Level Set 2026, the Portland Timbers: Where Things Stand as We Wait for the Whistle to Blow

Hello, 2012.

[Ed. - Factually, yes, I did post a “farewell post” for this blog late last year – and it wasn’t the first time. I very much meant it at the time, but please see the bottom of this post where I mumble some excuses for what will change going forward and why the farewell holds up, if in the most sorta kinda way possible.]

What follows is a brief history of the Portland Timbers, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed in between those two sections and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., less than one week before First Kick 2026. I saw an Adam Sussman skeet telling me that Merritt Paulson told him to expect a couple more signings before then, so it's likely that not everything below is final…and yet, I’m not going to hold my breath for greatness or anything.

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...

…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. That datapoint 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…

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.

Portland Timbers 2-0 San Jose Earthquakes: Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz & Other Thoughts

Celebrate. The demon-child allowed it.

Delightful. Absolutely delightful.

Blown away as I am by Dairon Asprilla’s career-year-capping, wunder-goal, the bigger, better take-away is this: think where the Portland Timbers would be today with Asprilla’s TEN (10) goals in 2021. On numbers alone, they’d be where the San Jose Earthquakes find themselves after tonight’s 2-0 loss at Providence Park: about 10 goals on the wrong side of good and mathematically out of the 2021 Major League Soccer playoffs.

The Timbers haven't stepped into the Promised Land yet - which, here, means the good bits, way past where Moses got - but they’ve bought themselves a fuck-up, maybe even a fuck-up-and-a-half, down the stretch. And I’m starting there for a reason, because a single sentence from Liam Ridgewell, tonight, from the broadcast booth, gave me the words for a concept tonight, maybe even a thesis:

Once one team breaks another, everything else goes out the window. Just put the game on ignore and enjoy it…so long as your team is one the right side of it.

Ridgewell kept going back to the idea of a game-plan, the importance of sticking with it, even to the point of eschewing tempting opportunities for heroism - i.e., know your role, operate within it, trust your teammates will do you the same, block out all the signs and voices bellowing “[YOUR COACH’S NAME HERE] OUT,” and stick with it till the plan comes together and everyone wearing the same shirt as you gets the big win. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes it does and it becomes a team’s “identity,” but,  at the end of it all, it’s just a set of assumptions a team plays under in order to make decisions and/or plays happen a little faster. Right?

As follows from, one team breaks another when they make the assumptions by which they operate fall apart. And, yeah, Asprilla’s goal was spectator-sports ecstasy, but the bigger, better thing framing for tonight’s game was, “there but for the left hand of J. T. Marcinkowski, San Jose would have eaten bowls full of shit.” From the time the ref blew the opening whistle for the second half to the end of the game, the game didn’t look like anything else but a Timbers win. And…confirmed: San Jose’s xG flat-lined after the 45th; it didn’t really do much from the 10th minute, honestly. Which gets back to what I’m saying about breaking a team…

The Portland Timbers, and The Fall Into 2019

The Seattle Super Junior Sounders!!

If you’ve followed my thoughts through the Portland Timbers’ 2019 preseason, you have seen the kinds of mood swings that get people talking about medication. This post will attempt to take all those disparate threads and tie them together into a coherent baseline understanding of where the Timbers seem to be going into the season. I’ll close out by identifying key mysteries and then wrap up by looking at Portland’s first 10 games – all of them on the road, of course - and projecting what I’d count as a good start to the 2019 season.

Preseason (domestic teams, only, and games that I watched): 2-1-1
The Timbers faced a useful collection of teams – e.g. (and in order), Seattle Sounders, the New York Red Bulls…Phoenix Rising (ah, the locus of my unhinging), and Real Salt Lake. Until that final, fluid win over RSL, where they played their starting set, Portland both played and faced some novel constructions for line-ups. There was the 60/30 split that faced The Seattle Super Junior Sounders!, the three-headed (fucked up) mutation that lost to Phoenix, and, again, something like the starting set against a baby Red Bulls line-up. Looking back on them now, all those make more or less sense – as in, I’m starting to really like Giovanni Savarese as a coach – but I’m less interested in the results than I am in the ultimate return of a familiar sensation.

If you take out the Phoenix game (see: “the locus of my unhinging”), I kept repeating the same big picture thought: with some complicated exceptions – e.g., Julio Cascante and David Guzman (and a strong, present desire to never see Renzo Zambrano again) - most Timbers played well. By the RSL game, they looked loose and confident. No, better than that: they looked saucy, and with a healthy helping of the right kind of back-heels. Because those thoughts line up with my notes from the earliest games last season, I’m going into 2019 feeling pretty good. Here’s why:

Overall

The three Portland players listed in Bobby Warshaw’s article on the best five players in every position answer the question: so long as they have Diego Valeri, Sebastian Blanco and Diego Chara healthy and playing well, Portland will remain competitive. All three are league elite, they know one another very well, as well as how to make the most of the pieces around them. If any one of those three goes down, though…well, that’s when the pants fill up in all the wrong ways. Roster continuity papered over some cracks last year, no question, but I’d also argue that some pieces around them don’t get their portion of propers – e.g., Jeff Attinella, certainly, but also Larrys Mabiala, Zarek Valentin and Jorge Villafana. The bones are good, as they say. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t questions.

