday’s 1-3 home loss versus the San Jose Earthquakes. On the most basic level, it was an(other?) example of game getting away from the Timbers; they gave up three goals with just over a quarter of the game played and Portland hasn’t scored more than two goals in any game outside the opener versus Columbus and versus a wretched, yet rising Sporting Kansas City team (now just three points below the Timbers). I doubt I would have put much time into that one had Neville stuck around. Setting aside the question of whether he was up to it (he wasn’t), the two-month The World Cup break will give every team in MLS something like a fresh start. Sure, some teams would make that start with more baggage than others – think of Portland running eight points behind the pace for the “real” (as in non-play-in) playoffs as starting adulthood with student debt in a race against trust-fund kids – but the Timbers brain-trust had plenty of information for gauging what was and wasn't working and making the relevant adjustments.

Those adjustments can only go so far, of course, with the extent limited by the players currently under contract with Portland. And that’s what the rest of this post will be: one man’s examination of the cards the Timbers currently hold in their hand and that its next manager will have to play. I’ll take those one at a time in player-by-player, position-by-position blurbs below - most based on the eye test, with a glance at the numbers – starting with the regulars and then on through the bench. Before touching on the present realities, however, let us turn our attention to a couple other externals.

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Portland Timbers: Blood From a Stone

Some have it, some get out of the way.

With this as late as it is, I’m gonna do all of us a solid and keep it short. Then again, with the Portland Timbers once again sinking to the bottom of the Western Conference what else is there to say but not great, Bob?

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
My personal highlights included Cole Bassett nutmegging Rodrigo De Paul in the first half (even if the ensuing play went nowhere) and Joao Ortiz getting off scot-free after absolutely wrecking him in the second, but that doesn’t show up on the scoreboard like Lionel Messi cutting through four defenders like a cosmically centered border collie wrecking an obstacle course. You have to tip your hat to the guy on that one, no matter how grudgingly, but seeing the defenders lose the sunsetting legend score Miami’s first goal on yet another give-and-go and the 1,000,000th trailing run of his career sticks in the craw like a broken chicken bone. At any rate, the fat lady broke into her aria after the second goal. One could make a fair case she started her vocal exercises after the first.

You have to sit through the full highlights to see Portland’s better moments (with MLS doing the clipping, I assume Messi’s wunder-run consumed the snapshot whole). Despite posting decent numbers, the Timbers didn’t put up much resistance. Kevin Kelsy probably fired Portland’s most collectively competent shot on goal (second half header) and Cole Bassett shot a smart one from range in the first half, but their chances of scoring more than one goal felt like something between fantasy and pipe dream. With 13 games in the books and just one (tough) game left to play versus the San Jose Earthquakes (more…tomorrow? Thursday?), the stinging sense that Portland’s not really in the hunt for, well, anything lingers like a fart in an elevator. The answer to the question of what’s going wrong boils down to the enduring cliché [gestures broadly]. The eye test is only really damning on the attack end – take the six goals scored versus Sporting Kansas City out of the sample and Portland averages a sliver above one goal a game – but the defense can’t be great when the Timbers posted its only clean sheet…versus SKC.

Vancouver Whitecaps 3-2 Portland Timbers: The Psychological Comfort of Getting Robbed

Were the cops on the take? (Nah.)

So, yeah, another editorial curve ball. The idea of posting the Portland Timbers match report/next game preview and then re-posting that with a wrap of the week’s league-wide action sounds stupid when I actually say it out loud…something I’m only now realizing, after typing out the entire concept at least twice. I had a good, if mildly blasphemous reason for adopting it - i.e., writing about the same team every week gets stale, especially when they keep doing the same shit over and over. Staving off my annual ennui was the goal, but fuck it. If Portland forces me to, I will literally post something that has “same shit” for the match report and “AMA, yolo” for the talking points.

Rough result last night, obviously. Getting robbed never feels good, but it hurts a little more when what came before it felt pretty good. In fact, I feel comfortable calling that the Timbers most impressive game of 2026, if with a curdled side of “damn shame about result.” And yet, it was and wasn’t that simple.

