Three big storylines

1. This is the last weekend of league games before MLS takes a break for the summer soccer tournaments to start. Speaking of tournaments, the big one is the Women’s World Cup that kicks off in France on Friday, June 6. The USA open their tournament on Tuesday, June 11 against Thailand. The U.S. men will be contesting the Gold Cup this summer; the Gold Cup will again be hosted mostly in the USA with a double header of games to be held in both Jamaica and Costa Rica during the knockout stages. The USA opens their tournament on June 19 with Guyana. Furthermore, Copa America will kick off on June 14 in Brazil. All three tournaments will have their final on Sunday, July 7.
2. The Portland Timbers are finally opening their newly remodeled Providence Park after an historic 12 game road trip to open the season. The Timbers will host the best team in MLS in LAFC, who come into the game boasting a 10-1-4 (W-L-D) record and a +25 goal differential. The Timbers are currently below the red line in 10th place, but they largely survived their historic road trip after a very rough start that saw them earn only one point from their first six played. They finished the second half of the road trip with 13 points from six played. The expanded capacity is now 25,218 after adding approximately 4,000 seats.
3. Bruce Arena will make his next managerial debut this weekend as the New England Revolution travel to play his former team, the Los Angeles Galaxy (Sunday, 7:30 PM, ESPN+). Arena was named the Rev’s new manager on May 14, but has taken a slow approach to taking over the full duties that come with the title of Sporting Director/Head Coach. Luckily for Arena, the Eastern Conference is definitely the more forgiving of the two tables and just two wins in a row would likely see Arena guide his squad back above the red line. Now for Arena to just figure out how to get those two wins in a row.

From a Sounders point of view

The Sounders have a Wednesday game this week at the Montreal Impact. The Impact are at home on Saturday against Orlando City SC (2 PM, ESPN+) if you want to get an advanced look at the midweek opponent. The Impact have lost Ignacio Piatti for at least 8 weeks to a knee injury. The Sounders will likely be without a number of international players for that game as well.

National TV listings

Atlanta United v Chicago Fire

Date/Time: Saturday, 3:00 PM PT

TV: UniMas

Streaming: Univision Deportes and Twitter Live Stream of the Week

Portland Timbers v Los Angeles Football Club

Date/Time: Saturday, 7:30 PM PT

TV: ESPN 2

Streaming: Watch ESPN

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This is your Sounder at Heart MLS Week 14 weekend gamethread. Watch with us.