Minnesota United FC 2-0 Portland Timbers, the Brutal Math of Gettable Points & a San Diego Scouting Report [hiccup!]

THIS IS THE TRUTH! SMILE!!!

If you seriously thought Portland would win last Saturday, I salute your optimism. This post does not make a case for optimism – the deck’s stacked pretty high against that – but rather occupies a state of suspended animation that I can’t see dissipating until Merritt pulls the plug on Phil Neville’s tenure. Where things go from there…that’s some tricky shit. Moving on…

Minnesota United FC 2-0 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
After multiple threats to skip the tick-tock of the match and just pass on a handful of broad impressions, I’m following through this time. Minnesota scored an early goal, nice finish by Tomas Chancalay (good player, bad history with injuries), but I was more disturbed by their successful targeting of Jose Caicedo for prying the ball loose – particularly one short week after declaring myself “sold” on the youngster (see Talking Point 6). Jefferson Diaz did the picking on that occasion and pulled it back for the assist, but my notes have Caicedo coughing up possession on both sides of Diaz’s mugging and, if there’s one must-have skill for a No. 6, it’s not giving up the ball in that position. It took the Loons until the second half to score their second – also around 15 minutes in, curiously – and the Timbers gave that one up by overcommitting to the attack. A great ball from (I believe) the highly-effective Joaquin Pereyra dropped from Minnesota’s right to Chancalay on Portland’s right and, with the Timbers midfield miles behind the play and the defense chasing, all he had to do once he landed the trap (with aplomb) was find a wide-open Kelvin Yeboah for a tap-in/his fifth goal of the season.

The final numbers paint a picture that Bob Ross couldn’t tidy up with a forest of happy trees, but Portland found chances, including feeds to a streaking, anxious Antony that one thinks would lift their xG higher than 1.0, but I don’t control such things. Cole Bassett – who arguably played the best game in an off-white Art Deco kit on Saturday (again, Kristoffer Velde gets my vote to make up for how often I’ve shit on him) – got a bit lucky to get a great chance about six yards out, but got unlucky by pinging his shot off the post (surely, that’s in here). Jimer Fory played a good cross to Felipe Mora that just fell a bit too low (29th minute), Brandon Bye found the ball at his feet after a good spell of pressure and played a peach of a cross that found no takers (63rd), Velde got loose on the counter a couple times in the second half only to have an errant touch push the ball out of his reach or to play a smart cross 10 yards behind a run on a long diagonal: maybe scribbling “thriving in garbage time” into my notes credits the effort too much, but this 1) wasn’t abject failure, and 2) wasn’t unexpected.

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers & a Mini-Parade of Disasters from MLS Week 2

Mistakes were made, weight was lost. Or gained.

Welcome to the Week 2 wrap, both for Major League Soccer as a whole and my Portland Timbers! The first shall be firste (though they were seconde above), but I want to start this post with some programming notes that hit like revelations. (Not really, but hype is the coin of the realm in the 21st century.)

Between my wife’s unfortunate illness (the very same one that derailed the “Level Set” series) and the resultant too much time on my hands, this week’s review got a little out of hand. That’s to say, I consumed more soccer than I either want to digest or (ewww) send back up the other way. That same experience led me to the research concept for MLS Week 3 and, ideally for every week going forward:

Watching the full 90 of every Portland Timbers game, plus the full 90 (or 60 minutes, at a minimum) of the team that Portland plays the following weekend, plus 45 minutes each of two more games – both with at least one Eastern Conference team, tentatively – then a maximum (get it together, man!) of four…or five of the 10+-minute highlight reels that Apple TV appears to have embraced for the 2026 season. [Ed. - It will be just four; gotta tighten this shit up.] If that doesn’t get my eyes on enough teams to stay current with Major League Soccer week in and out…well, I can’t say I give a shit, because that feels ample to me. That will leave some blind-spots, of course, particularly around teams that bore me, but fuck it.

With that, let’s get to this week’s notes, comments, and appreciations. To kick things off, enjoy this...

Stupid Thought for the Week
I appreciate that the offside rule must be called by the letter of the law instead of its spirit, but I will never stop resenting that reality. Seeing an attacking player get called offside for having the tip of his knee ahead of the last defender’s will never strike me as anything but a violation of the spirit of fair play, but if there’s a slipper slope in soccer officiating, this is it.

Moving on to the meat…

Level Set 22, Minnesota United FC: MLS's Marquises of the B Students

Noble, but also not.

What follows is a brief history of Minnesota United FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

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...