Vancouver Whitecaps FC 3-2 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
Vancouver scored early and too easily for my liking. Edier Ocampo scored it and the simplest take I have for what went wrong boils down to Jimer Fory switched off, thereby stranding Alex Bonetig and Finn Surman, in succession. The game carried on from there with the Timbers looking like 11 men running up that hill, but I also had this grand theory that Vancouver suffocated Portland without doing much for themselves. In the main, the Official Highlights support that theory, while the Official Stats run against it - i.e., that is some lopsided shit.

The Timbers came up for air somewhere around the 30th minute and slowly clawed their back, first to solid ground, then to the lead. Thanks to an opening 20 minutes that conditioned me to accept failure as the expected state, the progress Portland made felt unlikely and, for that reason, precarious. Even after an equalizer for the ages at the 36th minute by Juan David Mosquera – who played a game that gets a fan’s cockles all hot and jittery (hold this thought) – waiting for the ‘Caps to shake off the stupor and get back to stuffing Portland into their own half seemed like the grown-up thing to do…

Portland Timbers 1-1 Los Angeles Galaxy: Something I'm Choosing to See the (or Some) Good in + a MLS Week 5 Recap

Me, before they even leave The Shire.

Welcome to another week of me triangulating toward what’s possible between time and other ambitions. Dreams of putting in long shifts on several games have shrunk to watching the Portland Timbers game, scouting the team they play next for 60-plus minutes, spending about the same amount of time on, literally, just one other game, plus going through as many highlights as I can get to. The plan is to tighten things up on the content side, but I've been dreaming that same dream since the late 2000s and yet what did I do but top the Director's Cut of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with commentary and all the songs from The Hobbit (plus commentary on the songs). My therapist told me that not working on my problems is the worst thing I can do, so here we are. Something else I learned about myself this past weekend: I will not sit through ten minutes of a game when neither team scored and I know the result. With that in mind, I need to revamp one of the regular sections a little:

Results That Surprised Me (This section will be removed going forward)
Charlotte FC 6-1 Red Bull New York (wait for it...)
Sporting Kansas City 1-4 Colorado Rapids (didn't think SKC was this bad; don't trust a word I type)
Vancouver Whitecaps 0-1 San Jose Earthquakes (though maybe it shouldn’t have; more later)
San Diego FC 2-2 Real Salt Lake (maybe less “surprised” than notice taken?)

Results I Ignored (no surprises here; but also links provided!)
Atlanta United FC 0-0 DC United (but Atlanta should feel very disappointed)
St. Louis CITY FC 3-1 New England Revolution (expected it enough, and good for St. Louis)
Austin FC 0-0 LAFC (don’t think this was good for anyone, but see below)
FC Cincinnati 4-3 Club du Foot Montreal (Cincy dodged a bullet that shouldn’t be sighting them)
New York City FC 2-3 Inter Miami CF (they’re both good teams; didn’t feel educational)
Minnesota United FC 0-0 Seattle Sounders (see note on Austin v LAFC and below)

I’m tracking results/opposition for all teams, for what it’s worth – and fuck The Mothership for letting the Form Guide cut off at Week 23 and not including anything to scroll over (they don't add one later; I check) – and that gives me big-picture perspective on some of the results I’m ignoring. For instance, LAFC’s goal-less draw at Austin looks different than, say, Minnesota's goal-less home draw versus Seattle: the context for LAFC's result includes a road game, sitting atop MLS’s Western Conference and not a goal allowed all season; the context for Minnesota’s is them scoring less than one goal per game (0.8/game, fwiw) and allowing 11 (2.2/game, fwiw, though most of that happened at Vancouver) and just generally presenting as a team running through mud. With those games dismissed (I'll do this better/deeper in the copy next week, promise), let's turn to The Main Event:

The Unmentionable Thing Vancouver Did the Portland & an MLS Week 3 Wrap Up

You're not sinking, you're thriving. MENTALITY!

Major League Soccer Week 3 went into the books a few days ago, fucking up a narrative or two as it passed through. I’ll get to that, but let’s start with the usual editorial notes.

