Portland Timbers 1-1 Los Angeles Galaxy: Readings from a Spoiled Sample

This plus a couple geezers. Not great, man.

I saw the question of whether the referee should have awarded the Portland Timbers late in Sunday’s game posed a half dozen times on the Timbers subreddit yesterday and answered with a raging “motherfucker, YES!” It was a massive call to miss, no question – calling advantage on that play does actual violence to the word “advantage” – and, while having two more points wouldn’t have helped Portland in 2024, it would have lifted Portland into the playoffs in 2022, given them homefield advantage for the play-in in 2023.

I get the frustration, in other words, and a very stupid non-call can matter, even in MLS’s largely pointless regular season, but…and you knew this was coming…shouldn’t we all be more concerned with the fact that the Timbers struggled to manage a Los Angeles Galaxy B- team?

About the Game
To start with some positives, seeing Santiago Moreno back in the XI did the soul good – particularly after a couple of his early runs made it look as if he might win the game on his own. The team as a whole looked more comfortable on the ball and decently connected over several periods in the first half, even if all that running and kicking didn’t necessarily translate into anything particularly, or at all, meaningful – i.e., seeing halftime stats like three shots, one on goal for the Timbers, and five (apparently) wayward shots for the Galaxy sounded about right, as did both teams’ piteous xG. Portland even tried to press here and there, which attempt I described in my real-time notes as “looks/works half-ass, but not a total waste.” The fact that came against a veritable “who’s that?” of Galaxy players – e.g., Tucker Lepley, Isaiah Parente, and Harbor Miller (that last one begs the question of what his ancestors did for a living) – always left open the hope that the Timbers were just working out their angles before absolutely destroying the whelps. And, when Felipe Mora deflected a David Da Costa grass-cutter cross from Portland’s right to score Portland's one and only goal, that plan seemed in motion – and with a bonus of giving Timbers fans a glimpse of how Da Costa’s skill set could help the mission. That bright shiny feeling that lasted only until the second half turned into a stalemated slog. I had a sense that LA got the better of the game while the Timbers sucked back into defense as I watched, but still appreciate the confirmation from the official stats page. It’s possible Gabriel Pec hoisted too much weight onto his own shoulders – more below – but he created at least one goal-line scramble and the Galaxy fired some better shots from range between the 60th and 70th minutes. The Timbers defense held…firm-esque through all that pressure, which only made LA's equalizer, from a simple ball over the top to Christian Ramirez (wake up, Zac), more simmeringly infuriating. I just circled back to the highlights, which helpfully reminded me that the Timbers had a couple chances to get back in the lead, and that brings the game and summary back to the non-call on the penalty that started the post.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Austin FC: Between Happiness and Satisfaction

This is not a highlight, but that is Ted Unkel.

Yes, ma’am, my homework is late. Yes, ma’am, it’s won’t happen again.

“Grappling with the possibility that I’m watching two mediocre teams play some JV shit.”
- Me, a Bluesky game thread, the 80th minute(?)

Upon further review, that overstates the case a bit. Portland Timbers players attempted at least two (hopeful) bicycle kicks, for one. Still, if I had to offer a key thought to hold in your head as you read everything that follows, that’s up there.

About the Game
The second shortest available video review of last Saturday's game (the "snapshot" is shorter...and pointless) reminded me that Austin FC fired a few more than I remembered – also notable, they fired a few more shots than Portland – including two that forced quality saves out of James Pantemis. Those came early and late, so credit to Pantemis for staying alert even as I was…nodding off, but none of the above has lured me into the Pantemania I saw popping up in various social media threads. You do you and all that, but I can’t think of what it would take me to take sides in a goalkeeper controversy, but assume it lands somewhere between insisting he must wear his “lucky sombrero” to reach his full potential or that three saves every game must be made by the famed scorpion-kick to build his social media brand. Seeing a defense limit the opposition to shots from range will consistently make me happier than anything a goalkeeper does.

Another telling detail in that short video review: the amount of time devoted to showing yellow cards. Few things stage-whisper “dud” quite like two teams failing to produce enough chances to fill a seven- minutes highlight reel.

Austin’s new signing, Brandon Vazquez, gets my credit for the best shot of the game – which, by the transitive property (associative? distributive?) hands Pantemis the best save – but Portland’s fucking new guy David Da Costa scored the goal that counted. It came (very) late, it took a little luck, and it was one of just two shots on goal for the Timbers (out of eight total), but I’m not above dipping my hand into the proverbial unflushed toilet if it means fishing out three points in the end.

Charlotte FC 2-0 Portland Timbers: About the Thing That Happened and the Thing to Happen

Evander II is dead, long live [Evander II.]

Over the opening six to eight minutes of today’s final preseason game, the Portland Timbers played some of the finest soccer I’ve seen from them since the salad days of mid-June to mid-July 2024. The defensive lines pressed high and disrupted 90% of what Charlotte FC tried to do and Diego Chara sat deep, playing balls long wide to Jimer Fory on the right and…Eric Miller on the left.