Thumbnail History
I tend to think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. That’s only half right, if for a couple reasons. First, Minnesota missed the post-season entirely their first two seasons and again in 2023. Second, even when the Loons do qualify – which, to be clear, they’ve done more often not and cleanly (i.e., not as a wild card) – they almost always fall out before the quarterfinals. That drops them into the folds of the biggest wrinkle in the Joy Points formula* - i.e., teams only get credit for qualifying for the playoffs when they reach the quarterfinals – and that choice obscures the reality that the Loons are a solid regular season team. “Solid” feels like a good descriptor for what Minnesota has historically done on the field, as well. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to round about the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant fielding teams that were constipated in every sense of the word, equal parts stubborn and organized, with a touch of ruthlessness. That started with the arrival of Osvaldo Alonso over from Seattle in 2019 and Minnesota carried that tradition forward with additions like Jan Gregus(?) and Hassani Dotson(?). Putting that shield in front of “imposing” center backs – i.e., large, slow-ish, but combative and capable center backs like Michael Boxall, Brent Kallman, (briefly) Ike Opara, and Bakaye Dibassy – went a long way toward taking care of one side of the team. On the other, Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with enough talent to make a competent defense pay off enough times. The most famous version of that was the “mercurial” Emanuel Reynoso (here, “mercurial,” speaks to his love of playing hooky), but they've also pulled out a couple wild cards or two, with the too-oft injured Kevin Molino serving as a tragic figure. When all else fails, Minnesota leans into one of the best all-purpose Band-aids in MLS history, one-man multi-tool, Finnish jack-of-all-but-defensive-trades, Robin Lod to steer the ship to shore. When that certain magic player cannot be found, is unavailable (or sulks in Argentina, a la Reynoso), Minnesota winds up relying on a rotating cast of characters like Darwin Quintero (the dreams they had for him…), Ethan Finlay and, more recently, Bongokuhle Hlongwane (just re-signed), Tani Oluwaseyi, and half-random guys like, say, Franco Fragapane. All that work and movement has yielded the returns immediately below…

Minnesota United FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Balling with the Elite, Running from the Hoi Polloi

Mood. I think, or thereabouts.

Anyone either have a guess, or do any of you wonderful people actually know, the number of points that the Portland Timbers since they just missed out the Leagues Cup semifinals?

The answer is two. Two fucking points out of 12 available. If you take out the two Leagues Cup wins (against Liga MX’s teams cramming for the start of the Clausura), the Timbers have a thin two wins over the past ten (10!) games. Those count as rays of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy 2-5-3 run – by Jove, wasn’t that road win at Los Angeles FC fun? remember that one? wasn’t it ever so fun? – and, in some ways, it was the fucking awful road form that got one to wondering whether the floor had given out, only without all of us doe-eyed believers catching on, a la Wile E. Coyote. Between shutouts at Toronto FC (probably out of the playoffs next weekend) and FC “Almost Certainly Cooked” Dallas (give it time…I kid, I kid), and contributing to an existential threat by being the only team to hand Real Salt Lake a road win over their past 10 games (related, get a load of the opposition in their four recent home wins: v DC, v STL, v HOU, v SJ), fans should be throwing rocks at their TVs and expensive beers at the executive suites. (And, should you ever get a clear line on Merritt Paulson, throw hard, people; throw hard).

And yet, somehow, the Timbers just took the second-best team in the West to within five minutes (with stoppage!) of a loss at home. Things still seem okay!

Minnesota United FC 1-1 Portland Timbers
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
My notes have this as “chess, with the odd collapse” – by which I (think I) meant, a game mostly contained between the two teams’ back lines with the odd breakthrough. For what it’s worth, the highlights support that take better than the final stats; the latter have me wondering whether I nodded off during the Timbers better moments. Stranger things, etc.

A smarter take – and the Official Xg backs it up a bit (how does one capitalize “xG”?) – holds that both teams came close to a decisive break throughout, only to have the last line of defense snuff out the danger. For (at least) the second week running, all Timbers defenders covered balls through and over the midfield like they’d read and absorbed the job description – again, the Finn Surman/Dario Zuparic feels like the ticket I want to ride until Portland runs outta gas (and Jimer Fory is, like, the best jerrycan they’ve had in seasons; also, yes (SIGH!), hold this thought) – and that kept Minnesota off the board, if with the odd, how-did-he-miss-that(?) moment (thinking Joaquin Pereyra, with most of the the goal at his mercy just after the half). Minnesota created a steady drip of chances throughout – credit to James Pantemis for keeping out his share (PHIL, just choose a guy!) – something that has yielded them (shit!) twelve more points worth of success than the Timbers have managed.

San Diego FC 0-0 Portland Timbers: A Little Satisfaction, a Little Future Trepidation & a Wrap Up of the West

With, like, a lot of shit left out.

This post also counts as my first/second stab at a new format/concept. On the most basic level, it involves: 1) kicking around (or just kicking) the Portland Timbers’ most recent result; 2) a quick tour around the relevant parts of the Western Conference for perspective on the grand scheme; and 3) a quick check-in with the team Portland plays next (the Dread Pirate Minnesota). I’m going to hit this at the highest stream-of-consciousness speed I can manage – about all I can do four days late, but I pledged to drag myself through this, gritted teeth, bad taste and all.

Close readers may have noticed I identified this as a first for a new format and, paraphrasing one of the worst we'll-do-it-in-post moments in the Star Wars universe, that’s true from a certain point of view – specifically, I switched the order after the sections on last Saturday’s game, so that the Scouting Memo (I tightened it up), aka, the only forward-looking portion of the post, comes at the end, which is the opposite of what I did for the FC Cincinnati post. (No need to read that; already forgotten.)