MLS Tourist Guide, Calendar Week 2: "Super"Draft, Signings and Sayonara

My relationship to MLS, a visual.

Another week, another round-up, in which I put my hand on MLS like I’m guarding the bucket. (Is it March 2^nd yet? For the love of GOD, can somebody please kick something?)

I’ll start with the big events, then talk about the U.S. Men’s National Team (FC Cincinnati’s fault for picking Frankie Amaya; I’ll explain), then my two favorite children (Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers), and I’ll wrap up with whatever team-specific activities interested me over the week just past.

MLS CaveatedDraft 2019

The week’s marquee event was the MLS Superdraft, and I won’t be the kind to put on airs and pretend I didn’t peek at the results through the first round, because I did. I will, however, say the same thing I say every Superdraft: it’s a veritable "who’s that" of American soccer (and it's “who will never be” for too many of those players). The few details I know come from the Mothership (MLS’s main site), which handed out for grades for each team’s draft. On that, what does an “A+” at an event most cognoscenti dismiss do for a team, really? On one level, this is ping pong at The Olympics, only the Chinese don’t always win.

All the same, it’s the first event of the annual MLS calendar and I love it, and I’ll go for the eyes of the first person to cast aspersions at it. (Who knows? Maybe the vestigial panic about the league going under never left?) From what I read, this year’s edition had moments of real beauty (even if I can’t find them), like FC Cincy’s Logan Gdula’s choking back tears as he took his first step toward his dream (wishing you many more steps, kid, and why not start early!). Getting excited about a player whose 2019 ceiling projects to starting for your MLS team’s USL team doesn’t come easy, but it’s not a terrible system. Call it a good way for your late-bloomers to reach the other side of puberty – your Davy Arnauds and Chris Wondolowskis – players who want it bad enough to figure out a way to get there. They can be better captains than players sometimes, but it takes a village, yeah?

MLS Cup & A Season Review from an Unreliable Narrator

Is safe, comrade.

I’ll start with my post-match analysis of MLS Cup 2018: the Portland Timbers lost.

What? Matchday Central never put up a...but…fine.

To start, I didn’t mind the way the Portland Timbers approached MLS Cup; the coaching staff actually impressed me a little. They set the line of confrontation higher than I expected, but that worked out, at least until a goal forced them to chase the game. Prior to that, Portland did a good job keeping Atlanta United FC in front of them. I hadn’t looked at the box score till now and…wow, that’s a balanced game, even to the point of equilibrium. Well, everywhere else but the score sheet. And that’s how you lose a game, people.

Here’s the thing with the last game of a season: there isn’t much to say beyond who won and who lost. No matter how feverishly the players itch for that shot a redemption, the next game won’t come till the next season. And what happened was really simple: Portland let in two crap goals, both of them dismal two-steppers. The broadcast team lamented the heavy touch by Jeremy Ebobisse on the first goal, but it was Ebobisse’s search for a better pass that slowed him down long enough for Michael Parkhurst (dude, not the fastest) to pick the ball off his toe. Parkhurst’s tackle left nothing between Josef Martinez and Portland’s yawning goal but Liam Ridgewell’s failure to stick all the way in. In a bit of cosmic unfairness, Ridgewell starred again on the second goal, this time by losing track of Josef “Single-Season-Fucking-Scoring-Record” Martinez, who would knock a header to a streaking Franco Escobar at the back post, aka, the guy Jorge Villafana lost. Two massive two-step mistakes, two goals, and the rest of it becomes what might have been – e.g., what if Ebobisse powered the ball across the goal instead of cushioning the deflection too near Atlanta ‘keeper, Brad Guzan? Had the Timbers leveled the score four-five minutes after Atlanta’s opener, who knows what might have been?

I fretted a little theatrically over Ebobisse’s mental state in a since-deleted tweet, but that’s misplaced nonsense because good players learn from mistakes. We’ll see how he handles this one, not just next season, but over the next couple; that’ll drop the relevant hints on Ebobisse’s ceiling. On that, Ridgewell had a bad night, an unfortunate capper on a season where he’d shown the mental resilience of three men by swallowing a benching and surviving an injury to become a key steadying influence during the MLS Cup run. How far did he climb in my mind: a trip down memory lane revealed that I’d written Ridgewell out of the team’s script somewhere in the middle of the season (Game 17, as it happens). The man enjoyed a side of redemption with his solid season, basically.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Seattle Sounders: Success, Wheatfields, and Andy Polo

Middle fingers, all of 'em. YEEAAHHHH!!!

I showed up late to the game, mostly because I like to skip the National Anthem. (Honestly, I’m patriotic and appreciative as the next guy, I’m just not a fan of enforced rituals.) From the moment I walked in all the way through the Seattle Sounders’ opening goal, I never saw a Timbers’ player touch the ball in anything but desperation. In so many words, the omens didn’t favor victory.

I got no better sign of how much this series matters to Portland Timbers fans than the freakin’ wheat-field’s worth of middle fingers that went up all around my section (210) after Jeremy Ebobisse knocked in a finish beyond his years. Just to note it, the more I watch this kid play the more my brain silently repeats, “buy in, buy in, buy in.” Those voices in my head have no idea how hard that is for me.