Treat the words after the ellipses as a short way of saying that the lineup that Portland started today – a 3-5-2 (probably?) with Felipe Mora and Kevin Kelsy up top, Fory and E. Miller on either side of a midfield block built around Chara, Joao Ortiz, and David Ayala, a back three of Dario Zuparic, Zac McGraw, and Kamal Miller, and Maxime Crepeau in goal – was not and, ideally, will not, could not, and cannot be Phil Neville’s Plan A for the 2025 campaign. I have no insight into how long regular starters like Santiago Moreno, Jonathan Rodriguez, Juan David Mosquera and [New Evander] will get back on the field. I can only hope that start trickling in soon enough to take advantage of one of the softer opening stretches the Timbers have seen for gods know how long. Between First Kick and mid-April, Portland has four home games, three of them winnable and one against a dismantled and limping Los Angeles Galaxy team, and even if Nashville SC has improved (rumors of a flawless preseason have reached this monitoring station), I’ve seen tougher road games. That’s 24 points up for grabs, the balance of them for the taking. Gods know a strong start would do this team good.

Getting back to today’s 0-2 loss to Charlotte, the remaining 72 to 74 didn’t go so good. Even when the game was somewhat even – aka, the first half – Charlotte managed to turn possession into chances before Portland could. Worse, the Timbers faded out of the game, both gradually and quickly (neat trick, btw), and to a point where forcing a draw looked like the best possible outcome for a generally impotent Timbers team. That possibility went “poof” when Charlotte opened the scoring at the 65th minute by working the ball up Portland’s left and finishing the play by findin Kerwin Vargas in a half-space, in the channel (with the butcher knife). From there, there was nothing left to do but let the clock run out…but then new guy, Joao Ortiz, squared the ball one step away from Tyger Smalls (great name, no notes) and he literally lumbered out the field and finished off one of the clumsiest goals I’ve ever seen scored by a professional (which you can relive through the link above, if you so choose). In a world where Portland looked like they’d ever score, that might have a hurt a little. On this one, it just felt like finishing a thought.

St. Louis CITY FC 0-0 Portland Timbers: Feeling Good (No, Really) Context-Free

A young Paul Giammati was the butt of the "wNbc" bit.

I don’t actually have a ton of blow-by-blow notes for the Portland Timbers' goal-less draw at St. Louis CITY FC (“wNbc!”), even though the game amounted to a series of isolated escapes from a general muddle. In all honesty, I’m mostly thrilled to see the Timbers keep their second clean sheet of 2024.

That’s not to say St. Louis didn’t come close here and there – e.g., Timbers understudy ‘keeper, James Pantemis, made a save on a Celio Pompeu shot through a thicket of bodies toward the end of the first half and Portland came within the width of Claudio Bravo’s lower leg of going down 0-1 in the 75th minute – and even that immediately followed Eduard Lowen hitting the right far post with a free kick. Tim Parker came close with a header at the 15th too (or thereabouts), Zac McGraw had to run down a through-ball (hat-tip to Joao Klauss for whiffing the shot!), but I doubt even the most rabid St. Louis fan would argue they stormed the castle. You’ll see nearly all of that in the highlights, but about 60% of the total run-time is devoted to dudes picking up yellow cards, with most going to St. Louis.

Portland had their chances – e.g., Jonathan Rodriguez’s shot to the far post around the 3rd minute (before he largely faded into anonymity) and another shot by Evander around the 17th – but their shooting statistics and lowly xG get the story mostly right.

And yet, even if this arguably counts as the Timbers least impressive attacking performance of 2024, it might count as something just as important: one of their more coherent playing performances. Unlike countless prior outings (well, not countless; they’ve played literally 18 games, so this can be quantified), Portland players looked generally connected and less like total strangers than they have across multiple halves of multiple games this season. Given how rare (more or less) wire-to-wire competence has been this season, I see that as something to celebrate.

Houston Dynamo FC 1-0 Portland Timbers: A More Complete Incompleteness

One way to "break" one's duck...

In my mind, the biggest question about last night’s game was which team would score first. The Portland Timbers came (god)damn close in the fourth minute when my personal Man of the Match, Santiago Moreno, found Cristhian Paredes loose on the right side of the six (gotta be in here somewhere), but Houston Dynamo FC gored the proverbial duck first, thereby taking a 1-0 lead they never surrendered. Timbers lose, Timbers lose, etc.

By the way, does anyone know where the phrase “break your duck” comes from? Yeah, I could google it, but what’s the fun in that? This stays poultry-heavy for a few, btw. Moving on…

Lacking as it was in some familiar areas - e.g., attacking verve and total concentration in defense - I don’t have a lot of gripes about Portland’s overall performance yesterday and, as a handful of people reminded me on the Timbers subreddit, they don’t often leave the “great” state of Texas with points. A point or three would have been nice, sure, but all things considered, I find it harder to argue that Portland deserved some slice of the points last night than to argue that Houston didn’t deserve all of them.

