With Timbers' Leagues Cup disappointment* behind, the bus heads to Dallas
*If a 6-1 goal differential can be considered a disappointment.
The worry with the Leagues Cup was what it might cost Portland in rest and momentum.
Fresh off a 1-0 road win over LAFC at the end of July — a crucial three points that bumped the Timbers into fifth in the Western Conference — the club headed into a two-week pause for the tournament already running on fumes after a summer of key injuries.
For MLS teams, Leagues Cup can be a blessing or a grind. Advance out of group play, and the knockout rounds come with six-figure prize money. Fall short, and it’s three matches of wearing down your roster before the MLS stretch run.
In that sense, consider the Portland Timbers an outlier.
No, Portland (10-7-7, 37 points in MLS) is not advancing to the quarterfinals. A 1-1 draw that turned into a 5-3 shootout loss to Club America Wednesday night ultimately did the Timbers in — well, that, and maybe the consistent shining of a laser pointer in keeper Maxime Crepeau’s eyes during the PKs.
But despite the disappointment of not advancing to the knockout rounds, Portland manager Phil Neville couldn’t really find much fault with the three matches in eight days. The Timbers didn’t lose in regulation during group play, they scored six goals while conceding one, and the second half of Wednesday night’s game saw Antony take the pitch for the first time since June and immediately start making up for lost time.
“I thought he was outstanding,” Neville said of Antony, who leads Portland with six MLS goals and featured heavily in the second-half counterattack in Austin. “I think he was the most dangerous player on the pitch when he came on.”
Neville then went a step further when talking about the quality of his entire club.
“I thought the players were incredible,” Neville said. “Probably one of the best performances in terms of grit and determination since I came to Portland Timbers.”
Granted, not everything about the last week has been rosy.
After the match, Neville led his press conference by calling out the multiple instances in the game in which Club America’s supporters broke out in homophobic chants.
“There is absolutely no room for discrimination on a football field,” Neville said. “I thought the referee handled the incident very well. But I don’t think the game should have continued after that incident. I thought we should have left the field.”
There was also the Santiago Moreno issue.
Portland’s 25-year-old forward didn’t show up for Wednesday’s match and reportedly traveled home to Colombia in protest of the Timbers not securing a transfer to Brazilian club Fluminense. Moreno has four goals and seven assists in 23 appearances this season and signed a contract extension in 2024 through 2026.
In a statement, the Timbers called his absence “unexcused.”
“Portland Timbers midfielder Santiago Moreno failed to report to tonight’s match vs. Club América. There is no deal in place for the transfer of Moreno, and the absence is considered unexcused. The club has been in contact with Major League Soccer regarding his absence.”
The timing? Certainly not great as Portland embarks on the first of its final 10 matches of the season on Saturday in Dallas.
The impact? That’s a tougher question.
Moreno has been a dynamic but inconsistent presence for the club, and the reported signing of DP Norwegian winger Kristoffer Velde from Olympiakos and midfielder Felipe Carballo – along with the return of Antony – has the Timbers suddenly not lacking for starting-quality bodies.
On Friday, after what he considered to be a positive Leagues Cup, Neville said the club is ready to make a charge toward a top-four spot in the conference with the players he has.
“Santi didn’t want to be here for the biggest game of the season on Wednesday night,” he said. “I always think as a manager, the culture of the team and the spirit of the team is more important than any individual…Sometimes in life you make poor decisions and we have a player who's made a poor decision — and it’s not the first time that player has made that decision for this football club.
“So as a manager, you've got to think of the group, the culture, what we're trying to build, the direction in which we're heading. And as you saw on Wednesday night, we had a group that was 100 percent headed in the right direction. And I only want players on the bus that are headed in the same direction as where we want them to go.”
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
Why was Phil ready to pull the team for slurs, but not the laser pointer?