This game’s actual miracle moment came when Diego Valeri dribbled through at least two tackles and flailed in the aftermath of one more to feed Sebastian Blanco the game-winner. After Blanco shrugged off some Sounders drapery to knock his goal past Seattle goalkeeper Stefan Frei, the sea of middle fingers rose again and underlined just how big this series feels in these parts. Is that healthy? Probably not, but that’s what’s going on and, golly, was I happy to take in the game live and in person. The mob mentality must have got to me because both my middle fingers shot up after both goals; this shit is infectious. The second goal was doubly satisfying after watching Cristian Roldan limp toward the farthest possible point of the sideline before stepping off the field. I have no idea why that pissed me off as much as it did, but I’m confident that Ted Unkel’s ultra-passive calls slid a burner under that and heated it to boiling. I want to sit down with him and ask how he only raised one yellow card through the length of that match…and I’m willing to listen.

After two late misses (one for either team) and an offside goal for the Timbers, that was all she wrote (here, I assume the author is Agatha Christie). Most importantly, the Timbers recovered from getting run over and scored on early to take a sadly slim 2-1 lead in this playoff series. As amazing as that was in the moment, it’s going to take some doing to make that score hold up in the second leg. A 1-0 Seattle win in Seattle is all it will take to send the Sounders through and that score-line fits that teams profile like personally-crafted skinny jeans (even my butt would look good). All the same, this win gives Portland a chance and, deeply apprehensive as I am about the road ahead, that’s all I can ask for, really.

Portland Timbers 2-0 Toronto FC: Dunking on the Expected

Again, without touching it.

So…that was like the loss to Seattle Sounders FC, only with winning, right? The Portland Timbers largely outplayed an opponent, but came out 2-0 winners instead of (mildly) broken losers - because, tonight’s win, right?

To start this review off right, yes, I do love it when the opposition’s starting line-up renders everything I covered in my pre-game tweet-storm totally irrelevant (no, please, kick me again). Why didn’t Sebastian Giovinco start; if not him, why not Jonathan Osorio, or even Victor Vaszquez? On the other hand, Jozy Altidore did start, but Portland swallowed his considerable mass well enough, what with Larrys Mabiala nipping at his heels for as long as the game lasted. (Yes, I’m exaggerating…just translate that thought into the team at large.) Barring a post-game revelation (I won’t follow up), I have no idea why Toronto FC started a B-Team against Portland tonight; I also know it didn’t pan out, so file that away too. Cruise control switched on for this game immediately after Diego Chara slotted home the Timbers’ winner. Portland piling on goals never seemed on the cards any more than a Toronto comeback, but Portland added a back-breaker of a goal to reach 2-0 all the same. Again, I have no idea why Toronto, a team (still) six points out of the playoffs and (now) with only eight games left, tried to win this game on the cheap.

I say that knowing that I’ve advised the Timbers to cheat on personnel time and again. Just this past week, in fact, and against the New England Revolution this upcoming Saturday. I can’t present the evidence on that because I haven’t figured out how to embed a tweet into a Blogger post and, Jesus Christ, I am never gonna do that. (This a space for textasphiliacs, while also being open to converts. But, to get back on track…)

Like at least, oh, 20% of the Timbers fan-base at any given time, I’d decided it was time to deploy Portland with another formation tonight - something the coaching staff took only as far as putting Jorge Villafana into the starting line-up (also, is this how the team lined-up; probably not). Jorge aside (and welcome back, kid), I’m not sure Portland played another formation tonight, so much as I’m pretty damn sure Toronto played against the Timbers the worst possible way they could have - especially this specific iteration of “Portland Timbers.” The past 3-4 teams have defended deep, and that, 1) gave Samuel Armenteros nothing but no space in which to operate, and 2) forced the Timbers to try to break down a compact defense with crosses, i.e., something they can’t do. And so they didn’t. And that’s the history of the past four games…

Portland Timbers 3-0 New York City FC: Pathetic Cobra, Cunning Mongoose

Bluff.

I started with seeing the things I expected to see - e.g., New York City FC’s Maxi Moralez finding seams between the lines to dart in and of like a hummingbird (pound for pound, just sayin’) - about 15 minutes into the game. The predicted spells of possession started to show about 25-30 minutes into the game, when NYCFC established a perimeter around the rough area of Portland’s defensive third (and with a pinch-in from both sidelines), and just…held that line and probed for weaknesses for as long as minute, maybe even three minutes at a time. The inexorable mechanics of a boa constrictor at work, and only a matter of time away.

To introduce a second unnecessary snake metaphor to the equation, a cobra is scary as hell until a mongoose shows up. I came into this game with a headful of dread (see twitter), and that had everything to do with NYCFC reputation, unbeaten, high-scoring, relentless; I’d seen them at least twice this season and never walked away without believing in their permanent upward mobility. To drag the cobra back into this, think when it hoists its head up, hood flared, poised to strike; that’s what each of those 1-3 minutes spans felt like (or, to introduce another metaphor, think a hammer hovering over a nail). When NYCFC settled into a rhythm after Portland scored their first from a Sebastian Blanco header, and camped out where I thought they would (just inside Portland’s half), I had flashbacks of both of New York’s comebacks against Atlanta United FC just the week before. More to the point, if you compare the league-wide hype-factor between Atlanta and Portland, a mighty river flowed from one, while a fitful trickle flowed from the other.

