A Final Statement on the Portland Timbers 2024 Season & A Longer Journey Ahead

We have the technology, we can deconstruct him.

I have two main goals for this post:

1) Closing the book on the Portland Timbers’ 2024 season with a handful (or so) of questions, ones that may or may not stray into the wilds of hypothesis. Don’t expect firm foundations like statistics and/or hard pitches for this or that player. To get one premise out of the way, 1a) I’m open to all kinds of fixes for what ails the Timbers, even as I accept I’ll be lucky to get three players and some tweaks to the coaching formula.

2) To serve as a preface for quick histories of every team that competed in Major League Soccer’s 2024 season (if with some really stupid twists). I’m still working on what each chapter will look like – e.g., lump the 29 teams into half-arbitrary categories? burn myself out by posting one chapter for every team, knowing full well that I’ll overwrite every chapter (and abandon the project)? – but my only promise is that the Portland Timbers will get the same treatment in the final chapter in that between-seasons series.

2a) I’m ignoring the New York/New Jersey Real San Diego FC United Burn Wizards (does San Diego’s team have a name yet?) because, to paraphrase a German exchange student who once berated me, they have no history. (The actual quote, and he was barely standing for this, but still said it to me directly, “you have no culture.” The same man used to say "sauber" every time he farted.)

My earlier post-mortem on the Timbers’ 2024 (aka, Timbers 2024 Post-Mortem, Part I) covered a fair patch of ground in terms of anatomy (the roster) and physiology (mechanics), so nearly all the points below look to bigger questions and beg further questions about how to fix them.

With that, sit and enjoy…what amounts to a second autopsy. Because the first didn’t return anything diagnosable. Won’t take long.

Portland Timbers 0-1 Monterrey: Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?

Feelin' it. (With due and necessary innocence.)

The Portland Timbers started yesterday’s Leagues Cup Round of 32 game in a defensive posture so deep and passive that I worried Gio Savarese had them out with specific and deliberate orders to defend first, second, and third, so long as the situation demanded it. When Monterrey commenced to camp in Portland’s half over the first five minutes of the game...well, I’ll speak for myself here, but I was already writing the first couple sentences of this post, nearly all of which centered on how I made peace with an 0-3 loss.

When the final whistle blew, Portland had conceded just one goal – one that, to continue the record from the alternative universe of doom and sadness, followed from a cascade of errors, many from the unlikeliest of suspects (e.g., and in order, Zac McGraw, Diego Chara and Claudio Bravo) – and they came within one late, great chance by Dario Zuparic of sending the game to penalty kicks (see the official highlights, surely). That wasn’t to be, sadly and dammit, because the Portland Timbers lost the game 0-1 to (from what I gather) Mexican titans, Monterrey.

That’s not what the post is about. It’s about how the game we all actually watched started about 14 minutes in.

After surviving those opening five minutes, the Timbers played straight to Monterrey’s end the first time they got on the ball. Franck Boli, in particular, became a channel-running pest: on two occasions between the 10th and 15th minutes, he received the ball and, after flummoxing a defender or two with as many cuts and feints, he fired shots that sailed just wide of Monterrey’s goal. His second shot rolled close enough to the right post for them to decide they couldn’t risk him firing a third, so a couple Monterrey defenders chopped him down before he could fire it. The entire stadium wailed for a foul (rightly so), but none was given (Leagues Cup, man; different set of rules) and Monterrey, now on the ball, launched a counter up their right.

Monterrey’s man – was it Maximiliano Meza or Stefan Medina? – almost reached the halfway line before Diego Chara 1) reclaimed the ball and clattered him clean to Providence Park’s (possibly cancerous) turf, and 2) signaled with the volume of a siren and the brightness of 100 flares fired simultaneously that Portland came to play yesterday, and with a very real amount of belief.