Given the way Houston has played under Ben Olsen, this one was always going to be grind. The Dynamo play a patient, methodical game and, to use a phrase I may have forgotten to get to in the preview, they can hold onto the ball until they behoove themselves (it can take a while sometimes) to swing into the attack. No less important, Houston tends to have its ducks in a row behind the ball as they push forward – and, outside some frantic moments over the opening 15 minutes, that held  last night. Feel free to chicken-and-egg this until you, a regular human, unlocks the ability to lay eggs, but Houston reliably had at least one player in the right place at all times and all night. Whether that followed from the Timbers’ lack of execution or from the Dynamo just having really goddamn good defenders – e.g., Micael exceeded my already high expectations and, bluntly, Phil Neville should have Juan David Mosquera watch video of how Griffin Dorsey plays the same position until further notice – I can’t say and it just doesn’t matter at this point.

The reason it doesn’t matter? The Timbers made the game’s one, fatal mistake and that’s all this game had in it.

DC United Scouting Report: 75% Coping with Fast Zombies

Only time will tell...

DC United kicked off its 2024 regular season with a 3-1 home win over the New England Revolution that knocked Armchair Analyst, Matt Doyle, off the fence. He’s now convinced that DC will make the 2024 playoffs, spin of the wheel with odds equal to betting it'll rain during November in Portland. He may be right, he may be crazy, he just may be the lunatic we’re looking for…but all I can think when I look at the East so far is “competitive.”

That’s a thought for another day, because the only thing I care about right now is whether the Portland Timbers can compete against DC on Saturday at…is it still Providence Park, or did the state of Oregon’s real estate king/hospital system fuck off a la Da Bella? Anyhoo, as much as the weight of the schedule ahead feels lighter than it did when it first dropped – see road games against the punchless (e.g., New York City FC) and the wounded (Houston Dynamo FC) teams – I’d still rate the hike till May as moderate to difficult at a minimum. The Timbers can knock down that hike to easy-to-moderate, but they’ll have to play well to do it.

Based on the few indicators at hand, DC will shove that question to the fore, one way or the other. They may or may not be good –I’ll get to that – but they play the game like smartly-trained methed-up puppies. They showed they have the youth and legs last week to run a highly active and coordinated press; no Revolution player could hold the ball for over a second without a DC player either jumping in his pocket or chasing him like a ravening fast zombie. With a new coach (Troy Lesesne), early-season enthusiasm, and the team’s storied (long ago) history lashing at their shoulders, I expect DC to run at every Timbers player within 20 yards of the ball from the starting whistle until they take a spell to catch the breath. The method to the madness showed up in Doyle’s Big Week 1 Wrap:

“Lesesne talked all week about winning the ball higher up the pitch to give [Christian] Benteke opportunities and it worked.”

- Calen Carr

Decision Day Preview: Bring All Your Best Marbles, 'Cause This One's For All of 'Em

Don't ask me how I know.

I just posted a scouting report for the Portland Timbers’ Decision Day opponent, Houston Dynamo FC, over on reddit. To translate the notes on Houston into marching order for the Timbers, I’d go with the Timbers need to play their cleanest possible game. To tighten up the phrasing, put a fork in Portland if they allow two goals, I’d put better than even money on Houston scoring one goal, but the main thing is to expect a game tighter than a wombat’s keister. Something else to expect, at least based on what I saw over the two games noted in the scouting report: Portland moving the ball pretty well only to see it all hit an elastic, yet firm wall about 25 yards from Houston’s goal.

To distill that even further, I harbor…sincerely real hopes of a Timbers win on Saturday – not like your uncle marrying someone really cool, like Bea Arthur when she was still with us, but something actually plausible – but I am, without so much as a second thought, bracing for a draw and an evening of clocking other results almost as much as I watch the game.

So, the usual yes, no, maybe, only without the net.

With all of those options, firmly on the table, I wanted to chuck my thoughts on what each would mean for Portland’s chances. Well, except for a win. Which would solve all the problems, heal all the woes.

Hold on. Just a quick aside: I get that disconcertingly large portions of the season blew chunks on a sucked raw egg, but the Timbers climbed out of the muck here and there. Why, for just over a month over April and May, they got their heads up with a road win over expansion darlings St. Louis CITY FC and home wins over Cascadia revivals, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps, on both sides of that. I don’t remember believing at that point, but like to think I did. And what about that home win over Columbus Crew SC, the one in mid-July right before the crushing loss to Houston, aka, Gio Savarese’s last, short straw? Sure, it took the Miles Joseph Miracle (coming to you on the Hallmark Channel) to lift the Timbers into playoff contention, but even those would have fallen short – also, hold that thought – without those earlier, seemingly meaningless Ws.

Portland Timbers 2-0 Los Angeles FC: A Step (Over What May Be a Corpse) in the Right Direction

Night, night, gram-gram.

Because this game wasn’t that complicated, and because I’m about to check out until the end of September, I’ll keep the game summary for the Portland Timbers comfy-cozy 2-0 win over Los Angeles FC short.

