San Diego FC 1-2 Portland Timbers: A Strange Place, an RSL Scouting Report & an MLS Week 10 Review (Whew!)

Why, hello, Mr. Jackson...

I bit off more than I could chew this week, but the tardiness owes more to a busy weekend and needing to move shit around. I’ll change the things I can change, accept the things I can’t, and, at the end of it all, try to get these posts up by Monday. [Ed. - See programming note at the end, if you make it. Journey's long, mes amis.]

To riff on a regular obsession for this blog, definitions of the phrase “must-win game” probably number in the dozens. My thinking on it has evolved to another phrase – i.e., a result doesn't need to be fatal and chronic can actually be worse. Part of that turns on the fact that, in Major League Soccer, the only teams challenging for the Supporters’ Shield play must-win games week in and out. For the rest of MLS, the damage done by failing to win a "must-win" game lurks in a space between reputational and predictive. To explain by example, the Portland Timbers upcoming against Sporting Kansas City is a must-win game because losing to a team already tagged as one of the worst in MLS history, failing to bank those (still) easy points compels the Timbers to fight for them against bigger dragons. (Related, heartbroken for SKC fans; pulling for you crazy kids.) In other words, what starts as keeping up appearances can quickly become a lesson in the practical math of foregone points.  

Based on how I see other people talk – and therefore think about soccer – makes me think I put more weight on the question of the opposition than most. Any team can win any given game, of course, but where each time is in terms of points, confidence, feeling like they’re making progress, etc. etc. at the time they meet means, like, a lot. Which brings the conversation to…

San Diego FC 1-2 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
When Andres Dreyer scored the penalty kick, called by the ref (correctly) for a Brandon Bye handball, a game that already tilted against the Timbers seemed poised to roll away from them. By my imperfect tally, San Diego had fired five shots inside the opening 20 minutes and they fired two more – including one Dreyer buries four times out of ten – before 25 minutes had gone. Kevin Kelsy quite literally stole a goal at the 26th minute – i.e., he picked the ball of the generally reliable Jeppe Tverskov’s toe and scored a smart one – but Dreyer’s goal still felt like regular order reasserting itself. Instead, reality turned regular order on its head.

Level Set 21, New York City FC: Chivas USA 2.0, Which (Mostly) Works Better

No.

What follows is a brief history of New York City 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
When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the concept hatched with Chivas USA – i.e., planting a junior club for a major international team in the U.S., in this case, (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City. New York’s second team joined a very different league, of course, one where the rules actively invited the signing of ringers. As befitted a team playing in America’s premier city (sorry, LA), the organization went big (if mostly in name), signing England/Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, classy Italian regista (think I’m using that correctly), Andrea Pirlo (loved this guy), and Spanish golden-generation great, striker David Villa. They also insulted that talent by making them play homes games at Yankee Stadium, aka, a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look that hasn’t been a regular feature in MLS since the league’s earliest days when teams played most games over American football fields. Happily, NYCFC has constructed a soccer-specific at a place called Willets Point. (Yay!) Unhappily, and somewhat incredibly, that facility won’t open until the 2027 season (boo! Honestly, I can’t out “good job,” with “about fucking time” getting in its way.) NYCFC’s debut season reinforced a familiar lesson, chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (and aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams ain’t enough. The team missed the playoffs in their first season (by quite a bit), and defensive failures would plague the team until they got more holistic about roster building. Defensive reinforcements arrived over their second and third seasons, led by Maxime Chanot and Alexander Callens in central defense and Sean Johnson in goal, and that laid the foundation that rebuilt the team. Success wouldn’t come until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers at fullback, up the midfield spine and at the sharper end of the attack. A lot of the relevant players were on the roster as early as the 2019 – guys like crunching No. 8s, Alexander Ring and a young James Sands, fullback Anton “Tin-Tin” Tinnerholm and Ronald Matarrita, and a young forward named Valentin Castellanos, who went by “Tata.” The seemingly eternal Maximiliano Moralez was the key piece, though, the modest mouse that got the attack singing from the same sheet. The seasons since have been berry, berry good: NYCFC finished in the top ten every season from 2016 to 2022 - and in the top five more often than not – and reached the quarterfinals of the playoffs in 2024 and 2025. Blue New York reached its peak in 2021 with the arrival of Norwegian Ronny Deila as head coach, a star-turn season from Castellanos, and its first MLS Cup at the end (over the fallen, last-gasping bodies of the Portland Timbers). With Ring as a notable exception, that roster didn’t look so different from 2019’s and that speaks to the consistency of NYCFC’s roster-builds. Their worst season came in 2023, after Castellanos left (factually happened in the middle 2022), a couple players aged out, others moved on - Johnson and Callens stand out – and the hot, new, often young fixes like Santiago Rodriguez, Talles Magno and…Richie Ledezma(?) struggled to maintain the same standard. NYCFC have come back since, but the lofty peak they climbed in 2021 towers a little higher lately.