There will actually be a third iteration this weekend, when I post notes on the game and then the other bits later. At any rate…

I just sat through the highlights to reconnect with this game. The first that struck me was the full minute of the 7:30 burned on the VAR review for the Andres Dreyer “goal” called back for offside around the 30th minute. I had a joke in the hopper about that being the only actual event of the game, but the rest of the highlights and the final stats painted a better memory for this game than the World of Imagination in my mind. It was still pretty damn dull, but, hey, little Ws have big hearts.

San Diego FC 0-0 Portland Timbers
About the Game, Briefly and Broadly
Is it possible that Corey Baird, formerly of FC Cincinnati (formerly of Houston Dynamo FC, formerly of LAFC, formerly of Real Salt Lake), coming off was the single most significant event of the game? It’s possible, sure: he played two drop-flicks that sent Dreyer free-‘n’-easy behind Portland’s back line, including the one that teed off Dreyer’s offside shot. The drought only looked more apparent thanks to San Diego’s failure to post even one shot on goal over the second half. They had a couple, just not many. Even so, I wouldn’t have believed MLS’s newest kids put just one shot on goal all game if the stats didn’t swear to it…and, yep, even that one shot on goal followed from the earlier Baird/Dreyer connection. The sum of that feels a tenuous combination of promising (for Portland) and significant (for San Diego), with the emphasis on tenuous.

10 Thoughts I Had While Watching Portland Draw Minnesota

Minnesota, in human form, at home.

I decided to try something new for match reports and for a couple reasons, but I’ll only bore you with the substantive one: going deep on any given game isn’t so different from running an experiment once with a small and hyper-specific dataset. When you get right down to it, it takes string of results to make a dataset that’s worth a damn – and even those have ups and downs to go around. As my Portland Timbers have demonstrated over the past five (1-3-1) to ten (3-4-3) match days…

Portland Timbers 1-1 Minnesota United FC
About the Game, Still More Briefly
Nothing of note happened in the first half, thus endeth that portion of the post.

Overall, though, pretty goddamn dull, in part due to Minnesota’s soul-sucking approach to the game and in part due to the Timbers looking…familiar in all the wrong ways. Against that, I’m glad I re-watched the second half (I was entertaining through the first viewing, or was I merely hosting, because was I all that entertaining?) because, even as the result felt insufficient (in the biggest picture), Portland put on a better show than I remembered.

Both teams posted better final numbers than I would have guessed after sitting through it (1.5 times). Still, Minnesota put the Timbers in the uncomfortable position of using the ball and the discomfort showed. Nodding back to expectations, the Loons scored on a set piece – a reported specialty for them, despite all the headers over the crossbar (for both teams, really) – with Anthony Markanich adding to his unexpected haul for 2025. Between there and the final whistle, Minnesota either slipped up by allowing Juan David Mosquera time and space in the right channel – either that, or they got cocky and thought they could manage it – and they got within mere minutes of getting away with it. Mosquera snapped back with, 1) one of his best attacking performances of the season, 2) a shot off the crossbar that put-near broke it (certainly somewhere in here), and 3) an assist on Omir Fernandez’s tidy equalizer. Couldn’t feel happier Fernandez, that scrappy little scamp.

Out of context, I’d call this result respectable. Minnesota’s a brick shithouse of a team, they’re a ways higher in the Western Conference standings, if not as high as they would have been if they’d held on, and seeing Portland push to the end felt good. The fact the Timbers pulled it off with a gently rotated starting XI made it feel a little better. Add context back into the mix – i.e., the run of results over the past five, ten games, the reasonable argument that good, competitive teams beat good, competitive teams at home – and things feel a little worse.

MLS Western Conference Check-In, More Words at the One-Third Mark

I'm coming for yer place, Soccer Don.

Careful readers who visited last night’s Eastern Conference check-in may notice I cribbed that preamble for this one. Fuck it. Who reinvents the wheel when he doesn’t have to? Ahem.

Welcome to this broad and necessarily shallow check-in on where things stand in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference about one-third of the way through the 2025 season. To set expectations a little:

I watch just one Western Conference team religiously – my Portland Timbers – and most of the additional (somewhat) in-depth watching I’ve done involved teams that they played the upcoming weekend. So, again, I’m not coming at any of this from some all-knowing, all-absorbing perch.

Against that, I sincerely believe that a lot of the week-to-week global coverage I see from this league (almost all of it from Official Organs) suffers from a pernicious tendency to read too much into the last game played – i.e., Content, particularly the stuff around failure and progress in players, formation shifts, etc., over-values the latest details, often at the expense of considering broader details like, say, did your team look like some hot-rod shit last weekend because they ran over the Los Angeles Galaxy (ha!) at home? All of the everything below looks at the same things, just over a longer arc. That follows for necessity, for sure, but it’s also about patterns, particularly when it comes to results, where they happened and against which teams and in what form.

Just to note it, I constructed the information boxes that top each section for each team from the (current) Conference Standings, the much-reduc’d Form Guide (still mourning the loss, contemplating egging MLS HQ…so long as that’s not a felony, because I can’t have another), and applying a filter one team at a time to the Official stats page. Just to note it, MLS has gutted its non-app content. Jesus fucking Christ, the home pages for must teams are like the shells of abandoned houses with all the copper piping and really good built-ins stripped out.

