St. Louis City-Portland Timbers Preview (10/28/26)

With 3 games remaining in the season, the Portland Timbers’ playoff hopes remain out of their control. All they can do is attempt to take care of business on their end while hoping that results around the league go in their favor. And as the other teams jostle for table position, the final midweek game of the season is a must-win. The Timbers will close their season series with the Raviolis in St. Louis, who are ready to celebrate their accomplishments from a week ago. 

The Ravioli Report

It has been nearly two months since the Timbers and Raviolis played to a 2-2 draw at Providence Park. St. Louis’ unbeaten streak grew to 14 consecutive games, and the Timbers got 2 game-tying goals from Kristoffer Velde. What has happened in Ravioli-Land since then?

That unbeaten streak kept growing. By the time the Raviolis lost 3-2 to Minnesota on October 17th, a new league record had been set. The 19-game unbeaten streak lasted from May 9th until that fateful and Loony loss. After their 2-2 draw in Portland, the Raviolis beat Minnesota 4-2 at home. And then the biggest game of their season was next up.

St. Louis had to travel to Colorado for the Open Cup Semifinal on September 16th. They left the Box State with a 3-0 victory, mostly attributed to Colorado’s failures instead of St. Louis’ successes. But that win gave them a berth in the Open Cup Final, which would be played on October 21st. In the month between, the Raviolis kept winning. Until they didn’t.

St. Louis (14-9-8, 51 points, 3W/7S) followed up that semifinal victory with a pretty routine 3-1 win against Toronto. They had to play the Red Bulls in New Jersey during the international break, and took advantage of multiple key absences for the hosts (most notably Adri Mehmeti and Julian Hall) to win 3-0. They saved their magnum opus for Sunday Night Soccer when the international break ended. The Galaxy were in town, and St. Louis responded with a whipping. Carlo Holse scored the first 3 goals by the 21st minute, before Rafael Navarro and Lukas MacNaughton added goals before the halftime whistle as the Raviolis took a 5-1 lead into the break. The game ended 6-2, with Joao Klauss grabbing a consolation goal in his return to Energizer Park. A top-of-the-table 6-pointer with Vancouver followed, but the Raviolis had to settle for a scoreless draw at home. The Whitecaps took 17 shots during that game, but none of them could find the target.

With their 19-game unbeaten streak in tow, St. Louis headed to Minnesota for their final game before the Open Cup Final. A bit of Ravioli rotation was employed, with key starters Daniel Edelman, Alex Matan, and Holse not seeing the field. That didn’t stop St. Louis from taking a 2-0 lead by the 10th minute. That scoreline held into halftime, but AZ Jackson (the Money Launderer, who previously laundered money in St. Louis) found the back of the net in the 49th minute. Kelvin Yeboah equalized in the 69th, and Marcus Caldeira scored the game-winner in the 86th. 20 games unbeaten was in their sights. And Minnesota cracked it with a ferocious second-half comeback.

Disappointment was surely felt following the breaking of their precious streak that everyone had gotten tired of hearing about. But if the wider MLS world (like myself) was waiting for St. Louis to just shut up already, they would be sorely disappointed.

Open Cup Final matchday in Columbus began with a sunrise (as most days do). A few thousand St. Louis fans made the trip, and they were treated to a 0-0 scoreline after 120 minutes. They also entered the shootout with a different goalkeeper between the sticks. Roman Burki was stretchered off the field following a collision with Columbus’ Mo Farsi. Backup Ben Lundt (a 6’6” giant of a man) was called into action. Most St. Louis fans would say that their season shifted in the Open Cup quarterfinal, a game where Lundt came in off the bench to replace Burki. He made 2 saves in the quarterfinal shootout and single-handedly made this Final appearance possible. Now it was his turn to play hero again. 1 save was all it took as the Raviolis made all their kicks and celebrated a trophy win on Columbus’ home field (this has absolutely been done before).