New York City FC 1-0 FC Cincinnati: The Many, Grace-Given Misses of Alonso Martinez

Alonso Martinez's afternoon, a visual.

FC Cincinnati has managed to stay one goal ahead of the opposition for the past month or so. That was always going to come to an end, of course – people change, hairstyles change, dog people wake up one day and realize they’re cat people, etc. – but Cincy was damned lucky to not lose in a blow out yesterday. New York City FC gave them a taste of their own medicine with a 1-0 win in the shitbox disgrace of a stadium they call home and I’m sure it tasted just as bitter.

About the Game, Briefly
It’s not often I find the lineup presented at the top of the broadcast – half of ‘em feel like misdirection from the head coach, honestly – but NYCFC’s attacking shape looked closer to the 3-2-4-1 than it did to the 4-3-3 shown in the official match report. Keeping all those players high served the familiar purpose of stifling Cincy’s build-out – which was huge – and having players closer to their goal to exploit any turnovers. One direct effect, aka, the huge one, was pinning both DeAndre Yedlin and Lukas Engel against their respective sidelines and cut off their outlets into the middle (hold this thought*). It took Cincy 20-25 minutes to sort out playing through it – they had their first coordinated break-out around the 30th minute (Luca Orellano missed) – or the loosening of NYC’s noose simply coincided with Keaton Parks limping off, but it proved too little, too late. The hosts had already found two quality looks within the first six minutes and it didn’t even take them 10 minutes to open the scoring. The pervasive role luck plays in goal-scoring is one of the more under-appreciated aspects of the game – e.g., it took (think it was) Miles Robinson’s feeble toe-picked “clearance” to steer the ball into the path of Julian Fernandez, who tucked the ball into the lower right corner of Roman Celetano’s – but the first half of the game saw New York make enough of its own luck to export it to abroad. The final stats erase that a bit, but it took (at least) 20 minutes for Cincy’s defense to get a handle on Andres Perea’s back-post runs and Alonso Martinez’ missed penalty kick at the 12th minute was the first of, gods, three(? four?) clear-cut-to-the-point-of-gilded opportunities he got. (To see the overstuffed catalog, kindly reference the full highlights.) If I had to guess at how NYCFC got that many trips to the same well, I’d put money on Pascal Jansen keeping Martinez close to Matt Miazga and putting them in as many foot races as he could; that led to the penalty call, if nothing else.

New York City FC Scouting Report: A Simple Matter of Overcoming Test Anxiety

You got this, bro(s)!

This feels like the first real test for FC Cincinnati in a while…even if it doesn’t look as tough – or as fun – as it used to. Is it just me, or did Cincy and New York City FC play some wild ones around the time Cincy got their shit together?

I’d look into it, but MLSSoccer.com has been stripped for parts to push people to their shitty app. I will never let this go...