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC, the Very Modern Model of a Median MLS Franchise

"It could be going better!"

Thumbnail History
I tend to think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. That’s only half right, though, if for a couple reasons. First, Minnesota missed the post-season entirely their first two seasons and again in 2023. Second, even when the Loons do qualify – which, to be clear, they’ve done more often not, and directly more often than as a wild card team – they almost always fall out before the quarterfinals. That drops them into the folds of the biggest wrinkle in the Joy Points formula* - i.e., teams only get credit for qualifying as a wild card if they clear the next two hurdles in the post-season – and that choice obscures the reality that the Loons are a solid regular season team. Solidity feels like a good descriptor for what Minnesota has done on the field through their short history, as well. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to round about the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant fielding teams that were constipated in every sense of the word - think stubborn and unimaginative - it took the organization getting its defensive midfield in order. It started with bringing Osvaldo Alonso over from Seattle in 2019 and Minnesota has kept that close enough to effective with additions like Jan Gregus and Hasani Dotson(?). Still, putting a shield in front of “imposing” center backs – i.e., large, slow-ish, but combative and capable center backs like Michael Boxall, Brent Kallman, (briefly) Ike Opara, and Bakaye Dibassy – went a long way toward taking care of one side of the team. On the other, Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with enough talent to make a competent defense pay off enough times. The most famous version of that was the “mercurial” Emanuel Reynoso (he's a chronic hooky-player), but they've also pulled out a couple wild cards or two, with the too-oft injured Kevin Molino serving as a tragic figure. When all else fails, Minnesota leans into one of the best all-purpose Band-aids in MLS history, one-man multi-tool, Finnish jack-of-all-but-defensive-trades, Robin Lod to steer the ship to shore. When that certain magic player cannot be found, is unavailable, or is, say, refusing to report for duty (see: Reynoso), Minnesota winds up relying on a rotating cast of characters like Darwin Quintero (for whom they had huge dreams, honestly), Ethan Finlay, Bongokuhle Hlongwane (just re-signed!), Tani Oluwaseyi, and half-random guys like, say, Franco Fragapane. All that work and movement has yielded the returns immediately below…

Total Joy Points: 1

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2020
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2024
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2019

Wrapping Round One of the Playoffs & Pondering a (Potential?) Hole in the Timbers' Roster

This machine, like pundits, lies. I am all man.

With Major League Soccer taking its annual embarrassing mid-playoffs pause (mid-playoffs! nuts!), the urge to jump in and gently pick it apart got hold of me last weekend. The Portland Timbers started their pause a couple three weeks before that, and I’m going to close with some loose notes on that, but let’s start with the post-season.

First and foremost, and as much as it made me giggle immodestly, I’m not going to join in the circle-jerk around Inter Miami CF’s early exit from the 2024 playoffs as The Greatest Upset of All Time – not with the way crowned heads fell off across MLS’s Eastern Conference. Miami’s (admittedly shocking) fall versus(!) Atlanta United FC cleared a path wide enough for Columbus Crew SC to line-dance their way to a second straight title, but they crashed out against a revived Red Bull New York before that path even opened. I’m calling anyone who claims they saw that coming a liar, not least because the Crew survived a mosh-pit of a season and (and!) they beat the Red Bulls on the road, on Decision Day. With everything they had going their way – claiming second in the league after an achingly slow start, a coach all observers mooned over like a young, slim Frank Sinatra, and a roster deep as the Marianas Trench – seeing them get swept rises every inch as high on the Shock-o-Meter as Miami’s early ouster.

FC Cincinnati’s failure to capitalize was far less surprising – especially given that long stumble down the stretch. Having to rebuild the defense late in the season had a lot to do with it, but, from my vague look from a distance, the way the goals and confidence dried up did them in as much as anything. Those particular symptoms notwithstanding, Cincy’s demise highlights a recurring theme across MLS playoffs history the positive power of momentum and its damning opposite. Pat Noonan’s team had labored since the middle of July, which makes that less backing into the playoffs than commuting to and from work in reverse every day. To be clear, nothing about that felt inevitable – New York City FC trekked across their own wilderness before a three-game wining streak lifted them past the play-in (that was with them losing at Montreal on Decision Day in the mix) – and Cincy had enough chances and half-chances to score the go-ahead in Game 3. Maybe it’s something about how long the poison stays in your system after the snake bites.

MLS Round-Up: Some Word Association on the Cusp of Decision Day

Ooh. Something about Orlando coming up.