Portland Timbers 2-2 Austin FC: A Test of Character (& Budgeting)

The Portland Timbers’ 2-2 home draw versus Austin FC gored at least one theory, but otherwise felt like weights falling on both sides of the scale. To be clear, I hated seeing the damn thing balance as much as any Timbers fan...like I said at the top of last night’s game thread, this was an occasion where the Timbers didn’t want to do anything they wouldn’t later regret. And then they went ahead and started Larrys Mabiala....I kid, I kid.

I’ll get to something like a match report in the next – sorry, no, one two three paragraphs after - paragraph, but I want to linger on Larrys for a bit (note: that’s a good adult film title, right?). For all their faults – and this is literally one of them – the Portland Timbers have brought me to an understanding of the true nature of defending. Those “[___] Days Since our Last Accident/Accidental Decapitation” signs at your local light-industry warehouse offers the perfect metaphor: the whole thing is about avoiding the next mistake for as long as possible, only all while knowing the mistake will come. Typing as someone who got dumped into the defense far more often than made sense (I sucked at defending), I wholly, fully and unashamedly embrace the argument that defenses get faulted for their failure to never fail in a way that the attacking side of any team rarely does...good Lord, these things are getting confessional.

Anyhoo, and to finally get back to Larrys, his game last night had a familiar pattern: he was fine for large stretches of the game – he even cleaned up a mess than Juan David Mosquera handed to him on a steaming, stinking platter – and then, nothing like out of the blue, Austin’s Owen “Coach’s Son” Wolff finds a bunch of space on Portland’s left late in the game (but not for the first time) and curls a cross into the heart of the defense. Now, I want to ask everyone reading this post to stop here and look at the Austin equalizer that yanked two points from the Timbers’ grasping hands. The video geeks did well with it, for what it’s worth, giving you plenty of time to see that Mabiala kept pretty fair track of Austin’s Will Bruin, he knew where he was and all that, only to somehow get separated in the decisive moment. Bruin almost certainly bumped him, but Larrys just played that whole thing wrong – if in a way I visible in 20/20 hindsight. Still, one lapse equals one goal allowed too often to count and the Timbers still lost two points on one brain fart...or two, if you want to count the fact that either Wolff and Ethan Finlay had time to whip in that cross.

Portland Timbers 0-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: How Hell Works

Marvin did that again? And again? And again? And again?

There was this band in Pullman, Washington way back when called Ignatius, who had a song titled “Waxing Pathetic.” Wish I could find that one right now...

FC Cincinnati played profoundly unwatchable soccer for three solid years. Just head-up-your-ass aimless stuff that made you wonder why they bothered.. I bring that up to explain this tweet:

“My spectator-sports life has come full circle: watching Portland feels like watching FC Cincy used to and vice versa.”

Maybe someone with a gambler’s personality/pathology could look at the last 10 minutes of the Portland Timbers’ exhausting and goal-less home draw against the Los Angeles Galaxy and talk himself into believing they’re due for something better. After 80 minutes of material that, frankly, insulted the concept of nothing, the Timbers finally located the goal and tried to put the ball in it – something long-time fans might recognize as the prime directive of the beautiful game. The increasingly maligned Jaroslaw Niezgoda fired his first shot – and the Timbers’ only shot on goal – at the 89th minute; that’s almost certainly the closest Portland ever came and Niezgoda would slice a header wide just minutes later. Justin Rasmussen fired a good, if tricky look into the stands some time later: and, yeah, that covers close to everything the Timbers did in the attack today.

Nearly everything outside of that fell somewhere between useless and dispiriting. A couple isolated moments aside, Portland hasn’t had an attack worthy of the name all seaosn. I’ll tease out a couple reasons why below – forgive me if I’ve made the same notes before, but also blame the Timbers for doing the same flailing shit over and over again – but I’d call that the second most disturbing thing about what has been a god-awful start to the 2023 season. The first thing: a genuine, thoroughgoing and baffling inability to either hold onto the ball or do something with it – and over stretches of the game that somehow feel longer than the game. I’m pretty sure that’s how Hell works, by the way...