Starting with the basics…

New York City FC
4-4-2, 11 pts., 12 gf, 13 ga (-1); home 3-1-0, away 1-3-2
Last...huh, 8 Results: WWDLLWLW
Strength/Location of Schedule
ORL (2-1 W); v NE (2-1 W); @ CLB (0-0 D); @ ATL (3-4 L); v MIN (1-2 L); v PHI (1-0 W); @ NE (0-2 L); @ TFC (1-0 W)

If anything made NYCFC a reliably competitive team through its best seasons, it was defense. They weren’t much better than average defensively in 2024 and merely occupy the mushy middle in that category this season. But for the fact they average just over a goal for per game (1.2), just over a goal allowed per game (1.3) wouldn’t be so bad, but that combo only makes them good enough for ninth in MLS’s Eastern Conference. One team constant for them did carry over: NYCFC get results in the vast, misshapen stadium they call home - and there lies Cincinnati’s greatest challenge. I don’t know much about their new-to-2024 Dutch head coach, Pascal Jansen, but he put in about eight years in the Eredivisie (or thereabouts; don’t know what Jong PSV is, doesn’t feel enormously important; cool detail about his mom in his bio, tho), and spent 2024 coaching Hungary’s Ferencvaros. More germane to the here and now, Jansen typically goes with a 4-3-3 and the guys he started against both Philly (in NYC) and Toronto (in Toronto) look like the early 2025 version of Plan A. That starting set includes some quality personnel – e.g., Thiago Martins in central defense (think he's shaved off a couple goals, fwiw), Keaton Parks as a ball-winning two-way player and Golden-Boot chaser, Alonso Martinez (six goals, so far) – but I like to hold up the newly-embiggened Justin Haak as a talisman for what NYCFC both has and lacks. Think more drilled competence than game-changing excellence. Something else I can’t shake: how is Maxi Moralez still starting for this team when he was “getting up there” in 2021? Rounding out the regulars, they’re getting decent early production out of Hannes Wolf, who kind of lingers on the sides behind the leading edge of the attack, and they have decent, if under-productive wing/fullbacks in Kevin O’Toole (reliably on the left) and whomever starts between Mitja Ilenic and Tayvon Gray. None of the players mentioned have produced a noteworthy number of assists – something that made sense as I watched them.

Getting Reacquainted with New York City FC, MLS's Proof of Foundation

Even the artist's rendering is embarrassing.

Thumbnail History
When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the premise of planting a junior club for a major international team – (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City in this case – in the U.S. Think Chivas USA 2.0 (and see tomorrow's post). New York’s second team had the advantage of joining a different league, one where the rules actively invited the signing of ringers. As befitted a team playing in the country’s premier city (I'll brook no dissent on this), the organization went big, signing England/Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, classy Italian regista (think I’m using that correctly), Andrea Pirlo (fucking legend), and Spanish golden-generation great, striker David Villa. They also opted to insult that talent by making them play homes games in a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look that hasn’t graced the league since the earliest days of MLS, when teams regularly played over football lines every fall. (Ed. – I understand there’s a soccer-specific stadium in the works, at a place called Willets Point, and I can’t spit out “good job,” with “about fucking time” getting in its way.) NYCFC’s debut season reinforced a familiar lesson, chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (and aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams ain’t enough. The team missed the playoffs in their first season (by quite a bit), and defensive failures would plague the team until they got more holistic about roster building. Defensive reinforcements arrived over their second and third seasons, led by Maxime Chanot and Alexander Callens in central defense and Sean Johnson in goal, and that laid the foundation for the rebuilt team. Success wouldn’t come until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers at fullback, up the midfield spine and at the sharper end of the attack. A lot of the relevant players were on the roster as early as the 2019 – guys like crunching No. 8s, Alexander Ring and a young James Sands, fullback Anton “Tin-Tin” Tinnerholm and Ronald Matarrita, and a young forward named Valentin Castellanos, who went by “Tata” – but Maximiliano Moralez was the modest mouse that got the attack singing from the same page (and gods bless the genius who found the image for his Wikipedia page). NYCFC finished in the top ten overall in every season from 2016 to 2022, and in the top five more often than not. That solid set-up just needed a nudge at that point, and that arrived in the persons of a head coach (Norwegian Ronny Delia, now with Atlanta, btw) and in a star-turn season from Castellanos. The blue side of New York raised its first MLS Cup in 2021 (over the fallen bodies of the Portland Timbers) and, with Ring as a notable exception, one doesn’t see many changes between the 2019 roster and the one that started and won MLS Cup 2021. Apart from Castellanos leaving in the middle 2022 wasn’t so bad, but, as always happens some players aged out (not Moralez; dude just re-signed), and others moved on - Johnson and Callens stand out – and the hot, new, often young fixes like Santiago Rodriguez, Talles Magno and…Richie Ledezma struggled to maintain the same standard. Before they knew it, the 2023 season was over and NYCFC neither played nor figured in the MLS playoffs.