With some strays called in – e.g., Columbus Crew SC (expectedly) picking at the bones of the New England Revolution (4-0) and Los Angeles FC sniping the Vancouver Whitecaps in second-half stoppage (2-1) - and nothing left to play but Decision Day, an urge to get things organized one final time before we take ‘em one game at a time (aka, the playoffs) kicked in. The rest of you do this in the privacy of your own mind, and you’re almost certainly better off for it. And yet, here we are…

Don’t expect deep analysis in anything below and I didn't flag more than a couple players by name. Also, judge me, if you must, for giving up early on doing league-wide coverage literally every season, but I still haven’t landed on a way of actually cover Major League Soccer that 1) I trust and 2) doesn't feel like rehashing the same shit everyone has plowed over three times or more. I’ll take another swing in 2025 – i.e., tinker with the methodology, maybe lower the bar for “trust,” etc. – but the best I can offer for 2024 is recollection of half- (or less-than-half-)remembered videos and highlights, a review of undeniable trends, both long- and short-term, and a succession of hiccups percolating up from my gut.

In nuts-‘n’-bolts terms, I’m gonna list every team in MLS, by conference and in their current order, from top to tail, and give a brief read on where they are now and their season as I understand it. Hot takes will come as my gut gives ‘em, otherwise…allons y!

WESTERN CONFERENCE (hey, that’s my home conference!)
Los Angeles Galaxy (1st in West, 2nd overall)
The somewhat rare team that can pull apart the opposition, arguably as good in possession as they are in transition. Vulnerabilities include a middling road record (6-6-4) and a middling defense, but the Galaxy have real talent all over the attacking third (given a preferred starting XI) and they can score from as many places. They’ve been lethal at home all season – only LAFC beat them there (and the last of their three home draws came in mid-May) – and they can beat any team on their day. They’ll have to win on the road to do it, but the Galaxy have a real shot at MLS Cup.

A Scouting Report & a Tease

Even your mom thinks I'm cool.

It’s not often that one gets to scout both teams that yer local team will play in the play-in they are doomed to play. And yet that’s exactly what happened when the Vancouver Whitecaps hosted Minnesota United FC and let them steal dinner with a 0-1 loss.

Most of the notes below point to Vancouver more than the Loons and, yes, that’s me hedging toward the ‘Caps as the Portland Timbers’ likeliest opposition for the play-in. Hot take. Yeah. At any rate, watching…about 75 minutes of this game dredged up thoughts and memories about both teams, and I’m going to lace those the post below. To be clear, I am familiar with both teams, as well as most of the players that line up for them, but I won’t pretend to I know either of them.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t done obsessive (unhinged) stuff all season to help me keep tabs on every team in Major League Soccer. No, you're the weirdo with the Word doc you created to track the progress of all 29 teams in the league because the Form Guide (hallelujah!) fell short of truly connecting you to the data. Not me, not this winner. That said, if I was that guy, I might have something like this just lying around.

Minnesota United FC
Record/Stats: 14-12-7, 49 pts., 54 gf, 48 ga (+6); home 6-6-4, away 8-6-3; 7th in West; 12th overall
Last 10 Results: LWLWWLWWTW
Venue:                HHHAAHAHAA (again, not laughing; H = home, A = away)
Decision Day Oppo: v STL

Vancouver Whitecaps
Record/Stats: 13-11-8, 47 pts., 50 gf, 45 ga (+5), home 6-6-4, away 7-5-4, 8th West, 14th overall
Last 10 Results:   WLWTWTLTLL
Venue:                  HHAHHAAHHH
Final Games: v LAFC, @ RSL

I’ll reference that below, but let’s start with:

MLS Week 23 Snapshot: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Where They Largely Don't Matter + Up From the Depths!

Best sidekick eva! Woo-woo!

Just like that, I’m on a roll. League-wide posts two weeks in a row. Woo-woo!

The preamble for this series/concept went up in last week’s post, so I’m going to just refer anyone who wants to know the “why” of this post back to that one. To give the short version, these aren’t detailed posts for two related reasons:

1) the details generally don’t matter; unless…

2) they either rhyme with or emphasize trends that have been going on for a while.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never flag details – i.e., three of the talking points below are only in here because I spent more time on a result that tickled my fancy – but these posts will mostly traffic in trends. Fans of deep cuts can always mosey over to Matt Doyle’s weekly columns (which I only skimmed this week; on a schedule), or lose as many hours as they’re willing to burn in the distinctly non-local MLS Season Pass archives, but it should take more than some random dude scoring a banger (e.g., Cristian Dajome, for a still-woeful DC United team) to make this short-list…which, for the record, is still longer than the specs said it would be. Dammit.

With that in mind, let’s dig into the notes for MLS Week 23 (again, yes, this is Week 23, look at the current standings (effective for reference only through Wednesday morning, July 17, which a bunch of games get played). Here are 10 Things That Happened on or Before MLS Week 23:

1) Nothing Happened to the Supporters’ Shield Race, Ignore MLS Content
I don’t have a sense of the overlap between the people who find this tiny corner of the internet and who subscribe to the MLS Kickoff newsletter, but Monday’s edition dug into race to the Supporters’ Shield – specifically, all the league-topping teams that lost games last weekend. The list includes, FC Cincinnati (waylaid by Charlotte FC! (see below)), Real Salt Lake (drummed out of Providence Park (see below)), the Los Angeles Galaxy (who couldn’t get going at FC Dallas (see below)), and, in the one game that actually felt like it mattered, Los Angeles FC, who got all but drawn-and-quartered against Columbus Crew SC in LA. Here’s the thing: that didn’t change anything about the relative position of any of those teams. Not one of them. Did a couple distant rivals gain ground on all of those teams? Sure, but only one team looks like it has a real shot at catching up with the pack…hold on...