The Galaxy, meanwhile, have some light ruing of their own to do. They never dominated the game, but they did enough to push 50/50 to 60/40 in their favor for most of the first half. They pinged two shots off Portland’s post – one by forward Preston Judd in the first half, and another by the lively Memo Rodriguez on a free-kick (I think) in the second – Gaston Brugman came within a couple fingertips of lobbing David Bingham somewhere in the first five minutes, and they had a couple other good looks besides. The Galaxy moved the ball pretty well, too, or at least they seemed to know where to look for the next pass more often than not (and literally doubled the Timbers on number of passes); if Portland can claim a win on defense, it was forcing Riqui Puig to get on the ball at the base of LA’s attack and thus endeth the list.

Los Angeles FC 3-2 Portland Timbers: Taking the Good from the Present

The top rock on the left fell off around the 65th.

Just when you’d given up, amirite? Ah, what could have been had the Portland Timbers played the entire game the way they played the final 30 minutes...

One thing I know for sure: I didn’t see Evander’s goal coming until Cristian Paredes’ dummy got the words, “holy shit,” halfway out of my mouth. Everything Portland did to that point rattled around the bad bandwidth of anxious and useless – and to the point that any sane person would have taken inflated odds against them scoring a second. And yet they did, with a goal that mirrored the scramble that teed up Los Angeles FC’s opener. That gave the game a nice sort of symmetry, even if on a see-saw that had only begun to tilt toward balance.

Two big questions hang over the Timbers’ 2-3 loss away to LAFC.

First, did you expect anything but a loss? Just as a thought exercise, put away all the specific complaints from today, forget the...concerning first half: quiet your mind and ask yourself, would you have picked the Timbers team you saw down the stretch in 2022 to go into the tougher half of Los Angeles in the second game of the next season (aka, March) and win that game? Sub-question: what do you think your answer would be if I told you that Dairon Asprilla, Sebastian Blanco, Felipe Mora and (why not?) Yimmi Chara would not be available before the game?

Admit it. You would have thought for, at most, a second before muttering, “yeah, they’re fucked.”

That’s for anyone who needs a pick-me-up after The Half That Shall Not Be Named.

The second question seems bigger to me – and I pose it without having a clear answer.

How much did the triple substitution at the 59th minute change the game? To refresh your memory (and you’re not alone), the Timbers replaced Santiago Moreno, Marvin Loria and Justin Rasmussen with Larrys Mabiala, Cristhian Paredes, and Claudio Bravo, respectively. Some gnashing of teeth flared up in my wee corner of twitter – the grounds was Portland “going defensive,” which isn’t a crazy thought – but the changes made decent sense in context – i.e., Gio traded a a little more beef in defense (aka, Mabiala) for a player whose touch appeared afflicted by nerves (aka, Moreno), a solid shuttler (aka, Paredes) for a stymied soloist (aka, Loria), and he almost unquestionably upgraded the left back position and threw more attacking juice into the mix when he replaced Rasmussen with Bravo.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Minnesota United FC: Say, That Was Lucky. And Ugly.

A metaphor (I couldn't find a better image to represent)

I feel like this was one of those nights where I saw every misplaced foot in defense, every stumble (remember, that one time, when Dario Zuparic almost fell on his ass watching Mender Garcia dance?), every over-hit pass, every touch that sent a ball flopping like a trout jumping for a mosquito, and more standing around and contemplating what some other player could do.

If anything went well during that first half, I either didn’t see it or failed to record it. And listening to the chatter from the broadcast booth was positively hallucinogenic. Felt like listening to goddamn propaganda half the damn time. And yet, I’m left wondering whether saw some darker, shadow-version of what everyone else saw tonight.