Total Joy Points: 12

Getting Reacquainted with New York City FC, MLS's Trust Fund Kids

The past-time of America's past-time.

[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

When New York City FC joined MLS in 2015, it revived the premise of planting a junior club for a major international team – (recent) EPL juggernaut Manchester City in this case – into the U.S. market. Think Chivas USA 2.0, only this time they’d take it seriously. Or something. As MLS fans know, they play their games in a baseball stadium, an embarrassing look of the sort that hasn’t graced the league since teams regularly played over football lines every fall. The Organization finally ponied up to build a soccer-specific stadium in New York City, at a place called Willets Point, congrats and all that, but it looks like they’ve got two more seasons of slipping on tobacco spit before that space opens. While a good product has typically graced that janky field, NYCFC had to learn some old lessons – chief among them, that seeding an MLS-regular expansion team with a few high-profile (if aging) ringers from Europe’s biggest teams is not enough. The team missed the playoffs that first season (and by quite a bit), but defensive reinforcements arrived for the second season and righted the ship. That brought consistency, but success wouldn’t arrive until the team found lower-profile, but better and frankly hungrier, ringers (Sit tight. I’ll flesh out the point below). That combination didn’t just make them regulars in the MLS playoffs; NYCFC finished in the top ten overall in every season from 2016 to 2022, and in the top five more often than not. That solid set-up just needed a nudge at that point, and those arrived in the persons of a head coach (Norwegian Ronny Deila) and a star forward (Valentin “Taty” Castellanos). The blue side of New York raised its first MLS Cup in 2021 (over the fallen bodies of the Portland Timbers, dammit) and the future looked very bright…until it very abruptly didn’t. More below…

Best Season(s)

Easy call. 2021. And by just about every measure.

Long-Term Tendencies

Talking “tendencies” doesn’t make a lot of sense for a team that hasn’t yet celebrated its 10th birthday, but kicking around the secret of NYCFC’s success isn’t too complicated. They became a good defensive team in 2017 and solidified into a great one from 2018 to the present. A potent attack came together one season after that and, with the exception of a slight falling off in The Year of COVID, stuck around through 2022 (the latter, i.e., the season after they won MLS Cup, was their most lethal). As it happens, you don’t need to look at anything but the top-line numbers to answer the question, what the hell happened to New York City FC in 2023? The attack took a giant shit is what happened.

MLS Cup 2021. Dammit.

Always rooted for him too.

You go through a soccer season, sorting out the players you can trust, developing a sense and/or set of beliefs about how far the local team can go, calibrating it from one week to the next by a combination of on-the-ground realities, personal biases, and outright daydreams. You get moments of clarity here and there, times when all those things come together and add up well enough…

…and then your local team has a night like tonight, a night that makes you feel either stupid or hubris-drunk depending how you read 120 minutes’ worth of tea leaves and a debacle of a penalty kick shootout. To finally pitch the headline, the Portland Timbers lost to New York City FC tonight, in Portland, and with the penalty kicks ending quickly enough to confirm an uneven night for the home side. You can play every game you get invited to, but you can’t win ‘em all…

How to describe that? Climbing a mountain, reaching the peak, then falling off the other side? Finally getting multi-ball, only to let all three-to-five balls slip away down both alleys and up the gut before you hit any of the jackpots? Having a tire go flat, discovering you have a spare and putting it on, only to realize you put the patches on wrong? Like playing euchre and having a solid hand when the bid ends in screw-the-dealer, only to get euchred by bad distribution? I’ll add other metaphors as they come to me, but it’s possible that’ll be the only one. two. three. four.