With the Open Cup in their back pocket, St. Louis traveled to RSL three days later and got mangled. Yoann Damet rotated heavily, and this game resembled Portland’s lopsided loss in Salt Lake back in May. RSL was dominating proceedings even before Tomas Ostrak decided to get a second yellow card. Suddenly, the Ravioli’s momentum has shifted.

19 straight without a loss has now turned into a 3-game winless run. They had to rely on a penalty shootout to get their hands on the Open Cup. But all of those games took place away from home. A return to Energizer Park for a trophy celebration might be exactly what the doctor ordered.

STL Injury Report & Projected Starting XI

Matan missed the Open Cup Final. Burki got hurt in the Open Cup Final. Ostrak was sent off in the first game after the Open Cup Final. Pompeu has been hurt since March, and therefore wasn’t able to play in any Open Cup games.

This is the same lineup that started the Open Cup Final, except for Becher and Lundt. Wallem was suspended for the first Portland-STL game back in August. Baumgartl is an Iron Man (more than 3,200 minutes played already this year) and has my vote for Defender of the Year. The Edelman-Durkin partnership has been outstanding. Navarro has 8g/3a in 9 matches since joining St. Louis this summer. Although their recent form has slightly dipped, the Raviolis have a very high floor and ceiling. In addition, they’re 9-4-2 at home with a goal differential of +15.

The Timbers Report

Despite a 4-day gap between games, it’s been a very busy week for the Portland Timbers (10-7-14, 37 points, 11W/21S). They will enter tomorrow’s game 4 points out of a playoff spot. But the leadup to this crucial match, one that might determine the fate of their season, has been dominated by the future.

The Final Sprint

The picture was displayed on a TV monitor within the media room at the training facility.

Diego Chara, in a white sweatshirt, smiled over the waiting reporters. It felt like the image of his smile would burn into the screen. Meanwhile, some trepidation filled the room. This press conference was announced on Friday. Was the long-feared retirement finally arriving, and much sooner than everyone thought?

Then the club captain walked through the door. He was smiling, per usual. Then he sat at the podium, and the smile faded. It was time for his announcement. “Thank you so much for being here, you know, to give me this space to announce I’m going to continue with the team for the sprint season, but after the sprint season it’s going to be my last season with the team. Once again, thank you for being here, you know, for your support. Thank you for the Timber fans too, and I’m really happy for next year.”

Diego Chara’s tenure in Portland has an end date. By the time he walks off the field in a Timbers jersey for the last time, he will be 41 years old.

What went into this decision? “I think the performance I had during this season gave me the confidence and the support of my teammates…To be back with the team for next year and decide to retire at the end of the cycle, you know. Being here for this long with the team, being one of the original Timbers, I think this is the best way to finish this career with the Timbers.”

A new era in MLS will dawn when the calendar switches next summer. That era will be known as post-Chara. He will leave Portland with his name emblazoned on the MLS record books. But which record is the most important to him? “I think the regular-season games, you know, is special, but not just for me, for the fans too. I think the yellow cards, you know, it’s a unique record and I think the fans always get happy with that.”

There’s going to be plenty of time to celebrate Diego Chara over the next 7 months. He’ll report to Timbers preseason for the 16th time in January. Until that final game in Green-and-Gold, the Timbers have one objective: win everything that they can.

A Bittersweet Loss

The other futuristic aspect of this week concerns T2, whose season ended with a 1-0 loss to Ventura County FC in the Western Conference Semifinals on Sunday night.

The LA Galaxy’s second team largely controlled proceedings, with T2’s excellent mid-block defense holding them at bay aside from a couple of big chances. The first of these opportunities occurred in the 24th minute, when 16-year-old Vicente Garcia flubbed a sitter in front of an empty net. But this defensive struggle largely remained somewhat even until the 84th minute. Substitute Arnau Vilamitjana powered a close-range header from a Jose Magana cross past Sam Joseph to give Ventura the lead. Sawyer Jura nearly provided the equalizing assist in the second minute of second-half stoppage time, but Daniel Cervantes’ finish was directed right at the goalkeeper. The final whistle blew, and Ventura County celebrated on the Providence Park turf.