The one thing no one could miss: Dairon Asprilla power-glancing home a header from a Santiago Moreno free-kick. Yessir, that was the rock on which the Portland Timbers 1-0 win over Minnesota United FC was built...and then I rewatched said header and saw that Asprilla didn’t have to move at all to win it; Moreno casually dimed it onto his head while Minnesota’s near-side defender (looks like Luis Amarilla from the still I’m looking at right now; gonna savor the mystery) stepped out of the way. Think it’s Michael Boxall who’s asking the same question I am right now: what the fuck, man?

While it’s not 100% borne out by anything more concrete than the eye test and some parts of the box score, I’d call makeshift Minnesota the better team tonight. They moved the ball smarter, they teed up better chances (and a lot more of them) – I mean, I’m looking at the passing accuracy stat right now and suddenly wondering whether I even know how that’s calculated (and whether the Illuminati are involved) – and, all in all, believe a fair case could be made that, but for the Aljaz Ivacic/Claudio Bravo double save, like, five minutes into the game, this one would have slipped away from the Portland. Seriously, think of it: if either of those shots go in (or, for that matter, any of Minnesota’s five shots on goal, or any of their 21 shots), that’s the Timbers trying to breakdown an actually compacted Minnesota defense. And, based on what I saw out there tonight, I don’t think that’s a game Portland would have won...but instead this game wound up as a lesson in what happens when one team lets the other hang around for too long.

Honestly, if either Garcia or Kervin Arriaga could shoot; Arriaga’s wild swing to nowhere were a comic delight, but, this could have been Minnesota’s game at least half a dozen times over.

Portland Timbers 1-1 FC Dallas: The Limitations and Blessings of "Eh, Good Enough"

Explain that entire civilization and make it POP.

Had FC Dallas’ Paul Arriola not flubbed on one-and-a-half breakaways, had Jesus Ferreira not been called offside on Dallas’ best team attack, had Aljaz Ivacic failed to see the same player’s shot curl around Larrys Mabiala at the tail-end of their best chunk of the game, and had the Timbers not worked the ball smartly from right to left – and for once – to set up their best chance from open play, I could have started watching that game around the 85th minute and walked away without feeling I'd wasted 85 minutes of my life.

MLS Week 24 featured all kinds of good, compelling games, many of them with scores ending in results positively begging for a longer look. This was not one of them.

On a weekend when chaos reigned, the Portland Timbers served up another plate of the same-ol’-shit, a ho-hum motherfucker of a 1-1 draw at home against a team that, say it with me, “is above them in the standings, but not playing their best at the moment.” I’m at the point where the words “unbeaten run” have become a triggering event. If you want to find something to feel good about in this one, you’ll have to sift through a ton of dirt. And archaeology feels like a good metaphor for this one: sometimes you have to look at a potsherd and expand on it to explain a whole goddamn forgotten civilization. Or maybe you just chuck the potsherd and figure it was worth forgetting.

Tthat’s my cue to admit to missing just about everything besides Dallas’ still-later equalizer. As noted in the game thread, I thought Matt Hedges nodded home the equalizer; in reality, it came off Diego Chara’s head, and I can’t think of a louder way to whisper, “maybe you’re cursed” than that. Unlike many a Timber, Chara had a decent night, i.e., leading a defensive line that had, comedic fuck-ups notwithstanding (see Arriola’s two spurned chances), managed Dallas’ feeble attack well enough. I touched on Dallas’ salad days above – the first 20 minutes of the second half, give or take – but, again, it took Portland’s worst moments to give them their good ones.

Going the other way, at least they had them. If you take the chance flagged in the mess of a run-on sentence that started this post and maybe the chance that teed up Portland’s late, yet not late enough penalty kick, the Timbers didn’t do collectively much all night, 16 shots and five shots on goal be damned. The few things that happened for either team came in individual moments – again, see the above run-on sentence. With only a few exceptions – e.g., Santiago “Wee Wrecking Ball” Moreno on the attacking side, Dario “Hack the Bone” Zuparic on the defensive side, a couple bail-outs from Ivacic and Marvin Loria finding the rare openings – everyone in green and flat yellow fell somewhere between good enough (e.g., Bill Tuiloma, David Ayala), undistinguished (e.g., Yimmi Chara) and invisible (e.g., Jaroslaw Niezgoda, but also look at that passing map).