MLS Cup 2021 didn’t serve up a big corpse to dissect. There’s definitely a body on the slab - the Portland Timbers’ - but the time and cause of death seem straightforward enough. By my math, New York City FC looked the better, more (ruthlessly) organized team for…more or less, the first 80 minutes, then the Portland Timbers came too life with…yes, exactly enough time to spare, damn near down to the second, and they carried that momentum through the first half of extra-time. NYCFC got past the shock, regrouped over the second half of extra-time, and rallied to win their first major trophy on penalty kicks. And with breathing room. Hence the thing about falling off the other side of the mountain.

Sure, the Timbers got a couple bubbles under their butts from about the 25th minute only to have Valentin “Taty” Castellanos pop them when he broke wildly free at the back-post (didn’t I mention the back post?), to both nod home the opening goal and unsettle whatever game-plan the Timbers had run to that point…and that’s where I have questions.

2021 MLS Cup Preview: The Timbers Game to Lose, but Let's Count the Ways

“I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”
“And we’re just the guys to do it.”
- Animal House, Whoever Wrote It, and, Yes, I Love that Damn Movie.

I like to think this site has a long tradition of doing excessive, even silly things at least once a season. With the Portland Timbers not just playing in its third MLS Cup, but hosting it as well, it felt like an occasion to really ratchet the excessive and silly to a whole new level. I’ll close this post with some general thoughts, but first, I decided to sit down and watch every goal scored or allowed in 2021 by the team that stands between the Timbers and the 2021 MLS Cup: New York City FC. Call it an attempt to figure out where the blows might come from, even if I’m powerless to do anything about it…

…and, full disclosure, I skipped the last three games of the regular season, and for reasons that will beccome clear when I talk big picture, and also totally forgot NYCFC played Atlanta United FC in the first round of the 2021 post-season, but, I did look at every goal besides that. Which is to say, I spent a stupid amount of time reviewing video for a guy with a tiny platform. And yet, here is my report.

To start with the big picture, NYCFC allowed just 36 goals during the regular season, plus five more during the playoffs, making them the 6th cleanest defense in Major League Soccer. Related, only two teams - the New England Revolution and Nashville SC - had a better regular season goal differential (+24 and +22, respectively), while NYC tied with the Seattle Sounders at third place with a +20. As follows from, I didn’t see a ton of goals scored against NYCFC - i.e., again, they are a good defensive team - but a hefty chunk of them shared two characteristics.

Switching Off/Set-Pieces
Some times they nod off on defense, and it’s full-on lights out when NYCFC does. A lot of ball-watching, heads not on swivels, just general, crippling inattention to the world around them. The Timbers can’t rely on that happening, obviously, because, again, they ended the regular season allowing 1.06 goals/game. Sadly, no one can make their defense switch off on command (but what if I paid you money? I've got like $56 in ones, guys), which makes that a yes/no, they will or they won't kind of factor. Now, for the one Portland can exploit…

New York City FC 2-1 FC Cincinnati: 20 Happy MInutes and the Nature of Inevitability

Yes,  you can play that way, but...

Not many people would take a second glance at FC Cincinnati’s 1-2 loss to New York City FC. They’d file it away as expected and move on; if anything piqued his/her/their interest it would be the fact that Cincy scored a goal. (Not that record, motherfuckers! Not today!). The bird’s-eye-view isn’t wrong, but it’s not entirely right either. This thing’s hairy with nuance…have I mentioned how much I miss the routine of soaking up context by watching too many goddamn MLS in 15 highlights? Have I mentioned how much the pandemic murdered the logic of going through that particular motion?

To stare directly at the warts, yes, FC Cincinnati played a sloppy, madding opening…65 minutes, and “opening” and “65 minutes” should never go together. To frame the point around two emblematic moments, the first came when Alexander Ring made what felt like NYCFC’s 100th scything run straight up Cincinnati’s gut; Ring slipped to the outside when Kendall Waston lunged in, but, and this is very much to Waston’s credit (especially at 32) he got enough of his body in the way and eventually muscled Ring off the ball, which almost certainly would have ended in a goal. He managed to clear it…maybe to the top of the defensive third? The ball might have crossed over into NYCFC’s half in a particularly #blessed moment, but it didn’t stray much further upfield for most of the first half and too much of the second.

