Trees, Everywhere Trees: The Gang Stays Alive (and Almost Kills Me)

Somewhere around 8:40 p.m. last Saturday – right about when Felipe Mora was missing the Portland Timbers' second diving header attempt – I fired off this post on Bluesky:

It's something that I'm sure all of us Timbers fans have tweeted, posted, texted, and/or said out loud at some point, "This game is going to kill me." The obvious hyperbole in the statement is meant to underscore out how stressful and maddening a particular 90 minutes of soccer has been, and is usually done in the face of the preferred team having an exceptionally tough and frustrating time.

So I was probably feeling that way because Portland was trailing by a goal with their season on the line, at home, and they were outplaying San Diego. They were genuinely the better side, and they were still losing. They had chance after chance, and none of them were falling.

And so at 8:42 I posted.

And that at 8:51 Gage Guerra did a madness and rescued the Timbers. And also killed me (again).

Here's how The Gang kept their season alive for at least one more week.

"Late game heroics in an elimination match, eh? Okay. Now you're talking my language. I know this game," – Gage Guerra (maybe)

If I had a nickel for the number of times Gage Guerra scored a late goal to rescue Portland in a must-win game, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

For those unaware, Guerra was also the hero way back in May in the U.S. Open Cup Round of 32. The Timbers were playing Seattle's MLS Next PRO affiliate the Tacoma Defiance at the Starfire "Hey my youth soccer team used to play here" Sports Complex. Tacoma led 2-1 late on, Guerra subbed on in the 79th minute, and then in the 80th he scored an equalizer – in almost the exact same fashion as his one last weekend.

The fact that Guerra was on the field at all is kind of ridiculous when you stop and think about all the factors that had to happen. First, Mati Rojas had to be injured: Guerra maybe wasn't going to make the teamsheet if Rojas was available. Next, CJ Dos Santos had to have suffered his unfortunate injury: that collision with Kevin Kelsy resulted in a concussion substitute from San Diego, and Portland therefore gained an extra sub – which they used for Gage Guerra.

Then, Phil Neville had to be willing to substitute a substitute. Ian Smith, who had just entered the game 18 minutes earlier, was sacrificed for Guerra to take the field. The last one I'll mention is that Guerra had to fit Portland's late-game strategy, which is to say he brought the "balls to the wall, chuck it up there, and run it into the goal with your teeth if you have to," energy that the game was frothing with.

The energy was born out of Portland's overall strategy for the game, which included among other things a very aggressive and high press of San Diego's attacking players. You could see it even before the match even started: Phil Neville's "all in" 4-3-3 formation saw all of the front line of Velde, Kelsy, and Antony along with both Da Costa and Ayala pushing high and essentially man-marking the likes of Anders Dreyer and Corey Baird anytime possession changed hands.

It was high risk – as evidenced by Amahl Pellegrino's equalizer – but for huge stretches of the game it worked. San Diego had much less time on the ball than they did in either of the prior meetings between these two teams, and it allowed Portland's forwards to do what they do best: run in on goal at pace with the ball at their feet. It's what led to Velde's first Providence Park goal, and also what led to him having the time and space to create the throw-in opportunity that resulted in the equalizer.

More importantly, it created something that we have been so desperate to see from the Timbers this year: some goshdang grit. Portland had some bite to them in this match (they out-fouled San Diego 21-14 in the game), and they fully embraced their roles as hard-nosed antagonists on the evening (Velde especially). That's the kind of determination that successful Timbers team of yore have shown, and also the type of determination that wins playoff games.

Which brings us back to Guerra. What better encompasses complete unearned belief than riding the bench for almost 90 minutes, coming on in the dying embers for your just your second MLS appearance since July, in a playoff game for your team's survival, and out-jumping literally the entire San Diego backline to score the salvation goal? That's some true green and gold determination. It was an amazing reward for the rookie, and produced an amazing Providence Park moment in the final Timbers Providence Park match of the season.

It is not lost on me that it is the ending to a year of matches at the park that started with an abject failure. The mood leaving the stadium on Saturday could not have been further from the mood leaving the stadium on that rainy day back in February. Joy and hope juxtaposed with misery and deflation.

It of course doesn't mean the Timbers have won anything. They staved off elimination for one more week, but the looming shade of their season ending could, and likely will, overtake them on Sunday. But for one night, Portland survived. They almost killed all of us in the process, but they delivered. Regardless of how Sunday goes, that's the energy that I am choosing to bring into the bleak midwinter and the promise of next season.

So anyway, I started posting

What do we do when the Timbers win in dramatic fashion in a penalty shootout at home? Post all of the live reactions of course:

• It really warms the cold recesses of my heart to see the Park in such jubilation like this. After all of the twists and turns of the match, and hell of the entire season, the fans deserved to celebrate this one.

• Special shoutout to STF's resident photog extraordinaire Kelsey Baker, who was in the perfect spot to capture the climactic moment.

• Friend of the site Billy Merck, also known as Green Is The Color, pointed out that Gage Guerra's goal appropriately mirrored the iconic header scored by Tony Betts against the Seattle Sounders in the playoffs back in 1975. Wild how Providence Park can conjure up some ghosts like that.

• This photo. My god this photo. Nothing sums up Kristoffer Velde as the "F**k you" hero the Timbers have needed better than this iconic shot. Shoutout to Omar for the appropriate edits and additions.

• Okay, okay, back to an actual soccer post. These pass buildups showcase just how determined the Timbers were on offense last week. The game state dictated a lot of it, sure, but how many times this season have we seen Portland's offense head out to lunch when they were needed the most? They definitely didn't last weekend.

Can I offer you a nice moment in this trying time?

How appropriate to close this post with an ode to Providence Park, which will be entering its 100-year anniversary in 2026. The stadium has been home to some truly iconic moments, both for the Timbers and the Thorns, and it delivered another banger last weekend.

The fact that that moment came in the form of a penalty shootout, almost ten years to the day after the iconic Double-Post shootout of 2025, is nothing less than poetic. After enduring years and years of seeing their men's soccer team, and to a somewhat lesser extent their women's team, suffering painful failure after painful failure, having a moment where we were reminded that the magic is indeed still real was so badly needed.

May we all take that revival of good feelings and magical vibes into the rest of the postseason (onwards, Thornies!), into next year, and into the eras to come. As previous Timbers general manager Don Paul said back in '75, "Hopefully, we are here forever."