Portland Timbers 1-1 Nashville SC: That One, Necessary Step

Go on, ya little shit. Those stairs ain't gonna climb themselves.

I have more a string of notes than I do a coherent thought about that the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 home draw against Nashville SC.

First, Nashville scored – and the Timbers really do need to clean-up the set-piece defending; swear to God I saw Larrys Mabiala lean in for a power-header and miss it clean – then, the Timbers came back, and on the same kind of goal I picture when you hear someone use the word “patient” when describing an attacking build-up. Turns out the line between forcing it and dicking around is a thin one.

And, as much as anything else, the Timbers have gotten better about getting on the right side of that line lately – and the numbers back this up; Portland has averaged 2.0 goals/game over their past ten games, and haven’t been shut out once – aka, the same period that has me feeling better about their chances.

Again, there’s not a lot to analyze about this game. Both teams did a lot better over a first half that happily coincided with a time when both teams played with some combination of thinking they could win the game and knowing they have to start getting wins. It wasn’t until 70 minutes into the game that I realized I had nothing to say about how either midfield defended, and it wasn’t until the 75th that I realized that had everything to do with the fact that both teams focused more on attacking than stopping the other team from doing the same.

The sub-text that runs over the paragraph above is that Nashville started stepping to the ball and higher up the field. Portland hadn’t been great on the ball all game (a concern!), but Nashville forced a succession of turnovers early in the second half and that knocked Portland on their heels, and I don’t think the Timbers got back on the front foot at any point thereafter. Actually, take that back: they found it twice in the game’s dying minutes, first with Jaroslaw Niezgoda hitting a ball a mere 5 km below needed velocity, and then Nathan Fogaca (more on him later) not quite getting around his breakaway just a couple minutes later.

The Timbers had two late, great shots at a winner, but they only had those shots because Aljaz Ivacic made at least “that’s my guy,” saves (plus at least one weird one). You can sum up the game a couple ways.

San Jose Earthquakes 3-2 Portland Timbers: Lost, and Never Found

Won't lie. I wanted to do better with this....

Have you ever seen one of those old movies, or even a parody of one, where a central character whispers a dozen farewells on his/her way to the beyond?

The Portland Timbers gave their best homage to that trope tonight in a slow-fade 2-3 road loss at the San Jose Earthquakes. The foreground the blunt reality, San Jose wanted it more. Their energy was better, they contested the ball faster - or, in far too many cases, at all - and they just, for lack of a better word, competed tonight in a way the Timbers only did either one player or one moment or a time and, yes, the “or” in that clause is 1,000% conscious, deliberate, not a typo, etc.

As documented in two or three places, I expected goals in this game. Moreover, I expected the game to turn on which team scored the most goals - i.e., basic logic meets basic math - and it did. And, finally, I don’t know what happened to the Timbers tonight, I really don’t. Rather than say they gave up…tempting as that is, I feel alright letting them off the hook with, they couldn’t see the path forward, so they tried to walk directly into the trees. Big ones too.

Where to begin with dissecting this one? And is there a point to the project? Hold on. I'll find one or two...

To make up for cavalierly shitting on San Jose’s defense going into this one, I hereby acknowledge that Tommy Thompson, aka, The Goal-Less Wonder, waltzed his way to one step inside the penalty spot before a there-but-for-the-width-of-Bill-Tuiloma’s-boot the Timbers would have gone down 4-2. After a certain point - here, I’m thinking rather pointedly about the ‘Quakes’ second, jail-break-perfect counterattacking goal - everything about the game rhymed with that moment. Even the laws of gravity seemed to tilt against the Timbers from that point forward and, yes, now confirmed, Portland did something less than half of shit over the course of that second half.