The real question became apparent only after Allan Cruz and (sure, why not?) Nick Hagglund came on at the 65th minute: why the hell did FC Cincinnati spend 65 minutes hanging from the edge of a goddamn cliff when, according to what happened after the 65th minute, it’s possible - and merely possible - they didn’t have to?

The second moment relates to the first, in that it expresses the flip-side of the same dynamic. On one of the rare occasions that the ball crossed the center stripe and into NYCFC’s half, Yuya Kubo bolted up the left side of the field with the ball at his feet; the literally only other Cincinnati player who joined him on the happy side of the center stripe was Jurgen Locadia, and he was all the way on the other side of the damn field. For the sake of argument, set aside whatever specific acts you think either of those players should or should not do in any given moment and focus on the deeper question how the hell two dudes split on opposite sides of entire goddamn half of a soccer field are supposed to beat four-to-six players defending that same space?

FC Cincinnati 1-4 New York City FC: Stanko-Curiosity & Role-Playing

Um, OK. Can we look at the other 19?

As I sat down to write this, I’d got it in my head that FC Cincinnati had a long history of scoring the first goal then gradually losing control of the game. As it happens, it’s a recent phenomenon, applicable only to their last three games. So, that’s one discarded frame (and title; I was thinking of going with, “I Got It, I Got It; I Don’t Got It”), but it does accurately describe a game (and a late phenomenon) slipping away one deflating increment at a time.

Related: I’ve fretted over the importance of FC Cincy scoring the first goal in the preview threads I post to twitter; the last few results punched a combined eight holes into that theory (i.e., one hole for each goal allowed), so let’s quietly set that one aside.

The best way I can think to explain yesterday’s 1-4 loss to New York City FC turns on a question: review the starting line-ups that FC Cincinnati and New York City FC fielded yesterday and ask yourself, which team’s player you’d take at each position on the field. At most, I’d take Andrew Gutman over Ronald Mataritta, Kendall Waston over Julian Sands (then Ben Sweat, but not over Maxime Chanot, maybe Mathieu Deplagne over Eric Miller, and one of Cincy’s midfielders (probably Victor Ulloa) over Keaton Parks, but he’s only 22 so that pick could invert in a year or two.

NYCFC picked up a couple lucky bounces – see, Valentin Castellanos’ accidental assist on Heber’s first goal and the way Mikael van der Werff’s heel didn’t do enough to thwart Heber’s cut-back on his second back-breaking goal – but better quality at nearly every position, particularly in the attack, feels like the proper narrative. Cincy posted as many shots as NYC in the end – at least a pair of good ones, too – but when the time came to strike the ball well and true, having Castellanos and Heber on one team versus Darren Mattocks and, say, Roland Lamah on the other decided the result.

New York City FC 0-1 Portland Timbers: The Ballad of Andres Flores

There was this guy named Andres Flores, WHOA-oh-oh!

I mean, I get the thought process behind the way that New York City FC lined up on this game’s decisive set-piece – i.e., set the offside line as far away from your goal as possible, because why wouldn’t you? – but that doesn’t mean I understand how that madness made it from the training ground to a game with points on the line. With all that space between that flat, high line and the goal (again, that was by design), it would take nothing more than a good ball over the top, one player slipping, and that’s an attacking player in clear en route to your goal. By my count, a coaching staff should only have to line that up one time before saying, “Oh, shit. Right. What was I thinking?”

That stupidly soft goal provided the separation, but the Portland Timbers owe their 1-0 road win in the Rumble at the Rhombus (ht: @iamseanspencer) to everything that happened around it. Certain players deserve a little more credit/love for delivering a, frankly, contextually massive win: Sebastian Blanco tops the list, and for reasons both obvious and less than, but the players who deserve the most credit are the people who filled in for the players that even most fans agree Portland can’t do without. If I had to choose between them, I’d give Andres Flores the more vigorous nod, but Renzo Zambrano keeps erasing whatever doubts I have about him one start at a time. Those guys, along with Claude Dielna, got thrown into the deep end, with “show us you can win a tough game” ringing in their ears. The stakes were lower for Dairon Asprilla, and on the grounds that he had less responsibility for proving that Portland can win without Diego Chara on the field. And, unless I misheard, winning without Chara is something that hadn’t happened since July 5,…2015 (wha?).

