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.