Responsibilities around home improvement forced some adjustments to The Plan. That was noted in last week’s post, but in light of the abandonment of The Plan, I shall not reference it further. The only plan is that The Plan will evolve with one exception: I will watch a minimum of 60 minutes of the game played by the Timbers’ next opponent every week they have one. That went out the window this what with the New England Revolution getting a reprie…er, having their game against Houston Dynamo FC cancelled for reasons I couldn’t easily find and don’t care to find out.

Further minor adjustments shall also go unmentioned as I think even careful readers won’t miss them. With that, let’s get to the good stuff, starting with…

Results That Surprised Me (both expanded on below)
Colorado Rapids 4-1 Los Angeles Galaxy
Red Bull New York 0-3 Club du Foot Montreal (also, congrats Montreal! Thought y’all were cooked)

Mild shocks aside – e.g., the final score on Nashville’s win over Minnesota and the weight of the hurt New York City FC dropped on Orlando (both also noted below) - every other result tracked well enough for me. Moving on, now, to this week’s main event…and I see you, Orlando fans.

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 2-1 Red Bull New York & A Roll-Call

So, the MLS season is...a hug that lasts hours?

Officially taking the next step in the ever-evolving, attempted-shrinking approach to these posts (didn't work) – something that makes ever more sense as the Major League Soccer season shrinks to its borderline tantric close. This might read like a glorified, long-winded reddit post, but I feel like I’ve put readers through enough over the past 20-some-odd years.

By way of framing, I’d call Saturday’s 2-1 win over Red Bull New York great and on a couple levels. Allow me to explain…

The Game, Still More Briefly
With the pressure to post on the same night now alleviated, I’m coming back around to the live game experience. I caught this game from the Multnomah Athletic Club deck (weird experience, which I both do and don’t recommend; and is a mother/son LEGO build the equivalent of a purity ball, or…?), which, despite flattening the vertical space, afforded me a fantastic view of how wide the Timbers spread the field. That felt like a good choice given the Red Bulls’ style of play and, throughout the first half, that held up. Portland piled on the pressure and scored one offside goal (see the full highlights) before Kristoffer Velde engineered a real one at the 28th minute. The Timbers carried that one-goal advantage into the half and well beyond, but the Red Bulls tightened their press at the start of the second half and squeezed it until Emil Forsberg scored a follow-the-bouncing-ball equalizer that matched Matias Rojas’ opener for unlikely good fortune. Portland answered back mere minutes later with a solid team goal that makes a fella want to stand up, salute, and believe in The Product. This season’s budding star, Antony, scored it, but I was lot more excited about the break-neck poise and pace that created it. If Red Bull came close to an equalizer I don’t remember it – the final stats don’t really hint at one - but the main thing that stood out about the performance as a whole was how much Red Bull struggled to play through the Timbers all night. I appreciate that’s hardly their forte, and it did the soul good to see Portland handle a mid-table team like they knew their way around the pitch and, total bonus, neutralize the Red Bulls game-plan.

Long-form thoughts on the Timbers are below, but, before touching on that, let’s do a…

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

My personal wingman broods...

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

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

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

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

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

Portland Timbers 2-1 New England Revolution, The Late (Late), but Still Pretty Good Show

Treat yourself!

Just rewatched the full highlights and think I heard something about both the Portland Timbers and the New England Revolution rolling into Saturday on unbeaten streaks. Sound salesmanship, but also inaccurate.

Still, the most affirming talking point about the Timbers in 2025 is the fact that, unfortunate trips to the North side of the Great Lakes region notwithstanding (one for your therapist or for your priest, depending on one’s outward reaction), Portland has improved on winning more of the games they should win. Hosting a Revolution team running (currently) four points under the Eastern Conference play-in line definitely makes the list and – drink ‘em if you got ‘em – Portland won this one. As for how they looked doing it.