It opened with a long, barren period – see the xG graph because it gets things mostly right – which left the game open for one of those pivotal moments. LAFC’s ‘keeper, John McCarthy, delivered with a swing and a miss at an Evander corner. His bobble bounced in front of the goal until Larry Mabiala did the simple thing of running toward it and heading it into the goal. Gods only knew what would happen from there, but it looked like a long stretch of nothing at that point.

I saw some chatter about LAFC getting back into the game during the latter half of the first one, but the only evidence I saw was an intermittently effective press and a couple smart shots from the left channel to the right post. All that didn’t amount to much – and I’m not the only one to think that; the on-screen halftime stats had the Timbers up 1.6 to 0.09 on xG (no typo on that zero behind the decimal).

The game ended according to everything but the final whistle fairly early in the first half. Portland scored an insurance goal so nice they insured it twice (seriously, watch it again for Santiago Moreno’s tulle-soft back-heel to Claudio Bravo alone) and LAFC only got worse from there. The Timbers had at least two more chances to dig them a deeper hole – and that’s on top of three more where a team that needed to make something happen would have pushed harder to make it so – and the game just kind of petered out from there. I mean that in the best way, honestly: there are few things I appreciate more in soccer than watching a team kill off a game softly, and the Timbers did that tonight. On a physical level, it didn’t take much more than a soap opera villain seeing that ill-gotten inheritance by leaning a little harder into the pillow smothering grandma’s face.

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 1-2 Tigres UANL: Three Team Round Robins Are Kinda Dumb

Possible metaphor for capitalism...

I’m going to let the game thread handle the play-by-play for the Portland Timbers...yeah, I’m going to call it disappointing 1-2 home loss to Tigres UANL. I’ve started 100 posts with “I’ll keep this short” only to delete it after I’ve run over by a mile and a thousand meters, but, seriously, this result doesn’t tie into anything besides the present (current?) tournament, there’s no question left but whether the Timbers make the first round and...hold on, I have some breaking news...

The Timbers have, in fact, already qualified for the second round. And, yeah, that makes sense: With Portland still on a +1 goal differential, a Tigres win would kill San Jose’s chances of topping that and vice versa, and San Jose can’t pass them on points even if they won a penalty shoot-out...wow, a three-team round-robin set-up is kinda dumb. Tidy, but dumb.

To briefly summarize the game (again, please also consult the game thread for additional material/insights), the game started with some light groping, only then the Timbers got into a rhythm – seriously, they countered in a way that gave me whiffs of nostalgia – and, before you knew it – POW! (ZOWEEE!) – they went up 1-0 on a cracking free-kick by Evander (c’mon, a non-celebration celebration is still a celebration). Not content to be the hero of the play, Evander made the fool decision to pantomime a swing that grazed the top of a Tigres player’s head, which right got him sent off for a second yellow, two yellows make a red, etc.

Won’t lie, didn’t love what followed – see below – but, the Timbers dodging two fairly reasonable penalty calls aside (don't think either made the highlights, so...), Portland handled playing a man down...let’s go with capably. You don’t have to love what you don’t hate and, honestly, it held together until it didn’t. The decisive moment came when Juan David Mosquera let Jesus Angulo bolt past his shoulder at the back post with the goal yawning wide before him. Tigres scored and the game effectively ended. If memory serves and the numbers add up, Portland managed just one more shot on goal after that and, in my mind...I guess I’d say they did some things I wouldn’t have.

Summertime Sadness, aka, The Thing That's Wrong with the Timbers

Mood, man.

When was the last time the Portland Timbers actually excited you?

That answer varies based on your own experiences and personal predilections, naturally, and encompasses everything from how pissed you are about front office malfeasance to how The Product plays on the field. I’ve got my gripes with the front office – and gods know I’ve aired them – but this post deals strictly with The Product.

I’m going to start with last Sunday’s home win over FC Dallas, but won’t burn a lot of time on it, you saw it or you didn’t, etc. Portland played all right: they made Dallas ‘keeper Martin Paes work (and barely allowed Dallas a shot); they scored a smart goal, Evander lofted his cross just so into the seam where Franck Boli made his run – and that run opened up a lot of the goal for the finish, good high-percentage stuff in other words. [Ed. - I have no damn idea how The Mothership measures xG, but am quickly becoming obsessed with it.] Going the other way, Dallas played like tired shit – that’s against the clean win they picked up at home midweek over St. Louis CITY FC They played through St. Louis’ pressure, which can come at G-force, and took three points on the back of two good goals. All in all, I wouldn’t get too deep into how much Portland limited Dallas’ shots, they don’t generate a ton (even in a win), and so on. I don’t mean to imply it wasn’t a good result – in context, it tickles the belly of “fabu” because they looked nothing like guaranteed going in and I’ve seen players like Alan Velasco and Jesus Ferreira fuck a defense up. It’s the context around it where...I have concerns.