Minnesota United FC Scouting Report: The Tale of an Old Gray Mare

Why, yes, I am showing my age.

The Minnesota United FC team coming to visit this weekend ain’t the one that started 2024 with balls-a-swingin’ and shouting, “Reynoso, who?” (He's gone, apparently, off to Xolos in Liga MX.) The Loons really did roll for a while, picking up six wins over their first 10 games – and they did cap a nice run from mid-late April to mid-late May by kicking their foot up the Portland Timbers’ ass (ah, memories). That said, things have changed a bit...

Minnesota United FC
The Basics
8-6-5, 29 pts., 31 gf, 29 ga (+2); home 4-2-4, away 4-4-1; 5th in West; 11th overall
Last 10 Results: WTWTLWTLLL
Where They Played 'Em:: AHHAAHHAAH

A Narrative
After going 7-2-3 over their first (why not?) 12 games, Minnesota has slowed down to 1-4-2 in recent weeks – including dropping the last three straight games. Their schedule has been tough-ish, but getting on the wrong side of a slugfest against a woeful, stumbling FC Dallas side and picking up a red card, a…let’s call it a significant suspension (see below), plus a loss at home against Austin FC(!?) points to something that looks an awful lot like a limp in the Loons once-mighty stride. (And what do you do to a horse with a limp? All together now!)

As noted in past posts, I really am trying to tighten up these posts (and largely failing), so, without further ado let’s move on to...

10 Things I’d Tell People About Minnesota United FC, as of June 27, 2024
1) The Old Gray Mare, Etc.
Back when I was previewing FC Cincy’s opposition, I saw Minnesota coolly dismantle a Charlotte FC that has proven sturdy and effective in 2024 (e.g., currently 4th in the East and 7th overall), i.e., not at all like the team Dallas ran ahead of, or the one the Seattle Sounders absolutely stuffed (and, no, 90th minute red cards don't count). Then again…is that so surprising?

2) Minnesota Is a Team of Average
I sincerely rate, even admire a number of players on Minnesota’s roster – e.g., Robin Lod, Michael Boxall, and Dane St. Clair – but, with the exception of Lod, I wouldn’t call any of them league-elite – and Lod’s only league-elite attribute is his flexibility. Dude’s like getting a wild card in every deal. Very much related…

MLS Weakly, MLS Week 16 (Trust Me, I Did the Math): Trends and Hiccups, but Mostly Trends

The end of Hour 1. Just two hours to go.

I’m attempting to revive the MLS, Weakly concept, only with a trimmed down model.

And, goddamn Inter Miami CF and goddamn the man, yes, I’m calling this MLS Week 16. Know why? I averaged the number games played for all the teams in Major League Soccer, including the ones without Lionel Messi on the roster, and guess what said average came to? 16.1 games played.

Most weeks (assuming I ever do this again), I’m mostly looking for some combination of trends or hiccups – e.g., did [Team X] (which, here, means FC Cincinnati) keep that absurd winning streak going to jam-band states of eternity, or did [Team Y] (which, here, means Sporting Kansas City) keep eating shit like they were participating in the Nathan’s Famous on the Fifth Ring of Hell? (Yeah, I recycled that joke. Shame.)

This time, and this is because I last posted league-wide content on May 19, I’ve got three games’ worth of trends and hiccups to catch up. That said, the format/framing will look should look the same – i.e., this will just be me doing a steam-of-consciousness data-dump – and I’ll be doing the same basic thing – i.e., riffing from the last snapshot post – which is the May 19 post referenced above (LINK), where I posted little data blocks and narratives for every team in the league. Fun fact, that May 19 post referenced a similar snapshot post that went up on April 2 (LINK).

Best case, I’ll keep this going. Likeliest case, I’ll do everything wrong, abandon this and threaten to shut down this blog for what has to be the 10th time. To paraphrase the intro to Black Star’s “Brown Skin Lady,” even my neuroses have neuroses.

With that, time to dig into the meat of this thing.

Minnesota United FC 2-1 Portland Timbers: Acknowledging Inevitability

I'm a horse-girl. No, seriously.

To lead this post/set of observations with something that doesn’t get mentioned nearly often enough: Minnesota United FC is a good soccer team right now. Trust me, I did a lot of maths!

I bring that up because the Portland Timbers played a better overall game at Minnesota than they have in recent weeks – even if they caught a break here (e.g., start watching this at 1:43) and there (the rest of the highlights, really).

You know where Portland didn’t play on good overall game? At home against a serially self-sabotaging San Jose Earthquakes team at midweek at (fucking) Providence Park. I embraced the win as if straight-up French-kissing that gift horse like we’re getting married as soon as pa-PA gives his blessing, but the Timbers reprised their season-long pattern of frittering away a whole goddamn home with their own unique spin on self-sabotage. Thus, and but for the ‘Quakes capacity to implode, Portland would not have that bright little blip in what has otherwise been a horrific stretch of 10 games. Again, I looked into this and can confirm that the Timbers have been Chicago Fire FC bad over their past 10 games. They have some company in their little corner of Hell, but even that stops at two to three teams.

