Sliding Portland, rising Salt Lake converge in wild-card round

For the second consecutive season, the Portland Timbers host the Western Conference wild-card game when Real Salt Lake visits on Wednesday night.

But the hope that greeted manager Phil Neville's first playoff appearance in 2024 has been replaced with frustration that the Timbers couldn't finish higher than eighth in the West in his second.

Portland lingered higher than that in the table for much of the season, before ending on a run of only one win in 10 league games.

The team's two center forwards, Kevin Kelsy and Felipe Mora, combined for only 12 goals and just two since the beginning of August. And the Timbers head into the wild-card game having been roughed up 4-0 by Western Conference top seed San Diego on Saturday in both teams' regular-season finale.

But a shot at revenge against San Diego looms in Round 1 if Portland can reverse its fortunes against ninth-seeded RSL. Neville is trying to use recent struggles to fuel his side.

"I think what we've majorly, majorly learned from, say, the last month, not just Saturday, is that I think we owe our supporters a performance," Neville said.

Salt Lake earned seven points from its last four matches to sneak into the ninth spot, the final one coming on a hard-earned 2-2 draw Saturday at St. Louis City.

Victor Olatunji scored two first-half goals and the Claret and Cobalt weathered a second-half onslaught to get the result they needed to extend their streak of playoff appearances to five seasons.

But, like Portland, RSL has struggled offensively -- Diego Luna's nine goals lead the team by a wide distance -- and believe their satisfaction at qualifying should be measured, even if they lack the star power of West foes like San Diego, LAFC, Vancouver and Seattle.

"Really, there's only one team at the end of the year that should experience joy," Salt Lake manager Pablo Mastroeni told the DJ and PK program on local radio station KSL. "The rest of us, there's relief that we get in the playoffs, relief that we move on. But there is joy, too, given the season that we had and all the adversity we'd gone through as a group, and still found a way to persevere."

--Field Level Media