Portland Timbers 2-1 New England Revolution
About the Game, Briefly
Given the past three or four weeks, just seeing Portland start as the better team counts as a l’il victory (so treat yourself!). They crowned that period of…let’s go with subtle dominance with a go-ahead goal that, all things considered, took a couple happy accidents to come together. That’s not to dismiss (or diss) the goal – the Timbers put together a might chain of “yes, and” to create the opening – but I doubt Santiago Moreno consciously weighted his cross to fall to Ian Smith (who didn’t line up where they had him…right?) and I bet Smith only hits side netting on that same shot once in every half dozen attempts (but prove me wrong, kid; prove me wrong). Now, the worrying thing…

The Revolution equalized 15 minutes later and in a way that highlighted one of Portland’s regular weaknesses (see Stray No. 5), but I was less concerned by that than how close Portland came to stumbling into a five-minute fall apart, i.e., one of those back-to-back goal, multi-goal, bed-shitting breakdowns that sees a game slip away from a team. Just two (or three) minutes after Luca Langoni finished around a firmly-seated Kamal Miller, New England’s Peyton Miller teed up Leo Campana for a simple, short finish that would have handed them the lead. Per the final score, Campana skied it, thereby sparing Portland from chasing the game.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Colorado Rapids: Strong Response to a Near-Death Experience

That ain't a light, son, it's a train. But also a light/a journey.

The Portland Timbers topped the Colorado Rapids 2-1 at Providence Park tonight. Hey! Get your mind out of the gutter! Think more two dudes laddering their hand up a baseball bat…dammit. My brain started glitching immediately after hearing Jake Zivin say “Timber Joey’s Victory Log.”

Right. Hitting the ground running…

About the Game
Not many soccer games turn on such a clear and decisive before-and-after – and most games that do get stuffed into the all-devouring “Tale of Two Halves” file – but that’s…mostly not what happened tonight. An almost wanton chance to put Colorado up 2-0 crept to Sam Bassett (more below) around the 75th minute and he couldn’t get it closer inside the goal than the crossbar.; after a couple bobbles around the right, the ball flies out of defense, (in short order) falls to David Da Costa, who plays Antony around the Rapids’ last defender, and the Rapids Calmer (TM; don’t touch that; I’m lawyered up) slips into under Nicholas Hansen for the equalizer. For most of the time before that goal, the Timbers couldn’t find much, never mind each other. Somewhere in the late stages of that curs'd time, Finn Surman picked up a bargain-bin yellow that Chris Penso waved around like so much foreshadowing; nine minutes later, working-man’s DP Djordje Mihailovic gets a step ahead of him leaving Surman no option but to keep one step behind, so as to avoid the foul. When Colorado went up 1-0, they looked convincing enough…

…the question is whether the Timbers pried open the first crack on the play in the first half that led to the penalty call against Andreas Maxso. That, in my mind, was their first truly competent attacking build of the night. Felipe Mora took the ensuing kick like he’d been either drugged or compromised (“when I snap my fingers, you will realize you missed, and too late too”; probably in here? if not, why not?), but the final moments of the first half might have been the beginning, given the final result and how it was arrived at, of what could justly be dubbed a Portland Timbers revival. If I asked to provide proof for that theory, I’d point to the barrage/siege the Timbers poured toward the Rapids’ goal after the equalizer. For anyone requiring more proof (what’s with this fuckin’ guy?), I’d flag the several…semi-effectual shots Portland found in the Rapids’ weak side in the minutes before Kevin Kelsy tapped-in the winner. Full disclosure: wondered how Juan David Mosquera squeezed his assist into the space between Colorado’s last defender and Hansen, but now I see that fear of an own-goal froze Reggie Cannon. The game wasn’t entirely over even then – see whatever you think Diego Chara did to Calvin Harris late, late in the game, which surely has to be in the full highlights (surely?) – but the ref waved it off and the Timbers swept all three points off the board, the end.

San Jose Earthquakes (Oof) 4-1 Portland Timbers: I Believe the Term Is Jointly and Severally

The number of things that went wrong...

A team can survive a bad night at the office, being a step behind, connected only in sad little spurts, etc. A team cannot, however, survive a half dozen or so catastrophic defensive errors.

I call that kind of collapse a Five-Minute Fall Apart, even when they unfold over an 11-minute span. The rest of the game wasn’t much better and that’s the beginning of the story of how the San Jose Earthquakes rolled the Portland Timbers 4-1 tonight.