I, like a lot of people, have waited patiently for the Timbers to find a rhythm and start doing something with it this season and assumed they would. Even if I didn’t trust it, I hoped that Portland’s 7-2 win over Sporting Kansas City had knocked off the rust…but, no. Moreover, assuming you stick with the implicit premise of my review - i.e., that an early goal invites teams to play toward Portland, which opens up space for their counter - well, the wheels fell all the fucking way off that one tonight. Once San Jose landed on a method to stuff the Timbers transition outlets - related, does anyone think that’s some state secret by now? - the game ended as a contest. For the record, that happened somewhere around the 65th minute. Or the 70th, in the event I want to spare anyone’s blushes.

Red Bull New York 1-1 Portland Timbers: Through Wind, Through Rain, Through Bull, etc.

It is called showing up to work. Dammit.

To offer a metaphor, the Portland Timbers road game at Harrison, New Jersey, compared to the experience of walking to the mailbox in a windstorm. It feels impossible when you first step into it, but, foot by foot, you figure out how to stand up, then you figure out how to walk, and, finally, you get the mail. Mission accomplished.

Sure, the wind still knocked you into a face-plant on the way back, but also, you got mail!

To set aside the metaphor, the Timbers poached a point from Red Bull New York, and stole two of theirs in the deal. No one wanted the 1-1 draw it ended on, but, returning to the metaphor, Portland found their feet tonight, and it was good. With few exceptions, either for players or in moments, they looked neither flustered nor too casual, and nearly every player in green grew into the game. Even if the result itself wasn’t good, it was good for morale. Die with yer boots on, if you’re gonna go down, take a good swing before the stars come out, etc.

To expand the commentary(/switch metaphors), playing Red Bull amounts to an effort in treading water - i.e., keeping your head up long enough find a safe harbor where you can get it together and get out of the situation. And, after a shaky start - and Pablo Bonilla and Marvin Loria stood out in that regard - the Timbers did that. In a nice bit of chemistry meeting in the middle, they collectively picked up the pace on the passes and provided options to make them happen. The way Red Bull plays makes it hard to get far out ahead - and, if you love the Timbers don’t look at the xG (because it wasn’t far wrong) - but Portland chose a moment to try to get something out of the game and pulled it off. I’ll have more on that later - due to some specifics I want to pull out - but, after three games after fairly uncompetitive soccer, just the idea of rising to an opponent plays like a choir of angels.

The Red Bulls got back into the game, of course. It took them about five minutes after the Timbers’ go-ahead goal (wait for it) for them to scratch back into the game, and only 10 minutes (or so) after that for Aaron Long to put back a second ball off a corner kick, but, a (heavy) flurry on the fringes of Portland’s back-line aside, the home team didn’t create a lot of opportunities. Moreover, when a great opening bounced their way, one that saw Omar Fernandez wide open and way up the field on Justin Rasmussen’s side and with young Justin on walkabout, the further he pushed up-field, the lonelier he got. That happened around the 82nd minute; the legs just weren’t there, something that has long struck me as the risk side of RBNY risk/reward system. I wouldn’t say they had an actual bad night; it’s more that when you shoot a little wild, as they do, you don’t hit a lot.

San Jose Earthquakes 0-2 Portland Timbers: No Dirt on Them Sheets!

Pristine, at long last.

I barely talk about it below, but, just for the record, the last time the Portland Timbers kept their sheets clean happened the beginning of last November against the then- (and still-)boring AF Vancouver Whitecaps. At any rate, I put that in the title because the first clean sheet in league play is a moment that deserves a spotlight.

As for the breakdown, I want to begin by doing something I almost never do: declare a man of the match. I resist the idea for a number of reasons - e.g., it’s neither always obvious or fair, see the bias toward attacking players, it takes a village, etc. - but I also see a flaw in the assumption behind the concept. More often than not, the choice comes down to highlight factors like, who scored the winning goal or who scored two goals (or bagged two assists…wait for it), or maybe goalkeeper who saved a penalty kick, as the Timbers new borrowed ‘keeper, Logan Ketterer (wait for it), did tonight. As I see it, those metrics miss the point - especially when you can name the player who revealed the tone and quality of the game like it could stand up and stare into a mirror.