A Summary
The stats back up my eye test – i.e., Minnesota came just shy of doubling Portland in every attacking stat; also, the Loons as a compelling attacking team, let that sink in for a bit – so, I’m not entirely surprised that the Timbers succumbed under the weight of the challenge. That said, I saw enough positives, whether true or false, for the final 1-2 result to burn a little. For instance, if this matches the actual form/rough function of the lineup pictured here, I like it more than I hate it. For all the bullets it dodged, it kept its basic shape and provided the offense with some bonafide sharp looks – i.e., there’s a reason Minnesota’s Dane St. Clair ended with as many saves than Portland’s Maxime Crepeau – and, Minnesota’s actual goals aside, St. Clair faced tougher shots than Crepeau in my mind.

MLS Snapshot, Week 13/14, aka, Figuring Out What's Really Going On

Take me to your secret garden under the sea!

Back on April 6 of this year, I posted a pointlessly premature league-wide roundup. This post both updates and revisits those early impressions and in a way that, I’m guessing, will embarrass the author in more ways than it won’t. Moreover, I’m taking an approach meant to maximize that discomfort because, to paraphrase the late Bill O’Reilly (…wait, is he dead yet?), fuck it, I’m doing this live.

By that I mean, I pulled the top-line numbers from the current standings (i.e., this link is functionally dead by next weekend) and the Form Guide (never lets one down) for every team in Major League Soccer and combined them into tidy little blocks of data. Those blocks include: each team’s current record, total number of points, goals scored, goals allowed, home and away records, where they fit in their conference and the league as a whole, plus each team’s results over their past 10 games and a note on where they played those games. Think data in high-protein, never-gonna-shit-again granola form.

On the analysis side, I decided against farting around with strength of schedule and instead went with a single snapshot-style statement on each team at this moment – which, for the record, is either 13 or 14 games for 26 teams. That’s to say, the current MLS calendar is on Week 13/14 and the great Inter Miami CF calendar is a lie.

The notes on each team will close with my impression of them as of MLS Week 6. This is where the embarrassment comes in, because I swung wide and wild on plenty of teams.

That’s it for the preamble. Everything else should speak for itself from here. As with that last post, I’m starting with the MLS’s Western Conference and closing with the Eastern and I’ve listed every team according to its current place in their respective conference standings. Finally, and as noted on Bluesky, I’m going back to following the Portland Timbers and the Timbers alone, and then posting some form of league-wide weekly round-up. Not 100%-sure what form that’ll take, I only know I want it to be smaller than this whale.

For now, let’s climb on Shamu’s back and see where he swims.

MLS Week 4: Brief Notes on Many Things & Trends A-Birthin'

No, really. I'm doing this for you.

Grand Narrative

First, we are inching closer to the most wonderful time of the year – i.e., the tipping point in every season where pundits, be they professional or amateur, can start leaning more into top-line stats and the standings, and less on reviewing stupid amounts of video. Sometimes that’s all a body needs to know….we’ll see whether I embrace that come mid-season or if I keep it up with the masochism.

As for Major League Soccer’s Week 4, it served up some wild ones – e.g., Chicago’s late, late win over Montreal and the Galaxy’s last-gasp salvage operation against a…spirited St. Louis team…has anyone tested their Gatorade, because, my god. And yet both of those feel like happy little blips (because both games were fun!) against some early trends in the early season. To go in the order they played ‘em, in an ominous sign, Miami became the first team to fully solve DC’s hyperactive puzzle, Columbus keeps rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ and look at those strong early starts by Vancouver and Minnesota. Coming from the opposite side, Jesus Christ and hide the children, how are both Orlando and New England San-Jose-Earthquakes bad?

With that, it's time to pick through some details, if briefly and with a distressing absence of embedded video, but I have something to say either about everything that happened or the teams involved. Before getting into it, a quick reminder on the symbols you’ll see after each result below (all of which include a link to The Mothership’s game summary for the relevant match):

* more or less skipped it, coasting on the fumes of past impressions.

(H) – I watched the highlights and checked the box score to update the opinion.

([Numbers]) – those represent the parts of the full game I watched, plus box scores.

That’s it for the preamble(!). The formula really is tightening and, if all goes as planned, I’ll be down to watching all of two games each week, plus 45-60 minutes of just three others by MLS Week 10 or 12. With that, let’s dig into what I saw and the sweet nothings all that whispered into my ear.

MLS Week 3: Less Brief Notes on Many Topics

What's new is old, mfs.

Grand Narrative

Major League Soccer Week 3 served up some actual upsets – e.g., Minnesota United FC shivving Orlando City SC in Florida, the Colorado Rapids stunning Rocky Mountain rivals in their fascist-adjacent stadium (i.e., America First is a bit freighted in 2024) – one head-fake upset - e.g., Club du Foot Montreal tripping MLS’s very favorite team on its way to the coronation the league wants like cocaine, fine cigars and cured meats – and at least one blowout – e.g., Atlanta United FC’s stroll over the New England Revolution. It’s all more or less normal from there, if with some noteworthy wrinkles, but there’s still 31 largely meaningless games to go. Plenty of time for rewrites in the script. For most teams, anyway.

