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...

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…