Tonight, in the Timbers 2-0 road win over the San Jose Earthquakes, that player was Marvin Loria. Let me explain…

As is his wont, Loria drove me fucking crazy tonight - like more than a couple Timbers players did too (more later). His decision-making is glacial and he rates his dribbling technique a step south of delusional, both of which cause him to loose possession and nip promising plays in the bud. And yet, when he arrived at a moment that required a good, decisive decision, Loria made it; when the Timbers recylced a 75th minute counter-attack to the right, and to a wide-open Eryk Williamson, Loria cheated to the back-post and, thanks to that run, he had nothing between him and San Jose's goal but a flailing James Marcinkowski. Loria buried the header, thereby giving the Timbers a two-goal lead that San Jose never even looked like denting.

And the game as a whole looked something like that. Like a drunk telling a great story, it only really got to the point here and there, while still telling the right story. And this is a story that took 90 minutes to tell. Bare, and frequently interrupted competence, best characterizes just about every single Timbers’ contribution tonight - too many players lingered on the ball to no better effect than getting caught in possession or making a shit pass (credit where it’s due, Yimmi Chara showed a real talent for using his body to keep possession and get the ball forward); on the other hand, the defensive organization/rotation was solid - but they managed to run through the ‘Quakes defense on the first goal (pretty one, Yimmi Chara!) and to literally play it like an accordion on the second. Who knew that taking all three points tonight would require as little as bare competence and a couple of moments?

Los Angeles FC 4-2 Portland Timbers: Half-Empty Glasses and the State of the Auditions

Are we sad glass?!

“Nobody thought we’d have five goals in this half, but we do!”
- Max Bretos, at the end of the first half

Why wouldn’t people expect five goals? The Portland Timbers came into the game having given up 11 goals over their past four games; add the four goals they, by and large, handed Los Angeles FC in last night’s 4-2 loss, and the Timbers now average three goals against per game. Fun fact, LAFC let in three goals in three of their past five games (they did better against the San Jose Earthquakes, and now the Timbers). Fans should have expected goals, in other words, because both these teams have taken to bleeding them.

Concerns about the Timbers’ defense, which has officially reached “holy shit” levels of concern, have merged into worries about the team's future. That doesn’t make it unreasonable, however, to ask what the average Timbers fans expected out of a game with two vertebrae removed from Portland’s defensive scheme (e.g., Larrys Mabiala and Diego Chara) and one arm tied behind its back in the attack (aka, the wounded Sebastian Blanco). I can’t account for what caused it - extreme recency bias (aka, the win over Seattle)? a perfect balance and quantity of chemical encouragement? a wildly burning lust for any positive sensation? - but I somehow went into the game thinking that things would work out. And, for as long as Portland contained everything LAFC tried to do, and after they pulled them apart and ran riot through the openings for a beautiful and impressive team goal, the delusion held up very nicely, thanks!

Reality started knocking rather loudly, however, and shortly after the hydration break. I saw some chatter during the game about that stalling the Timbers’ momentum, but it seems just as likely that LAFC made some adjustments I didn’t notice (see, “balance and quantity of chemical encouragement”). Their first goal didn’t bother me overly - a set-piece, a lost mark, etc. - but, when LAFC returned the “pull ‘em apart and run riot” favor for the go-ahead goal, and then Portland's defenders shared a collective, simultaneous snooze on another set-piece that, frankly, sucked, the alarms that had been blaring before the win over Seattle blared anew. Fortunately, just when you started to wonder how bad things could get, Jeremy Ebobisse lobbed Jorge Villafana’s pin-point cross over LAFC ‘keeper Pablo Sisniega on the last play of the first half.