Beyond stating the obvious that T2 would have secured home-field advantage throughout the rest of the playoffs due to other results going their way, this felt like an end of the season that came much too soon for Jack Cassidy’s squad. “I think ultimately, when you’re missing 3 key starters from any team at any level, you’re weaker. And it’s no slight on anyone who played, it’s just normal,” Cassidy said post-game. “And it just wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be.”

The full-time whistle may have featured significant celebration from the visitors, but the hosts were despondent. Multiple players collapsed to the ground. But Cassidy was eager to focus on the big picture. “I’ve just said to the players inside that I’m really proud of them. They’ve given us everything. They’ve worked extremely hard. And I’m immensely proud of what we’ve done as a group…We were the second best team in the Western Conference. And sometimes you forget about that in these types of moments. But yeah, ultimately I think the group has given the staff and each other everything, so I’m delighted.”

Cassidy is correct. The complete reversal of T2’s fortunes wouldn’t have been possible without him and the collective buy-in he received from a group of academy players and draft picks. And he believes in the players he has led over the past year. “I think there’s nothing that I’m going to say that’s going to make any of them feel any better. There’s a lot of upset faces, a lot of tears, and I just sort of said that this is the career we’ve chosen. There’s more of these moments, unfortunately in football…so it’s just about how they can use that to learn for their own career. I think there’s some lads in there with a bright future ahead of them. There’s a lot of good young men in that dressing room, and I know they’re going to go on to do good things.”

I think that last quote is the perfect message to end on. T2’s season may not have ended in a title, but the progress and growth stands as a vast contrast to every single T2 squad of yesteryear. Cassidy and Jack Dodd are building something special on the turf training pitch in Beaverton. And more players on this squad are becoming worthy of a genuine run in the first team. Eric Izoita is the first. He certainly won’t be the last.

Tree Questions with Alexander Aravena

Aravena’s last-gasp game-winner broke the Timbers’ 7-game winless streak and kept their playoff dreams alive. It’s been a while since he’s had a chance to speak. I caught up with him after training on Monday.

Q: What was going through your mind after scoring the game-winning goal this past weekend?

Aravena: “There’s a lot of happiness. It was a pretty difficult game for the most part but just really happy that we got to win at the end.”

Q: You’ve had to recover from that mid-season hip injury. How was the recovery process?

Aravena: “It was a longer period, close to 2 months. The recovery was pretty strenuous, in terms of wanting to get out on the field, trying to be back. On and off the field, I’ve been trying to help the team as much as possible. I’m happy to be back.”

Q: It’s your first year in Portland. What have been your impressions of the city?

Aravena: “It’s a really beautiful city, you know, very complex.”

PTFC Injury Report & Projected Starting XI

Muse is the only new addition after picking up a concussion in training.

Given the immense stakes of this game, the Timbers have to go with their best available lineup. That would include a return for Surman, who was an unused substitute on Saturday for the first time since October 6, 2024. Kind of a wild stat, if you think about it. I think the Miller-Surman partnership was excellent in the summer, and I think Marti Cifuentes has to go back to it in this crucial playoff decider. Izoita cannot be dropped from the lineup for any of the 3 remaining games. Neither can Da Costa, Velde, Lassiter, or Janssen. Every game is a cup final from now on. And there’s no possibility of penalty kicks either.

Tactical Preview

Transitions

The Portland Timbers can win tomorrow’s game. But in order to do so, they have to manage transitions.

Most people think of “transitions” as the counterattack, which is a transition between possession and trying to regain possession. However, because soccer is a game that contains multiple phases of play, a transition can relate to any switch between those phases. Buildup to possession, possession to attack, possession to losing the ball, counterpress to attack, all of these instances represent some sort of transition. And there’s one particular transition that the Timbers need to accomplish to perfection tomorrow: the transition between losing the ball and organizing the defense.