About the Game
The post started with a distinction between collective and individual failure for a reason: the Timbers committed sins both individually and as a team tonight, but they might have muddled through, even if just to a more respectable final score, had, say, both Finn Surman and Kamal Miller not bit like half-starved basses on the pieces of bait San Jose dangled before them. Their mistakes turned into the (borderline) sitters that put the game beyond Portland’s likely longest reach inside the first 30 minutes. Maxime Crepeau could have done better on both shots – the man’s head and feet didn’t seem to have an open channel, on the second goal more than the third, for me – and, as much as I get wishing James Pantemis was there, that does everyone the same amount of good as wishing Surman didn’t overcommit all the way into Nevada on the ball into Ousseni Bouda, or that Miller didn’t sprint all the way to the left sideline just to get nutmegged by DeJuan Jones. That’s the individual stuff and I feel confident arguing that three-minute span killed Portland’s chances at three points tonight. Moving on to the stuff that made even one point unlikely…

San Jose scored their first goal on their third (or fourth) run at the same attacking movement – i.e., push the ball outside to a runner sprinting to get around the Timbers’ widest defender on one side or the other, then pull it back to an attacking player who drifted into the space left open by a Portland backline that appears willing to collapse into its own damn goal. Seeing them come close mere minutes before the 90th on the same damn play felt like the right way to wrap up the game, but the problem was always the same. When San Jose pushed the ball wide, an Earthquake player curled off Portland’s defensive line and none of those players tracked that movement; Timbers midfielders – e.g., Joao Ortiz was the closest available option on their first goal – failed to run back to cover that run, leaving some quality attackers with time and the full width of the goal to fire at from around the penalty spot. Under those circumstances, whose man is that? The answer falls somewhere between everyone’s, no one’s and the first player to see him peel off. And that’s the, or maybe just a, collective failure.

Austin FC 0-0 Portland Timbers: The Littlest Possible Win

How I watch with my ears...

Nobody won yesterday’s 0-0 draw between Austin FC and the Portland Timbers, very much up to and including any and all fans who turned up or tuned in. In its defense, the highlights reminded me of some…action I either forgot, or that didn’t enter my consciousness during the periods when I let my eyes rest and took my best shot at watching the game with my ears. Then again, the five-minute run-time tells its own story.

About the Game
Austin played the 4-3-3 that I touted for in the Scouting Report and still believe suits them best (the official line up was a lie). It never generated much offense for them, though spendy new striker, Myrto Uzuni, did bookend the game with looks on goal at either end that showcased what he’s all about – or can be. That accounts for two of Austin’s eleven shots total and their only shot on frame came when Brandon Vazquez sandwiched a point-blank header at Portland’s James Pantemis in between stumbling at the feet of Jimer Fory and chasing the ref to demand a penalty kick. Think that happened…somewhere close to the 80th minute and, sure, that does get me ahead of the game, but I wanted to wrap up Austin before turning to the Timbers. Back to the game writ large, after 30 minutes of…not a whole lot (and the first attempted nap*), both teams took more interest in attempting to forcing the ball through one another’s lines. And then came the halftime whistle, which referee Drew Fischer couldn't blow fast enough. The first team to stir was Portland. After posting a meager three shots with one on goal over the opening 45 minutes, they started to find ways to get the ball into Austin’s defensive third. One popular route saw David Ayala step higher into central space to receive a short pass inside, which he then carried into the teeth of Austin’s last line of defense; seems like a nice move to file away for the future use. While that, and other options, got the ball closer to Brad Stuver’s goal, Austin’s last line did a good job of pushing Portland’s attacking moves outside the frame of the goal, forcing them to cross or take shots from diagonal angles (Santiago Moreno probably fired the best of these). The Timbers held a very real competitive edge over the opening 20-25 minutes of the second half and, over the entire 45-minute period, they grew their top-line attacking numbers from three shots with one on goal to 13 shots with seven on goal by the final whistle. Nothing I saw from Portland struck me as outright dangerous – it’s even possible Austin had the best smattering of chances – but, as I type this, I’d rather be Portland than Austin.

Nashville SC 2-0 Portland Timbers: March, or Something Darker?

You get weird shit searching "lion eats lamb."