That’s respectively, in case you can’t tell. Seriously, I would have asked for tall odds for a bet on a Timbers win tonight - say 6:1. Saying they’d win by three would have shot the odds through the roof - say, 25-1, maybe even higher. And I think you’d get a taker or two on that 25-1 for a 3-0 win, the final score for this beautiful puppy. Just think what you could be doing now with all that cash, Doubting Thomas…cocaine and Vegas, man. Or just an eighth and Spirit Mountain. By Uber.

That said, I just checked the highlights and I’m struck by the full meaning of Blanco’s goal - e.g., the mongoose of the…second order metaphor. Even the title to the link is titled, “Sebastian Blanco loops an unlikely header into the net,” and that captures it nicely. Blanco  had to get a better line on the ball than 5’ 9” Anton Tinnerholm to score Portland’s first goal, and it didn’t necessarily feel like Sly Stallone leaning just a little bit more on during one of the qualies for Over the Top. As noted above, New York kept doing what they do, keeping the ball in front of them, finding Moralez ping-ponging between the back four and whatever midfield configuration then opposing team puts in front of that. It felt like they’d pin Portland in and, when the time was right, ripe, and most devastating, they’d strike. Not sure where I am for metaphors by now, but this feels more like a feline alpha predator at this point, that’s just to note where my head is right now. Moving on…

New York Red Bulls 4-0 Portland Timbers:The Slough of Despond, But With a View!

Think this might be familiar this season.

What do you call a game that had nothing?

Some mysteries have no answers....holy shit, some mysteries have no answers.

My top-line thought on the New York Red Bulls’ 4-0 pool-shark evisceration of the Portland Timbers was…well, brutal. Portland has regressed, and abruptly. Ideally, this is a bad spell that will pass once new coach, Giovanni Savarese, figures out where he wants to take the whole thing and he's just keeping things status quo (same formation, and relying on most of the same players, etc.) in the meantime. At time of writing, though, Timbers fans have an absolutely stunning view of the Slough of Despond.

Because this post only continues the evisceration, I want to state this early: this isn’t hitting the panic button. Portland hasn’t been good on the road since 2015 (though they held up decently in 2017), so I didn’t expect much from the opening stanza of 2018, most of which the team will sing on the road. Something else I didn’t expect: a Portland team that looks, for all the world, like it has no clear sense of how to move the ball forward, never mind be goal-dangerous, a team that looks utterly fucking clueless in the attack. It’s important to stick with that idea about the same players in the same formation because the bulk of this same team didn’t just win the Western Conference last season, it featured the league’s most valuable player, Diego Valeri MVP, and looked like it had several ideas on how to score.

Between preseason and season, I haven’t seen Valeri feature in anything for Portland so far. Worse, every other player looks to have dropped off the same cliff. And that’s the real mystery: how does a team that basically knew what to do in the attack last season transform into eleven stumbling blind mice? I mean, sure, night follows day, but rarely that fast.

That aside, Portland’s starters punched even with New York’s reserves tonight (again, the reserves.) The Timbers “came back into the game” in the early part of the second half, but still without quite knowing what to do fully in play. Luis Robles, Jr. had to stop one chance (v. Samuel Armenteros) and steal another (header by Dairon Asprilla), but those two shots bounced against Portland’s ceiling, while the Red Bulls, on the other hand, left Portland chasing on the game winner, playing in, out, around, then across Portland’s defensive middle to score a tap-in. The Timbers defense flat-out sucked for the second week running, so it’s not a huge surprise to see them struggle against an accomplished forward like Bradley Wright-Phillips; the 17-year-old, on the other hand, Ben Mines, the guy who scored the goal documented above…yeah, that’s a blow.

5 Questions for the Portland Timbers...After a Buncha Shit

I mean broadly, right? Does it feel new to you?

“With the exception of Powell, it’s been a disappointing preseason for the Timbers’ back six. Vytas’s job, obviously, isn’t secure. Olum has been only not-terrible in fill-in duty. Guzman has been subpar. Ridgewell and Mabiala have both been up-and-down. #RCTID”

- Chris Rifer tweet

Rather than speak directly as to how I feel about that tweet - for I have opinions on every point about each named name - I’ll go on for two-three pages in various directions from all that.

First, I watched three preseason games this season - that dispiriting loss to FC Dallas, the B-side scrimmage rout against New York Red Bulls II, and tonight’s 3-2 Jekyll-Hyde win against the Portland Timbers sub-nemesis, Sporting Kansas City (how does a team exorcise a double post?). In the broadest possible terms, that translated to 3 halves of depressingly flaccid soccer from Portland, against one good half and a certain number of glances down fresh avenues that look promising. As for the New York II game, I’m not sure it matters, at least not outside bolstering one particular legend.

I’m going to end/build this post around forwarding 5 questions about the Portland Timbers going into this 2018 season, but I want to park on tonight’s game before getting to those, because 1) it’s our freshest shared experience (come with me, kids!), and 2) it touches on some of the relevant sub-plots to those questions.

