Austin FC need a victory to keep their slim MLS Cup playoff hopes alive on Wednesday night when they visit the ninth-place Portland Timbers.
Even a draw would make it impossible for Austin (9-13-9, 36 points) to catch Portland (12-10-9, 45 points), though it would leave FC Dallas (10-14-7, 37 points) with an outside shot if they can win out.
It looked like Austin’s hopes would be extinguished on Saturday. Instead, a late rally to a 2-2 home draw against Real Salt Lake on Saturday night — on goals after the 80th minute from Jader Obrian and Guilherme Biro — kept them flickering after a rough stretch in which the Verde struggled to convert the chances they created.
“By and large we’ve been pretty pleased with a lot of what we’ve done,” Austin coach Josh Wolff said of the past several matches. “But you have to score goals to win games. That was the hangup.”
The Verde enter Wednesday’s trip on a five-match winless run. They have scored multiple goals only five times in their past 21 league matches.
Portland has no such problem, having scored a Western Conference-best 64 goals entering Wednesday’s match. And with 15 goals and 18 assists, Evander has been involved in more than half of them while mounting a serious MLS MVP bid.
The Timbers can seal their place in the postseason with a win against Austin or a draw combined with an FC Dallas loss or draw with last-place San Jose.
After a 1-1 draw at Vancouver over the weekend, the Timbers play two of their final three at home, where they’ve won 60 percent of their league matches so far.
Though their first goal is simply to assure playoff qualification, that final stretch could provide an opportunity to catch teams such as Houston, Vancouver and Minnesota to try and move up two spots and avoid the wild-card round.
Timbers’ first-year coach Phil Neville is pleased with that proposition.
“When we were … in preseason and we were setting the goals for the season, I think if we would’ve said, ‘Look, three games to go with our destination in our own hands, in our own control, with two games in front of the Timbers Army,’ I think we would’ve snapped our hands up,” he said.
–Field Level Media
