It’s Benn a rough… oh, five years now for Timbers fans. Maybe this is the year we do away with all the asterisks and excuses, and get back to being contenders in the West. Opening day against Columbus sure was fun! Diego Chara starts his 400th match (!) and we got goals from Mora, Antony, and the unlikely source of Ariel Lassiter! Signs point to no Mora goal drought, potential confidence for Antony and Lassiter, plus 3 points right out of the gate. Good news all around! How did it go after that?
The Columbus game was great for morale. Being there (somewhat intoxicated) it felt like we might be back. Timbers social media had a clip of Brandon Bye appearing to be genuinely emotionally moved by the supporters in the stadium and the whole experience. It was very heartwarming. However, the next day watching the highlights (sober) and some of the replay, I got the sneaking suspicions that maybe Columbus wasn’t as good this year as they have been lately. Our go ahead goal late in the match was combination of hustle from Lassiter and the fact that a Colorado player went down in the box with what looked like a hamstring injury. Had he been able to get up he would have contested for the ball. Looking back from match week 5, we’re both in 14th place in our respective conferences, so….
Colorado Away.
We followed that up with 2-0 loss to Colorado, a match that I watched but can’t remember a single thing about, other than it was Cole Bassett’s first return to his old stomping grounds.
Cascadia Cup and Vancouver at home!
Next up… a high intensity match with our Cascadia revivals! Another fantastic tifo, lots of energy! Surely we aren’t going to get embarrassed again… and we lost 4-1. There were 2 bright spots however. The Corgi race at halftime (see picture above) was a welcome replacement for the Stupid Degrading McDonalds Child Farce™ or whatever it is they call the thing where they make 2 little kids put on clothes (including a McDonalds t-shirt) at the half and run with an oversized ball to try and score a goal. You’d be surprised how many kids don’t score, it must be the boots. It just makes you feel sorry for the kid that loses because they are inevitably still struggling with the clothes as the first kid is pushing the ball in goal. It sucks and I hope it never returns. (Spoiler alert, it does.) Hopefully both kids win something there than a McDonalds t-shirt.
Am I forgetting something? Oh yeah, a stunning goal from Eric Izoita!
Possibly the greatest day in this 18 year old kid’s life and he can’t properly celebrate because we were down 3-0 at the point he scored. It seems like we might make a comeback… and then we went down 4-1. If you’re drawing a blank at Eric Izoita’s name, it’s because he’s from the academy, and they had to sign him to a proper T2 contract just so they could call him up for this match! Why were we in such a predicament? Injuries galore! We may never see him again, but he’ll always have that goal. I mean, I definitely hope we do see him again, I want everyone to succeed for us, especially a homegrown.
Houston Away.
Next up, a match in Houston, historically a bummer no matter what, but at least we weren’t playing there in the summer. It looked like we were going to eek out a draw but we ended up on the wrong side of an MLS record for the latest regular season game winning goal when journeyman Brandon Bye got beat by DP Mateusz Bogusz on a long ball. I feel bad for Brandon, but I also feel like we should have been prepared for this by our coach. Shades of Larrys Mabialla coming back to haunt us. Even worse because we were up a man when it happened. Oh well, hopefully we’ll learn from this.
Match week 5: Home against LAG
Phill has to be in the hot seat. Consensus amongst the armchair coaches is that he’s a great guy who is a vibes coach and doesn’t have a lot of tactical know-how. A common criticism of the Timbers in his tenure is that the team has no recognizable identity. Nobody knows what version of the Galaxy we are going to get this year, but they looked like they were in the ascendency towards the end of last year’s disastrous season. How would the Timbers do against them? It’s a home match before a stretch with a lot of away games, we needed to get back on track.
And it looked like we would get back on track! We dominated early on and Velde scored first around 13 minutes into the game to become our leading scorer with (checks notes…) 2 goals. Hot on his heals with 1 goal each, are Izota, Mora, Antony, Lassiter, and Gauge Guerra. Did you say Gauge Guerra? Why, yes!
Vlelde has his penalty saved and Gauge is there to clean it up in Houston. The only luck in that play is that Velde doesn’t make the PK. Watch Gauge time his run as Velde steps up to kick that. Guerra is smart.
Where was I… oh yeah, LA Galaxy. Kamal Miller gets sent out with a straight red after review for catching Klaus in the achilles. In the stadium it looked very soft, but in the slow motion replay you can see why it was called. The Youtube clip doesn’t show it, but the clip they showed at half time looks pretty bad. Maybe Miller was feeling nostalgic about his 2025 opening match red card in the 10th minute since he didn’t start in the 2026 opener. Some people claim that slow motion has the tendency to make things look worse than they are, and maybe they are right, because Klaus made a miraculous recovery. How miraculous you ask? Enough to score the equalizer after DaCosta was caught flat footed on a pass in traffic.
It could have been much worse.
Honestly, I think our fanbase expected the Timbers to fold and the Galaxy to overrun us. What happened was a combination of the Timbers defense hunkering down , and possibly the Galaxy just not being very good. Failing to take the lead after being up a man for 70 minutes seems like a Timbers thing to do, but fortunately, it’s a Galaxy thing to do these days.
It was flat in the stadium for long stretches. The weather was beautiful, but the fans didn’t seem to have “belief beyond reason.” We might need some refreshing on the chants. It seems like we’re using some that used to be reserved for when we were winning. My section buddy pointed out, we might not have any chants if that was the case. Did I mention we were last in our conference going in to this match? Things did get livelier at the very end when it looked we had a chance or two to steal a win, but it ended in a draw. I’m sure the odds were highly in favor of LAG to win, so we’ll take the point, and move out of last place in our conference due to… (checks notes) SKC being slightly worse than we are with the same 4 points but a -6 goal differential compared to our -5.
It’s too early…
It’s too early to be 100% pessimistic about this season. We have some new signings that have to acclimate (or see the field for the first time), and hopefully all those injured will return. Chara continues to be… Chara. Thank Glob we still have him. This next stretch is going to be rough, and you can bet Phill probably has an ulcer or two in the works. We’ll see…
International break is upon us. Expect to see some vintage Timbers and other non-match related posts.