To start, however, with one of the least relevant points, Jake Gleeson bailed out the Timbers tonight (with one vital assist from David Guzman(?)). Contrary to the tweet above, Alvas Powell hogged the spotlight in a drunk karaoke vein - i.e., he commanded attention again and again, but missed key notes in crucial moments, and the Geiger count on those moments tracked with proximity to goal; in other words, Powell’s been Powell so far. As for big revelations, if Samuel Armenteros’ preseason hasn’t kindled some hope in your heart, seek professional help, because that fucker’s probably necrotic (shit…yer heart, not Armenteros). Between his mobility, visible glee at combination play, and a highlight reel of good finishes (and none of his finishes for Portland have looked that good so far), Armenteros looks genuinely promising - in a way that a lot of this preseason has not.

In spite of today’s come-back - which, incidentally, lifted Portland a 2-2-1/respectable preseason - Vytas Andruiskevicius busted a hamstring. (Also, thank god for Marco Farfan, and good luck, kid!) And I’m still coming to terms with the full meaning of seeing Dairon Asprilla as my second brightest spot to preseason 2018 - that’s after Armenteros. I mean…that has implications, right?

Portland Timbers 1-2 Seattle Sounders: When Your Tifo Game Is Your Last, Best Hope

Our shared lives....

After taking in the (condensed) Hell of the Portland Timbers’ midweek loss to Minnesota United FC, and then enduring the auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong that Portland coughing up a late 2-2 draw to the Seattle Sounders, a moment that made a mockery of a truly wonderful tifo, I have several things to say/note, or that make me wanna go fetal…

First, see the title.

Second, I want to bury this idea about “bad defending,” because I view that as a too-broad argument for a more specific phenomenon. Generally speaking, the Timbers don’t defend badly as a unit, so much as they keep making horrific, this-will-make-your-mother-hate-you mistakes in defense, and, because they follow from bad decisions in the precise/specific/defining moment, those kinds of fuck ups are harder to remedy. There, I’m talking about Jeff Attinella coming off his line on Minnesota’s third goal and taking out not one, but two defenders, or the way not one single player in Portland’s defense tracked Clint “Fucking” Dempsey wandering into the space that opened up when all three of Portland’s last-line defenders dropped off on Seattle’s equalizer…the line was immaculate, then, if distinctly Maginot in nature and quality. Basically, the problems seem based less on structure than bad decisions by individual players.

I’m not saying Portland’s defense doesn’t blow the fundamentals from time to time – see the pocket that Christian Ramirez settles in to score Minnesota’s second goal (yes, keeping a good line is fundamental) – but everyone’s in some reasonable approximation of where they should be for Minnesota’s first (Okugo just got a bad touch, and the resulting own-goal; then again, where’s the reaction to that overload?). The same goes for Joevin Jones’ opening goal on Sunday: Portland’s defenders were in decent position – and I’m not saying that a couple player didn’t react like corpses (looking at you, Alvas Powell, Lawrence Olum) – but, honestly, Jake Gleeson’s rebound went straight back into the natural progession of Jones' run, who didn’t so much follow up as found the ball rolling lazily into his stride, and that’s just the gods tickling the odds in one direction or the other. As suits their fancy, the whimsical bastards…

Bottom Line: set aside the details and Timbers fans get the same outcome: every Timbers game now amounts to an exercise in anxiously turning the crank on a Jack-in-the-Box and waiting for that fucker to pop and scare the shit out of you/ruin your day.

San Jose Earthquakes 3-0 Portland Timbers: That Day the Team Showed Up…Stoned, I Guess?

A universe that bounds angels to the earth.

We all should have seen it coming as early as the 16th second (yes, second) when David Guzman skipped past a loose slow-roller at the top of the Portland Timbers’ defensive third, with prospects of a lethal counter on the horizon.

Look, it was bound to happen. Off days are inevitable, especially in a league like Major League Soccer, which seems to operate as if it exists in the Harrison Bergeron Universe. If a team comes out flat as the Portland Timbers did last Saturday, it loses, universe notwithstanding. Sure, off days happen, and I can’t see the Timbers coming out that flat any time soon – at least not unless they want to chuck the career (guys, don’t…changing jobs sucks) - but the outlines of something ominous lurks at the back of this one.

With so much to unpack, where to begin? Ah, I know! How about a jinx/prediction:

“With too many of San Jose’s new guys failing to pan out (Danny Hoesens), or not panning out enough (Tommy Thompson, Jahmir Hyka, and Marcos Urena), and Chris Wondolowski shooting blanks even on the rare occasions he can find the ball, the ‘Quakes feel like a one-goal-per-game team right now.”

That was me, by the way. Anyway, pull Tommy Thompson out of that equation and every other player in that sentence played to the direct opposite. Danny Hoesens got dangerous time and again – including when he kicked off the chaos that led to San Jose’s first goal – Jahmir Hyka scored (though, in honesty, he’s been all right), and Chris Wondolowski put some shine on his shooting boots before this one, because he bagged two quick-twitch classics (or just goals) in this game. Hell, even Marcos Urena shot well today – yeah, the same guy who’s limp-dicked his share of tries (not fronting there; for all the things I do competently on the field, absent a good wind-up, I’ve got a weak shot).