Sure, Portland ended the game over the line, and in something crazy like 8th place, but they share that lowly podium with (literally) four other teams and, as I see it, the broad arc of the Timbers’ season bends toward where they started the week, i.e., below the playoff line. And that brings me to the grand thesis:

There ain’t a lot to get excited about on this roster. I’d go so far as to argue that the Portland Timbers are in the midst of a “transition year” that has somehow lasted for two seasons.

Portland Timbers 3-1 Vancouver Whitecaps: They Wore Green and Gold (Yes!)...And It Was Good

If you know, you know.

Forgive me Father, Mother Mary Full of Grace (full of grace! full of grace!), the bless’d angels and the Holy Spirit, I turned off my late, late viewing of the Portland Timbers 3-1 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps at the 85th minute.

And yet I’ll argue that made decent sense.

To start with something I saw in a tweet – and by no means am I shitting on the original tweeter (and I couldn’t tell you who it was, gun to my head) – I saw this described as (paraphrasing) “the Timbers making a pretty good Vancouver side look pedestrian.” I want to dig into that from two directions.

First, how good are the Whitecaps, really? My best description: better than the av-e-rage team, but only just. That’s on a high-level, nuts ‘n’ bolts level – e.g., their goals for (15) and goals against (12) against the league average (14.24) – but I have a couple thoughts in my head that push back against the “but numbers love them” argument.

Eight of those 15 goals came in two games – the recent 3-2 win versus Minnesota United FC and the earlier 5-0 drubbing of Club de Foot Montreal (aka, Simon Becher's debutante ball) three weeks before the latter got their groove on. Yeah, yeah, the ‘Caps beat the Timbers at BC Place some weeks ago – a game that...did not go well for Portland (though I did search for silver linings with a magnifying glass and tweezers) – but I also just ticked through Vancouver’s every win of 2023 and none of those teams rolled into the foot of the Canadian Rockies as their best selves (though the Timbers were one game from the/some shit straightening). In a lot of ways, and to lift up a cliche that answers “but the numbers” cliche, The ‘Caps are exactly what their record says they are: a middle-table team. But that’s just starts the answer...

I’ve watched all or large portions of five Vancouver games this season and...well, they’ve never “wowed” me. As I said in the last preview, I see them as a team that goes about the business in a very business-like way; those of you who watched at home might have heard Ross Smith’s digression about “no outstanding players” and that’s just a big “yep.” The phrase “collective spirit” stands in for “no one really spectacular to see” not so much nicely as appropriately, soccer players making soccer plays, etc.

St. Louis CITY FC 1-2 Portland Timbers: No Comments, But Also Three Pages' Worth

Kid's already miles deep on, "you just made the list, mate."

What’s that phrase? No comments?

No comments because that Portland Timbers win checked every box.

At the apex of the glory, a defense stayed organized and held strong, and then one player put the team on his back and ran till they got proverbially there. Even more important, the Timbers took control of a game for the first time in 2023...sorry, the second; the way they stomped Seattle seems like something I usually keep between me and my therapist. At any rate, after a desperately drab first half, the Timbers either got a locker room stemwinder or they figured out that St. Louis CITY FC didn’t have their whole heart in tonight’s game. Once it became clear they could take the game to St. Louis, the Timbers kept yelling, “please, sir, may I have another,” kind of like an Oliver gone gritty on a revenge bender, until they answered back to St. Louis’...let’s call it complicated equalizer....

...and that’s another box checked: the offense repaying a good game by the defense by clawing back one goal.

The Timbers have never looked as much like a professional soccer team as they did tonight, not in 2023, not like you, not like me, and, yeah, I’m starting to trust my credulous eyes more with each passing week. To finally get to the lead, the Timbers beat St. Louis, the best team in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference coming in to tonight, 2-1 and at their place...wait...oh my God, I finally found a linguistic detour around “at home.” Sorry to interrupt, but this is my Mount Baker at a minimum.

Before digging into the rest – and, honestly, even acknowledging the timeline – I have a couple notes on St. Louiis. This was either the fourth or fifth time I’ve watched them this season and, outside last week’s draw at Colorado, I’ve never seen them look so...what’s the word...less like they'd spent the afternoon blood-doping and doing all-day two-minute hate sessions at every Timbers player. When I watched the Colorado game, I put the absence of their xA (xpected Aggression) down to saving their lungs for a full 90 at altitude. After tonight, I’m starting to wonder if they’ll already hit the fundamental limitations of relying on “playing at 11” as a strategic choice. They didn’t have Joao Klauss – who, to his very real credit, has Maxi Urruti-level qualities at brain-fucking defenders – and that left Eduard Louwen trying to do everything with, as I once said without the information to back it up, “MLS average players.”

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.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Sporting Kansas City: A Win in March (or February) and Everything That Was Wrong with It

If I had to declare a star for the evening of the Portland Timbers’ season-opening 1-0 win over Sporting Kansas City, I’d go with the opening goal. I mean, that thing felt like the first kiss after love after love at first sight, something that left you dreaming of all the great things to come and believing they’d come true.