Phil Neville was right about one thing. Well, there were several other things that he was correct about, but he correctly assessed that the Timbers are at their most vulnerable when they have the ball. When the Timbers lose the ball, it is so easy for other teams to either “control and regroup” or simply attack downhill. Which is why, for this game and the two other games remaining in this season, they have to recognize when they need to counterpress and when they need to retreat.

I asked Cifuentes about this on Monday, and here’s what he said in response: “I’ve been speaking before about how the quality of your counterpress is dependent on your quality in the possession phase. And that, as well, is about your positioning. Against a team like St. Louis, they go a lot of man-to-man, so the position of the football is almost gone because you cannot stay in your position then. They actually will try to match us however we position ourselves. They always try to mirror that and go in a very aggressive way. So you need a lot of mobility. You need a different way of approaching that kind of pressure.”

“But the main moment is that if you lose the ball in situations where you cannot counterpress, you need to reorganize quick, and you need to do it through compactness, through shuffling very quick, and making sure that the distance between the lines is short enough to make sure that you are capable to press again because, at the end, that’s the target. I don’t see the out-of-possession phase as a phase where we just want to wait and see that the opposition makes a mistake. We want to be proactive, and we want to provoke that mistake.”

I love that last line, but instances of that are still much lower than the coach would probably like. Making sure that the distance between the lines are short is the main thing that the Timbers are struggling with. The main responsibility for those widened lines falls to the 8s. If they push up too high, the 6 is isolated and has to cover way too much ground. But if they drop too soon, the teeth of the press can vanish. Finding the balance between jumping and dropping is still a serious issue to work on. And St. Louis is disciplined and well-drilled enough to attack any sort of space the Timbers are leaving in their structure.

The First Goal

The Timbers are going on the road again. Time to update the “first goal” stat.

Record when scoring first: 8-3-1 (2.25 PPG)

Record when conceding first: 5-3-13 (0.85 PPG)

Hooray! 0-0 Draw!: one occurrence in 2026

Now we have to get the road split again.

Record when scoring first: 2-2-1 (1.6 PPG)

Record when conceding first: 0-1-8 (0.11 PPG)

Hooray! 0-0 Draw: none on the road in 2026

When these two teams met in August, the Timbers were 1-0 down within 35 seconds. They were able to battle back due to a free-kick brace from Velde, but that was taking the home-field advantage into account. Now the Timbers are traveling, and they cannot concede first if they want to keep their season alive.

Matchday Info

Broadcast Bulletin

English: unavailable

Spanish: unavailable

Home Radio Broadcast from 105.1 The Fan: not available on Apple TV

Broadcast Platform: Apple TV

Kickoff Time: 5:30 PM PST

Referee Report

Rubiel Vazquez’s 2026 stats: 21 games, 22.24 fouls/game, 0.38 penalties/game, 3.57 yellows/game, 0.19 reds/game

Record in Timbers games: 3-1-7, -8 goal differential, -1 foul differential, +1 yellow card differential, +1 red card differential, +3 penalty differential

Last Timbers game officiated: August 19, 2026 vs SD 3-1 W

There’s a pretty common trend with Timbers games that Vazquez officiates. Portland is usually very good or very bad. The most notable Vazquez game in Timbers history is the 5-0 Wild Card loss to Vancouver. Officiating couldn’t be blamed for that disaster, and it couldn’t be blamed for the 1-0 loss in Seattle last year. Vazquez’s two Timbers games in 2026 have told very different stories. The 3-2 loss to Houston was marked by a penalty kick awarded to Portland and Nick Markanich’s stomp on James Pantemis, which rightfully was decided to be a red-card offense. The 3-1 win against San Diego didn’t feature any major officiating errors either. Yet it’s understandable to shudder when Vazquez is assigned a Timbers game. Something bad usually happens, and those unfortunate occurrences aren’t the fault of the referee.