That's how one team beats another 3-0. Still, who knew it would be Florian Jungwirth, a defensive midfielder converted to central defender, apparently (if only according to the broadcast booth), who fed Wondo for both of his goals. And that’s where I flip the microscope to Portland’s side.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Sporting Kansas City: Say, That's Not Right (But It Is)

WWWWAAAHHH!!!!

First, some context: my wife and I had gone on a date prior to the game, and that put me about two sheets to the wind at kickoff. I made it through the game, and then some, but I think I wrapped myself in Sheet 4 or 5 somewhere in there and, in every sense except actually being asleep, called it a night. With that in mind, I’m going to approach this from an impressionist angle.

A feeling sums up the Portland Timbers’ 0-1 loss at home to Sporting Kansas City: a sense of vague yet persistent frustration. Every time a Portland player faced an obstacle, he did it knowing that another obstacle stood beyond that one, and so on to what felt like infinity for some damn reason (or maybe Sheet 3, but I digress). By game’s end, most Timbers players looked not so much tired, as weary*. Enervation in game form: that’s what Saturday’s loss felt like. Running, but never moving, Sisyphus putting his shoulder to the rock again, etc.

Something told me that Portland would never score. I can’t even peg the time this occurred to me – did that come to me before or after KC scored their goal? – but I think I’d experience the former as resignation and the latter as despair, and how far are those two things, really? No team in MLS has had much luck breaking down KC this season, but the Timbers seemed likelier than most teams to do it. Instead, we got a double-layered shit sandwich: a loss at home against a Western Conference rival and an indication that KC’s has both the system and the intent to put their opponents in a submission hold for the length of the 2017 season. They’ll choke off games, basically, and that’s boring, but effective. And boring.

I just sat through the condensed game to fan the fires of memory a little, and here’s where I pick up that asterisk. * Portland’s best chances came late, so my memory failed me a little on that detail (but is that timing issue relevant? you be the judge), but I still maintain there’s a reason my chief mental impression of the night featured Diego Valeri seeming to just scream at referee, Drew Fisher. From the looks of it, it just came out as “WWWAAAAAAHHHHHH!!” It’s like Valeri performance-arted The Scream live, on-field, only instead of wailing about the horror of existence, his felt more like "do you believe this fucking guy?" as a madman's bellow. At least that’s how I remembered it…

Fewer Questions: The Portland Timbers, The State of Things

Stepdad 1. World 0. (C'mon, you'd be impressed. Or sufficiently confused.)

In a post last week, I hit a piece in The Oregonian from an angle. That article-show (you see, when an article loves a slideshow very, very much) put 11 Questions to the Portland Timbers for 2017. If Portland answers them right, they win! More often than not! (In case you're wondering, yes, accurate.)

As noted then, 11 questions feel like checking every side street instead of just driving straight to the destination. To pick an example (#2), if Portland lands on an effective center back pairing, a few other items (let’s go with, #4, #7, #11, #13, and #14), get answered either loosely (e.g. the presence or absence of “an effective center back pairing” behind David Guzman will go a long way to determining how he plays); by answering itself (e.g., if, say, Rennico Clarke seizes the starting job, the young players made an impact by definition); by the same logic (e.g., the team, and the back-line, will either have good chemistry or it won’t); directly (e.g., if the Timbers have “an effective center back pairing,” they will win more games on the road); finally, and again, directly (e.g., if they win more games, steal some others, they will make the playoffs).

Look, I’m not just shitting on The Oregonian’s copy. This is more about highlighting/addressing the big issues (personnel) and then tuning the machinery to get it firing optimal. Call it Formula 2015, or come up with something better, it’s about the same thing: getting the most out of the players the team has at any given moment. And, now that I’ve completely incorporated the Supporters’ Shield into my universe of goals, what’s possible in any given moment should influence how the team approaches each game.

To frame that from the longest distance, playing for the Shield should mean putting out your best team every time you can, because maximizing points every game means operating on a very much live for today mind-set. If, however, you’re most focused on the MLS Cup – and I think this is viable, even wise, for some teams from the start of the season, but, even more, as your options run out during the season - you can, say, risk dropping points in order to rest players (especially on the road, and in tough venues), and give your back-ups more first-team experiences, because that builds repetitions, therefore on-field partnerships. This isn’t a clean contrast, either, because FC Dallas threw their youth to the lions a couple times last season (I think; eh, maybe), but still won the Shield. At the same time, how much did wear on their team, and Mauro Diaz in particular, doom their Cup hopes? Just sayin’, people make choices alla time…

On a related note, and to see if I finally can’t get it right, I’ve been trying to understand why the Timbers winning MLS Cup in 2015 never quite satisfied me. Because the Timbers did the consistently inconsistent thing for most of the year, winning the Cup felt like your divorced dad, after an entire year of blown promises and blowing you off, absolutely fucking nailed your birthday party. That probably has something to do with 2016, but let’s stick to the task at hand.

Timbers Tumble in Texas...And It All Made Sense. It All Made Sense

Depressingly uncomplicated, actually.