And then the rest of the game happened and, just like that, that same young couple is sitting at the back of the bus marveling at how all that frisson fizzled out.

There isn’t much to say about this game in either a short or long narrative. Once you take away a couple hiccups of excitement here and there, after Juan David Mosquera effectively willed in the game’s one and only goal – and by playing both sides of the ball in the same move, mind you – the game settled into an unwelcome pattern.

In a phrase, every good thing Portland managed to get going wilted over time. While that mostly took form of one Timbers player or another doing good things and leading a charge to somewhere promising, the malaise had a kind of global feel about it – say like someone running up a hill, heart bursting with courage screaming, “who's with me?!" only to realize he's leading, at most, a two-man charge. Or, to reach for another metaphor, the whole game felt like a metaphor for autumn, only some place shitty instead of, like, New England where leaves on the trees pop like fireworks in October (and with less of a fire risk; good stuff).

If there’s a plus side to this whole thing...guys(!), the Timbers kept a clean sheet! And, yeah, I get the impression that he’s popular as a narc as a high school party with a lot of Timbers fans, but stand-in ‘keeper David Bingham deserves a real share of the credit for that. He came up with saves big, double and good at the 24th and 77th minute. Bingham didn’t do it all alone, happily: Zac McGraw and his rippling physique knocked out the aerial threat time and again – one second-half intervention made it look like he has license to chase the ball across the area – and he got one of those long, sturdy (deep breath) legs in the way of one of SKC’s better attempts at a final ball. Mosquera deserves a ton of credit for making Portland’s right side hell to play down or through and I count both Justin Rasmussen and Dario Zuparic as fully present and entirely serviceable...

Portland Timbers 2-1 Atlanta United FC: The Raw Art of Sufficiency

In the same way this is food...

To start with the biggest happy picture, three straight wins goes a long way toward getting a team out the hole it dug over the first half of the season. The Portland Timbers’ 2-1 home win yesterday afternoon over a winded and dizzy Atlanta United FC capped that hop, skip, jump run of games and hoisted them a little higher over the playoff line. That the Los Angeles Galaxy played two games over the past week and pissed away four points in what arguably should have been winnable games makes it a little sweeter still.

Another happy thought: the Timbers have scored two goals in each of those three wins, which bought the defense a little credit for the one goal it has inevitably given up. All that’s the say, the foundation look good, at least until you take a closer look at it.

First, and to finally get to the game, Atlanta hasn’t been good all season – i.e., they leave three-game gaps between wins and this game came in a trough – they’re crap on the road (1-9-5), and they kicked off the game under the playoff line and there they remain. So that’s at least three reasons the Timbers did no more than what they should have yesterday. And, to their credit, they looked the better team. Atlanta had a nice, crisp, organized opening period where they took the game to Portland, though in retrospect all that activity wasn’t materially different than a ‘keeper bouncing and flapping on his goal line ahead of a penalty kick...and how apt is that metaphor?

To sing a couple more bars of praise, I like the way the Timbers took over the game. Both midfielders and defenders snapped at most things played toward them – even when they had to step ahead an Atlanta player to get there first – and that did a number on the visitors’ confidence in moving the ball. When they finally started finding and prying at little seams in the channels, the three-man back line of Bill Tuiloma, Dario Zuparic, and (about damn time) Zac McGraw held the right positions to cut out the passes or generally get in the way. Atlanta’s too-late goal aside – and pour one out for the late tragedy of Josef Martinez’s great MLS career – they managed just one other clean look on goal, e.g., that clever ball over the top by Santiago Sosa to Ronaldo Cisneros. And Aljaz Ivacic got his leg in the way of that one. Moving on to the caveats...

Portland’s attack didn’t look great. Missing Eryk Williamson had something to do with that, of course...at least until you remember that, for all his utility (i.e., help us, Eryk, you’re our only hope), the Timbers’ attack hasn’t look much better when he’s there. A good way to phrase the phenomenon came to be as my attention wandered during the second half yesterday (and, lo, it went far and freely): the Timbers have arrived at place where they cause goals, as opposed to creating them. I can’t remember the last time Portland did anything particularly impressive, never mind artful, on the approach to goal; as much as I admired the indirect inventiveness of Eryk’s assist on (I think) the second goal in the win over Austin, they haven’t waltzed one in over the last three wins. It’s been a lot of free kicks and, yesterday, penalty kicks.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Seattle Sounders: Think Happy Thoughts. And That's Mostly Directed at Me

The beeesssttt of both worlds...

The super-big, important thing to keep in mind – and I type those silly words with only a few trifling complaints about tonight in my head – the Seattle Sounders have been as bad as the Portland Timbers lately; worse (for them), they completely pissed away the first 40 minutes of the second half through not knowing what to do and fucking up pretty much everything they attempted. It was the opposite of impressive.