Portland Timbers 3-2 Chicago Fire: The Worst Rom-Com Ever...

The competition....

If you feel like you just watched the most pointlessly meandering rom-com in history tonight, you’re not alone. Everything from form to road records to comparative statistics to the Portland Timbers scoring the first two (semi-random) goals said that tonight would end happily for the Timbers; it was always a question of what obstacles would intervene to keep the lover (Portland) from its beloved (all three points). To start with the most salient critique, the plotting was terrible. In spite of a 3-2 win by Portland....yeah, I was bored.

Set aside the timing of C. J. Sapong’s second goal for the Fire – the rough equivalent of someone standing to object to the marriage only to reference something that already got resolved in Act II – because the whole goddamn production actually fell apart when the soccer gods decided to kill the villain in the 1st fucking act. First of all, who does that? Second, when Aleksandar Katai got sent off for (literally) busting Julio Cascante’s chops, this game was always going to end the same way – i.e., with a Timbers win. Tonight had all the narrative tension of the lovely couple playfully bickering about the color of the crockery suggested on their wedding registry.

That said, I’ll be the first to admit that I doubted Portland would score its third goal. Thank God they did too, because that was the only consciously-constructed goal that they managed tonight. It gave me some belief that they could score when called upon against a better team (if in the throes of transition), because I’m not so sure anymore. Don’t get me wrong; Portland’s first two goals were fine: the delicacy of Jorge Moreira’s chip takes real talent live, and it’s not like the Timbers didn’t find a way around Chicago’s stubborn defense to score the second goal; they still both had a haphazard, “look-what-I-found” feel to them, and this was against one of the worst road teams in MLS (Chicago), and one that’s hardly lighting it up generally to boot.

Montreal Impact 2-1 Portland Timbers: Dead Ends & Futures

The image feature is fucked up. Here are birds of paradise getting sexy.

What good is a player who is only good every October? I’m asking for Dairon Asprilla, a player the Portland Timbers have carried on its roster since…hold on…wow, 2015. For all his lung-busting effort, he’s scored fewer goals than you think, and over more performances than you realize. God willing, he’s killing it every day with T2, but, without further excavation, I have only his numbers with the Timbers’ first team to go with, and one has to wait a while before having anything to count…something like being in prison and having one day last six months.

And, wow. Wow, wow, wow. Lucas Melano’s numbers are barely better. Even with the year off, yikes.

The Timbers gambled on its youth tonight against the Montreal Impact. The starting eleven included one regular starters (Cristhian Paredes), another guy who’s slipping out of the regular rotation (Jeff Attinella), and one patch-starter (Julio Cascante), maybe two (Marco Farfan). Every other guy Portland fielded has, at most, a start or two with the first team next to his name. They wound up losing 1-2, both to Montreal, and to a freakish, wonderful goal. Honestly, I take off both hats off to Orji Okwonwko’s winner, because that’s, at best, a 1-in-50 kind of goal, a Bird of Paradise, if you will…

…but on the level of argument, it took Montreal pulling that out of their collective asses to win this game. So, yeah, not all is lost, and that’s why I didn’t go with my original, more arresting sub-title, “I Hate this Team And I’ll Never Watch Them Again.” It was a joke, people…

The game started all right – call it 10-15 minutes – before degenerating into a conspiracy between the Timbers giving away the ball and Montreal winning nearly every duel that sent all the traffic toward Portland’s goal. The Timbers started the second half stronger and, when they equalized via the famous trio of Loria-to-Cascante-to Conechny (OK not famous locally, but do any baseball fans get the reference?). Portland looked capable of God-knows-what after that goal, and they played…relatively even with Montreal for the rest of the game, even if, after Okwonwko scored Montreal’s second goal, they never really looked like coming back into it. All the same, and generally allowing for the reality that Montreal’s B+ team narrowly out-played Portland’s B- team (in Montreal), some players looked ready for this level, while others did not.