"You see results that are head scratchers."
- Caleb Porter, Timbers head coach, post-game

I expected moments like Houston’s Raul Rodriguez biting too hard on Portland’s Darren Mattocks' run, a lunge that allowed Mattocks to follow Darlington Nagbe's leading pass into the space behind (we all know how this one ended, ball off post, Diego Valeri (of course), doing his right-place/right-time thing to tap the in Portland’s goal, no, it’s equalizer!). Or maybe when Valeri later picked the ball off (again) Rodriguez and Portland almost scored. Both of those came during a solid 20-25 spell in the second half, a time that, according to the script I’d written in my head, looked right side up. It fit the standings, after all, plus...we're the better team, right?

But was the game right side up in those moments? Was this really a “head scratcher?” That’s the thrust of Porter’s comment. It tracks my preview post, too, and a handful of tweets I put out the week prior: it tracked the assumption that, because this was Portland’s best chance for road points at this point in the season, those road points were therefore available. The logic leapt from “A-to-C,” in other words, but without any more reason than Houston’s weaknesses and/or unknowns. That’s weird because the empirical evidence points to something else, something much, much simpler.

The Portland Timbers are terrible on the road. Goddamn, clarity is refreshing. The equalizer noted above, one that I took as some kind of given, only warded off a 3-1 loss that felt inevitable by the end. The question is why I (and, I'm assuming, other Timbers fans) expected something different. I mean besides wishful thinking and blind faith. The Portland Timbers suck on the road: that's not just reality, it should be the first sentence written for every Timbers away game. "Well, obviously, the Portland Timbers suck on the road." And it'll be true. Until it isn't.

Downed by Dallas: Some Cheap Hope and a Remedy

I call it Plan P. You WILL remember!

I was able to believe that the Portland Timbers would find their way back into the game for quite a while. Until the 53rd minute, to put a number on it. That I felt like Portland had a chance against FC Dallas going in very likely had something to do with it; I mean, who doesn't want to see his/her hunches confirmed? And it's not like the Timbers didn't give people reason to hope: about five minutes after Dallas' opener a long ball from Liam Ridgewell found Lucas Melano over the top, who forced an error from Dallas 'keeper Chris Seitz, and one big enough to keep Dallas' defense dancing for a few full seconds. Even after Dallas raised the margin for victory to 2-0 at the very end of the first half, Melano meandered across the top of Dallas' attacking third, a move that, 1) threw off Dallas' defense and, 2) put him in position to later thunder a shot off the crossbar. It didn't go in, nor did Fanendo Adi's follow-up header. Still, think what drawing first blood in the second half could have meant to the contest. Or think what an answer to Dallas' first (soft) goal five minutes after it happened could have meant.

That paragraph above is loaded with a whole lotta what-might-have-been. Things felt decidedly over, sadly, once Walker "I Make 'O' Faces" Zimmerman blasted the ball over Jack Jewsbury's head and past Portland 'keeper Jake Gleeson for Dallas' third, final, and entirely sufficient goal in the ultimate 3-1 win (and with Steven Taylor clinging to Zimmerman's jersey like a damsel begging him not to leave). Zimmerman's goal launched the inquiry, basically, into what went wrong in Dallas this past Saturday.

I thought I had a pretty good narrative, one that I typed into my phone on the (long, almost interminable, really) train ride home. Those notes flagged details like a reminder of Portland's better days, back when the double pivot worked, germs of a theory on why Ridgewell and S. Taylor (goddammit, guys; sign fewer Taylors!) make for a lousy tandem, a belief that Dallas turned Diego Valeri invisible in the second half, and, finally, they argued that the Timbers have a "wing" problem. It all sounded very simple, basically.

Timbers Top Columbus (Again), Through Distorted Lenses

When I look at the world, I only see the cracks.

I was told tonight – or, rather, I was reminded – that I tend to approach subjects from the negative. It's a fair point, all in all, especially seeing as how most of the thoughts I have about the Portland Timbers first-ever March win in the Caleb Porter Era (long may it last; or may it last so long as Caleb brings home the sweet, sweet bacon) do lean a little toward the negative – e.g. Dairon Asprilla is good, but is he good enough? Lucas Melano is fine, but at that price?

There are rose-tinted lenses, then there are whatever the fuck I wear. All I know is that I'm pretty sure the bastards aren't Ray-bans. In an attempt to go against that trend, I'll start with all the things about tonight's epic (in the context of past months of March) win over last year's final victims, Columbus Crew SC.

Jermaine Taylor Is Fine at Left Back
Yes, he's never going to transform Portland's attack from that position, but I think that anytime the Timbers have a game where they want a lock-down(-ish? –esque?) performance out of a left back, Taylor offers a pretty reasonable option. His speed is decent and, this is key, defending is his strength. So, there's one plus.

Alvas Powell Is a Fine Right Back (yes, that's right back)
Powell had a great defensive game today; the best bit came when he so powerfully shielded the ball from Columbus' Shaun Francis, that, in the grips of child-like enthusiasm, Francis could only show his appreciation by climbing on Powell's back for a piggy-back ride. Wheee!! In all seriousness, I would love to ship Powell to...mutually better pastures. Trouble is, I can't do that until Portland replaces Powell with an upgrade. Here, I'm talking about a right back who visibly upgrades Powell in the attack while defending, oh, 3/4 as well as Powell. Basically, I rate Powell pretty damn highly as a defender, while I'd argue he attacks...less well than he should.