And yet, I am thankful because the Timbers needed tonight’s 2-1 win like a fish needs water and a mammal needs fresh air to fill its lungs. It’s mostly happy stuff from here on out, and I may be speaking for myself here, but I would be very, very cautious about reading a turn-around to a fitful 2022 season into this game. That’s to say, one can can’t talk about how iffy a team has been going into a game only to talk around it when said iffy team spends...let’s see, call it the 20th minute that Seattle started doing nothing, and I’d say that carried to the 80th minute, maybe the 75th at the earliest, so, yeah, by my count, the Sounders checked out for somewhere between 55 and 60 minutes of the game. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t count on any other teams to do that.

But full credit to the Timbers. They had their own period of figuring out which way is up (pssst...it’s up), they even went down a goal on a set-piece that said “HELLO” like a whiff of cat-piss (speaking from experience), but Portland did something tonight that they haven’t done since...I’m going by memory here, but I’d say either the home win over the San Jose Earthquakes or battling road draw at Minnesota United FC – i.e., make the game play out on their terms. Most of that, if not all of it, turned on the defining fundamental in all sports: the art of execution. And, as I often do, I must confess to heresy as an auto-da-fe.

All the way up to the exact second Eryk Williamson ran into Yeimar Gomez Andrade’s legs (and blow it out yer ass, Kasey Keller), I couldn’t see a path to the Timbers first goal. A very large part of that actually went back to Williamson, a player who, at least tonight showed a lack of mobility that I’ve not seen since OG MLS-legend, Carlos Valderrama. God’s honest, I watched Eryk all night and the man barely moved. With the game winding down and everything (which, here, means another fucking draw) on the table, I saw Williamson occupy a space in the channel two-three yards above the top of the 18...and that’s it. He literally stood there and directed traffic. The ball came in and out of that space a couple times, Eryk stepped vaguely toward, but, again, that’s it.

Portland Timbers (Lucky) 1-1 Orlando City SC: Thoughts on a Visit from a Gift Horse

Once again, a portrait of the author. (Call me.)

I’ve decided not to feel any particular thing about the 1-1 draw that could have easily been a loss for the Portland Timbers today. The darker side of me - and that’s the fellow I’ll be chatting with for most of my comments tonight - thought Portland was running out of ideas, options and time right around the time Orlando City SC’s Andres Perea tripped Cristhian Paredes at the top of their 18. That mistake handed the Timbers a shot at redemption, as well as a plausible hold on a narrative that says they have a fair shot at getting better as time, familiarity and the return of fresh, healthy faces has time to show up in the starting XI.

And, for what it’s worth, that feels like an important narrative to maintain somewhere between the foreseeable future and the if/when it falls apart. To be clear, I’m pulling for the “if” scenario - i.e., the one in which things don’t necessarily fall apart - even if I believe 2022 has already posed some tricky questions for the Timbers.

Speaking of questions (and I’ll have more below), the big one I had after today’s game: how much did what happened today followed from Portland doing it to themselves versus Orlando doing it to them? Best-case scenario, the Timbers befouled a good game plan with poor execution - i.e., all you need to fix the problem is better execution. I saw Gio Savarese frame this as a “lack of urgency” in the attack, and I more or less accept that, if with a couple re-writes - e.g., maybe favoring early crosses that give attacking players space to run into, instead of tapping and dancing for the perfect cross against an organized defense…and I type that acknowledging that Portland found one of its better chances when Josecarlos “The Maddening” Van Rankin clipped a cross to the back post that Paredes could have buried and put the Timbers up a vital goal. That’s just one example; another could reduce all the way to something blunt and simple as pulling trigger on a half-chance instead of playing for the sitter. All that’s to say, the Timbers have a nagging habit of overelaborating in the final third, and it very much hurt them today…until Perea rescued Paredes’ visibly doomed run across the top of Orlando’s 18…get my mints, Stella, I’m going to French kiss that gift horse for…hold on, brb, and don't mind the tattered clothing…

To turn over to the bright side of things, and as much as the aesthetics favored Orlando, this was a cagey, tactical game. Portland gave them as little as the xG indicates for most of the game, but Orlando made the most of the one vivid breakdown when Alexandre Pato picked out Junior Urso’s run-from-the-depths and the latter calmly poked home the shot (though, on further review, Pato fairly clearly chopped blindly into space that found Urso, so how concscious was it?). And, sure, you could call the (more or less) free header that Benji Michel headed toward a goal in some alternate universe the moment when Orlando could have put the game away, but this was a decent performance for Portland on the defensive side. Diego Chara put in the usual heroic shift and Zac McGraw has given the Timbers good positioning with a side of aerial dominance that should have the people calling the shots thinking, if not second-guessing (and, if the theory holds, more competition should equal a better back-line). After that, Claudio Bravo achieved his usual balance of bad-'n'-ballsy, while Van Rankin played one of his better games of 2022, if only to about 10 minutes before his incredibly pointless self-sending off…again, I’m Team Bonilla/Bravo, risks be damned. Still, the defense more or less did its job, if against a team that plays like Victorian authors write, so, yeah, I’m more concerned about what the offense isn’t doing right than what the defense is doing wrong.

