MLS Western Conference Round-Up: Checking the Blowouts & the Wrong End of the Standings

I go with the wind, I am the wind. That is me. True story.

If all goes according to plan – and if you’re holding your breath, by the gods, I urge you to stop – I will top next week’s version of this post with Portland Timbers’ match reportage. For anyone who’s curious what that will look like, it should be something like the Eastern Conference round-up posted to this same channel last night. But also shorter. I posted earlier on the Timbers letting two points slip away versus LAFC last Saturday, but fuck it, it’s early and Portland’s in fourth place and when’s the last time that happened. For the record, this used to be the kind of thing I would look up, but The Mothership has stripped a lot of the links and connectivity out of their archived material, which makes that kind of thing a lot harder…what a bunch of assholes.

A final programming note: most weeks, I will watch whichever team the Timbers have next, but there’s no goddamn way I’m sitting through Austin FC beating the Galaxy by one damn goal when I’ve already stared at both of those teams more than anyone but their biggest fans should have to.

Right, let’s kick around what happened in MLS’s Western Conference last weekend. Just the good shit.

Seattle Sounders 3-0 Nashville SC
Why This Game?
A combination of trying to figure out what’s going on with Nashville and keeping your enemies close…

The Game, Briefly (watched 1-45)
First, both teams rested their share of regular starters, if for reasons unknown – Albert Rusnak and Jordan Morris for Seattle, and Edvard Tagseth, aka, Nashville’s Engine – and, against the even numbers in the final stats, the game was over by the 34th minute. As confessed above, I only watched the first half (fine…most of it), but I caught at least five of Nashville’s shots on goal in the full highlights and never saw them serve up anything more threatening than a kitten in a sombrero. One li’l curiosity to note: wily veteran Andy Najar played some role in at least two Seattle goals, one by commission (the first goal), the other by omission (what was he doing so far from Paul “Everyman” Rothrock on that third goal?). Pedro de la Vega got a lot of hype in the Official post-game chatter (aka, MLS Wrap Up...gotta stop watching that bilge), but even he credited Obed Vargas for teeing up his goal. The Sounders overwhelmed Nashville, no question, and took just 15 minutes to bury them. Sometimes a game just gets away from a team.

Getting Reacquainted with the New England Revolution, MLS's Maids of Honor

To the queen in blue: you are seen, you are beautiful.

Thumbnail History
I moved to Boson in 1998, the same season I consciously uncoupled from DC United (successful teams don’t challenge you enough as a fan) and embraced the New England Revolution. The Wooden Spoon stung their bums for the one and only time in their history at the end of that very season. Fortunately, for both me and them, New England became one of the first teams to crack the post-contraction code and that made them the Second Most Menacing Team in MLS for pretty much every season between 2002 and 2007. To be clear, not all of those MLS Cup runs were created equal: with Taylor Twellman and MLS iron-man/assist-king Steve Ralston in the starting XI, the 2002 roster had the beginnings of the Revs’ real glory seasons, but it took additions like Matt Reis in goal, Michael Parkhurst and Jay Heaps leading the back line, plus Shalrie Joseph dominating midfield to transform the Revolution into a team that could win any given game. Throwing a team like that into the playoffs season after season (e.g., from 2002-2009) gave them plenty of chances to win it all. Which, again, they did not. To get a little personal, none of those losses kicked me like the 2006 final and, firmly as believe that spectator sports cannot deliver trauma worth even five minutes of therapy, I do consider that loss formative to how I “enjoy” soccer to this day (i.e., never get too close). The Revs’ history tells a familiar tale from there – you know the drill, players leaving the team one by one, new players coming in who don’t fill all of the hole left by the guys before them, a once-reliable coach sticking around past his sell-by date, etc. Several rough seasons followed, before the 2014 season rolled around. New England had made the playoffs the season before, sure, but they fielded not just a young team, but one that had mainly proved itself IN MLS. It started with Andrew Farrell in defense, but continued up the spine with Scott Caldwell in central midfield and Kelyn Rowe and Lee Nguyen running the midfield. That basic line-up got a boost of nitrous in the person and personality of U.S. Men’s National Team adoptee, Jermaine Jones, who came in as a late-season addition and girded every loin he could bark into shape. And all of those budding youngsters promised a brighter future…until they very abruptly didn’t. The Revolution sulked back into the wilderness for fives seasons after 2014 – I mean, they didn’t do shit – but caught up to the new way of doing things by 2021. Part of that relied on calling in new designated players – the (cliché alert) mercurial Gustavo Bou and one of MLS’s latter-day greats, Carles Gil – but the other half relied on spotting some of the best North American talent of the current generation – e.g., Matt Turner (goalkeeper) and Tajon Buchanan (full/wingback) lead that bunch, but Henry Kessler and DeJuan Jones are nothing to sniff at. That team benefitted from the wisdom of MLS Svengali, Bruce Arena, and leaned on a spine of some old-guard regulars – i.e., Farrell and long-time MLS-above-averager, Matt Polster, but it took a second generation of budding talent to lift the 2021 Revolution team to the then-best-ever regular season in MLS history. And, yes, that record was broken just three years later by an Inter Miami CF team that rode a smash-and-grab reunion to even greater heights. Only to run into the same dead-end that never stopped haunting the Revs. They didn’t even make the semifinals. Ha.