I’ll be damned if Flores, especially, didn’t do his best Chara impression out there tonight. To carry over a thought from last weekend, just about every player channeled their inner Chara tonight, few more so than Dielna and Larrys Mabiala. Stressful as it was to see both of those players as high and wide as I saw them tonight, the Timbers have found real success pushing against the other team’s attack lately.

At the same time, I think the box score gives a truer read on this game than what you’ll see in the super-condensed highlights. Portland had a pair of great chances – and, holy shit, does Diego Valeri still have it (which he proved on multiple occasions tonight) – but NYCFC had more chances and better ones too. The best ones fell to Valentin Castellanos (here’s one), but Portland by and large succeeded in keeping them away from danger zones. And that’s where the box score goes wrong: the Timbers rarely broke a sweat in this game; whatever the numbers say (ungood things), the Timbers never looked uncomfortable tonight.

MLS Form Guide ULTRA, Week 4: What the Hell Is Wrong With New York(s)?

Not this, but also this.

With Week 4 now (mostly) wrapped up (get with it, Toronto FC), and eight teams already into Week 5, we have enough data on our hands to scramble some preseason assumptions. To take a stab at one of the bigger ones, 2019 has proved cruel enough to the two New York teams in that neither team’s name pairs with the word “contender” the way they used to do. So, down they went. (To those new to these posts, while I don’t strictly rank all the clubs in Major League Soccer, they listed below in some rough semblance of good to bad.) Careful (or just patient) observers will also find last year’s MLS Cup contenders – Atlanta United FC and the Portland Timbers - down in the depths with New York - where they’ve shown they belong (dammit). Where those teams have covered themselves in shame and vomit, Toronto FC turned has so far produced a flawless rejection of their 2018 flame-out – and they doubled-down with what looks like one hell of an effective new signing in Alejandro Pozuela. (Just watched the condensed game; it checks out.)

Narratives extended from all the numbers down below, even if it’s hard in some cases to say where they’ll go from here (say, Philadelphia Union), and impossible in others (say, FC Cincinnati). I’ll flesh out some of those points in the narrative summary I’ll post on Orange & Blue Press (and, once it’s up, link to it right here; it’ll fuck up some of the spacing down below (dammit), but I’d rather link to that than not), but, overall, it’s the usual dogpile of teams stacking up in the standings as they do. Or dogpiles, rather. After the contenders (the top four, maybe five teams below), you’ve got teams with solid starts/reputations in one pot (say, FC Dallas down to the Los Angeles Galaxy), and, in another, you’ve got teams that have managed to pile up some points, but who could go any which way going forward…or maybe just FC Cincinnati and L’Impact du Montreal.

Shit gets weird after that – and having Atlanta, Portland and the New York teams crawling around the innards of the outhouse only makes it the thought of whatever busts out of it feel more threatening somehow (because it crawled out of a damn outhouse, son). Anyway, details on the most recent results for every team in MLS are down below, along with some commentary and who everyone has next – something that’s already becoming a factor in divining at least the short-term future for a lot of teams. I’ll be digging into that in the narrative, but, till that goes up, enjoy the data!

LOS ANGELES FC, 4-0-1, 13 points, 15 gf, 5 ga, (3-0-0 home, 1-0-1 away)

Last Ten: N/A

W	W	D	W	W
v SKC	v POR	@ NYC	v RSL	@ SJ
2-1	4-1	2-2	2-1	5-0
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Current Judgment: Sure, they’re piling up the points by beating up a succession of situationally vulnerable teams (and Portland’s got next!), but that doesn’t roll back the reality that they are actually doing it, and Carlos Vela is playing MVP soccer.

Next Game: @ DC United, which feels LAFC’s biggest test of their young season.

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

Bluff.

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

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

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

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