Portland Timbers 1-0 Austin FC: Forest Versus Trees; Even If I Can't Get that Metaphor Straight

We are in a good place, and we love each other.

Started a new tradition tonight: I didn’t write down notes of any kind until the second half. Except on twitter…also, there wasn’t much to say about that first half. It was a classic vague, mutual groping, a feeling out period that went on a little too long without going anywhere. Nothing of real note stood out, at least not beyond Austin FC having a lot of the ball and the Portland Timbers getting the best look. Bottom line, all that played to the Timbers strengths, only at an angle that arguably benefited Austin’s strengths more than Portland’s.

Now, I’m not a fan of the halftime speech. That could because I’ve never heard a real stem-winder, at least not one that didn’t involve me as a half-negative argument for inspiration (again, the frame was, “if he can do it”; true story, at least twice), but whatever Giovanni Savarese said before he sent his charges back onto the field, whatever adjustments he made, I’d put the number that worked at somewhere between 60-80%. The other part of that equation, and the one I’m least equipped to make: what adjustments to Josh Wolff make to what Austin did?

For all the noise that came between the whistle that started the second half and the one that ended it, the loudest came in the 62nd minute when Bill Tuiloma got a big step in front of whoever the hell wears Austin’s No. 4 jersey (Ruben Gabrielsen, huh), and powered home a point-blank header off a pretty-as-you-like Yimmi Chara set-piece to put the Timbers up 1-0. Some sweaty moments aside, if fewer than one might think, that was all the Timbers needed to pick up their first win of 2022.

Tuiloma had a wonderful game. Give or take 10 minutes after he scored, he cleared an absolute, no questions asked Austin goal off the line, and during a scrum that had Timbers defenders flying around their own area like clay pigeons. And that’s one of my take-aways from today: the Timbers bent their defense to the breaking point, but made sure that it didn’t. Tuiloma and Zac McGraw deserve a tip for all the clean-up they did today, but they got a decent lift from Josecarlos Van Rankin’s best game of the season, plus a…well, let’s just say we’ve got something to think about after Justin Rasmussen’s wholly impressive first-team debut. As much as I hate making judgments off a tiny sample size, I wasn’t nearly as impressed by Rasmussen’s defending - which wasn’t bad at all - as by his composure on the ball. Good passes forward, smart slip passes under pressure…suffice to say questions abound and the answers don’t seem so obvious all the sudden…

…no. No. Don’t give in. Cool your jets. It’s one game. It’s one game. Moving on…

Los Angeles FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Poised on a Thread

Zac McGraw made me feel as safe as that tree tonight. Srsly.

But for a tap-in that only looked inevitable after it went in, the Portland Timbers would have left…whatever Los Angeles FC calls their home stadium 1-0 winners. Seeing as the exception has already been noted, yeah, LAFC scored a late equalizer - off a tap-in - and wound up with a 1-1 tie that feels…I’m going with complicated.

There was a lot to like in this game from Portland’s point of view. For one, they held a (fairly) front-footed, compact shape together for 90+ minutes today - and how often do Timbers fans get to say, “our defense won it for us today!” Portland’s one-man strategic reserve, Bill Tuiloma, played a role, as did Aljaz Ivacic - he looked confident today and made at least two beauty saves - but if Zac McGraw didn’t make at least one starter feel antsy tonight, they didn’t watch the game I did. Athletic, smooth, but smart more than anything else: Gio appeared to have tasked McGraw with putting out fires before they could ignite and the man got his Smokey Bear on straight.

Claudio Bravo looked super-sharp, at least until he took a dumb-shit tug on LAFC's Cristian Arango and got sent off…Josecarlos Van Rankin, meanwhile...I don’t know what that guy can do to make me comfortable but, whatever it is, he has yet to start doing it. I tell you, the guy looks as nervous as I feel every time an attacking player squares him up.

The returns diminish as I tick through the names from there. There’s no taking away the divine improv-glory of Yimmi Chara’s blind-looper of a goal, but the game-state ran him down to where he couldn’t find a pass. That left Dairon Asprilla as the only viable outlet for about 65+ minutes, but he got lonelier and lonelier for as long as (most of) the starting unit stayed out there; he got some more chances to run after Sebastian Blanco came on for Jaroslaw Niezgoda (who had moments, but…), but even that only happened after LAFC stepped to the edge of all-in to find a goal. Back on the happy side of things, I thought Cristhian Paredes put in a solid shift (while still believing he got subbed just in time), and Diego Chara just keeps on keeping on and in a way that makes me questions all kinds of things. Elsewhere, I’m still wondering whether Santiago Moreno was on the field tonight, or whether he just sat down on the field now and again with a look on his face that said, “can you believe this shit?” out of contractual obligation.

If that feels like putting the cart before the horse, I apologize, but I’m mostly processing this game as an opportunity both unearned and blown. Let me explain…