Los Angeles FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Running Through Hell to Glory

Ma tenders!

There was a lot to love about the Portland Timbers’ late, late (late, late, late, late) equalizer against Los Angeles FC tonight e.g., the way it felt like Portland looking at the right side of the mirror, for once, after they’ve looked at it from the wrong side too often this season, or the fluid beauty of the full faith and execution with which all the players involved found the right passes and made the right runs, not to mention seeing Diego Valeri drop the cross on a goddamn dime to Jorge Villafana’s back-post run. This was after 90 minutes into an exhausting duel and running on legs I’d given up on, frankly, too many seasons ago.

Personally, I most appreciated the aesthetic of the way it played out on my TV. I got only as far as “wai” into “wait, where’s that cross going?” before I spotted Villafana’s run. Watching the ball fly through the air as Villafana sprinted to meet it, seeing LAFC’s goalkeeper and defender pinch together to stop it - swear to God, it brushed the defender’s hair (who was it? no one important, just another victim) - and to see that it always could only land exactly where it did: ah, thing of beauty…

…what’s that? What about the 90 sweaty minutes passed before it? Yes, yes, LAFC pinged the woodwork like it was the object of the game - twice if byDiego Rossi, once if by Carlos Vela, and through disturbingly clear openings - but I’ve got caveats for days from Portland’s side of the “what ifs,” and Timbers fans got their fairy tale ending in a 1-1 draw that booked them a date with FC Dallas. In the grand scheme of everything, I’d call that result a steal worth not asking too many questions about.

First, either forget the box score (too even) or know that LAFC ran good-golly-gosh-darn riot for nearly all of the first half; hell, the Timbers could barely get out of their defensive third for the first 25-30 minutes. Portland settled down their affairs as the game continued, but I doubt even one dollar’s worth of the live betting shifted in their direction until the 80th minute. That said, the smart money would have started moving in the Timbers’ direction around the 85th, even if in search of a big payoff. They finally posted someshots and, I’m guessing, did most of the work to doing those last-minute revisions to the box score.

Los Angeles FC 4-1 Portland Timbers: Letting Jeff Down.

A wrong turn was clearly taken.

[Ed. – Spring forward caught up with me around midnight last night. Or it might have been the large containers of very strong ale. Either way, midnight felt like 3 a.m. I regret the delay.]

Had you turned off the TV (or, you piece of shit, opted to break the Seventh Seal on all things that are holy and left the stadium during) the Portland Timbers' 1-4 loss to Los Angeles FC at the half, where would you have pegged the final score for yesterday’s game? Close observers will recall that the score was 1-2 at the half, and in LAFC’s favor, but, based on what you’d seen to that point, how where would you have thought the game would end? A 2-2 draw? A 3-2 win for Portland? A 2-3 win for LAFC? What about a 1-5 loss for the Timbers?

That dip into a counter-factual comes in as an attempt to retrace the steps between here (call it the end of the first half) and there (the final whistle) to see if we can’t figure out where the wrong turn (in which they missed the bridge and plunged off the cliff and into the river) happened. Overall, the game played out fairly clear game states: LAFC scored the first goal during an opening 20 minutes of beating Portland to every ball and winning ever duel; the Timbers responded over the next 20-25 minutes by doing very close to no wrong, and scoring a goal of their own (at least they won the duel of the headers). LAFC would take over completely in the third and final game state, or, as some would call it, the second half.

I think the only question comes with identifying the precise moment that cracked the Timbers’ will. As much as it hurt in the moment, I’m hereby pulling the nomination for Christian Ramirez’s first-half-capping game winner, and on the advice of my gut (the thinnest of all grounds). With just two candidates left in the running, was it Carlos Vela feeding Adama Diomande for LAFC’s 3rd goal, or was it Diomande feeding Vela for LAFC’s fourth 3-4 minutes later? Or were those awful 3-4 minutes the Timbers pivot straight to Hell? On a higher level, did the Timbers fall apart or did LAFC pull them apart and is LAFC (perhaps) that good this season? In the end, where is the balance between LAFC’s (allegedly) great attack or the Timbers (allegedly) shitty defense?

On Portland’s side of the ledger, the conundrum comes down to this: at times, the Timbers played unstoppable soccer going forward, the kind of switched-on/half-blind riffing that ladders the ball upfield in a way that’s impossible to stop…at least without Jeremy Ebobisse seizing up on the kind of chance that makes a forward a forward (for the record, I really wish that highlight reel came in 2-3 passes earlier). The Timbers played some incredible, seeing-eye stuff yesterday – at times, the attack hummed with ambient beauty – but, Ebobisse’s one goal aside, they could only create danger, but not goals. Still, they put in a respectable shift, one that would do most road teams proud. Their aim wasn’t so good, and giving up four definitely leaves a mark (more below), but they played a better game overall than that score suggests. One simply must wonder what might have been had Ebo put away the gift of a break-away by Sebastian Blanco.