Nothing says your local team is killing it quite like the broadcast booth doofus saying they “need this half-time whistle." And Nashville SC still had one more goal in them…

About the Game
I noted the Portland Timbers’ first competent breach Nashville’s defensive at the 35th minute in last night’s game. Also of note, the Timbers gave up two penalty kicks in half that time. It’s a hell, goddamn, ass miracle they lost just 0-2 yesterday. No less miraculously, and gods bless James Pantemis, neither of those penalty kicks resulted in a goal. Somewhat maddingly, Nashville didn't need either penalty kick to win the game. Firing at least 21 shots (with 11 on goal) does that for a team. On the same Official Stats page, I see that the Timbers’ fired four shots on goal and, after reviewing the highlights, I also know that half of those came softly off Antony’s shoe, so small wonder, etc. Nashville ran away with just about every attacking statistic and, whatever you think of xG as a concept, seeing theirs at almost eight times Portland’s passes the smell test…

…here I thought the Timbers had a chance at Nashville. Now, I’m just wondering about...things.

Nashville unnerved Portland early by playing balls over the top that put (mostly) Sam Surridge and Hany Mukhtar into a foot race with the Timbers CBs. One super-early one, we're talking just four minutes into the game, saw Finn Surman haul down Mukhtar before he could reach the box, and Zac McGraw shove over Surridge inside it. That was the first penalty, taken by Mukhtar, saved by Pantemis. They got a fair amount of mileage out of that direct attack through the first half, but their second penalty came when Ahmed Qasem slipped into the top left corner of the Timbers’ 18-yard box and Joao Ortiz made that the time to announce his presence with a shove under Qasem’s shoulder. The second penalty, taken by Surridge, and to the same damn spot for some reason, was also saved by Pantemis. Saved penalty kicks often lift a team. Meanwhile, back in Nashville...

Thus began the search for signs of coherence in Portland’s movement on and off the ball and I’m sad to report that the party never came back. Things improved slightly in the second half, notably after Phil Neville pulled Ortiz for Diego Chara (more on that later), but Nashville was already up one goal by then and the rest of game boiled down to them poking and prodding the soft spots in the Timbers’ defense. The goals came, of course, and the only thing that made Nashville’s goals remarkable were the failures that allowed them – e.g., after saving two penalties, how does Pantemis let Andy Najar’s tight-angled shot slip under him? And how much ball-watching does it take for Qasem to run right to left across the seam between Portland’s defense and midfield, before God and everyone, and still get a free, near-post header? Between those and the PKs, that’s four chances, at a minimum, straight-up handed to Nashville. (They left Walker Zimmerman free on a corner! I'm such a snitch!). After the second goal, there was nothing left after that, but the final whistle.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Austin FC: Between Happiness and Satisfaction

This is not a highlight, but that is Ted Unkel.

Yes, ma’am, my homework is late. Yes, ma’am, it’s won’t happen again.

“Grappling with the possibility that I’m watching two mediocre teams play some JV shit.”
- Me, a Bluesky game thread, the 80th minute(?)

Upon further review, that overstates the case a bit. Portland Timbers players attempted at least two (hopeful) bicycle kicks, for one. Still, if I had to offer a key thought to hold in your head as you read everything that follows, that’s up there.

About the Game
The second shortest available video review of last Saturday's game (the "snapshot" is shorter...and pointless) reminded me that Austin FC fired a few more than I remembered – also notable, they fired a few more shots than Portland – including two that forced quality saves out of James Pantemis. Those came early and late, so credit to Pantemis for staying alert even as I was…nodding off, but none of the above has lured me into the Pantemania I saw popping up in various social media threads. You do you and all that, but I can’t think of what it would take me to take sides in a goalkeeper controversy, but assume it lands somewhere between insisting he must wear his “lucky sombrero” to reach his full potential or that three saves every game must be made by the famed scorpion-kick to build his social media brand. Seeing a defense limit the opposition to shots from range will consistently make me happier than anything a goalkeeper does.

Another telling detail in that short video review: the amount of time devoted to showing yellow cards. Few things stage-whisper “dud” quite like two teams failing to produce enough chances to fill a seven- minutes highlight reel.