In other news, The Mothership’s stubborn refusal to fill in the Form Guide forced me to create a sad old guy version of one (Viva Excel!), but I’m glad I did because, oh, the tiny trends that would have slipped down the memory-hole without it. Don’t get me wrong: a lot of teams are having something close to the normal ups-‘n’-downs – e.g., let’s go with Charlotte FC and RSL or, hell, even Colorado – but then you’ve got New England’s flop-sweat start to 2024, or Sporting Kansas City or Nashville SC’s dead-cat bounce string of draws. Again, these are tiny trends – and I pick at some of them below – but, with some exceptions (hello, San Jose Earthquakes!), not many of those present as permanent conditions thus far. Moving on…

I’m introducing a new segment this week. It’s nothing more or less than stuff that pops in my head as it drifts off during extended highlight sessions (see below for clarification). I haven’t come up wht of a name for it yet, so let’s go with…

Shouts from the Peanut Gallery

1) MLS should be raiding the bench of Europe’s good-to-great clubs looking for high-end depth pieces – the kinds of players the bigger teams sign as either development or insurance. That doesn’t mean they should stop looking for the latest hot, young thing from Central/South America…hold on. I think MLS is already doing this, only before they get to Europe. Still, I’m guessing there’s talent a-wasting on the benches of Europe’s more ambitious clubs, if not the bigger ones.

1a) Is it just me or has MLS essentially and/or completely given up on Central America? If so, is that wise? Half of me thinks probably, but the other half feels like they may be missing out.

MLS Week 1 Vibez Review: It's Okay to Enjoy It, Even If It Doesn't Mean a Damn Thing

His eyes are my eyes, rn.

Welcome to the first one of these quick-hit reviews that, with breaks for vacation(s) and sanity, I plan on posting every week of Major League Soccer’s 2024 regular season – and beyond! (Which, here, only means posting through the playoffs). Before getting into anything at all, here are the results from MLS Week 1:

Inter Miami CF 2-0 Real Salt Lake (actually watched all of this one; just too late to fold it in)

Columbus Crew SC 1-0 Atlanta United FC

Los Angeles FC 2-1 Seattle Sounders %

Charlotte FC 1-0 New York City FC

DC United 3-1 New England Revolution %

Orlando City SC 0-0 Club du Foot Montreal *

Philadelphia Union 2-2 Chicago Fire FC

Austin FC 1-2 Minnesota United FC %

FC Dallas 2-1 San Jose Earthquakes

Houston Dynamo FC 1-1 Sporting Kansas City *

St. Louis CITY FC 1-1 Real Salt Lake

Portland Timbers 4-1 Colorado Rapids

FC Cincinnati 0-0 Toronto FC

Nashville SC 0-0 Red Bull New York *

Los Angeles Galaxy 1-1 Inter Miami CF

First, I’ve embedded links to The Mothership’s game summaries under each final score. Second, the above has a pretty simple index:

% means I went beyond the highlights and box score and actually watched 45+ of the game in question.

* means I ignored the game entirely.

[No Symbol] means I checked the highlights and the box score and maybe read a thing or two (which doesn’t mean I remembered it).

Now, I’ll do two things through the rest of the post. Third(?), will be a long paragraph – perhaps even a run-on sentence - that flags your more interesting results for the week just past. Everything under that goes under the titled The Grand Narrative. Fourth (now that I’m rolling with it), I’ll close on notes on all the games I either reviewed (%) or glanced at ([No Symbol]). Ready, set, go!

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC...

Don't google "special boy." The images only get darker.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

If you put a gun to my head before I wrote this post and asked me when Minnesota United FC joined the league, I’d be writing this post at your mercy. 2017? Then again, maybe that’s for the best…they still don’t have a damn head coach last I heard…

One wild season aside (see below), I think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. Turns out that’s only half right: the Loons fell short in both of their first two seasons – and by a fair amount. The half-remembered consistency kicked in after that: they qualified for the playoffs in each of the next four seasons - 2019-2022 - if from the middle of the table or thereabouts; 7th place overall finish in 2019 is their high-water mark. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to (something like) the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant trotting out teams that were sturdy in every sense of the word - i.e., stubborn and unimaginative – but that, like the other pieces above, didn’t fall into place until Heath got his defensive midfield in order. That took care of one side of the team, for as long as it did, anyway, but Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with that special something, a game-changer…

…that’s just one game-changer, mind. Don’t want to go about putting on airs.

Best Season(s)

2020, easily, the playoff run that put the fear of God into a Seattle Sounders team that was a dead man walking without even knowing it (Columbus Crew SC beat Seattle at a stroll in MLS Cup 2020). Minnesota had found Emanuel Reynoso by then – i.e., the greatest game-changer in Loons history – which meant they’d finally found a means to make “stubborn” payoff and even dream a little. MLS journeyman/hot boy, Kevin Molino, did just as much as Reynoso to make that happen. Think of it as a combination of two kinds of wizardry, something not seen before or since in Minnesota.