5eatt1e is very good. So yesterday shall be known. #RCTID

The same could be said of Antony and Bassett to significant extents, but my goodness DDC looked like a new player in the second half, in particular. Totally dominated—capped off by deleting Jackson Ragen on the final goal. #RCTID

Has a coach who was four years younger than one of his starters ever won a game in MLS? #RCTID

Ope. #RCTID

Second yellow for Rothrock if there’s any justice. #RCTID

If Jack Cassidy has to use his own two feet to get off the field tonight we riot. #RCTID

The Timbers are showing in a game what the coach said they’d been working on in training. Huh. #RCTID

The glass-half-full take on the Timbers’ hiring of Phil Neville was always that his teams all got better after he left. So far so good. #RCTID

The Timbers have been confusing Seattle with Kelsy and Bassett’s positioning. Kelsy’s totally free — dropping deep, flaring wide, or leading the line depending on where the space is. While Bassett is flattening Seattle’s midfield by playing higher than usual. #RCTID

That was maybe the best 10 minutes of soccer the Timbers have played this year. Stumbled out of the blocks, but they’ve been taking it to Seattle for the last ten minutes. Well-deserved goal. #RCTID

There are a lot of factors at play here, but today has to be the least-anticipated Seattle away game that I can remember. Not even remotely comparable to what this game used to be. Hoping beyond reason that the Timbers can flip the script on that with their performance tonight. #RCTID

Where there’s smoke there’s no Fire.

It definitely doesn’t always happen this way, but Fleming might be the best example of a player taking time to carve out a role on her team. Went from feeling like a signing that didn’t quite hit in Year One to totally indispensable now. Great to see she’s sticking around. #BAONPDX

England schadenfreude is so good that we need an English word for it.

There’s no coming back from this for England. Scotland and Wales are in charge from here on out.

This is a fair point. Say what folks will about BlueSky generally (it’s objectively only a small slice of the social media universe), there’s indisputably a robust Timbers community on here. So skipping this platform feels like a real choice. #RCTID

Going to be an interesting final between the team Messi is on against the team that 30% of the American viewing audience thinks he’s on.

File this away as objectively good news that triggers reflexive anxiety. #RCTID

Sometimes I think about how MLS’s mid-2010s media and social media environment was so well suited for the 2020s attention economy in ways basically no other league was but the league decided it wanted to replicate other leagues’ mid-2000s state media landscapes instead.

Oh, yeah, it is absolutely not coming home. #RCTID

*extreme boomer voice* It kind of stinks that every crowd reaction shot after a goal is just a wall of people with their phones up.

Video Argentina Referee.

The gap between John Strong and Stu Holden and the replacement-level English accent teams that Fox had calling games at this World Cup is pretty remarkable.

I hope USSF’s mismanagement of 2023-2024 gets the airing it deserves in the postmortem. How USSF turned a solid 2019-2022 recovery cycle into a two-year crisis and interregnum because of some mildly unwise comments made by the former manager will be studied for its incompetence.

Whose fault this is power rankings: 1. Trump 2. Sergiño Dest 3. Seattle 4. Matt Freese

Poch deciding that no defending is better than Dest defending and honest to goodness I agree with him.

I hesitate to jump to conclusions like this, but my god they look like a team that believed all the bullshit about them over the last week. They made the round of 16 at a *home World Cup.* the best team they’ve beaten is…Paraguay. Haven’t done shit yet.

The irony is that Belgium finds itself in a similar position as the U.S. 36 hours ago: bearing a legitimate grievance but finding that arguments and maneuvers grounded in rules and reason get you nowhere in a broken, corrupt system.

Among my most millennial soccer takes is that if you can’t pronounce a basic name in Spanish like “Jorge” even remotely correctly, you shouldn’t be calling a game involving Mexico.

Nobody has a clean argument in the Balogun situation. Belgium can’t credibly claim grievance for having to play against a player who shouldn’t have been suspended in the first place. The US can’t claim justice given the obvious corruption at play.

FIFA’s options: 1. Lift the suspension because it was a bad call and an erroneous use of VAR. 2. Leave the suspension in place because, although not a good call, that’s how the rules work. 3. Corruption. You can make a case for either Doors No. 1 or 2. But for FIFA, it’s always Door No. 3.

Absolutely 👨‍🍳💋 that Infantino started his 4th of July message by saying first that today is a huge day for Fox.

Maybe the most frequently repeated incorrect statement about soccer refereeing is that the Laws of the Game don’t require “intent” to give a yellow or red card for a foul. They expressly do. To get a yellow, a player must act with “recklessness”—that’s definitionally a level of intent.

Anyway, one thing I thought was interesting is that it looked like the first thing the VAR showed the referee was a freeze frame of Flo’s boot making contact, which seems fairly misleading in this instance but also methodologically pretty flawed.

What’s the point of having a corrupt, two-bit dictator if he’s not going to call his partner in corruption to get his country’s player un-suspended?

That’s a pretty baffling call, especially given the amount this referee has let go. #USMNT

Biggest fourth quarter comeback since the Knicks in Game 4?

The portions of NWSL’s Code of Conduct aimed at online behavior are well-intentioned and aimed at the important goal of reducing online abuse. But NWSL has entered a space in which it needs to tread carefully; in other contexts many have used such policies to crack down on criticism, not just abuse.

Portugal starting Ronaldo is the Biden running for reelection of this World Cup. Portugal weren’t favorites, but this nonsensical decision makes them severe underdogs. This game against Uzbekistan is that one press conference at the UN that we all watched to see if Biden could still speak words.

Stipulated: Every fan in the Northwest wants a grass surface at their stadiums. It’s better. Yes, we all get it. No, there’s nothing we can do about it. Also: All involved with US Soccer would be better off if they were just a little less precious about playing on turf once in a while.

It’s a uniquely USMNT experience to go to a Noon game and then, at a date night dinner afterward at a nice restaurant, sit next to a dude dressed as George Washington.

Didn’t have Paris Hilton leading us in a U-S-A chant on my bingo card.

That’s one of the craziest saves I’ve ever seen.

Glad to see Gio land another job. Honestly baffled he didn’t get another opportunity in MLS. Even if it wasn’t the most aesthetic soccer, Gio had a lot of success in Portland until things stopped working. Easy to see how he could be successful elsewhere. #RCTID

The England paradox is that their team is generally pretty likable and it’s fun when a team that hasn’t won a World Cup in a long time makes a run. But also the world is generally a brighter place when England falls on its face.

Basically every #USMNT performance since Qatar has been the first half of this GIF. And we may have just arrived at the second half.

Really appreciate John Strong’s subtle protest, calling that the “end of the first quarter.”

Anyway, rough end to the first quarter from Canada. Hopefully they can come back in the second quarter.

Oh, Canada.