Austin’s new signing, Brandon Vazquez, gets my credit for the best shot of the game – which, by the transitive property (associative? distributive?) hands Pantemis the best save – but Portland’s fucking new guy David Da Costa scored the goal that counted. It came (very) late, it took a little luck, and it was one of just two shots on goal for the Timbers (out of eight total), but I’m not above dipping my hand into the proverbial unflushed toilet if it means fishing out three points in the end.

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.

Charlotte FC 2-0 Portland Timbers: About the Thing That Happened and the Thing to Happen

Evander II is dead, long live [Evander II.]

Over the opening six to eight minutes of today’s final preseason game, the Portland Timbers played some of the finest soccer I’ve seen from them since the salad days of mid-June to mid-July 2024. The defensive lines pressed high and disrupted 90% of what Charlotte FC tried to do and Diego Chara sat deep, playing balls long wide to Jimer Fory on the right and…Eric Miller on the left.

Treat the words after the ellipses as a short way of saying that the lineup that Portland started today – a 3-5-2 (probably?) with Felipe Mora and Kevin Kelsy up top, Fory and E. Miller on either side of a midfield block built around Chara, Joao Ortiz, and David Ayala, a back three of Dario Zuparic, Zac McGraw, and Kamal Miller, and Maxime Crepeau in goal – was not and, ideally, will not, could not, and cannot be Phil Neville’s Plan A for the 2025 campaign. I have no insight into how long regular starters like Santiago Moreno, Jonathan Rodriguez, Juan David Mosquera and [New Evander] will get back on the field. I can only hope that start trickling in soon enough to take advantage of one of the softer opening stretches the Timbers have seen for gods know how long. Between First Kick and mid-April, Portland has four home games, three of them winnable and one against a dismantled and limping Los Angeles Galaxy team, and even if Nashville SC has improved (rumors of a flawless preseason have reached this monitoring station), I’ve seen tougher road games. That’s 24 points up for grabs, the balance of them for the taking. Gods know a strong start would do this team good.

Getting back to today’s 0-2 loss to Charlotte, the remaining 72 to 74 didn’t go so good. Even when the game was somewhat even – aka, the first half – Charlotte managed to turn possession into chances before Portland could. Worse, the Timbers faded out of the game, both gradually and quickly (neat trick, btw), and to a point where forcing a draw looked like the best possible outcome for a generally impotent Timbers team. That possibility went “poof” when Charlotte opened the scoring at the 65th minute by working the ball up Portland’s left and finishing the play by findin Kerwin Vargas in a half-space, in the channel (with the butcher knife). From there, there was nothing left to do but let the clock run out…but then new guy, Joao Ortiz, squared the ball one step away from Tyger Smalls (great name, no notes) and he literally lumbered out the field and finished off one of the clumsiest goals I’ve ever seen scored by a professional (which you can relive through the link above, if you so choose). In a world where Portland looked like they’d ever score, that might have a hurt a little. On this one, it just felt like finishing a thought.

Mild Dread & the Preseason So Far

"Mild dread" is very literal on today's internet.

To get preliminaries out of the way, it’s the preseason, nothing matters, not just in the Portland Timbers extended universe, but generally, and I’m not taking much of anything, or even anything at all, from either today’s 0-0 draw against Chicago Fire FC or Wednesday’s 2-1 win over the San Jose Earthquakes. With that in mind…

Broadly
The Timbers looked sharper against San Jose than they did against Chicago, but I didn’t see much for fluid attacking movement in either game – Portland scored two goals against San Jose, one a set-piece, the other one half-trash – so opportunism looks to continue its long reign over well-oiled attacking machinery. Chicago provided stiffer competition – more on that shortly – but I don’t see the point of reading too much into any of that beyond filing away the possibility that the Fire may be further along in its rebuild than San Jose is in theirs. Based on what I saw, Portland’s 2025 Preseason First Team has some capacity to press – with the caveat that starting Felipe Mora disarms that a bit – and that gave them a good half against San Jose and a strong opening 10 minutes against Chicago. Related, I don’t expect much pressing to continue once Evander and Jonathan Rodriguez get back into the fold, but who knows?