Series History

Historical record: 2-3-3, -2 goal differential

Road record: 1-1-2, -2 goal differential

Current streak: 2 winless

Current road streak: 3 winless

Table Time

The Galaxy and LAFC get the midweek off as the rest of the conference catches up to them. With a win tomorrow, the Timbers could find themselves 1 point behind the Galaxy with 3 games left. However, RSL has to be accounted for as well. They’re traveling to Austin, who aren’t mathematically eliminated yet. Since wins are the first tiebreaker, the Timbers can’t be jumped by Austin if the Broccolis throw Portland a bone. But San Diego and Minnesota are also breathing down the Timbers’ necks. In fact, with 3 games remaining, let’s see how tough the schedule is for each of the potential Wild Card battlers.

LAFC has 47 points, so I’m declaring them safe from the play-in. Seattle and Colorado are in for a rough ride over the next week-and-a-half. The Galaxy, RSL, and Portland all face Austin. Minnesota gets the SKC free space, but then has to tangle with LAFC and San Jose. San Diego will likely be knocked out before Decision Day. Portland’s toughest remaining game (on paper) is tomorrow’s trip to St. Louis. 

Final Whistle

And what a banner day it will be for the hosts, as they prepare to celebrate their first trophy. Having said that, it’s time to rain on their parade.

The past three editions of the Open Cup should come with an asterisk next to them. MLS deliberately chose to send their worst-performing teams from the prior season to tussle with the various USL sides and semi-pro teams that the Open Cup draw threw at them. Sure, winning a trophy is a serious accomplishment. But no one qualified for it, and therefore not every team had a fair opportunity to win it. I’d rather have an Open Cup than an empty Leagues Cup, yet MLS keeps putting the Timbers in their nonsensical slop tournament instead of the only one that has history.

But that shouldn’t diminish St. Louis’ accomplishment; a legitimate piece of silverware to signal their transformation from “collection of 2. Bundesliga players told to press until their legs give out” to “the closest thing MLS currently has to a Wilfried Nancy team.” Corey Wray and Damet have created something special in the city that already boasted the most Open Cup titles before their MLS team got in on the act. But, unfortunately, they screwed up. It’s not their fault at all. They can only blame the schedule.

Back in 2022, the Seattle Sounders won a trophy. Instead of waiting to celebrate this accomplishment at the first possible opportunity, they waited two months to raise a banner when the Timbers came to town. ECS, ever the creative bunch of artists, decided to make a tifo to match.

The Timbers ran the Sounders out of their own building that day, getting a fully deserved 3-0 win. That scoreline wouldn’t be topped until this year, when the Timbers won 5-1. The Sounders did not pay attention to the bloviating proclamation of their own fans, so the “Greatest Team You’ve Ever Seen” decided to miss the playoffs entirely. There’s a moral to this story: do not celebrate your accomplishments when the Timbers come to town.

But Wray and Damet were able to get St. Louis’ car fully built and working within months. A busy winter transfer window provided the platform, while a couple moving pieces in the summer didn’t dampen their progress in the slightest. That Open Cup Final was played without Navarro; the Ravioli’s record signing. He was already cup-tied with the Rapids. But St. Louis was fully committed to their change in identity, and their busy winter proved it. All it took was one transfer window with some buffing and smoothing in between.

It’s hard not to look at the Timbers and think that a turnaround of that magnitude could be possible. Last weekend, they had their most comprehensive performance under Cifuentes. The focus on the offseason and the coming sprint season is very important. But there are three games left, and the Wild Card is still within reach.

In 2023, the Timbers handed the Raviolis their first-ever loss at Energizer Park. Although they’re set to face one of MLS’ top teams fresh off of a trophy, it’s destined to come down to Decision Day again. The Timbers have to follow that destiny and get their 3rd road win of the season. It’s going to be a party in St. Louis. Let’s get to crashing. The climb continues.