Timbers Top Dallas in Leg 1: Rumors of a Steady State

The man at left is Caleb Porter's copilot. Good times.

It all hinged on The Goal of Destiny. When a random scrap player from your team – say, Dairon Asprilla – scores that crackerjack, out-o'-nowhere special goal that your team of choice so rarely scores, it's time to set aside all sense of doubt, to suspend all reasonable disbelief, and, when all's said and done, to believe that all the trends might be too irresistible to resist, and to accept that, yes, things are going really goddamn well with your local soccer team.

As all who care to know know by now, the Portland Timbers built a big beautiful lead in the opening game of their home-and-home series against FC Dallas tonight, taking a 3-1 win (familiar? yes!) over Texas' historic also-rans (yep, I'm fronting!). The Timbers won this one in the best way possible for this kind of series: they came out and dominated, from the get, from the go, and, with small exceptions, from start to finish. The Portland Timbers look really real, people, in a way that anyone watching them in August, or even September, would have given you very good money in order to buy very good drugs that promised to let them feel some lesser form of anxiety about the current and future state of all things Timbers.

But the margin, it didn't feel so large in real time as it does now, did it? Portland drew first blood with a barreling goal from Liam Ridgewell, but Dallas threatened in some achingly familiar ways. Not the most familiar ways, mind you - the Timbers defense did a good enough job corralling Fabian Castillo that teams around the league should review the tape (Jorge Villafana, in particular, appeared to have a clear mind as to how to play Castillo right – e.g. leave a gap between you and him, assuming that the worst thing he can do is get actually past you) – and they generally stayed compact when Dallas had possession (yay!) – but the Timbers allowed a set of set pieces in a spot on the field that 100%-absolutely could have spelled disaster. With Mauro Diaz misfiring, it didn't matter in the end and that's the tale of the tape: the better team (Portland) wasn't punished for some moments of less-than-perfect judgment (free kicks), so they won the game and rightly so.

Before I bury the lead, I want to say it here explicitly: the Timbers look really solid right now; this club defends at damn-near close to the highest level in Major League Soccer, but they have since figured out how to score goals...wait...doing actual research for one of these...no, don’t spoil my moment...yes, thought so, Portland has scored 24 goals in the second half of the season, versus 17 goals in the first half; throw in the playoffs, where Portland has scored, uh, seven more goals in four games. That's not some brilliant, massive haul, but, yeah, with one goal per game giving way to something...mathematically better, I'd argue that Portland has worked out scoring goals. That's cool, but that's not the coolest thing. When your team plays defense like that, they're going to win if/when the offense comes online. And against any team in MLS. Any. Team.

Timbers Triumph: On a Plan Coming Together

Not my fault. That show was manifestly stupid.

Everyone knows the super-agent movie trope when the super-villain sets up some Rube Goldberg contraption to kill the super-spy, often one that functions on a glacial time-line, as opposed to just putting a big bullet straight through the friggin' head of his nemesis. That approach to taking care of the biggest of one's 99 problems is so obviously silly that only an obvious movie could lampoon it (one of the not much lamented Austin Powers franchise; funniest thing I've ever seen Seth Green do, for sure).

But I understand the super-villain mind. When some asshole has foiled your plans for world domination over and over and over – maybe he even hurt or killed that fluffy white cat you love with all your nefarious heart – you don’t want to just kill the guy: you want that son of a bitch to spend his last hours (and good revenge totally requires hours) tallying up all the ways he's fucked. All the ways that you, Master Super Villain, have 100%-guaranteed, and from every possible angle, that he is fucked. The goal isn't just to vanquish one's foe. For all I know, it's to see if you can't make him cry a little. (NOTE: Roger Moore squirted a few every time he had to run for a scene by the time of his long-overdue retirement from the Bond franchise; NOTE to NOTE: Apocryphal; NOTE to NOTE to NOTE: I heard he had a stunt double run for him, which isn't remotely Bond-esque, but my story about tears is 100% fabricated.)

I'm not saying I wanted the Portland Timbers to dominate and humiliate the Vancouver Whitecaps yesterday. First of all, that would be just rude, what with the classy tweet they posted today congratulating the Timbers and the Timbers Army. I mean, I can be vulgar, crass, etc. etc. I do, however, aspire to some basic quantity of class. Good taste...I'll do that later (Edit, Randall: Oh, the punches he pulls; there's some rot in the attic, people; war crimes in his head earlier today).

That said, beating Vancouver the way the Timbers did last night, and at the end of this season, shares more than a couple things with the super-villain's Super-Spy Death Trap. Timbers fans have studied its shape and structure for months now. Over time, they came to understand that the mechanics of the Timbers machine is overly complex, it has too many goddamn parts – and most of those don’t ever seem to fit together right – and it took far too goddamn long to function well, never mind as promised. And yet, isn't that glorious, mangled contraption working like gangbusters right now? I mean, holy shit, the goddamn thing works!