Also, four points in two games would look a lot better if it hadn’t come against two of MLS’s most-plagued franchises (seriously, I’ve done the math, both teams are cursed). Still, Portland cleared the bar on the (meaningless) results side…woo-hooooooo.

I multi-tasked through the San Jose game (because working), so the notes below come more from what I saw against Chicago today…but I’m noting them because I believe they still (unfortunately) pertain generally.

The Lingering Issue
The Timbers continue to present as a combination of rushed and disconnected when they get on the ball. The symptoms get worse anytime they play teams that press, or even mark man-to-man, but this feels ominous against a scrolling backdrop of Portland struggling with passing and/or composure on the ball for some seasons now. A few overlapping pathologies either create or play into this problem. Because I just burned a half hour failing to wrestle this into bullet-points, and my bastard brain refused to tap-out, please consider this stream-of-consciousness up-chuck my first draft at examining the problem:

Getting Reacquainted with the Portland Timbers, My Burden, My Boo

Ah, memories.

For obvious reasons, this one’s going to go on a bit longer than the others in the series…

Thumbnail History
In my head, I knew the Portland Timbers had some lean seasons before they won MLS Cup 2015, but it receded to where it felt like some other team’s history until I picked through Wikipedia posts about those early seasons, as if thumbing through a yearbook. I also remember the 2015 season through a very specific lens, but I’ll get to that. Starting at the beginning…

Now that I’ve posted mini-histories for every other team in Major League Soccer (may not be better than a Wikipedia post, but definitely shorter), I was struck by how steadily the Timbers pieced together a competitive team, and how early it came in their MLS history. When Portland graduated from the USL to MLS in 2011, they came in with a roster typical of that time (MLS…2.5?): it started with a few players who came up from the USL team – e.g., Futty Danso, Steve Purdy, Bright Dike, and Kalif Alhassan – which was then beefed up with players typical of every Expansion Draft, i.e., fixer-uppers with a good season or two behind them – e.g., Eric Brunner, Eric Alexander, Kenny Cooper – and capped with the player who was born a cagey vet and who would captain through (most of?) their first several seasons, “Captain” Jack Jewsbury. The key additions from outside the domestic professional ranks included a hot college draft pick named Darlington Nagbe and a Colombian midfielder named Diego Chara, who was sold to expectant fans as an “attacking midfielder.” The front office hired a cliché, aka, a “fiery Scotsman,” aka, John Spencer to coach them, and off they went. The Timbers did reasonably well in that expansion season, missing the playoffs by an AI-generated handful, but they fell headlong into a sophomore slump in Year 2. Despite spotting the right weakness – the attack – and upgrading with a couple Colombians (Sebastian Rincon and Jose Adolfo Valencia, who I barely remember), another reclamation project (Danny Mwanga), and spending on a DP forward (Kris Boyd), all that tinkering didn’t lead to anything good and Boyd, in particular, didn't match the hype.  2012 might have been the Timbers’ worst all-time season (and big shout to Chivas USA and Toronto FC for sparing them the blushes!) - haven’t run the numbers, don’t see the point – but the building blocks started falling in place fairly quickly thereafter. First the front office plucked Caleb Porter from the college ranks (University of Akron) before the end of 2012. The players came next, starting with the Flying Johnsons, Will and Ryan (also, no one called them that), Pa Modou Kah (why not?) came over from the Dutch top-flight, by way of Saudi Arabia – Portland even got a little jiggy when they signed former Manchester United stand-out Mikael Silvestre (who broke quickly) – and, of course, the crown jewel of the 2013 renovation, Diego Valeri. He joined on loan, but made it official (I think) before the year was over and would become a fixture/face-of-the-franchise for the next nine seasons (right? because you count both 2013 and 2021?). The result was an about-face from 2012, and an appetizer for the peak seasons to come: 2013 was arguably the Timbers’ best-ever season, if only on paper: the team was balanced, going well over the average for goals scored, while keeping out well below the average; their post-season ended in the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs against what was probably the last, best season for Real Salt Lake’s golden-generation. Portland suffered a…senior slump(?) in the 2014 season, missing the playoffs…and this is where the way I remember 2015 comes up.